Come Destroy Me by Vin Packer Read Free Book Online Page A

broke, and he wondered what in hell he had meant. He wondered why he wasn’t a man. How he could have helped. What was he supposed to do?
    Slowly he walked down the back hall to his bedroom. He shut the door behind him and stood by the window looking out at the hills with the moon shining on them. The tears that were in his eyes stayed there and he blinked so that one streamed down his cheek. A line from a Kipling poem came to his mind: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you …” He said the line over to himself, and he remembered that the poem ended: “And what is more, you’ll be a man, my son.”
    In the back of his thoughts was the memory of Jill Latham, but he postponed that memory consciously, withholding it until he could fully savor the injustice done him by his mother and by Russel Lofton. He imagined himself coming home exactly as he had a few minutes ago, with Lofton shouting at him in the hall the way he had, and Charlie answering him, “Where have I been? I’ve been out chasing down my sister and that no-good Jim Prince, and they’re right outside now. That’s where I’ve been!” He imagined his mother smiling at him with a certain calm adoration in her eyes, Russel Lofton fumbling for words, the whole scene bigger, better, completely the opposite of the way it had happened.
    He kicked the chair lightly, shook his head, and flicked on the overhead light. He thought, What a dreamer I am! Dream. Dream. Dream.
    When he took off his shirt he went to the mirror and stared at himself bare-chested. He kicked his loafers under the bed, gave two rolls to the cuffs of his pants, and stood arms akimbo before his own reflection, his jaw stuck forward, an eyebrow arched, a leer on his lips. He looked tough. He said to the mirror, “I’m Charlie Wright. Age sixteen. In love with a pretty little girl named Jill Latham. What’s it to you?” Then his face broke into an embarrassed grin and he said again to his reflection, “You crazy character. Charlie boy, you’re nuts, Charlie boy.”
    He got tired of watching himself and he moved away and sat on the bed, undid his pants buckle, and pulled them down, leaving them in a heap on the floor. In his white jockey shorts, he stretched himself out on the bed without taking off the cover. Then he inspected the hair on his arms and on his legs, holding them up so he could see them in the light. He had a lot of hair. Men with a lot of hair were virile. What the hell! Who gave a damn?
    For a long time he lay there looking up at the bulb, staring at it until his eyes hurt and ran. He wondered how long he could look at the bulb before he lost sight of everything but the special red color he saw eventually. If his mother thought he wasn’t a man, why should he try to act like a man? He could spend the rest of his life staring at light bulbs and not go to Harvard or do anything. Stare at light bulbs.
    Think about Jill.
    He wasn’t ready yet. He got up and went down the hall to the bathroom, ran water on his face, and again watched the mirror as the water dripped down his chin and over his lips. He winked at himself, grabbed the toothbrush, and ran it lightly across his teeth. He took a long time with his toilet. Man! The word made him sick. What did his mother know? He didn’t even have a father, did he?
    Back in his bedroom he put the light off, tore the cover from the bed, and stripped it to a single sheet. He sank his head down on the pillow and lay on his stomach. Now he could think about her.
    The moon gave a fork of light to his room and he did not feel sleepy. He wanted to be sure exactly what he would think about her before he started, and to begin with he went through the whole evening again, reviewing everything. He could not remember the song.
    He took the pillow and put it beside him, putting his arm around it very gently. “Jill, tell me,” he whispered. “I’ll understand.” The linen cover of the pillow