“Well yeah, I mean no. I knew it … for the most part. I needed the ruler. It was mine, you know.”

“I told Mr. Howell you got ill. So he passed you.”

I didn’t get it.

“Jonathan Wheeler is poison, Dunph. Stay away from him. And have a nice summer.”

PART Three

I spent the summer of ’74 in hazy Falmouth, Massachusetts, a resort town on Cape Cod. The old man finagled me a job at a caddy camp, and the day I returned from school he dropped me off on Route 195 with a cardboard sign that read: Cape Cod or Vicinity.

I passed the time on the sweltering golf course daydreaming about Jane Weston. I would’ve given anything to have known her well enough to get in touch with her. I felt as if I did know her, but the fact was that I didn’t really, and I was resigned to daydream. “Daydreaming” is an understatement; during that summer I must have logged a thousand hours thinking about the girl.

I left the Cape on August 30 and returned to Pawtucket for the remaining two weeks of vacation. On my first night back the old man sat me down for a discussion.

“So you had a big time this summer, eh Dildo?”

“Yeah, pretty good time.”

“Well, don’t you think it’s about time you started producing? You know, you are getting a little old for that garbage.”

“What garbage? You were the one who sent me out to the Cape.”

“To work. Not to stay out until four every night chasing pussy and acting like a wise guy. I pull a few strings, get you into a nice school, and now you think you’re a big spender who can chase pussy and act like a wiseguy. Drinks are on Dildo. Everyone’s buddy, right? WRONG!”

“But—”

“And don’t give me any lip. You’ll wish you never learned to talk.”

I listened.

“You know that school you go to? You see any of your spinach-chin friends going there? No. Why do you think that is? Why do you think that is you’re the only punk in Pawtucket that goes to a fucking prep school? Because of connections! Caveech got more pull in that place than Raymond got in his little finger. But you don’t appreciate it. And I get you a job on the Cape Cod—madonne, what I wouldn’t give for a job on the Cape Cod when I was a kid—but, no, you don’t appreciate it. You don’t appreciate nothing.”

“Okay, I appreciate it. Why can’t I enjoy myself, too. I saved five hundred bills—”

“Four-fifty,” the old man said. “I got fifty coming off the top.”

“For what?”

“I lent you fifty frogpelts when you went to your school last year.”

“Thirty! I asked for fifty.”