The Spot

by John Scudder

In every suburban town there are spots, the secluded places where teenagers from all walks of life congregate.  Once you happen across one you know it instantly; leafy brush covered ground strewn with used condoms, cigarette butts, Coors light cans and all the other debris of adolescent exploration. Our spot was little more than a cement wall overlooking the Merrimack river, a place we would come to live out our adolescent fantasies; isolated from disproving adults and prying eyes. You have to know what you are looking for to get to the spot.  The entrance is across the street from Jeff Merrill’s house, the small break in the ferns and ivy looks more like a hunting path than a trail, a dense line of oak trees forms a tunnel leading into the woods. If you follow the trail about fifty feet into the woods you will reach a well worn fallen tree, past that the world drops off.  It’s a forty five foot drop to the rapids below. During the moonlit nights we spent there, we were wary to look over, fearful that some phantom push might send us careening into black tumults below.

Fifty years of graffiti lined the wall. It chronicled a rich varied history of sluts, dicks, and assholes.  Tagging the wall was something of a right of passage, for the bored youth of Methuen scrawling your name was almost a requisite for graduation.  You aren’t an accepted member of the senior class until you’re name is scrawled on the wall.  Pat Riordan and my names are up there, we had stolen a pair of climbing harnesses and some rope from the Methuen High School gym at the end of our freshmen year.  That summer was the last night things were good between Pat and I.  The next morning he left for a week long vacation, 2 weeks later at the start of the school year Jennifer Bertrand moved in and changed our lives.  

Pat and I have always done everything together, we’d been through all the six seasons of lost, the star wars prequels, and the separate yet equally nasty divorces of our parents together.  We’ve been called stuck up, freakish, gay, we never really cared though we knew everyone else were assholes, in all of the Merrimack valley there were only two real people, that is until Jen came. She found us at our lunch table on the third day of our Sophomore year. unceremoniously plopping herself down next to me at our almost empty table, she didn’t even ask if the seat was taken, of course it wasn’t and we weren’t about to tell her to get up.  She had long straight black hair that she let down below her shoulders,  she wasn’t wearing any makeup nor did she need to. She was wearing a maroon hoodie with a black “Cannibal Corpse” tshirt, and some skinny jeans. For a moment Pat and I sat dumbfounded, we had no precedent for such encounters.  This was the stuff of Emma Stone movies or porn, and yet it was happening before us.  By this point she looked visibly concerned, we had been staring mouths ajar for about five seconds, she broke the silence with a “hey”.  From that moment on Pat and my dynamic changed.

Jenny had moved to Methuen from Tewksbury with her mother.  She liked the Velvet Underground, zombie movies, swearing and doing nothing, it was like God himself had designed an Okcupid profile, tailor made to drive a socially awkward teenager wild. The only problem was Pat and I both had our sights set on her.  Hangouts with Jen were vicious competitions, but she only had so much attention to give. Pat and I were like her piglets, boisterously vying for a spot at their mothers teet.  Almost every night we would call up “Ice Man”(Jenny coined the name one night after noticing a startling resemblance to a character in “Crazy Taxi”) our dealer. “Ice man” was a twenty five year old Mcdonald's employee who drove around in his dad’s beat up Pontiac Fiero peddling 1 gram bags of low quality weed.  After coughing down a joint or two we would walk for miles.  From the gas station to the other gas station, to the other other gas station,  our walks may have seemed mundane but we made them special. We were not alone either, by night the town came alive.  The alien and dark roads were filled with raucous gangs of leathermen clad inebriates.  They would make their way through the town whooping and hollering paying little heed to us peons as they went who knows where.   When the spot wasn’t occupied we would be there, spending hours looking out over the water and the cars on 495.  As we chain smoked Marlboro blacks, we had two hour long bull sessions on whoever had irked us that day,  from Bill O'Reilly to whichever member of the football team we found to have been the most egregious asshole that day.  When we grew shrill from laughter Jen would pull out her ipod speaker.  She would look off at nothing in particular and gently rock to the “Talking Heads”.  During these times Pat and I would inch closer to her, fabricating our own sexual tension where none existed.  Eventually she would yawn and we would walk her home.   Leaving bitter and disappointed, Pat and I were silent on the walks back home.  

Finally one day things took a turn for the worst,  one night Pat brought a bottle of whiskey to the spot.  When I saw it sitting on the log between him and Jen I knew something was wrong.  Pat only drinks when his dad drinks.  Pat’s father was a monster when he drank, the kind of monster sons spend the first half of their adult lives trying to forget and the second half of their lives becoming.  When Pat drank he too was different. He would down full bottles of whiskey and it wouldn’t show, instead of stumbling and laughing he would spit poison at any unlucky soul who happened to cross him.  That night Jenny and I were on the chopping block. By the time I got there Jenny was almost in tears.  I sat down next to her and put my arm around her, she pushed me off and ran back into the woods with her face in her hands.  “What the fuck?” I said, “You” he said, his voice deep with malice, I stood there “What are you looking at puss boy? you gonna help your girlfriend?”  he rasped.  I continued staring him down, “pussy ass bitch” he muttered to himself before plopping down on the log.  He stared out towards the lights of Lowell and Lawrence.  Slowly I sat down next to him, taking the bottle.  He didn’t seem to notice or care until I chucked it with all my might far out into the Merrimack.  “The fuck!?” he yelled “that was thirty fucking dollars!” Of course he had nabbed it from his father's liquor cabinet, while his dad was passed out.  I didn’t say anything, I knew better than to talk to him when he was like this.  The air was thick with mosquitoes and a crescent moon rose over the hills of the valley, the bushes shook with the cold autumn breeze,  the valley was bleak, 495 desolate.  “I love her” he finally said, I looked quizzically at him. “Fuck you dude” he said, not directed at me, more as just a statement. “You always get what you want, why?” he paused “why can’t I just get something?” … “I mean it’s not like I don’t have enough shit to deal with, fuck this town, I wish I never fucking moved here”  He slammed his fists down on the log, shot up. and loped off into the woods kicking ineffectively at the ferns and underbrush as he moved.

I sat there for some time, only after 15 minutes passed did I realize where I was,  this was the first time I’d been alone at the spot.  I realized how filthy the ground was, and how cold it was, for the first time I felt afraid the woods felt vast and dense and the drop to the water below looked endless and terrifying.  

The next day at school neither Pat nor Jenny showed up to the lunch table.  The next day Jen was there but she didn’t say much, no matter how much I prodded she wouldn't tell me what he had said.  After a while she was back to herself, if not a little more reserved, Pat on the other hand didn’t show up to school for a month.  We didn’t see him until he was lead in by the truancy officer,  he wouldn’t acknowledge me or Jenny.  On the days after that he did come in he was always high or drunk or both.  Outside of school I saw him hanging out with the Lawrence kids, his "Facebook" filled up with cloudy pictures of him at Lowell house parties, eventually he dropped out.  

    One night during the summer before senior year at the spot we got drunk on a sickly sweet mixture of Rubinoff and Coconut Malibu Jen had made.  I had started to hit on her rather forwardly, “Hey what if we made out?” I asked, she gave me the quizzical stink eye,  “No seriously” I said, “We’re both like cool right? and I think like I like you”, I was sweating at this point and she obviously wasn’t taking me to seriously but I kept pushing.  “You’re drunk” she said, “nope you are” she laughed “you know you’re retarded sometimes” I laughed too, it felt good, laughing,  I hadn’t laughed in a while.  We shifted towards each other and she began to shiver, awkwardly I put my arm around her and she leaned her head into my chest.  My heart was beating fast.  I noticed an awkward bulge in my shorts, shifting hoping she wouldn't notice but she giggled, I laughed again, harder this time. Suddenly the world began spinning and within seconds  was rising up from inside of me, after a few wretched gagging noises it was all over my pants.  Jenny didn’t look surprised or disgusted, just sort of annoyed, I whispered my apologies but she just said, “alright partner time to get up”.  She helped me up and led me out of the woods down the few blocks to my house.  With the patience of an elementary school remedial math teacher, she helped me fumble through my keys to open the door. Luckily my dad wasn’t home, not that it mattered, he had stopped caring a while ago,  but he always gets curious whenever girls are even mentioned in our household.  She helped me take off my vomit soaked pants and laid me into my bed, after propping me up on my side and giving me a bucket she put her hand on my forehead like my mom used to do when I was sick.  She rubbed my bangs with her index finger and I moaned something along the lines of “mommy” before passing out.   

    The next morning I awoke to a suitable roar of a hangover and a shitty taste in my mouth.  Predictably Jenny was gone, I couldn’t expect her to stick around and babysit me all night.  I found my phone next to my puke stained shorts and texted her “bout last night…”.  I sat around the house all day doing nothing in particular but anxiously awaiting a text or phone call.  Finally at eleven o’clock just before I was about to give up and go to bed she texted me,  “the spot? ;)...”.  My heart just about leaped out of my chest. I grabbed a condom from the box my uncle had bought me for my 17th birthday and practically skipped out the door.  I jogged the two blocks to Jeff Merrills house before turning onto the path.  The pitch black path was alive and bright with masculine excitement, imagine my surprise when it was Patrick Riordan sitting on the log.  He wasn’t smoking nor did I see any empty booze bottles, “Hello” he said, “where’s Jenny?” I asked him I sounded confused and scared.  It was then I noticed his hands were shaking, I yelled now “WHERE’S JENNY!?”  He was rocking back and forth now, tightly running his boney hands through his streaky blond hair.  It was then I saw her, at his feet obscured by the log was the crumpled figure of the girl I had fallen in love with.  It’s not  true what they say about dead people, that they look like they are sleeping,  her corpse was grotesque,  a four inch deep gash running from her forehead through her eye and down onto her shattered jaw.  A pool of blood had collected the leaves on the ground, and her lace camisole was soaked in crimson streaks of blood.  I felt the bile once again surge up from inside of me.  Both Patrick and I were crying now, he kept saying “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry” in a disgusting raspy voice and I was on all fours.  Finally after what seemed like an eternity I lunged at him, knocking him off the log and inches away from the ledge.  We rolled in the leaves and the blood.  I kneed him, bit him, pummeled him in his kidneys over and over,  he moaned as I lay into him time and time again. Finally he wretched a thick concoction of blood and bile into my eye,  with a gasp I rolled off of him and lay on my back to catch my breath.  When I turned over to look at him he was on his side with a crazed grin on his face, with a push of his legs he rolled himself over the wall.  I don’t remember if I heard the splash, or checking down to see if he was still alive down there.  Of course for the first few days I was the number one suspect.  It wasn’t until Patricks fingerprints were found all over the rock he had used to bludgeon her that I was acquitted of murdering Jenny. As for Patricks death I got off on a cocktail of insanity and self defence, at least the insanity part was true, that night had taken away any sanity I had left. It had ripped me from my stable reality and thrown me into a world of questions that had no logical answers.  In truth there was no reason why Patrick Riordan had done what he did,  no cause for destroying that place which had harboured most of our youth.  Perhaps it was just been loneliness and boredom that did us in, left to our own devices we had proven that we were no better than animals.  

Brief Response:

For this story I decided to go with Fionna Maazel “Interpreters of Men Get it On”,  I felt it was in the pieces best interest if I shyed away from an all out orgy and instead focused on shocking readers through other human emotions and fluids.  Throughout her short story Maazel  includes the idea of boredom, by setting my story in the sleepy suburb of Lowell that is Methuen.  I also felt that for the story to include both the sexual tension and the violence I needed to shock the reader as Maazel did I would need to make the characters believable,  this would make the murder at the end even more of a shock and surprise.  The narrator in “Interpreters of Men get it On” also lends much of their own tone to the narration, so I wanted the somewhat snarky protagonists attitude to shine through.  The location of the piece and focus of this assignment was “the spot”,  to the best of my knowledge I don’t think there is quite a spot like the one I described.  

The reason I picked Methuen is that I have driven through it,  it always seems like a snapshot  of bored youth in small town America. The wandering teens seemed like they were totally free in fact strangely I saw very few grown adults on my journey through the town.  I tried to make “the spot” and surrounding areas to be something of a teenage wasteland,  It may be unrealistic to have had so many late night occurrences on school nights,  but I felt it added some style to the story.  Confusion is another common thread in “Interpreters of Men Get it On”,  confusion is created not so much by the graphic descriptions, but by the spontaneous nature of events.  I tried to capture that, the senseless nature of the killing and subsequent events gave extra weight to the scene before hand and the location itself.  Another interesting aspect pf Maazel’s essay I tried to mimic was the inclusion of foreshadowing,  in the first half of her story she included off putting and strange sexual references,  these only gained meaning after you have read the story,  I tried to incorporate foreshadowing by mentioning “phantom pushes” and the drop of the wall.