A Letter from Home

James tossed his backpack onto to the bed and kicked off his worn sneakers. He looked around the room, discerning whether or not his roommate was back from class or not. This missing towel and shower caddy from the other side of the tiny dorm room indicated that Hans, the stranger with whom James had been cohabitating, was in the shower. After two weeks they still had barely spoken two words to each other, and James was beginning to wonder if in fact Hans did not know how to speak English, or perhaps did not know how to speak at all.
James reached into his back pocket and retrieved from it the Wisconsin postmarked letter that he had received that morning. He hadn’t heard from home since he left for school. He hadn’t heard much from his mother at all since he decided he was going away for school a few months earlier. She never said it out loud, but she felt like he was running away. The look in her eyes the few times he’d seen her over the summer was the same shame and disappointment she’d tried to conceal when talking about his father. James, Sr., never too clever to live up to clichés, went out for a loaf of bread when James was 13 and never came back.
The letter though, was not from his disappointed mother, but his best friend and cousin Benny. Benny had recently decided that he was just plain Ben. Unlike James, formerly Jimmy, he did not have the luxury of starting over in a new state to rid him of his childhood pseudonym. James sat down on the edge of his bed, dutifully ignoring the naked Dutchman in the corner. He unfolded the scribbled letter and began to read.
Dear Jimmy,
So it’s been two weeks now and Mary Ann still hasn’t returned my calls. I think she’s still mad at you for setting her up like that. No wonder you said you didn’t care if I dated her when you left, there’s no way in hell she’ll talk to anyone who knows you as long as she lives. I’m sorry man, that was rough, but seriously, you shouldn’t have gone after her in the first place if you knew you were just going to leave her at the end of the summer. Enough lecturing. Shit man, I miss the hell out of you. I’ve been having to hang out with that lame ass brother of mine. Johnny says hi, by the way. So does my mom.
Met any hot college chicks yet? Man, I gotta come out there and visit you sometime. You’re coming home for the holidays, right? I’ll tell you Beth got back from the summer camp last weekend and damn did she grow up over the summer. Me and Johnny went down to the bonfire last weekend. He went out for the football team this year… and we thought he was bullshitting, right? He’s second string, but he fuckin’ made it man, can you believe it? He’s going to get all the chicks we always wished we could. Anyway, Beth went with us. She’s going to the community college with me and Rosie next week, so I thought it would be cool if I started hanging out with her some more, you know?
So we get down to the fire, and there’s all those kids, and all us guys hanging back just kind of drinking beers and laughing at ‘em. Then over walk, get this, Artie Warren. The guy got out last week. So we’re all catching up, and he tells Beth how he got arrested after the State Finals for stealing his dad’s VW. Turns out his dad didn’t send him to military school after all, he fuckin pressed charges, and he’s been serving 8 months over in County. Who knew, right? I never thought Old Man Warren would snap like that. But anyway, so he tells us about this place his cellmate told him about. It’s this hole down in the quarry. It’s pretty well hidden by the rocks from above, but pretty easy to get into once you’re down on the level.
So we go down to the quarry with Artie, right, at this point it’s just me, Artie, and Beth. Johnny stayed at the rally with his new girl (more on that later). So he’s all “sshh, sshh,” and we’re telling him to shut up because his fuckin’ hushing us is worse than the whispering we’re doing as far as the echo, you know? So we go down to this hole in the quarry, a cave really, not even knowing why. I mean, we’ve got a couple in us, right, so we ain’t thinkin’ too straight but he hasn’t even told us what is in the cave anyway. So we go in and there is, get this, cocaine EVERYWHERE. He tells us that this is where some of the cops at county stash what they steal off the perps. No one is supposed to know about it, but it’s actually not too well kept a secret. So anyway, we end up doing a couple lines and Artie goes stumbling off into the woods talking about the fucking squirrel that stole his favorite socks. I have no idea what he’s talking about but I figure it gets me some time out with Beth, so I let him wander off.
I probably shouldn’t have just let him wander off like that, in his condition, but you know-- I’m not much better off. So he goes off and me and Beth are out on this rock overlooking the water, and we’re just talking and then she kisses me. I mean, I know you’re thinking I made the move, but I swear she kissed me. So soon we’re just tearing each others’ clothes off and making out. At first I was looking out for Artie, hoping he wouldn’t find us there like that, but then she started giving me head, and I stopped thinking altogether. So then we’re going at it, right there on the rock, and eventually we both just pass out.
When we come to it’s light out and our clothes are all over the place, we couldn’t even find her underwear. So we get dressed as best we can and we start heading back to the car. We figured we’d find Artie on the way. I had the worst fucking headache. It was like a hangover times fifty-five. I felt like crap, but I started getting worried about Artie. So me and Beth start screaming: “Artie, Artie!” But we couldn’t find him anywhere. So I start thinking maybe he fell into the quarry, and I’m fucking panicking. But then we get out to the road and we can’t find his car either. So then I’m pissed, I’m thinking the bastard ditched us. So we start walking down the road, and about a half a mile up there’s Artie’s car, plowed right into a tree. We start freaking out again, and we run over to the car, but he’s not in it. So we’re looking around, and ten feet from the car, there’s Artie—bloody as hell, and his arm is hanging off the side of his body. That’s all he was man, a body. It was the freakiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Anyway, I gotta run, but I’ll call you sometime this weekend.
-Benny-