The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (4 page)

“Joey,” Tim sighed, “your signature’s on the evidence. You’re worse off than us because Ascension’s your aunt.”

Joey looked like he’d been stabbed. “I—I was drunk when I drew it.”

“So were we. Tell her that.”

Joey groaned and let himself collapse onto an oak root. His lower lip quivered. I always felt boy-tough in Joey’s presence, but shamefully so, like feeling good about yourself when you see somebody in a wheelchair.

“We’re going to capture a mountain lion and release it in Blessed Heart School,” Tim said.

The squeaking of Wade’s handgrips stopped. I laughed.

“Francis thinks I’m bullshitting,” Tim said.

Rusty said, “We got it worked out. Semi.”

Wade and Joey said, “Mountain lion?”

I snickered some more. Tim stared at me patiently.

“We’ll do the reconnaisance tomorrow,” he said. “On the field trip. They have panthers there.”

Rusty’s mom was class mother, and she’d arranged an outing to Marshland Island, a new educational facility that included a sort of zoo. Rusty and Tim had suggested it.

“We can steal the cat on a Saturday,” Tim said. “Then we bust into the school on Sunday and set it loose. We leave notes at the rectory and the convent saying what we’ve done. They’ll close the school down until they catch it, and by then Kavanagh will have forgotten about our comic book. Compared to a rampaging wildcat, it’ll seem like high jinks, see? It’s relative. Like if you get bitten by a snake, you forget about the mosquito bite you got earlier.”

Joey kept shaking his head, wiping sweat from his face with dirty hands, leaving streaks. He sniffled and grunted.

“The cops’ll shoot it and we won’t miss any school,” Wade said.

“No,” said Rusty. “It’s an endangered species and it’s government property. And first they’ve got to find it—we’re talkin about a fuckin lion—and that’ll take time, experts, equipment.”

“What if they don’t believe the notes?” I asked. “Suppose they have school anyway and somebody gets eaten? Jesus.”

“The island will report the cat missing,” said Tim. “There’ll be obvious signs that we’ve tampered with a door or window. Et cetera.”

“What if they catch it the first day?” Wade asked.

“Then we leave a new set of notes saying there’s a bunch of rattlesnakes in the school now, or scorpions or whatever. After a cougar, they can’t afford to doubt anything.”

I said, “Even if we could do this, it seems cruel to the animal, and a hell of a lot of trouble.”

“The problem with life,” Tim explained, “is that when you’re not in trouble it’s boring.”

“After the cat sees what’s here—all the people and concrete and cars and all—he’ll be glad to return to the island. He’ll live out his life knowing he’s in a good place.” Rusty inflated his chest and folded his arms across it.

“And this is probably the last big job we’ll ever do as a gang. After this summer, we’ll probably never see each other again. We might as well finish up with something spectacular.”

“I’m ready for it,” Rusty said. “I don’t give a shit anymore. I’ve lived a full life.” Rusty’s dad had been promoted to vice president of a lumber company whose home office was in Tennessee. After graduation, Rusty and his mom were moving up there.

“I spent a day in the juvenile home last summer,” I said. “Remember? And this is more serious than ripping off Kmart.”

“You surrendered,” Tim said. “You did the genteel Robert E. Lee thing instead of hauling ass like the rest of us.”

“Y’all are psychos,” Joey hissed. He twitched, grunted. “Forget it. Don’t even think about including me.” He pulled himself up.

“And I can’t do all the swashbuckler crap anymore,” I said. “My hernia’s gotten worse.”

“We’re artists,” said Tim, meaning outlaws. “What would Picasso do in a situation like this? This is our last year. We can’t just fade away.”

Besides Rusty leaving, it seemed Wade’s mother would marry
the architect she was dating and move Wade with her to South Carolina. My parents were saving to send me to Benedictine, the local military school run by monks. Tim was going North to prep school.

“This’ll be good for all of us, and it’ll prevent us from getting expelled.”

“I need to think about it,” I said. Tim grimaced.

“Not me,” said Joey. “Hell no.” He wiped under both eyes. Twin dirt smudges.

“Remember that panel you drew?” Tim said. “Kavanagh flogging Ascension’s bare ass with the cat-o’-nine-tails?”

“No! No, no, no!” Joey hustled away, thighs slapping against each other.

Rusty made a meowing noise.

Mrs. Barnes stood in the field and shook a hand bell that meant recess was over. The softball games stopped, one side cheering, backslapping, the other side swearing and abusing the equipment. Boys stuffed their shirttails in and cinched their ties and milled into a rambling line where the girls were already gathered. We collected at the rear and began to trudge back to Blessed Heart. The man with the metal detector was on one knee, turning over sod with a minispade.

We passed the sandy area where the swing sets and slides were, then entered the near field. A white duck waddled towards us from the pond on the other side. Another duck scooted after it, nipping at its neck with his bright orange bill and trying to climb on its back. The rear of the line giggled and snickered, marched towards the intersection. Mrs. Barnes and most of the students had already been ushered across by red-belted patrol boys with the power to stop traffic.

Craig Dockery, tallest of the black boys, trotted out from the line and raised a baseball bat. He ran at the male duck. The duck whirled, scampered. Craig hit the duck and something popped. The duck squawked and flung itself in circles, dragging one wing.

“Got that motherfucker,” Craig said. He laughed, deep-voiced.

It was unbelievable. We didn’t know what to do.

Rusty put his hands on his hips and dropped his mouth open. “Aw, what the hell’d he do that for?”

Therese Parker, the girl who kept a pet raccoon, ran after the duck. The duck flapped towards the pond. She followed, plaid skirt swishing.

I wanted to murder Craig, but I was suddenly very aware of my hernia, like a burr in my groin, and my knees were shaking and I felt weak. I watched Therese and the squalling duck. Something flashed beside me. I stumbled out of the way. Tim was on Craig’s back, his arm around the boy’s throat. Tim fumbled in his knife pocket. Rusty stepped over to stop him, and Craig grabbed the back of Tim’s shirt and bent over and flung Tim down at Rusty’s feet.

Tim jumped up, face flaming, and stood rigid with his fists out. Craig made a show of looking him up and down. Rusty lunged forward and Craig raised the bat. Rusty froze. Wade stood behind him, fists balled with the bandaged thumb flagging up. I realized it was just our gang and the black eighth-grade boys. The others had all gone in.

Tim panted, hair splayed out over his ears, grass stains on his back.

“Ain’t nothin but a nasty old duck,” Craig said. “It wasn’t Donald Duck, little man.”

Tim screamed a catalog of obscenities, conspicuously leaving out anything racial. The variety and combinations shocked us all. Craig’s face slackened.

“Put the goddamn bat down,” Rusty said, pointing jerkily, excited. “Mess with somethin your own size.”

“This doesn’t make sense,” I said.

Lewis Epps, a boy so dark his skin looked blue in the sunlight, said, “Let’s go, Craig. You’re in the wrong, man.”

Across the field, Therese was creeping towards the duck, baby-talking. The duck huddled against the fence of the swimming pool.

Tim forced a short, disgusted laugh, then spit near Craig’s shoe. “Be glad I’m not carrying a gun. You’re on my list, Dockery.”

Craig raised his chin, squeezed the bat handle. “You just itchin to call me a nigger, ain’t it? That’s what you’re thinkin.”

“No I am not,” Tim sneered.

“Nigger donkey-dick sucker!” said Rusty.

“Lovely.” Tim rolled his eyes. “Let’s have a little race riot.” He pushed his hair back behind his ears and stalked off towards Therese and the duck.

Nobody said anything else. I hated Craig, and I had to force myself not to let it spread to the guys behind him and to all black people, the way you might hate all dogs, say, if you’d been bitten a couple of times. I saw it in their eyes too, something that didn’t have much to do with any of us, but did. We looked the same to them, maybe, as the men blasting their people with fire hoses in the old news films. They looked the same as the occasional boys that robbed me and called me honky or cracker boy while they did it.

I made myself think of some of the black families on my old paper route, and the ugliness buried itself a little.

Therese Parker ran past us, muddy knees, tear-striped face, and we sulked towards school, wearing identical green uniforms, but divided according to the parts that showed, hands and faces, pink or brown.

Tim joined us later at the bulletin board. He said Therese had gotten Sister Ascension to call the Humane Society and that he’d guarded the duck until they arrived in an old station wagon. They gave the duck an injection and took it away to the animal hospital.

We finished the bulletin board, but pretended to still be adding the final touches when Ascension passed us, escorting Craig Dockery and his mother, who’d been summoned to take him home early. She was smaller than Craig and wore an old flowerprint dress, sharply ironed and starched. She walked like an example of good posture, staring straight ahead. Craig swung his shoulders and puffed his chest, but looked at the floor as he passed.

Rusty flipped a bird at their backs. We talked. We invented tortures for Craig that made us feel better, revenged.

“Snip his eyelids off and drip Tabasco sauce in his eyes,” Rusty said.

“Tie him down,” Wade suggested, “stick his pecker inside a loaf of bread, and release about five-hundred hungry ducks at him.”

Joey even laughed a little.

I said, “Is anybody going with Donny Flynn’s sister that you know of?”

“Why?” asked Rusty. “You think you’re gonna get somethin off her?” They were all looking at me. I felt red come into my face.

“I just wondered if she liked anybody. She seems okay.”

“She’s strange. She tried to croak herself not long ago. Besides, she’s too good-lookin for you.” Rusty had three sisters and wasn’t at all afraid of girls.

Wade said, “I kissed her at the Christmas bazaar two years ago.”

“Wow,” Rusty jeered.

“What was she then, eight years old?”

“Ten-and-a-half. She used her tongue.”

“Bullshit,” I said, instantly sick and jealous.

“Don’t believe me then.”

“Tongue,” Rusty said. “Wow. Put a goldfish in your mouth, you get the same feeling.”

When the final bell rang (I was prepared for it this time), Margie went by with the others. She pressed a folded paper into my hand, looked at me, and walked away. The note said PLEASE CALL ME 394-7626—MARGIE.

“You lucky swine,” said Tim, then he spit gloriously out over the railing and barely missed the far wall.

The teachers lined up along the bulletin board and praised the artistry, worried over the violence. But I stopped hearing them.

It occurred to me then why the heart is always associated with love. Mine was a cannon. I had only to think of Margie, or see her, to start a barrage. And the touch of her hand and the words she’d given me made darkness close all around like when you dive into a river, and then it lightened and I surfaced standing in the hallway and listened to the boom, boom, boom of the universe.