Gordon sniffs model glue. Sometimes when Ray and me go by his place, he’ll come to the side door with glue and plastic bag stuck around his nose and mouth. When he’s high on glue, he can barely open his eyes. Once, when he was sniffing, he lit his face on fire trying to light a cigarette. Now his cheeks look like the wrinkly skin of a balloon after most of the air has seeped out.

Gordon’s a friend of Ray’s. They’ve been friends since grade school. Ray’s telling him all the time to stop with the glue. Ray’s always stuck up for Gordon. A lot of guys like to punch Gordon’s head in. I’m not sure why. Gordon doesn’t do anything to anybody. Most of the time if Ray’s there he can talk them out of it. Not all the time, though. If it wasn’t for Ray, I think Gordon would never leave his basement. When he isn’t at school, or at the walk-in clinic getting his head sewn up, he’s in his basement making model airplanes, or sniffing glue and listening to music with his headphones on.

When he was a kid, Gordon’s dad did stuff to him. Around the time Gordon burnt his face, his sister Missy disappeared. She was in a few of my classes. I liked her. The police looked for her for a while. I don’t think Missy was her real name.

The rain had stopped by the time we pulled out of the lane behind our house. The radio was playing country music. While Ray was messing around with the radio trying to get something else, he told Donny to stop at Gordon’s. He said we had time because none of the guys would be down in the valley until after nine.

Donny said no. "Why do you want that fuckin’ idiot to come? There’s gonna be too many guys there who’ll kick his head in. Anyway, there ain’t no room for him."

Donny had come home with a brown Chevette. Even though it was a four-door, it was real small. Donny and Ray put me in the back seat and then piled firewood and the beer all around me. We needed dry wood for the fire, so Donny and Ray yanked a bunch of boards off the Chinaman’s fence who lives behind us. They busted them in two and then shoved them in all around me. It was sort of funny, I couldn’t hardly move when they were done. The Chevette was so full, the hatch wouldn’t close. It had to be tied down with rope.

As we were driving along the Danforth, the exhaust fumes were coming up into the back of the car and going to my head.

No matter which way he turned the dial, all Ray could get was the same country station. He told Donny again to stop at Gordon’s. Donny didn’t answer. The needle on the radio jerked back and forth as Ray twisted the dial.

Ray said Gordon could squeeze in the back. Turning, Ray nodded at me, "Right Mikey? He’ll fit back there."

A piece of wood was pressing into my ribs. I couldn’t move my legs. There was shit or mould smeared on the board I was resting my arm on. "I guess."

We stopped at a red light. Donny found me in the rear-view mirror. "Right Mikey," he mimicked Ray, "maybe Buttfuck could sit on your lap. Right Mikey? I guess. What are you, fuckin’ fag or something?" He stared at me in the rear-view mirror.

Buttfuck is what Donny calls Gordon sometimes, because that’s what Donny said his dad did to him.

When Donny calls Gordon Buttfuck, Ray gets pissed off. Yanking the small chrome dial off the radio, Ray threw it at Donny, telling him, "Shut the fuck up and go by his place. We’ll get him in. He can lay in the back on the wood."

When we got to Gordon’s, it was raining. Donny said we ain’t waiting. Moving a case of beer off his feet, Ray got out of the car and hurried up the driveway, his shoulders hunched, to the side door. After knocking a couple of times, the screen door opened and Ray went inside.

The deejay on the radio said something about a Hank Williams song. I felt like I was going to puke. I moved a few boards so I could roll down the window. The rain wet my face. Donny asked if I had any smokes. They were in my jacket pocket but there were too many boards around me to get them out. I asked Donny to turn the car off for a minute. He said he couldn’t.

The rain stopped. Ray’s been in Gordon’s for about ten minutes. Even though there are no boards or cases of beer crowding Donny, he was too tall to fit behind the steering wheel. From the backseat, Donny looked like a crippled spider, his knees bent toward his chest and his long arms folded at the elbows.

"We’re leaving," he said, reaching for the shifter.

"Wait. I’ll go see what’s taking them so long." There was a sour taste in my mouth. Donny got out of the car and came around to my side to help me get out.

"Tell ’em we’re leaving," he said, picking up the splinters of wood that had fallen onto the sidewalk.

Stretching, I spat and then hurried up the driveway, the warm spring air made me feel normal again.

I opened the screen door, but before I could knock, Donny called me back to the car. He was smiling. "Gimme a smoke," he said.