Toll Booth. Michael Aronovitz

      “My mom will smell it!”

      “That’s bullshit and you know it,” he said. “Butt breath goes away in fifteen minutes.”

      “How do you know?”

      Kyle bent his knee and slapped the sole of his foot flat to the bulldozer’s control panel. He hiked up the bottom edge of his jeans and dug for the smoke pack hidden in his sock.

      “Bobby Justice told me.”

      I was silenced. Just the fact that Kyle had conversed with Bobby Justice was an instant credibility. The guy was seventeen. He took shop classes half the day, majored in raising hell, and even got arrested once for selling grams of Hawaiian pot under the bleachers on the school football field. He drove a jacked-up black Mustang. He wore shit-kicker boots, and a chain hanging out the back pocket in that half-moon that said in its dumb, blind sort of grin, “Fuck off, Chief.” Rumor had it that he once pulled a sawed-off shotgun out of his trunk at a Hell’s Angels biker party, somewhere between the tube-funnel beer-chugging contest and the motor throw, because some dude was wearing a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt that he wanted.

      And it was mind-boggling to picture Kyle extracting this information from Bobby Justice in casual conversation. The only reason this bully ignored kids like us was that we were still too young to beat up.

      Kyle drew out the pack, ripped away the cellophane, and let it float off on the wind. With a mild sort of alarm I noticed that the brand in his fist was the filterless Chesterfields. Last time it was Marlboros.

      He scratched at the foil cover and pinched one up.

      “Come here, sit down, and have a smoke with me, Jimmy.” He held it like a pointer for emphasis. “I’m not asking you to steal the change from your mom’s purse like I did. I’m not asking you to go down to the Rexalls and tell the old fart that the butts are for your old man, neither. I’ve already done all that myself. The only thing I want is for your first puff to be with me. Ain’t you my new best friend no more? Don’t ya want to hang out with the big boys?”

      I climbed out of the trench, my face burning, my mind racing. In the past two years friendships had suddenly twisted around by definition, and it was like I hadn’t been paying attention in math class or something. The “cool” kids had access to Penthouse and Gallery magazines, and stuff like Pop Rocks, cherry bombs, pump BB guns, and exploding gag cigarette loads. They were building monster album collections with the complete works of Zeppelin, Sabbath, Kiss, and The Who, while the only things Mom let me have was this shitty eight-track, a tape by Helen Reddy, and a commercial, pop anthology you ordered from TV called Autumn ’73.

      I walked to the dozer.

      Kyle scrambled from the big bucket seat and sat on the dozer’s thick tread strip between the two side wheels. He slapped the area next to him and I took my place at his side. Our weight bowed the track pad down a bit and I cupped my hands between my knees. His arm was across my shoulders.

      “Now listen,” he said. “Don’t suck it down like you’re gulping a Pepsi. And don’t use your teeth. Take a small puff, hold it in your mouth for a second and then breathe it in slow. And when you blow it out don’t try to do smoke rings. That shit is for girls.”

      I nodded.

      “Go on then, Bozo. Take it,” he said. He was holding the pack out with my cigarette jutting up about a half inch from the others.

      I reached for it. My fingers were shaking a bit.

      “Breathe,” he said. “Breathe, baby. Stay with me.” In a far-off way I noticed that his arm had disengaged itself. I put the cigarette between my lips. Took it back out. Wiped off a little drool. Reinserted. “OK, OK,” he said. “Here we go.”

      He struck a match, cupped it, and brought it across. I leaned in going cross-eyed. Close up it looked beautiful and deadly. I sucked in carefully and got braced for the hot, nasty swallow.

      It was awesome.

      Sharp, it hit the back of my throat and rolled into me like a chocolate cloud. It was potent and rich. Forbidden. I blew it out and watched the gray smoke make art on the air. My head spun a bit in a friendly sort of a way, and I knew I could handle this. I was older now. Better. I spit my gum out and took another deep drag.

      “Now you’re ready for the surprise,” Kyle said. He was studying me, smoking one himself now. His eyes were thin, but his expression was otherwise neutral. I leaned back.

      “Show me.”

      He hopped down, went to his knees, and reached behind the dozer’s front roller. I couldn’t see his arm from my angle, and I had the sudden premonition that he was going to fake like something grabbed his hand. He would open his eyes in wide surprise and jam his shoulder into the front of the dozer, giving the illusion he was being yanked really hard from something lurking in the shadows under the load bucket. Of course, this didn’t happen. If it had, however, I would have been ready and it made me smile. I really was changing for the better.

      He came back up with a cardboard box about the size of a car battery. It was old and stained, and the front had a sticker that said “16D.”

      “What is it?” I said. He carefully set it down on the tread a few feet to my left.

      “This here,” he said, “is a fine example of why most grown-ups have shit for brains.” He took a deep drag of the smoke he’d been lipping, then pointed to the box with the lit end for emphasis.

      “Notice, James, the ‘16.’ This stands for three and a half. The ‘D’ stands for ‘penny.’ Put them together and the ‘16D’ means three and a half inches of nail. But please explain to this dumb-ass kid what ‘D’ has anything to do with ‘penny,’ and what ‘penny’ has to do with hand nails which are so obviously made of steel and not copper.”

      I let go a nervous laugh.

      “Where did you get—”

      “I clipped them from my Pop’s tool box,” he said. “Look.” He flipped open the top, dug up a nail, and held it outward. It was bent and a bit jagged.

      “Why’s it all screwy?” I said.

      “When my Pop’s done framing a house, he walks the job and yanks out all the bent nails.”

      “Why?”

      “He brings them all back to the tool-house and pulls a major bitch and moan. Gets paid back for each and every one of them.”

      “Then he’ll miss that box!” I said. I had jumped to my feet, and I chucked away the smoke. “Geez, Kyle, why did you go and do that? He’s probably going to kill you and then come for me!”

      His eyes narrowed.

      “I ain’t that stupid, James. I found the empty box in the garage two months ago and stashed it in the closet behind my old board games and Lego garbage. I’ve been filling it up one nail at a time. Cripes, don’t be such a fucking dipshit!”

      I forced a wounded grin.

      “You’re the one with a dipshit pal and that makes you a total bonehead.”

      “Yeah,” he said. “I must be freakin’ bonkers.” He was smiling but I found it hard to mirror. Just because Kyle knew how to handle his old man didn’t mean I’d figured it out.

      Mr. Skinner was Westville’s definition of a good ole boy. He drove a mud-splattered, light brown Chevy pickup and always had the back bed filled with ladders, lumber, upside-down wheelbarrows, and power tools. He had an American flag on the hood-side opposite the antenna and a bumper sticker that talked about ripping his pistol from his cold, dead fingers. On the driver’s door was his company logo, “One-Truck-Johnny.”

      I sat back against the tread and kicked a bit at the dirt.

      “So, what are the bent nails for?”

      Golden