I’ve never really liked camping, but Marty was home from the army, and I had grown tired of school after the first week, so, Mom wrote the school a note, and I agreed to go.
Marty had been away for almost three years, stationed for two years in Germany and then for a year in Texas where he met and became involved with this married woman. When that fell through, he jumped on the bus and came home to Indiana for a few weeks. At the time, I didn’t know if he was supposed to be home or if he had just left for a while, but either way, it was good to see him. I was only thirteen when he left, and when he came back I wanted him to know that I was no longer a kid. I had not had my first beer until he had been gone for almost a year, and I wanted Marty to know that now I was like him, that I was someone with whom he could be frank, someone with whom he could be real––that I was a man. And in some ways I was, only it was Marty who would force me to accept adulthood on a level I had not known I was ready for; it was Marty who ultimately knew from way before the moment he stepped out of Aunt Janice’s car, wrapped his hand around mine, and pulled me in toward him, that I was going to have to grow up over the next couple of days, that I was going to be stretched, and that he was going to be the reason. I remember that embrace, and I remember Marty then hugging Mom for a long time––his face buried in her shoulder, his limbs, too long for her small body, reached completely around her back, his hands touching the outsides of her arms. That that impoverished greeting on that cool October eve was significant only became apparent to me afterwards. At the time, I was so eager for Marty to see who I had become that I could not see Marty, I could not realize that maybe there was more to his sudden return than the opportunity for me to demonstrate my manhood, that maybe everything was not all right with him.
I looked rough in those days––the way I thought I was supposed to look. I had long stringy hair that I wore in a ponytail and a black leather biker jacket that Mom had bought me at a pawn shop for my birthday. Usually I wore old jeans and black t-shirts and my jacket. That was my standard look––a style that gave me an identity at a time when I believed that a person’s style defined who he was. Maybe that’s why I never figured Marty was not all right, because, like most people, he had mastered the facade of cool stoicism, a facade behind which lurked a hundred emotions which would never be allowed to surface. He had all his gear packed in a duffel bag, and he was wearing a blue canvas jacket with the sleeves cut off and these beat-up boots that he bought back in Germany. His hair was military length but still somewhat unkempt and wild like he washed it but never combed it. It sort of made him look like a rock singer, a look furthered by his disdainful expression and his pale face. He smoked cigarettes mostly with no hands, the thin cylinder riding between his lips as he exhaled out of the corner of his mouth. Often the ash, perilously long, would simply break off and fall into his lap or down his shirt front. When he noticed, he’d casually brush the ash off his clothing as if the action were a tedious necessity. Marty had begun lifting weights in the military, and besides developing a muscular upper body, the exercise had caused his muscles to tense and the veins on his forearms to pop up and run over them like buried pipes forced up and out of frozen ground. Partly hidden by the sleeve of his t-shirt was a black and red tattoo of a killer whale and the words Moby Dick written in ornate letters. Neither of us had ever read the book, but Marty knew this guy in Germany who was always comparing life situations with scenes from the novel. One night, on a whim, the two got the tattoos, and Marty swore he would read the book to authenticate the art, but as far as I knew, he never did.
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