Cape Cod Noir - By David L Ulin Page 0,10

Least that’s what I wanted for mine.

I never meant to be in the car that killed that girl. It was like that was someone else, not me. Like I wasn’t even there. But I was.

Mr. Riaf, my court-appointed lawyer, had said that the hardest thing out here on Penikese was figuring out how to survive the other guys. “Someone always cracks,” he said. “Don’t let it be you, kid.”

Freddie Paterniti said that when D.Y.S. told him he could go to school on an island for a year instead of being thrown back in the can, he thought he was gonna be spending his days jetskiing. Everybody gave Freddie a load of shit for being such a stupid fuck though they had all thought the same thing. Me, I never admitted to knowing better.

Instead of jet skis, cigarette boats, and chicks in bikinis, we got Cunningham, the school’s founder, an ex-Marine who fought in Vietnam and looked like Jean-Claude Van Damme crossed with Santa Claus. Cunningham believed that our salvation lay in living like it was 1800, but the lesson wasn’t about history: “You boys were chosen to ride Second Chance here because you have shown a demonstrated capacity for remorse for your crimes. We’re here to teach you that your actions literally create the world around you. By creating everything you need with your own bare hands, you can re-form the person you are deep within. And you can take that second chance all the way back to a new place inside.”

That’s why we carried water, slopped pigs, caught fish, dug potatoes, gathered eggs, and built tables and chairs, and if we didn’t, we wouldn’t have had anywhere to sit and nothing to eat.

We chopped a lot of firewood that was brought in on Second Chance from Woods Hole. If we got pissed off—which was often—we were sent out to chop more. At first our muscles ached for days. The feel of the axe ricocheted up our elbows, into our shoulders, our skulls. But we got stronger. Soon we split wood and dreamed of splitting the take, splitting open girls’ thighs, splitting this place, this life.

We were constantly making our world in this nowhere place, chopping it to bits, and redoing it all over again, but we couldn’t remake what we had done to earn our way here.

“Boys,” Tiny Bledsoe would say when we made the cutting boards that were sold in a fancy Falmouth gift shop to help fund the school, “consider yourselves to be in training for Alcatraz. Soon you’ll graduate to making license plates and blue jeans!” Each time Tiny said this Freddie hit the woodshop floor, laughing.

Freddie and Tiny were an odd couple. Freddie: sixteen, short, oily, wall-eyed, with the whiniest high-pitched Southie voice you could imagine. Tiny: seventeen, a lumbering, clubfooted giant who came from East Dennis. They were nothing like me and my big brother Chad, but they reminded me of us in their own way. They both claimed to have killed people. That was their thing. Their special bond. Something that Chad and me have now too.

* * *

That girl’s mother sent me a picture of her, lying in her casket. It looked like one of those jewelry boxes lined in pink satin with a little ballerina that spins while the music plays. All you have to do is turn the key and that ballerina comes to life, but there’s no key on a casket. Just some motor at the gravesite that lowers the box into the ground. My little sister Caroline had one of those jewelry boxes. There was nothing in it but some rings she got out of those grocery store things you put a quarter in. The rings weren’t worth anything, but Chad convinced me to steal her jewelry box anyway.

Freddie and Tiny. It was never Tiny and Freddie, though Tiny was a foot taller. Even Cunningham and our teachers caught on, always saying “Freddie and Tiny” like “I got Freddie’s and Tiny’s homework here!” “Freddie and Tiny are going to lead us in hauling traps!” “Freddie and Tiny …”

One day early in the year, Ryan Peasely was rolling his eyes in mechanics class and mumbling behind Cunningham’s back, “Freddie and Tiny sucked my cock. Freddie and Tiny ate my ass.” It seemed like no one could hear him other than me, but Tiny had sonar for ears. He clamped down on Ryan with a headlock in no time flat. Freddie then whispered into Ryan’s ear that he would kill