That Was Then, This Is Now

“It’s just as well,” Charlie said. “You guys are going to get in real bad trouble one of these days. Some guy’s going to get hacked off when he finds out what you’re doin’, and you’re gonna get a pool stick rammed down your throats.”

“No we ain’t,” Mark said. “Give me a Coke, Charlie.”

I had been friends with Mark long before he came to live with us. He had lived down the street and it seemed to me that we had always been together. We had never had a fight. We had never even had an argument. In looks, we were complete opposites: I’m a big guy, dark hair and eyes—the kind who looks like a Saint Bernard puppy, which I don’t mind as most chicks cannot resist a Saint Bernard puppy. Mark was small and compact, with strange golden eyes and hair to match and a grin like a friendly lion. He was much stronger than he looked—he could tie me in arm wrestling. He was my best friend and we were like brothers.

It was a long walk to the bowling alley, and I wished for the hundredth time I had a car. I had to walk everywhere I went. As if he’d read my mind, which he was in the habit of doing, Mark said, “I could hot-wire us a car.”

“That’s a bad thing to do,” M&M said. “Taking something that doesn’t belong to you.”

“It ain’t stealin’,” Mark said. “It’s borrowin’.”

“Yeah, well, you’re on probation now for ‘borrowing,’ so I don’t think it’s such a great idea,” I said.

Mark suddenly poked me. “You still in the mood for a little action?”

“Sure,” I said. Mark motioned toward the next intersection. There was a black guy standing there, waiting for the light to change. “We could jump him,” Mark said, but suddenly M&M spoke up.

“You make me sick! You just rescued me from some guys who were going to beat me up because I’m different from them, and now you’re going to beat up someone because he’s different from you. You think I’m weird—well, you’re the weird ones.”

I was the hustler and Mark was the thief. We were a great pair. One thing about it, though. Mark couldn’t see anything wrong with stealing stuff. I could. It didn’t much matter to me whether or not Mark was a thief, but I still felt that stealing was wrong—at least it’s against the law. I think Mark was only dimly aware of that fact. Stealing was a game to him, something to do for fun and profit, and he was careful not to get caught because that was one of the rules.

As we got into the elevator Mark said, “I’m inclined to agree with his old man. That is one stupid guy.”

“You mean it?” I said. I had been thinking about Mike’s story, and I could see his point about not hating the people who beat him up.

“Yeah, I mean it. Man, if anybody ever hurt me like that I’d hate them for the rest of my life.”

I didn’t think much about that statement then. But later I would—I still do. I think about it and think about it until I think I’m going crazy.

I stopped breathing for a second. Cathy was looking at Mark, and I suddenly felt like I’d swallowed a spoonful of red pepper. I felt cold and hot and sick and mad all at once. I only felt it for a second, only for a second and then it was gone—but sometimes now I wonder how it would be to feel like that all your life. You know what the crummiest feeling you can have is? To hate the person you love best in the world.

Y’know, when I first came around tonight, after that kid cracked me, I was scared stiff. I thought I was dyin’, I was so scared. I really felt weird. But after I got to thinkin’ you were there with me, I calmed down. Bryon, you’re the only family I got, you know that? I mean, your mom’s been great to me and everything, but I don’t feel like she’s really my old lady. But I feel like you’re my brother. A real one.

“Yeah, but still, don’t you kinda miss that one-for-all, all-for-one routine? It’s kinda sad, really, when you get to where you don’t need a gang—I mean, like you did before.”

“It’s kind of a good thing too,” I said, “when you know your own personality so you don’t need the one the gang makes for you.”

“Yeah,” Mark sighed, “but there’s a difference. I wonder what the difference is?”

“The difference is,” I said evenly, “that was then, and this is now.”

“Shut up, O.K.? As long as they ain’t doin’ nothin’ to you, it’s O.K. I guess you can get away with anything.”

Mark leaned back in his chair. The sun came through the small kitchen window and glinted on his eyes, turning them a bright yellow. “I guess so,” Mark said. He smiled, like an innocent lion.

Mark didn’t understand and Cathy did. I started spending more and more time with Cathy. Since I had the car, we went for a lot of drives and got a lot of Cokes together. We were always talking to each other about the way we felt—I tried telling her how I felt about Charlie, about how shook the whole thing had me. […] I could talk to her about anything, talk to her better than I could anyone, even Mark.

After a few weeks we’d drive by the park and make out for a little while. It was different for me though, because I had quit thinking only about myself, quit pushing for all I could get.

I looked across the street, watching some little twelve- and thirteen-year-old teeny-boppers make fools of themselves—smoking, trying to act cool, pushing each other, screaming and swearing so loud I could hear them. I had a sudden recollection of Mark and me at twelve, smoking our heads off, clowning around, hoping someone—usually some little long-haired chick—would notice us and see how cool we were. All of a sudden it seemed like I was a hundred years old, or thirty at least. I wondered if, when I got to be twenty, I would think how stupid I was at sixteen. When I remembered us, it didn’t seem possible that we had looked as silly as these teenyboppers, but I guess we had. At least then we weren’t worried about looking silly. We were sure of ourselves, so sure we were the coolest things to hit town. Now I wasn’t so sure.

“Nothing bad happens to you when you’re a kid. Or haven’t you realized that?”

“Youth is free from worry,” I said sarcastically. “You’ve been listenin’ to too many adults.”

“I don’t worry. I’m never scared of nothing, and I never will be,” Mark said, “as long as I’m a kid.”

“You can get away with anything,” I said, because that phrase came through my head whenever I really thought about Mark.

“Yeah, I can.” He was quiet. “You used to be able to.”

I looked at him, and suddenly it was like seeing someone across a deep pit, someone you couldn’t ever reach.

“You can’t walk through your whole life saying ‘If.’ You can’t keep trying to figure out why things happen, man. That’s what old people do. That’s when you can’t get away with things any more. You gotta just take things as they come, and quit trying to reason them out. Bryon, you never used to wonder about things. Man, I been gettin’ worried about you. You start wonderin’ why, and you get old. Lately, I felt like you were leavin’ me, man. You used to have all the answers.”

“I don’t want anybody to fight the Shepards.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to keep this up, this getting-even jazz. It’s stupid and I’m sick of it and it keeps going in circles. I have had it—so if you’re planning any get-even mugging, forget it.”

“Is that what’s buggin’ you? Listen, I didn’t sell M&M anything. He got it from somebody else. Lookit, Bryon, they’re going to get it from somebody if they want it, so why can’t I make some money? I never forced it on anybody. I never tried to talk somebody into using drugs so I could make a buck.”

He could have talked all night and I wouldn’t have changed my mind.

I wondered tiredly why I had never seen it before: Mark had absolutely no concept of what was right and what was wrong; he didn’t obey any laws, because he couldn’t see that there were any. Laws, right and wrong, they didn’t matter to Mark, because they were just words.

“…you straighten up and they’ll let you out early on probation or parole or whatever it is, and you can come home. I’ll get you a job at the store—”

“Like hell you will […] I ain’t never goin’ back there again. When I get outa here, you ain’t never going to see me again.”

“We were like brothers,” I said, desperate. “You were my best friend—”

He laughed then, and his eyes were the golden, hard, flat eyes of a jungle animal. “Like a friend once said to me, ‘That was then, and this is now.’”

I broke out in a sweat and was suddenly glad of the walls and the guards and the bars. I think if he could have, Mark would have killed me.

Mostly I wonder “what if?” What if I had found out about Mark some other time, when I wasn’t half out of my mind with worry about Cathy? What if I hadn’t met her in the first place, would I still have grown away from Mark? What if M&M had had a good trip instead of a bad one? What if someone else had turned Mark in—would there still be hope for him?

I am too mixed up to really care. And to think, I used to be sure of things. Me, once I had all the answers. I wish I was a kid again, when I had all the answers.