The doctor says I'm getting better but I don't even know what that means. I don't feel any better. I told him that and he told me I was being negative. I asked him if he would say that a coyote gnawing off its foot to get out of a trap was being negative and he said I was being morbid. Then he told me I was getting better.

I always think of you when he tells me I'm getting better. You're better. And I think about all the times we had. They were better. And I think how whenever fucked up shit happened to us growing up, you actually took it a whole lot better than I did and then you actually got better afterwards. I never get better and that's the truth. Shut up, too, cause I can already hear you telling me I am getting better and not to be negative. That's one thing that's better about you not being here. When I tell you to shut up, it actually happens, and I can picture you without us talking at all, and believe it or not I get a lot of warmth and hope just from looking at you. I always did.

I was thinking I would tell you about this apple war I was in when I was younger. I have way too much time to think. That's the one thing about this fucking place-the only option you really have to turn your fucking brain off is to pretend you're getting really depressed and then they give you some more drugs. The pain medicine doesn't work anymore but the lithium eventually succeeds in making me vague. Nothing really works. Only morning. When no one else is up and it's a sunny day and the light comes in across the blanket over my legs and I can picture you at the end of my bed. Quiet. Not fucking talking, just standing there, smiling at me. I never realized your upper arms were so pretty until you were imaginary. Now I wish I could touch them.

Anyway, the apple war seems important because the doc is always asking me about violence and I've actually started thinking about it myself and that apple war always comes back. A whole lot of other more fucked up shit comes back too, but that's the earliest memory I have that has the same feelings in it. You know how some memories always feel the same way no matter when or where they come back to you?

The morning of the apple war I went to watch my dad play tennis at the club. We spent the summers at this weird place near Annapolis called Sherwood Forest where everything was named after Robin Hood. We lived on Maid Marion court. It was coolest to live at Robin Hood, mostly cause that was where the beach was so the houses were more expensive. The beach was a sandy point on the Severn River. We used to swim and play tennis ball tag there when the sea nettles weren't so bad they came through the nets. Sherwood was a summer community, 50s style, sort of like the Catskills for naval officers and Baltimore bankers, something like that. There were also a handful of groovier folks who had infiltrated in the 70s when the real estate bottomed out, but the vibe at the place was kind of like Baltimore prep school meets the American Legion. Being a DC kid was like being a fucking alien.

I think the reason the place was always so heartbreaking for me was that the mornings were so beautiful. My dad woke me up that morning. He was already dressed in his tennis stuff.

"Hey beast. Come warm me up," he said.

I was eleven and just getting to the place when it was hard to get up because of the hormones, but it wasn't bad yet and I jumped up and threw on my shorts and shoes and followed him out the screen door rubbing my eyes. My mom and sister stayed in bed. It was Saturday. The place really was a beautiful forest, hardwoods, mostly elm and poplar and stuff, and it was always quiet early on the weekends. We walked down our little lane, my dad carrying the ball hopper and me the rackets and then emerged onto the golf course into the blinding light. The dew was heavy on the grass and soaked into my shoes. At that stage in my life I was happiest walking alongside my dad like that. I came up to his chest and I remember the way I could notice the muscles in his thighs and forearms when we walked side by side and it was a reminder to me that I would not always be small and trapped. I was chattering to him about the other kids at the camp and about anything I could to hold his attention and he was walking eyes forward, looking at the courts already. He asked me some kind of question about some kind of sports.

"Nah," I said. "They suck."

He stiffened up, stopped, and turned towards me. I knew I had done something wrong right away.

"Don't ever use that word," he said.

"Okay."

"Okay?"

And then he was moving forward again and my throat was choked and I was trying real hard to keep the tears from running out of my eyes. I remember having that feeling a lot, choking back tears. I didn't like being wrong mostly because I was always trying really hard to do right but there were times when I just didn't know. I was angry at my dad too. I only said "suck" cause the kids at the shitty ass camp they stuck me in said it all the time and I was always trying not to seem so square there. My best friend was a little kid named Todd whose head was too big and he could barely run in a straight line. He liked comics and so did I, so I stuck up for him. I was the best athlete in my age group so people didn't mess with me so much and even pretended to be my friends but they could tell I was weird and I couldn't ride a dirtbike or a skateboard so I usually just let them leave me behind.

The rest of the walk was silent. I held the tears. When we got to the courts, I warmed Dad up but he turned it into a kind of lesson where he was correcting my shots and I got sullen and finally we just called it off. His partner arrived, which saved us from getting into a fight, and instead of getting into the stands and watching him for the next three hours like I usually did, I wandered down the road to Duffy's Store to see who was around. It was early so no one was around and I had the idea that I would walk all the way down to Robin Hood beach just to check it out.

It was the year before I met you and one of those times when life would have been perfect if you were around. We could have walked down to Robin Hood Beach together and talked about stuff. It was a pretty long walk and we would have had plenty of time to get past the stupid stuff and get to something real.

The road led straight from Duffy's Store through the middle of the back nine and then down a steep ravine to the river. I thought about going over to Todd's house in Alan-a-Dale but it was too early so I settled for walking down the ninth fairway and watching the grass cuttings accumulate on the dew-soaked toe of my shoe. One thing to note about that golf course was that the greens were actually white sand circles. It seems so military now, naval really, and I can picture the same kind of course in Subic Bay. Less maintenance and golf being really just a way to kill time as you're getting drunk.

The thing about the white sand circles is that set in all that green, they were attractive, meaning you wanted to walk towards them without knowing why. So I was walking toward the ninth green, down the ninth fairway, looking at my shoes when an apple bounced in front of me. The fairway was lined with crab apple trees.

I turned around to see who'd thrown it and I didn't see anyone right at first but then I saw Ty Gardner standing up in the branches of the tree. It looked silly because he was a senior and one of the biggest kids at the camp so he dwarfed the tree he was standing in.

"I missed on purpose," he said.

I picked up the apple and held it in my hand. I've always been good at aiming things. I threw the apple to him and he caught it with one hand up in the tree. He played varsity lacrosse for Boy's Latin and that was about as high on the food chain as you could get in Sherwood Forest. He was a toe-headed blonde kid who still wore braces, which meant either his teeth were really bad or his orthodontist was a swindler. Could have been both. There were a lot of orthodontists at Sherwood Forest.

Ty was one of the few people in the camp who induced awe in me. He moved like a tiger, natural in his skin and totally unafraid of the stuff outside of it.

"Hey, come over here," he said. "You're a Spartan right?"

The whole camp was broken into Romans and Spartans. I was a Spartan, and even though I knew it was dumb, I was proud of that. I never liked the Romans. My prep school was divided into Blues and Whites. I was a Blue and proud of that too. I guess mostly I just liked that simple feeling of belonging and of being liked for being good at sports, but I think there was already in me the sense that you had to fight for things you didn't really believe in just because the lines were drawn for you before you got involved. I know that seems like a pretty philosophical stance for a kid that age but I really think I was better equipped for life for those two years than I have been ever since then. I'm glad I met you then, that you saw me like that even if we didn't really start off on the right foot until a little bit later.

"You want to help me ambush the McCarthy's?" Ty said. "They're Romans."

I knew Ty thought the Roman and Spartan thing was a way of talking me into ambushing the McCarthy's. He didn't realize I had already decided a long while back that I liked him and that I'd be on his side no matter what he asked me to do. On top of that I didn't like the McCarthy's. There were six of them, stair-step sons to a local developer and you could see their family name by the side of the road all along Rt. 50. They acted like they ran the camp and they sort of did, since the oldest brother Greg was the head counselor that year. He was actually alright and so was the youngest one, James, but the rest of them were a pack of jackals.

"It'll be fun," he said. "Nothing better than an apple war."

And so we lay up between the two oldest trees and gathered a healthy mound of the green apples there. Ty didn't know my name and he didn't ask, and I was really too busy watching him to want to talk. Being that close to an older guy who wasn't my dad made me want to learn every movement exactly. I had seen Ty kissing Kelley Havermeier after camp one day underneath the clubhouse. She was the camp director's daughter and my sister hated her, and while I could see my sister's point, I was already swayed by the long tan fronts of her thighs. Ty was how I wanted to be so I had to watch him close. His hair was layered and shorter in front with a wavy mane down the back. He wore a crew t-shirt with the colored tab at the throat and it was wash-faded perfectly. And he had on a crisp pair of OP corduroy shorts that showed off his thick leg muscles and their ample golden hair. I had little knobby pale chicken legs then. Still do I guess but there's that moment before puberty when you are so keenly aware of not having things, like balls for instance. How about that? I met you the year I got my balls.

The McCarthy's, three of them, had gone up to the lacrosse field by the club gate and Ty had seen them go by and hatched his ambush plot. It didn't occur to me then to wonder why a sixteen year old was hatching apple war plots at 9am on a Saturday morning, but now I think Ty's house probably wasn't all that great a place to be. As we were waiting in our hiding spot, Todd showed up with his little brother Devin. We were basically at the end of their street and they joined us and listened to Ty talk about the battle plans, which were really just wait for the word and bean them. Todd couldn't throw anything though, which he and I both knew. His arms were so short it looked like he couldn't reach his own pockets. His little brother was not so badly formed but he was tiny and only nine. I could tell he was impressed with Todd that he knew me and Ty, and Todd imitated his comics and talked the talk with us until the McCarthy's appeared at the speed bump on the near side of Duffy's Store. It was Eddie, Phil, and James, the younger end of the ladder. Phil and Eddie were twin ginger-haired fifteen year olds and nobody liked them, including their own brothers probably.

I once watched Eddie take a backpack from a younger kid and throw it off Main Pier past the nets into a column of sea nettles. He had laughed and looked around for approval but everyone around had just looked down. The kid was crestfallen. He cried right on the spot. I can see Eddie's face, frozen in maybe his last pang of self-doubt, before he knitted his brow and snorted out a laugh.

"You guys are such pussies," he said.

Todd and Devin straddled their dirtbikes, only halfway committed to our adventure.

"I'm gonna charge em," Ty said. "When they stop, you snipe em. Headshots only."

I nodded. The McCarthy's were eating freeze-ices and riding one handed in a meandering, summer day kind of way. When they got just past our position, Ty looped around behind them and streaked across the fairway. He stopped about twenty feet away, before crow hopping and rifling an apple at the McCarthy's. The shot was low and horrifically hard and it nailed Phil's front tire, knocking the handlebars from his hand for an instant before he caught himself. Ty whooped and started unloading the rest of the apples. I had the three of them broadside and I aimed a shot at Eddie.

The apple came out of my hand perfectly and spun lightly. I knew it was going to hit him flush as soon as it left my hand. It caught him right over the ear as he was yelling something inflammatory at Ty. Ty exploded into laughter as did the other Macs but I could see Eddie's eyes water with humiliation and pain, and I felt the gravity of the situation. Todd was terrified. Ty came running over and slapped me five still howling with laughter. The McCarthy's had sought out their own apple tree on the other side of the fairway and were gathering apples.

"I'm gonna kill you for that," Eddie yelled at me.

Ty's laughter was worth it to me. When we first met, you used to say I was a faker cause I acted one way around the guys and another way when we were alone. That really got to me, which is why I was always teasing you in front of everyone else. You were right, but I didn't want to be that way. It was just the way you had to be. I don't think you ever understood that. Or you didn't care. If you were a guy you probably would have been more like Ty than like me.

The apple war had battle lines now and for a while we just felt each other out. I remember reading about how before Shaka, the warfare in Southern Africa was more ritualized and the throwing back and forth of spears a kind of contest of strength while the younger men tried to get as close as possible to show their courage. Then Shaka made the spears short and taught his men to bayonet charge like the British. Something like that. You can't really untangle the history of violence. I told the doc that story and he said it sounded like colonial revisionism and that I should focus on my own experiences. Tell me how I'm supposed to share my own experiences with somebody that fucking smug? I do, though. And he knows I will because he's the only person I can talk to except the nurses and they try hard not to get attached to us. Most of the other guys are always trying to cop feels from them anyhow. I have a crush on one of them. Her name's Margaret and she has suffering brown eyes and she wears this one scoop neck top from Target and it makes me believe in the milk of human kindness.

The war changed when Billy Roth and Mitch Cooper came riding by. Ty recruited them to our side as Spartans, but it turned out Billy was a Roman. He went to Boys Latin though, so he came our way and Mitch followed him. They were my year. The McCarthy's had put their bikes down under the apple trees and had taken up position on the main road, using the embankment as protection. We had them outnumbered and fanned out on the fairway and came forward. They had the steep ravine that ran down to the basketball courts behind them, so we had them in a barrel. I don't think anyone had really gotten hit with an apple since I hit Eddie, but now we were whizzing shots in thick enough that we had our chances. Then down from Robin Hood Hill come Jason and Kevin McCarthy.

It was right about then that I remembered my grandmother was coming to visit from Baltimore for lunch. My mother's mother was a cold Irish woman who had "not been the same" since her husband died. I don't think anyone looked forward to having her around. In my position now, it strikes me I should be polite to the dead, but I've spent too much time already not saying things I mean to the point that I don't know what I mean. She drank martinis in the evenings and got a little aggressive after dinner, which she didn't really eat. She was coming for lunch and I realized I should probably get myself home in time to help my mother and sister get ready, just as the McCarthy brothers, now five of them and the two older ones throwing heat, launched a counter-offensive at us. Everyone was in the fairway now and it became a kind of running battle as the ranks broke. Todd and Devin got on their bikes and rode home. Eddie McCarthy came looking for me.

Ty was holding off three of the brothers with a combination of skill and reckless abandon. If you've ever been hit by a green apple thrown hard you can appreciate the sensation of being empty-handed when someone who's bigger than you are and meaner than you are is bearing down on you with murder in their eyes. Eddie came running straight for me after I let my last apples fly and I turned and ran for the cover of the trees and a fresh supply. I was not faster than him but shiftier and he was so intent on nailing me that he wanted to be nearly touching me before he threw. I zig-zagged away from him and scooped up an apple as I went around the tree and then we were back in the fairway and I was running away. I ran towards Mitch Cooper, thinking we could turn the tables on Eddie but he inexplicable raised his apple to throw at me and the moment caught me by surprise so that Eddie was able to kick my legs out from under me.

He stood over me, smiling vindictively and I put my hands out in front of my face to call quarter, which I knew he would not give. He reared back and threw the apple at my face but his movements were confused between throwing and punching and the apple rebounded harmlessly off my hands as I rolled away from him. He stayed on top of me though, muscling his way on to my chest and pinning my arms down with his knees. I saw the mucky rubber bands attached to his braces as he exhaled from the effort and I tried to wriggle out from under him.

"I could bust your nose right now," he said.

A kind of enraged terror welled up inside my and my eyes teared up. I was still trying to get free but he was much too strong for me and I had a feeling of total helplessness as he worked up a mouthful of spit and then let it fall on my face between my eyes. I groaned and kicked and tried to get my hand free because I wanted to rip out his tongue and feed it back to him but I couldn't get loose.

"Keep fightin, squirt," he said. "It hurts you worse than it hurts me."

Ty saved me. He came running down the fairway and planted a kick in the middle of Eddie's back that sent him sprawling, and I scrambled up and ran.

"C'mon," Ty yelled. "They turned on us."

Billy and Mitch had joined the McCarthy's and they were all chasing after us. Ty bounded over the edge of the ravine and ran full tilt downhill for the underside of the clubhouse. I stayed close on his heels.

James McCarthy was leading the chase, showing off his speed for his older brothers, but he got too close. Ty turned, stil holding an apple in each hand, and fired a shot that caught James in the cheek. James stopped and held his face and I could see his shoulders shaking as his brothers caught up to him. Them stopping bought us enough time to run under the clubhouses and crawl through a gap in the fence that skirted the underside of the front deck. I clambered after Ty into the cool, safe darkness.

I sometimes wonder about the significance of little decisions. Like that time in 7th grade at Julia's Christmas party when we were hiding together under the boxwoods out front of her house-if I had kissed you right then, would we have gotten together in high school, stayed together, been together now? It's not really helpful I know and it's a sign that you regret things, but I wonder also if I had run right out of the other side of the clubhouse when the McCarthy's were huddled around James, if I had ran for home then, if that memory wouldn't just be barely perceptible, and not what it is now. None of the other kids lived at Maid Marion and they wouldn't have known the ravines the way I did from hunting box turtles and picking raspberries. I could have worked my way home in time to help get ready for Granny and Ty's screams wouldn't still be in my fucking ears as a reminder that I am fundamentally a coward.

The doc says I have a habit of fixating on things and a propensity for trying to create larger meaning where there is none to be had. He says I remember the apple war most probably because it allows me to feel emotions that I had to bury during the rest of my childhood. I told him that just because kids are little doesn't mean they don't experience larger meaning and he said I knew he didn't mean to imply that at all. I get very angry at him sometimes and I guess it's funny in a way because I can't move my legs and I end up sort of wriggling my way down the bed towards him.

Once we were in the dark Ty and I watched the McCarthy's through the green wood slats of the skirting and worked our way to a crawl space that connected the two sides of the clubhouse's underworld. I had tried to wipe the spit off my face but I could feel it crusting across my nose and under my eye and it made my throat swell with rage. We made it across to the other side where the old canoes were stored and sat down between them where we couldn't be seen.

"They'll get bored and go away," Ty said. "I can't believe those two shits turned on us."

"Thanks for saving me from Eddie," I said, and just saying it made the tears come back, which embarrassed me.

We sat there for a few more minutes before Ty got up to scout out what was going on. I crawled back over to where I could see the others. They had fanned out and surrounded the clubhouse. Others were organizing piles of apples and I guess the site of them had drawn a few more kids into the action. It was pretty clear we weren't getting out without taking a beating of some kind and I knew Eddie would be cruising for me. Ty came back shaking his head.

"It's not looking too good," he said. "I think we should just make a break for it and see what happens."

I nodded.

"You okay?" he said.

"I'm okay."

"I'm going up and over the fence," he said. "You should try to get out the way we came in."

In front of where the canoes were was a high, padlocked fence with barbed wire at the top. On the other side of the fence was a walkway with one opening on the golf course side and the other where we had come in at the ravine that went on down to the basketball courts and the pond. Ty ran full speed at the fence. Someone hollered the alarm and before I could even move, Ty was caught in a hail of apples, splitting on the fence, the pieces whizzing past my ears where I stood.

"Fuck," Ty yelled and sprung off the fence like a macaque.

We went back into the dark and a crowd of kids gathered at the fence to jeer at us, call out threats, and lob apples back up to where we were. We sat there neither one of us sure what to do.

"My grandmother's coming for lunch," I said.

"You gotta go?" he said.

"I should."

"I don't blame you," he said. "Those two sold us out."

We sat down again, our backs to an upside down canoe. I watched Ty's mind work through the possibilities. I knew them already but he was not really what you would call a thinker. That is one of the things I had liked about him from a distance and being with him I still liked it. It's what I always liked so much about you. Not that you're not a thinker, just that you only let yourself think about things when you're deciding how to act.

Ty rose and I followed. As we walked back to the fence he took his shirt off and held it in the air.

"Truce," he called. "I got a proposal."

Phil and Eddie had worked their way to the front, and James was there with him, a red welt on his cheek, his brown eyes defiant. Mitch and Billy had drifted back to the shadows and would not meet my eyes.

"The kid has to go home," Ty said. "His grandmother's in town for lunch."

"Bull fucking shit," Phil said.

At that point Greg McCarthy came into the tunnel and made his way up to Ty. Ty explained the situation and Greg stood there looking very grave. What I was trying to get across to the doc is that had Ty been Chief Joseph and Greg been Gen. Crook, the intensity of the moment would not have been any different. Greg had to consider his responsibility to avenge the welt on his little brother's cheek, his general duties as a camp counselor, and his competition with Ty, whom he had over a barrel. Ty had only his dignity, the will to fight, and the desire to protect me from suffering.

"We'll let both of you out if you go butts up on the backboard, one throw from each of us," Greg said.

Ty looked at me and I'm sure he could see the fear in me and the already growing shame of it. James McCarthy intervened at that point.

"I know him," he said pointing at me. "He's cool. We should let him go."

"Alright," Greg said. "Ty, you're on your own."

Ty nodded. I looked at him as he put his shirt back on. The sight of his muscles amazed me, so too the rope necklace at his throat. He had a patch of acne in the middle of his chest.

"Don't sweat it," he said, and tousled my hair.

I walked away from him and slid under the gap of skirting out into the light. As I made it I heard a general roar as Ty bull-rushed the fence, and then Eddie Mac's voice.

"It's a trick. Get that little shitbag."

I ran up the slope of the fairway to safety and when I looked back no one was chasing. I stopped just in time to hear Ty's scream, a piercing gulping cry. He had gotten hung up in the barbed wire on the way over the fence. He screamed again.

"Get me off!" he screamed at no one. "Motherfucker!"

The other kids scattered and ran as Ty screamed. The blood soaked through his white shirt. I was only a hundred yards away and the last thing on anyone's mind. I watched Greg McCarthy stuff his hands in his pockets and walk hurriedly away from the clubhouse, clearly unhinged. Billy Roth from Boy's Latin was left alone standing in front of Ty, who had managed to rip his bloody arm free from the tangle but was still stuck by the flesh of his back to one loop of the sharp wire. His body was contorted unnaturally and he was holding himself to the fence with one arm and one foot. He couldn't stay like that for much longer. I put my head down and ran for home. Ty's break-away cry, a louder more defiant scream than the first one, reached my ears even though I had tried to close them. That is the scream I can still hear.

I arrived at my house sweating and feeling a horrible sense of shame. I walked in the screen door. My family was situated formally around drinks and nibbles in the sitting room. My mother was so angry that she would not look at me. My sister also avoided my eyes, probably because she knew my mother was mostly angry because my absence had betrayed our family's true feelings about her mother. My Dad gave me a quick understanding grimace.

"Get washed up," he said.

I had technically ruined lunch, so we all sat there quietly clanking away and there were polite complements for my mother's vichyssoise. My father winked at me, as if to apologize for the extent of my hard day. I was silent and could not stop thinking about Ty. Afterwards, I excused myself and went outside. I walked down the ravine at the back of our house where I normally hunted for old heavy glass bottles with thrilling long-forgotten logos or for snakes and turtles. I was not interested in them. At the bottom of the ravine was an old dock that jutted out into the wide slow creek mouth and I watched the wind disturb the heavy green surface of the water and the ghostly sea nettles pulsing beneath.