After: "Andy Petty's Summer" (Andy Petty Chapter 1/1)

After my trip I've started a major round of revisions. I started typing in my manuscript notations/corrections and spending several days on each chapter after going over the notes in my Horseshit notebook. The first result of this, obviously, would be chapter one: "Andy Petty's Summer; the Idylls of Child." I thought this chapter was in decent shape before, but I think I really fixed it up. It probably needs a few more adjustments, but I got a flow I was really happy with and think I added a lot of focus. I've posted the last draft, so I won't recap much. I'll probably do a before and after thing for the other chapters, too. So here's the new draft of chapter one:

“Andy Petty’s Summer; the Idylls of Child”

Andy Petty’s last day of summer began and ended with dead cats, in Horsehit, PA. The first was forgotten in a wooden shed. It sat still and looked alive for who knows how long.

He took his old Huffy from his aunt’s trailer and rode about a mile. Aunt Debbie lived outside of town, north of Selinsgrove and under the curled billboards and mountain apostrophe. She earned $18,000 a year because she made it through high school. She didn’t buy her anti-depressant medication so she could play the lottery. Both she and Andy lived alone. They weren’t sure if they were happy with each other, so took the family route and pretended to get along.

He could feel it as he drove by. The voices of the germs between its hairs and on its flesh whipped through the corn rows. And in the center of the field, slightly to the left, sat the shed which looked like a tandem outhouse. The hexes on the side made him think of the room in the trailer where his cat slept. The one with Aunt Debbie’s old things he didn’t recognize.

But as the cat called—the draw of somewhere from this Dinty Moore earth crust—he rode his bike and thought about a song a friend played for him at school. He couldn’t remember the title. He whistled something else. A girl he jerked off to earlier came back into his head. The corn looked so green against the butter, Redenbacher sky that he thought of her teal eyes and wheat-shining hair. Her little freckles burned, but didn’t pop. He would never talk to her. He couldn’t figure out why he would never talk to her. She was Beth Cuomo.

He hid his bike so no one would take it. Bikes in the country were like sculpture. They decorated roadsides. They disappeared like lost children and turned up on foreign corners later, used and worn out. Most were Amish.

The corn was wet-spider-leg plantation. Andy was five-foot-five and the sharp green leaves scraped against his cheeks’ acne. Aunt Debbie was supposed to order new lotion this month. Andy kept going further into the sunset dust, Goodwill Nikes scraping the pressed dirt from the tractor treads as he kicked the molded rows of earth apart. His socks browned while he ran fast through the arms of the earth. Finally he came to the shack and tried looking through the cracks. He knew the yield shape, traffic light, and 24-hour photo. But, the hex signs here and along the highway…they were mixed in with a fashion of 70s sequined talismans for places like the Showboat, down south on the river. Near the sex dungeon-style cobblestone and prison cleft on the hill surrounded by the mountains. He never knew how to feel when he saw part of his history.

In the distance he could hear a tractor turning over dirt. He could hear the cars on the highway, but they were so common that he hardly noticed the roads anymore. They were covered by rolling breasts of corn and brown creeks with mosquito bites, where steeples bothered the sky and crosses eclipsed masts.

Insects buzzed inside. The cat sat on the floor. Nothing moved. He stared. He wanted to pet it. It made him sick. He needed his zolpidem. Everything felt razed and he couldn’t open the door no matter how long he touched the knob. He didn’t like to see dead things, but he wondered why it was there.

The ice cream place near town was still open and Andy thought he could go see who was around even though he didn’t have any money and didn’t have any friends. Or maybe he’d try the pool. He needed something to brush the dead whiskers out of his head.

Drew and John hung out by the pool, so Andy rode by. They’d pushed his head down the toilet so many times, sold his clothes, threw his shoes on the roof at adult swim. He wanted to see people eating ice cream. If Aunt Debbie wasn’t watching her soaps he might have asked her for money. She didn’t have money because he didn’t have acne cream. The acne spread.

Andy skidded into the stone parking lot next to the Tire Iron, where Jed and Trevor decorated the ice cream stand. His bike was shit and they looked at him funny. Jed spoke.

“We should get an apartment. I can’t be living at home this time next year.”

“I gotta get a better job,” Trevor said. His jacket flapped and it was windy.

“I know Cheeve, he ain’t gonna be in on it. Too wrapped up in Emily Tokars. No money’s coming out of that. But this time next year, we get an apartment. We have to.”

“I hate this town,” Trevor said.

“You see that thing they’re building downtown?”

“What?”

“The vacant lot. I wonder what they’re building. I hope it’s apartments.”

“Hey guys.”

“Hey Andy,” they said, looking away.

Jed always spoke. “I just don’t wanna die here like this. I need to graduate.”

“I need something to smoke,” Trevor said.

Jed coughed, waiting for Andy to leave, until: “So, Andy, ‘sup with you?”

“Nothing guys. Just riding around. Wanted to do something and came over.”

“We’re going to the park if you wanna come. This place is dead.”

“Yeah, sure. What’s going on there?”

“Who cares? It’s the park. It’s the end of summer. What do you want?”

“Okay.”

Andy, Jed, and Trevor went to the north parking lot and tied their bikes to a tree. Sometimes when Andy parked his bike somewhere and forgot his lock he pissed on the seat to keep people from stealing it, but not when other people were around. He rubbed his hands in sweat from the ride up.

They walked alongside a macadam path without walking on it. Their feet never left the dark grass except to rise forward, or when Trevor jumped on a thick tree stump as wide as their overweight bus driver Carl Schroeder. They all sat down at a busted picnic table stenciled with razor blade. Most kids in Horseshit carried razor blades, either to use on themselves or public property. They were cheap.

“Fuckin’ shit,” Jed said, tossing an acorn at two ducks.

Trevor hummed something.

And they didn’t say anything for a while.

Jed drummed on the table. “Beth Cuomo’s been developing nicely.”

“Haha, yeah man. Nice jugs. Like the pears at that Amish stand outside town. I’d be ‘eatin’ ‘em and eatin’ ‘em and eatin’ ‘em.’”

They liked quoting that sign. “You like ‘em Andy?”

“They’re nice.”

“‘Nice,’” Jed laughed. “You’re stupid.” He kept laughing to himself, in breaths, and flicked a cigarette away before saying, “What would you do, Andy, if she came to you and let you do anything to her? And don’t be easy about it. Let’s see if someone in this town has an imagination, man.”

Andy thought for a moment, looking toward the sun-slip as it hurt his eyes and made them aching muscles. And he could feel the guys’ eyes bleeding all over him, their mouths open and wet for answers, their hands dangling over his face waiting to grab his words.

“Andy . . .”

“I’d fuck her.”

“And?” Jed said.

“What the fuck?” Trevor laughed. “Oh Jesus.”

Andy’s voice was small. He spoke like rattling wheat, awkward trembles and scratching. Irritating.

“Get in line,” Jed said, turning back to Trevor. “Wouldn’t she be great in a gang bang? Not that I could share her.” He lit his high beams, and felt high.

“Who cares, if you’re not dating her. You don’t care about chicks in this town anymore’n I do.”

“Shit, I need to get out more. You’re finally right about something. Someone almost understands me. And I hate stuck up girls like her, who think they won’t be stuck here.” They sat quietly, the other two wishing they had something to smoke and Andy wishing he could just burst. “I really wish we had my dad’s porn here,” Jed whispered. He pulled out a small CD player, like the boom box sitting in the corner behind the counter in the Rinky Dink. They took turns listening together. A cat ran out from behind the open amphitheater. It prowled behind a tree, peed, stalked, fading. A bird landed on the branches in the swarm above them, shitting across the azaleas. They let the radio play, and it played screaming, and it felt authentic.

Jed walked to the amphitheater.

Trevor trotted along with his shoelace falling apart. “What are we doing?” he said.

“Checking out the cat’s place. I don’t know. Why don’t you think of something to do?” They came to the small opening, where Jed stopped. They heard kittens inside, too small to see because of the sundown. “Where’s a stick?” Jed said. He found one a few feet away while Trevor smiled and Andy waited to see what Jed would do, already feeling it. He looked quickly behind them. Silent houses and old furniture stores. Couples walked by but no one noticed what they were doing, despite the wet feeling of heat over Andy’s back and face. He tried to hide his face.

“Poke around in here,” Jed said, handing the stick over to Andy. “I can’t reach.”

“Why? What are you giving this to me for? I don’t wanna do it. It’s stupid.”

“Make them talk. Come on. The mom’s gone, you pussy, they’re just babies. What’s it gonna do to you? You keep trying to hang with us and don’t want to do anything. You’re giving me a headache. You’re starting to become bad for me, and I’m being as polite as I can. Do you like us?”

“Yeah, it’s just . . .”

“Then do like us. Do you care about anything here? Is anything in this town for you? No, there’s nothing. You make your own shit happen here. That’s what I do. And there’s nothing to do right now. The pool’s closing, we got no money, your bike is shit. What else are you gonna do, Andy?”

Andy bent down and saw partially inside, with his face close. The kittens had patchy light hair that reminded him of pink skin. Or Peg Oleander’s orange afro tease-hive. He used to stare at her cheeks when they had class together. If he had a voice, he’d approach her. They both had skin that looked easy to break. Jed said, “You guys are the most boring gang in the world. You’ll be cleaning my apartment, while I live in it.”

Andy stood without saying anything and poked the stick around. The cats meowed and broke a little. Andy jabbed the stick around, dust splintering, half-dry from the rotting sun. They watched while the boy meekly did his damage. “I’m going home,” Andy said.

“Give me the stick. I’ll do what you pussies can’t.”

Jed etched into the cats the invisible tattoos that filled with blood and acted like the Jed Simp they both knew. Jed Simp couldn’t stop thinking about other people in his life, no matter what he was doing.

“You see? Was it hard? Am I dead? Did I get arrested? Jesus. Let’s get out of here,” Jed said after the cats’ whimpering disappeared. “You’re both so sad. Always going to be stuck in this town, living off your parents. Hoe bag girlfriends and Salvation Army pants.”

“I just really need to go,” Andy said. “My aunt’s a crazy bitch. She’ll take away my bike if I’m not home. And I need it. I can’t afford a car yet.”

“‘S cool. Let’s all get out of here. Nothing happened and we’ll pretend nothing happened.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure, whatever.”

They walked back next to the path, under the blue, pink, white sky turning black. And the bike sat until Jed broke it. He stuffed it full of dents. He took it and beat it, letting the gears loose and bleed all over a tree while shrubs caught the best parts. Then Andy was stranded and had nothing left but spare parts of nothing.

“Hang with us sometime,” Jed called out. “I’ll pick you up.” He and Trevor walked down a little hill where the park boiled up from the sidewalk and headed back for the center of town. The harvest moon broke the cotton and had silver poured on it. And Andy walked a long way home thinking and wondering why this happened whenever he went out. It was hard caring for things, and about things. Maybe the mother would feel sad when she saw her loss, too, when her eyes met the punctured bellies and seam-split eyes. Or maybe she was just programmed by natural mystery to care for her babies because they were small and her own.