Right Down the Line
Based on the short story “Julie”

Chapter One: “Baker Street”

I was arrested on my first day of high school. It wasn't for anything major...I just shattered the glass on George Mangleson's truck. He started it. He called me a walking pile of...crap...even though we had never met before that day. So, I took that as an open invitation to pick up a large rock from the parking lot and threw it onto his windshield, right in the lower side where the glass is under the most pressure. Cracked like an egg...several times over...and so did George as he tried to go after me...but...he stopped abruptly as I had the same rock back in my hand and was willingly ready to use it on him if he took one more step. The charge against me was being an outsider in a closed student system.

Let's get the introductions aside, at every school I attended I was designated "that kid". You can hear the commentary "that kid'll drop out at the end of this quarter”. Parents of the girls that I 'dated' all had a shell with my name written across the casing--just itching to pull the proverbial-and a few, such as Mr. Stevenson, literal, trigger. (Just so you know, Mr. Stevenson, Nikki lied to me too. She is very experienced and not as angelic as she wanted either of us to think).

Reardan was my fourth school in three years. My freshman through junior years were like being in the infantry, with a weekend pass now and then. I used that pass to the limit. I would go to a party on Friday night with DeeDee. Meet up with Angela outside with some of the other other smokers. I would wake up with Carmen and then meet up with Nikki the next evening. We’d either find the next party to go to or steal some beer and make our party. Our own party usually ended with a few rolls in the hay—when I lived in Missouri. A corn field, in Nebraska. Sometimes in the back of one of my parents’ cars. I thought it was just routine for me to be stupid. I didn’t care about feelings—mine or hers. If she didn’t care who she was with five seconds before they were with me then why I should I?

You would have never been able to persuade me to “change my ways”. I assure you, if you tried to tell me of the void in my soul, the dangers of drinking and doing drugs, or something about myself getting AIDS or her getting pregnant. I would nod my head and then go back to whatever it was that I was doing at the time. If you wanted to shift the drama into overdrive you could say that I was ruining my life and I would have nodded in agreement.

That was the way the life of Bryan McCauley during his first three years at high school. I had been arrested before, and that did not deter me from my normal rounds. And at my schools, you either feared me or you wanted to put a bullet in me. That's how it was and that's how people felt. However, two things happened that actually made me change my life: Mom walked out on my father when I was about six and my father died in a crash at an air show, forcing me to move to my grandparent’s farm near Spokane. The farm was a quarter-mile off of the main road, named after the family: Baker Street.

The ride from Reardan to the farm was a little under five minutes but on that day it felt longer as my grandfather picked me up from the police station. We drove most of the way in silence. I didn’t even try to clear my throat as I stole small glances at my grandfather.He had on an old and worn baseball cap and sunglasses so it was hard to read his expression.
“I’m disappointed, Bryan.”
“Yes sir,” I replied while staring straight ahead at the farm.
“Gonna be some consequences.”
“I know.”
“I need you to change out the oil on the truck.”
“Sir?” That was an easy job, so I had to wonder what he had waiting to stack on top of it.
“Then, you’re going to apologize to the Mangleson boy.”
That was a consequence as I felt that I didn’t owe George squat. He should have had to apologize to me instead. It was a Baker/McCauley tradition to fight and defend.
“His family agreed that what he did was stupid; so he won a stupid prize for it. But you, son, best heed that temper before it gets you into real trouble one day.”
“Yes sir.”

The sun hung low on that autumn night as I worked on the truck inside the barn. It was an old Chevy truck with a high stick manual transmission. It was so old that Don McLean never would have tried to drive it to a levee or to town. I would, however, wouldn’t mind driving it to school. I mean the thing was nearly a damn tank and with one touch to the bumper, George’s car would collapse into a heap of new truck junk. I had to convince grandpa to let me drive it to school, you know, to alleviate him having to drive me to school.
“You’ll take the bus,” he replied after I laid out my case in a six minute speech.
“It’s a mile to bus stop.”
“Your legs work, don’t they?”
“What about in the winter?”
“We got boots. They don’t fit, double up on your socks.”
“What about to football games?”
“We’ll see about that,” he said with a wink.