The Whore's Child by Richard Russo Page A

“You’re one crazy little fuck, Dernbo,” said the boy who had peed on my chinos, and the admiration I heard in his voice got me through the long, diuretic afternoon. To ensure that everyone understood that I was no flash in the pan, I repeated the performance the following week, this time with mustard, to even more disastrous intestinal consequence.
    Gaining entrance to the dubious society proved disappointing, though of course I was unable to admit this even to myself. No group in my junior high school had a wilder reputation than my new friends, but as far as I could tell, it was largely unearned. They had let on—and of course it was believed—that during the summer they’d stolen a car and taken a joy ride down the coast to Old Orchard Beach where they’d drunk beer and met some high school girls who came across and they’d all spent the night on the beach.
    This was exactly the kind of adventure I feared and longed for. I hadn’t hung out with my new friends very long, however, before I began doubting that the episode ever happened. Either they’d lied or they only had the one joy ride in them. I was beginning to suspect that the most daring act they’d ever performed was peeing on my chinos back in October. By now, they seemed to look to me for inspiration, and increasingly I was responsible for the execution as well. I not only had to conceive of the smoke bomb in the tailpipe, but I also had to buy it with my own money and put it there. I was given to understand that it wasn’t cowardice that infected my companions, but rather that they had records from their many run-ins with the cops. One more bust would land them in reform school, whereas I had years of credit stored up as a result of having been such a little pussy for so long. They were therefore determined that we should get on equal terms. Once we were all equally at risk, they’d start kicking ass again. Until then, we’d restrict ourselves to what we called small, random acts of senselessness—the lighted M-80 shoved through the mail slot, the burning bag of fresh dogshit on the WELCOME mat, sugar in the neighbor’s gas tank.
    But these were not what had me looking for an escape. The day before, on an impulse that frightened me into something like wakefulness, I had picked up a stone and thrown it, hard as I could, at a mangy dog that had just lifted its leg to pee on the tire of a parked car. My intention had been, I thought, to scare the animal off, to teach it caution, but I knew the moment I released it that the stone was too heavy, and I knew the moment I released it that it would neither miss the dog nor nick it on the flank. Suddenly aware of us, the animal put its hind leg back down and turned just in time to catch the stone right between the eyes, dropping without a sound. “Jesus, Dernbo,” my companions said as one. By the time we ran, blood was oozing thickly through the fur.
    â€œLet’s haul ass,” somebody advised. We were right there in the open on a quiet street, and it seemed impossible that what I’d done had not been witnessed. I stayed where I was, though, kneeling mesmerized beside the animal, amazed by the rise and fall of its narrow chest, its continued respiration. And after a few moments the dog jerked back to consciousness with a whimper, its rear legs twitching, and then it was on its feet, weakly licking my outstretched hand with the same look of stupid, affectionate confusion I’d seen on the face of old Mr. Conlan, our next-door neighbor, when he discovered that somebody had sugared his gas tank. It was that look I was hoping to leave behind as my mother and I climbed the hill that led out of town, reducing the whole village until it fit neatly into the round frame of the side-view mirror.
    At Brunswick we got on the interstate and made a bee-line for the New Hampshire border. To get across the state line suddenly seemed imperative to my