Chicken (21 page)

I lose my balance, jam my hand down on a rough step to keep from toppling onto Hannah’s breasts. I make a split second decision that it would look a lot smoother to keep going than try and straighten up, so I twist my body and kind of roll right over her—without touching—until my butt lands on the middle step. 

Lauren laughs and nudges my back with her foot. “Someone get this boy a ticket to London!”

Brant snorts. “Last I checked making out was not an Olympic event.”

Lauren lays her hand on his forehead, drawing his eyelids up like window blinds. “I wasn’t talking about that, grouch. You missed the good part.”

He sits up, straddling the banister and planting his elbows on his knees. She ruffles his hair, but he jerks his head away. Lauren lifts her eyebrows at me and makes a cat scratch gesture behind his back. I manage to turn one corner of my mouth up for her, but that’s it, I’m done, I can’t believe I thought our kiss would make him do anything other than hate me. 

Our kiss. It was all chapped lips and chin stubble, laced with the delicate afternotes of Sister Sharon’s potato salad. Not the sort of thing anyone would make a movie about. An accident really. A stupid mistake. Barely even got started before Brother Dean’s truck rumbled into the barn yard, and just like that we were standing three feet apart, frantically dusting hay off our britches as if it were dick-shaped confetti from a gay pride parade. Twenty minutes ago, I was certain there had been plenty of moments after that—moony eyes while I loaded my horse, shy smiles on the ride to Sister Bonnie’s house, a shoulder nuzzle as we leaned against the gate watching Shetan greet his little goat friends—to justify the joy I’ve felt for the past seventy-two hours, but now it all feels like just another one of my stupid daydreams.

Beside me, Hannah sits up, making what I’d call a big show out of wiping our saliva off her mouth. “He’s just jealous because I stole his date.”

I see his body tighten, and I wait for him to laugh at our little foursome’s new inside joke, even go so far as praying make it happen Jesus please make it happen, but it doesn’t, of course it doesn’t, it’s not funny anymore, not for us, not since I screwed everything up. 

Instead, he mutters, “I gotta piss,” and then, in a move much more Olympic-worthy than my own, he jumps up, spins around, lands on the banister, and runs up to the porch. He slams the door behind him, but the frame is old and warped so it swings open a crack, letting a stream of icy air-conditioning blow down the steps.

Hannah throws up her hands. “What the actual hell is his problem lately?”

Lauren looks uncertainly over her shoulder, then back at us. “Should I—?”

I shake my head, already halfway to my feet. “I’ll go.”

I make sure to close the door behind me. The fellowship hall is dark but for some thin strips of sunset shining through the blinds. I squeeze between two folding tables and the rows of brown metal folding chairs that no one bothered to straighten after the men’s Bible study breakfast yesterday.  The last chair on the right is skewed wildly out of place, like maybe someone clanked his hip on it in his hurry to get away from me.

I check the kitchen first, in case he’s warming up more of his special cookies, but it’s empty and dark, haunted by the scent of Walmart vanilla wafers and red Kool-Aid powder. I follow the long, narrow hallway that cuts through the center of the church, checking the Sunday School rooms on either side. Lots of goopy, glittery crafts drying in the windows and felt Bible characters peeling off of big green boards, but no surly teenage boys. 

I give the closed door of the old evangelist’s quarters a wide berth because that room gives me the creeps, but when I reach the spot where the hallway splits into a T behind the sanctuary and church offices, I turn around. There’s a tiny bathroom buried at the back of the EQ; maybe Brant really did just need to piss. 

I pause at the solid wooden door, steeling my nerves to turn the knob. In the old days this was where visiting preachers slept, but that practice ended when the cleaning lady brought it to the previous pastor’s attention that kids were finding the bed a convenient place to break the pledge. These days, it’s just a place to stash all the weird crap a church collects—fake flower arrangements and giant Christmas wreaths, choir robes and Bible costumes, the wooden manger from last year’s Nativity: Live! and an old rugged cross that some poor guy dressed like Jesus has to lug down the aisle every Easter. And then there’s the—well, I press my ear against the door because I’m not opening it unless I’m one hundred percent sure he’s in there.

Mostly all I hear is the magnified sound of the air conditioner, but when I cover my other ear, I can pick out something like grunts and muffled punches from the other side. There is a ninety-nine percent chance that this is Brant, but that still leaves me with a one percent chance of opening the door and landing a starring role in The Night of the Living Dummy, so I turn the big brass knob very slowly, easing the door open just enough to press my lips against the crack and whisper, “Brant?”

Silence. And then a deep, gravelly voice asks, “Who is Brant?”

“Not funny.” I lean into the door, widening the sliver. “Brant.”

“Go away. We’ll eat you up.”

I slip inside, shut the door. The stained glass window across the room is one of the last in this part of the church—the rest were blown out in some long ago tornado—and though it’s mostly hidden behind a mountain of Christmas decorations, there’s enough of it rising above the mess to fill the room with an eerie pinkish-yellow glow that makes the scene before me even more ghoulish than it would be in dim natural lighting.

Brant blocks the narrow path to the bathroom, arms folded across his heaving chest. An enormous red heart lies at his feet, its big black mouth gaping at the ceiling while its googly eyes roll toward the floor. The toe of Brant’s boot rests on the loose fabric hanging like a torn artery from beneath the heart’s pointy chin.

“Nice try, but I ain’t afraid of puppets anymore, Brant.”

He kicks the heart toward me, and I jump, slamming my back flat against the door. 

“Liar.” His smirk looks strange and devilish in here, like he borrowed it from the horned and mustachioed, bright red puppet on the wall behind him.

 That wall. I try not to make direct eye contact with any of them, but that’s easier said than done when you’re dealing with things whose eyes are glued on in an expression meant to be wide-eyed wonder but, to me, has always come across more like zombified horror. There’s at least twenty impaled on the sticks slanting out of the wall, each with a wide black mouth drooping down in a silent scream. Their limp puppet arms dangle from their brightly-colored sleeves, four-fingered puppet hands brushing the wild, feathery hair of the puppets below them. Most of them are supposed to look sort of like people—people with furry, jaundiced skin, people who are only torsos—but there’s also that devil, and a blue-eyed, blond-haired, barrel-chested superhero, and a big, purple monster draped over two sticks like an empty hide, and of course the disembodied heart lying way, way, way too close to my feet. I know it’s irrational, but there was this skit one summer when I was little, with the puppets and this creepy swing dance song and like—okay, I mean, trust me, it’s hard to explain, church is weird. 

Brant pushes both hands through his hair ’til he’s gripping the back of his head, elbows jutting out like a dinosaur’s frill. “You really shouldn’t be in here right now.”

I take a deep breath, push myself off the door. “I really think I should.”

He groans and folds his elbows inward ’til they come together like a horn in front of his face. “We don’t have to talk about it, okay? I get it. You made your point.”

“Well, maybe you could enlighten me because I don’t know what it was.”

He groans again, almost a growl, and then his arms explode outward, his left hand slapping an old prospector puppet across its bearded face. “You have a girlfriend! You can kiss her in public! I know! Okay? I know!”

My forehead wrinkles up. “Wait. You thought I—”

“Yeah, I thought. Of course I thought.” His voice drops to a hiss. “You kissed me.”

I shake my head because he’s starting to hurt it along with my heart. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“No,” he says, turning his back to me. “I can’t play it like that. I can’t pretend it didn’t happen.”

A frustrated roar claws its way out of my chest. I kick the stupid heart puppet out of my way and cross the room, grab his shoulder and spin him to face me. His eyes are wild, the whites pink, the irises yellow, but when he tilts his head to mine, the light shifts and they go back to normal, soft and brown, something comfortable to wake up to for the rest of my life. 

We lunge for each other, chests colliding as our mouths scramble to fall into place. His cheekbones are sharp and oily under my palms, and his lips taste salty and metallic, like my own after a morning’s worth of hard work in the sun. His fingers bend my ears forward, and when I tangle mine in his hair, his lips slide into a grin that makes him really hard to kiss, but we don’t stop, we just get sloppier, laughing, bumping noses and teeth until we’re nuzzling as much as kissing, and though I long for a world where we could be like this in public, today it’s enough just to hold him right here, in front of all these slack-jawed puppets who can’t ever avert their eyes. 

FRIDAY, JULY 13, 2012

Brant Mitchell has magical powers. This is the only explanation for what’s about to happen. He cornered my folks after the service Wednesday night, all swagger and southern drawl, and launched into a dazzling sales pitch about the spiritual importance of spending time in the wilderness like John the Baptist and all the great prophets really. Mama was smirking by the time he was done—she didn’t believe for one second we were going to spend any time in the Word, although she clearly didn’t guess the truth either, or I’d be locked in my room—but Daddy’s pupils had turned into little black crosses by then and all he wanted to know was what time to drop me off.

When Mama expressed concern about the cougar, Brant scoffed. “Ma’am, I’ve spent my whole life in them woods and there ain’t never been a lion and there ain’t ever gonna be a lion. They just don’t come around here.”

Mama rolled her eyes. “Brant, we’ve all seen the picture.”

He shook his head. “I understand, ma’am, but in this day and age, you can’t believe everything you see. I mean, just look at your hair—” 

She waved her hand for him to stop. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t think it’s a good idea right now. Maybe later in the summer.”

Brant studied her, chewing on his lip. “Okay. How’s this? I’ll take my Daddy’s pistol—”

Mama touched her fingers to her temples and turned to my father. “Russ.”

Daddy shrugged and scratched his head. “Honestly, Janet, I don’t see any harm in it. The boy’s right. Sort of. With everyone that’s been out there looking for it, that cat is long gone by now. It was just a baby anyhow.”

Brant scowled for a fraction of a second, but then he rushed forward to shake Daddy’s hand and hug Mama around the neck, thanking them for saying yes before Mama could defy Daddy like I knew she was going to. She pushed him away before he could smash her hair, saying, “Fine, fine, but don’t you dare take any guns.”

And so here we are, sans firearms, back in the Mitchell’s barn, lashing three dusty, red milk crates onto the back of Brant’s black four-wheeler. One for snacks, one for bedding, and one for everything else—kerosene lantern, matches, hatchet, first aid kit, a Bible with a camouflage cover, and a big blue flashlight that can double as a club. Brant gives them a strong tug to make sure they’re secure, and then he ties the long, rectangular tent bag to the rack in front of the handlebars. 

Finally, he slings his leg over the seat and cocks his head behind him, giving me that lazy dimpled grin. “Your turn.”

I settle into the space between his back and the milk crates, trying not to rub my junk all up on his butt because between that and the four-wheeler’s vibrations something really embarrassing might happen. He waits for me to grab hold of his sides before he leans into the handlebars. He kicks into gear, gives her some gas, and we shoot through the doors, leaving swirling waves of dust and hay in our wake. As much as I prefer horses to heavy machinery, I’ve got to say that riding double on this metal beast is a heck of a lot comfier than it was on Shetan last week. 

Halfway across the field, Brant hollers over his shoulder, “I reckon now’s as good a time as any to let you know ninety percent of this stuff is just for show.”

I lean in, get a mouthful of blond curls when I shout, “What?!”

He shakes his head. “You’ll see!”

We bounce down the ramp into the Ditch, and then he makes a hairpin curve so we’re headed east toward the part of the forest that’s already tinged with purple dusk. Within minutes, we round the bend below the spot where I found Brant among the rocks that day and head north. The Mitchells’ house is built on the tame side of this mountain, but now the wild side looms up from the left ledge of the Ditch, all boulders and brambles and probably bears.

Something shiny flickers in the trees up and to our right. Fireflies, I reckon, but no, wait, this is silver not gold. A chain link fence reflecting our headlight. But not just any fence. It’s hard to judge from down here at this speed, but it’s gotta be ten feet tall. Three—could be four—strings of barbed wire line the top, leaning into the pen like a prison fence. But with the kudzu climbing up the metal posts and the briers and ferns tangled around the base and all the tree limbs hanging over, some of them pushing down on the barbed wire, it feels a lot like Jurassic Park.

I scoot closer, rest my chest against Brant’s back, and hook my chin over his shoulder. He grins and I kiss the corner of his mouth. 

I point at the fence. “You didn’t tell me there’d be dinosaurs!”

He jabs two curled fingers into my thigh and lets loose a terrible sound, half honk and half roar, the full volume version of his subtle, in-church, Tyrannosaurus Rex impression. I grab his hand and put it back on the handlebar.