The Boy Who Killed Grant Parker (4 page)

Dad had a congregation in a suburb of Cleveland at the time he and Doris got married. Doris's family was from Kentucky, and she had a southern drawl as sweet as aspartame, with a kindness that was just as fake.

Mom had cursed under her breath when she found out it was a dry wedding. “I have to be in freaking Ohio for my ex-husband's wedding, and I can't even be drunk for it,” she muttered to me at the reception. Except she hadn't said “freaking.” Mom had the vocabulary of a sailor, a personal flaw she said she had tried to correct while married to my dad. “But cussing feels good,” Mom always said to explain this particular vice. “Besides, there's nothing in the Bible that says you can't cuss. As long as you don't cuss and involve the Lord's name in it, you're all good.”

In middle school I had found my mom's eccentric behavior humiliating. Now I missed the fact that I could swear without being called out for it in my own home.

“Luke,” Dad said from where he sat at the kitchen table, a frosty glass of iced tea in front of him, “I had a very disturbing call from Leslie Sherman today.”

I would think any conversation with Leslie Sherman would be disturbing.

This was not going to be a conversation. Dad was going to deliver a sermon, and I was going to endure it like I would any Sunday sermon he spoke from the pulpit.

“What is this about you attacking the team mascot at the pep rally?” he asked with a bewildered frown.

When he said it out loud it did sound ridiculous, more like the punch line to a joke than an actual event.

Like my life.

“I didn't attack him,” I said wearily. “It was just a misunderstanding.”

“He also mentioned your shirt. I told you this morning that shirt does not convey the kind of image you want to be creating for yourself in Ashland. A Death Cab? What is that? You know, the community has been concerned about violence in our schools ever since Columbine.”

“Dad, I seriously doubt the Trench Coat Mafia was listening to Death Cab for Cutie. Those guys were from some backwater town like this one, and Death Cab wasn't even a big name until a few years after Columbine.”

A squawk emanated from Doris's direction as she erupted with emotion, and she and Dad exchanged nervous glances.

Dad took a deep breath and looked down at his glass of iced tea, searching there for his next words.

“Look, Dad,” I said, trying to ignore Doris, “moving here at the start of my senior year sucks. Okay? It sucks.”

“I understand that, Luke,” Dad said. “But you have to understand that Ashland is a conservative community. A small town. There just isn't going to be tolerance for anyone who…”—he paused as he considered what to say next—“well, for anyone wearing shirts like that. You're not helping yourself if you don't at least try to fit in.”

“I don't want to fit in,” I said. I felt myself getting angry and knew I was going to lose this argument. Again.

“Luke, I know when you're young it feels like things aren't ever going to change or get better. You have to be open to change. It's just like I tell my congregation. You have to be prepared to let the Lord into your life if you want to find real strength through his love.”

He was retreating into dogma. An argument that was impossible to win. So I accepted defeat and went to my room.

*   *   *

My humiliation at the pep rally was not something anyone would soon forget, not least of all because someone had managed to capture most of the debacle on video. Don texted me to let me know. I wished he had kept it to himself. Of the forty thousand views the video got on YouTube in the first twenty-four hours, seventeen of those views were my own. I knew I shouldn't watch it, that it would just make me feel worse, but I couldn't help myself.

Though I already felt sorry enough for myself, I needed the replay of the whole episode to help me feel worse. I watched it on my phone in the privacy of my room and wondered if the person who had captured the video of my assault on Willie the Wildcat would need my permission before submitting it to
America's Funniest Home Videos.

I looked painfully uncoordinated and lanky in the video, and had never noticed how thin my arms were before seeing them in the video seventeen times. My face was recognizable, but I hoped there was no way anyone at my old school would stumble upon it. After all, I wasn't friends with anyone at my new school on social media. It's not like they could tag me in a post.

As I lay in my bed, hidden in my room from the outside world, I could imagine the video going viral, shared among hundreds of my new classmates. A running counter in my mind spiraled into the millions of views and thumbs-up emojis before I drifted off to sleep that first night.

 

5

My assault on Willie the Wildcat had confirmed for Leslie G. Sherman on my first day at Wakefield that I was here looking for trouble. For everyone else, it offered clear evidence that I was a complete tool, a prime target for ridicule and dislike.

At least I now had the excuse of going to after-school detention every day for the next five days, where I could avoid other students—and Dad and Doris.

During the hour of afternoon detention I could not talk or read or listen to music, just stare blankly out the window, alone with my own thoughts. It was supposed to give me time to think about my crime and learn to repent. Instead, it gave me ample free time to think about how much I hated Ashland and everyone in it.

*   *   *

During that first week I rode my bike home by a different route every day. I was learning my way around town and, at the same time, trying to find the perfect route so that I would see the minimum number of people. It's not as if I had anything else to do, and I certainly didn't want to be at home.

Dad was only in his office part of the time because he made visits to people in the hospital or had to conduct a funeral or something. And since Doris didn't work, there was always the risk that I would run into her or, worse, she would have the Baptist Church Women (that's what they called themselves) over for sweet tea, with pimento cheese on Ritz crackers.

It was on the third day when I was on my way home, taking a much longer route that followed the train tracks through a nonresidential part of town, when I saw her for the first time.

A large junkyard surrounded by a chain-link fence took up a whole block near the main railroad crossing. Sitting on four bald tires was an old Camaro, a late-sixties model. The body was in great shape, if not filthy and coated in road dust. It was a ragtop, and from the street side of the fence I could see no tears or rips in the cover.

I walked my bike along the length of the fence that surrounded the junkyard until I came to a building with three bay doors and a black asphalt parking lot in front.
ROGER'S AUTO AND BODY
was painted on a sign hung above the glass entry door. A bell on the door announced my arrival, and I stepped into an empty office. The angle of the sun cut a path of light across the office, dust motes swirling in the current of air from the open door.

“Hello,” I called through the doorway that opened into the garage bays.

A grunt and the clatter of metal were the only reply. I ventured into the well-lit work area, clean and orderly compared to the neglected office, and saw a Ford pickup gleaming under the overhead lights.

“Hello?” I said again, thinking maybe I had imagined the sounds of another human, or that the garage was haunted.

“You already said that,” came a disembodied voice from somewhere below.

“Oh. Uh … sorry. Where are you?” I asked, feeling like a total idiot.

“Grease pit,” was the reply. “That all you were looking to ask?”

I looked under the truck and saw a man standing beneath it in the grease pit, reaching up into the undercarriage of the Ford. The bay on the far side held a mechanical lift, an Oldsmobile perched on top of it.

“Actually, I was wondering about the old Camaro out in the yard,” I said. “Is that your junkyard?”

“Who wants to know?” he asked. I couldn't make out any features, because the trouble light that hung under the Ford cast his face in shadow, but judging from his voice, he wasn't young, maybe not even middle-aged.

“I-I'm Luke. Grayson. I just moved here a couple of weeks ago.”

“Pastor Grayson's kid, huh? I heard tell something about you moving to town.” The grease pit was surrounded on three sides by a raised metal barrier to prevent objects from rolling from the garage floor over the edge. The fourth side of the pit opened onto a flight of metal steps that had once been painted yellow, but only a few flecks of paint remained.

Suddenly the man emerged from the grease pit and climbed the stairs while wiping his hands on a cloth that was more black with grease than the red of the fabric. My first reaction to him was fear. He was huge, big as an old oak, with long black hair that had grayed to the point that it was more salt than pepper. He wore a bushy beard, also shot through with gray, and the creases on his face and arms had been permanently blackened with car grease. “You don't look like your daddy,” was his first observation.

“No, I don't,” I said with some relief in my tone, since my dad resembled Ned Flanders from
The Simpsons.

He almost smiled at that. At least his eyes did. His mouth was lost in the tangle of beard and mustache.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

“The Camaro, the convertible out in the yard. Is that yours?”

He nodded thoughtfully as he tossed his rag onto the hood of the Ford and went to an old metal cooler that rested against one wall and pulled a can of beer from the ice bath within.

I tried to wait patiently as he cracked open his beer and took a long swig. He sighed with pleasure after he had emptied half the can and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Used to be my car,” he said. “It's a chick magnet.”

“A what?” I asked, hoping I had misheard him.

“A chick magnet,” he said. “You know, it attracts women.”

“Oh,” I said as I contemplated a time in history when Roger, since I could only assume I was talking to Roger of Roger's Auto and Body, had been attractive to the opposite sex.

“Is it for sale?” I asked. I didn't want to sound too hopeful in case he was going to drive a hard bargain.

“Maybe,” he said and took another swig of his beer. “You know anything about cars?”

“A little. Enough. I know enough.”

My mom dated a guy for a while who lived with us. Clint. He was really into cars. Would take me to car shows and taught me how to do some of the basics. Older cars were less complicated, and I knew I could figure it out. “Does it need a lot of work?”

“Not much. Maybe a new radiator and hoses. The carburetor could use a good cleaning, spark plugs. Just needs someone to love her a little bit.”

“I don't have a lot of money, but maybe you need some help around the shop. I'm looking for a job,” I said. This wasn't really true, but the idea struck me as we stood talking. With an after-school job at least I would have something to pass the time. “I could earn what I can't pay you in cash.”

He only nodded at this suggestion, giving me the impression he was the kind of person who didn't like to be convinced of anything. “Most people your age are pretty worthless,” he said without any humor. “What are you, sixteen? Seventeen?”

“I'll be eighteen in December.”

“Ooh,” he hooted through his beard. “So you're all grown. Might as well hire you while you still know everything.”

“Does that mean you'll do it?” I asked, my voice rising in pitch with too much hope. “I'll do whatever you need. Cleaning, answering phones, whatever.”

“I'll think about it. Come by tomorrow at the same time and I'll let you know.”

“Okay,” I said, taking that as a dismissal, and started backing toward the door. “I'll come by tomorrow on my way home from school. Same time.”

He waved indifferently and tossed his beer can into an oil drum as he turned to reach for another. I was already forgotten as I let myself out to the tinkle of bells.

 

6

I was wrong to think of Ashland as my purgatory. It turned out to be my own personal hell. Not just the time I spent in school being alternately ignored or studied intently, like a specimen under glass in a museum, but the time I spent at home was hell, too. I rarely left my room, but when I did I was subject to Doris's saccharine smile or disapproving glances, depending on her mood and what shirt I was wearing. Dinner each night was torture. Dad and Doris would ask me questions in an effort to inspire conversation, but usually I stayed silent while they discussed the business of the parish—speculation about whose marriage seemed too perfect on the surface but was probably in serious trouble, or which caterer offered the best funeral wake.

It was Doris's ill-conceived idea to host a welcome-to-the-neighborhood party for me as an opportunity to introduce me to people from the community. I suppose she was hoping the party would serve as damage control for my initial impression on the neighbors as an assailant of their beloved wildcat.

Doris's idea of a party was not the same as my mom's idea of a party. For one thing, there was no booze. As Southern Baptists, Doris and Dad did not indulge in booze other than a bottle of medicinal brandy Dad kept in his study. For another thing, Doris prepared all of the food herself, didn't call for delivery from the local Italian deli or Lebanese restaurant the way Mom would have. Not that there was any such thing as an Italian deli or Lebanese restaurant in Ashland. Doris confined herself to the kitchen for two days, a never-ending collection of decorative aprons dirtied by her efforts, and created an impressive spread of ham biscuits and potato salad and deviled eggs and every other stereotypical southern food fit for a preacher's wake. Lemonade and iced tea were offered up in frosty pitchers, and there was a sickly sweet punch for the kids that stained the Styrofoam cups an electric pink.