Flesh and Bone (2 page)

“Do you like to eat pussy?” she asks.

How do I answer that? I've never done it before. I've sucked cock and figured that eating pussy would be completely different.

“Look at him blush,” she says and laughs.

Everyone laughs.

“Leave him be,” John John says. “He's good folk.”

They shake their heads and the bell rings and it's time to go in.

“I was just teasing you,” the girl says.

“Okay.”

“You'll get used to it,” she says.

“We'll see.”

“My name's Tammy,” she says and kisses me. She goes into the school and I stand there for a moment thinking maybe someday I'll get her into bed. Right now, though, I have Biology. Maybe I'll learn something about girls there.

I
T RAINS TOO
much here. I haven't seen the sun in weeks. The ground is thick and soft. Grass gives way to mud. Moss grows on anything sitting still long enough, trees, stones, houses.

“Oregon winter,” John John says.

He lives next door. He lets me fire his rifles. I don't hunt like he does. I'm good with cans and bottles in the dump by the creek, but not so much with squirrels or deer or anything living.

“We gotta eat,” he says.

We walk through the pasture to his house. He's someone to talk to on the bus, on the weekend when there's no one else around.

“Watch out for my uncle,” he says.

“Your uncle?”

“Just watch out.”

His mother stews a couple of rabbits for dinner. No one stays in the kitchen with her. She works alone, without noise or chatter. She likes things quiet.

“You in school?” his uncle asks.

“High school.”

Harold lives in a little room off the kitchen and smells of stale beer and chewing tobacco.

“You want a beer?” he asks.

“Cool.”

He gets me one and I swallow a swallow and choke. It tastes like nothing I've tasted before.

“Make you a man,” Harold says.

His smile is gap-toothed and yellow.

“You a virgin?” he asks.

“I…”

“Leave him alone,” John John says.

“Just asking.”

“He's not interested.”

I don't know what it is I'm not interested in. I know nothing about these people. I don't know the answers to the questions, the things no one talks about.

B
EKAH'S BEAUTIFUL AND
popular. The guys gather around like a halo. They bring her things and try to make her laugh. I don't try to make her laugh. I keep away from her. She makes me nervous.

I only have one class with her and she sits across the room. She's so much more interesting than the teacher. I can't help but stare. I want to ask her out, but I don't have the guts. Girls make me shy and jittery.

Terry, the quarterback, knows what to say to her to make her smile. They've been going out for months. Still, I want her to like me. We've never spoken. Words are only so much air. How do you say ‘I love you' to someone like that?

I
T COMES DOWN
to what comes first and what comes next. I do my chores before walking down the road to the bus stop. I hate this rain, this wind. My fingers turn blue and white and ache as if they've been crushed. There is no blood flowing in my hands.

The bus is filled with people I don't know. I cannot smoke. I sit as far back as possible and stare out the window at the trees. They're starting to unfold their leaves. Fields filled with raspberries are beginning to blossom. Soon the bees will come. If the rain doesn't shut them down, that is.

When we get to school, I wait to be the last one off. I hate the crush. I hate the feel of people pressed against me, hurrying to unload.

Richie stands in the Pit smoking a cigarette, leaning against his Chevy's fender.

“Bill,” he says.

“Richie.”

We don't know each other well enough to talk about our lives. He's not very good looking and his knuckles are
scarred from fighting. He scares me a little, but I act tough. It's important to seem like you can take care of yourself.

“Did you do the English homework?” he asks.

“Most of it.”

“I'll give you twenty bucks to do mine.”

I take the twenty and sit in his car diagramming sentences. John John comes and taps on the window.

“What're you doing?” he asks.

“Richie's homework.”

“You're going to get busted.”

“He's paying me twenty bucks.”

“Jesus.”

“See?”

“Just make sure you change some of the answers,” he says. “Nothing gets you busted faster than conformity.”

I finish the homework and hand it to Richie. Richie tucks it into his bag and gives me a smoke.

“You're a smart fucker,” he says.

“Not smart enough,” I say.

The bell calls us to class. We grind our cigarettes out on the asphalt and file through the glass doors where everyone swirls like corpuscles through the halls. I sit in my class and stare out the window at the gulls wheeling in the ashy sky. It reminds me of a dream I had. It reminds me that sometimes, I too can rise into the sky. Not now,
but later, maybe, I'll rise out of this sadness and into the light on the other side of the clouds.

M
Y HANDS ARE
hard and red from tilting the hay out of the loft. My hands are sore and crooked. The hay is for the cattle in the barnyard. The news says there might be snow this week. No one knows for certain. Feeding the cattle comes every day.

Rain seethes on the tin roof, whispering promises it can't keep. The wind is sharp as chipped glass. Rats rush from bale to bale. I light a cigarette, a bad idea with the hay lying dry all around, but I don't want to stand in the weather to smoke.

The cattle come and lower their heads to the hay piled in the yard. They pay no attention to me. I'm the hand of god. I bring them their hay and it doesn't matter how it gets there.

“Bill,” Grandpa says. “You're going to burn the barn down.”

I grind my cigarette out on the wooden floor.

“You know better than that,” he says.

I hang my head. I have nothing to say. There are no excuses.

“The troughs are empty,” he says.

There's a well on the side of the barn. You have to lower a bucket and pull it by hand. It's hard. I hate it.

“Go on now,” he says.

The barnyard is thick with mud and cow shit. I fill the troughs and the cows push forward to get their share.

“You have school,” Grandpa says from the loft.

I go to the house and change. I brush the smell of shit and hay and dirt from my hair and teeth. I walk down the road and wait for the bus to come for me. Rain makes me miserable. My bones ache. I imagine summer, heat, a blue sky and sunlight. I imagine rising and disappearing over the mountains. Someday I will vanish and no one will find me.

H
AROLD OFFERS ME
a ride to school. The sun's just barely over the horizon. Trees stand like skeletons in the darkness, black on black. Riding beats standing at the bus stop.

“You want a cigarette?” he asks.

“I've got some.”

“I have some pot if you want a sip before school,” he says.

We pull into the woods and smoke the weed. Lights bury themselves in my eyes.

“Good shit,” he says.

He kisses me on the cheek, his whiskers a rough whisper on my face.

“Have a good day,” he says.

I float into the school, the walls bending around me, my face burning with the memory of his lips.

I
'M MORE THAN
a little high. Four Oxies, a bowl of weed and half a pint of two dollar wine. I stare through the window of Richie's car, my eyes focused on the tip of my nose, everything else fluid and blurred.

Richie cautiously aims the vehicle along the road out of town. Trees march past and fields stretch into the mountainous horizon. Staying in our lane is difficult.

“Jesus,” Richie says. “Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.”

We pull into the long driveway to my grandfather's house and the ruts rattle the car. When we stop, I sit and stare at the barn across the pasture and the cows and chickens in the fields. Rows and rows of berries march in straight lines to the edge of the woods.

“I have to go,” Richie says.

“Yeah.”

“I don't know how I'm going to get home.”

“Watch the fog line.”

“That doesn't work,” he says. “The fog line dances.”

“Do your best.”

I make it to the lawn and lie on the grass and try to drag the spinning, dipping world to a halt, but there is nothing I can do with the nausea. Somehow I make it to the verge and puke into the dormant rose bushes.

When the rain begins again, I stumble onto the porch and knock. I knock and knock and knock and Grandma opens the door.

“Bill?”

“I need to lie down.”

“Are you drunk?”

“I need to lie down.”

She helps me to my room and pulls the blankets back. I fall onto the mattress. Grandma pulls my shoes off.

“We'll talk about this tomorrow,” she says.

“Okay.”

“There are rules,” she says.

Yes. There are rules. I broke them all tonight. I'm paying for it now.

“What would your mother think?” Grandma asks.

I let the words flow over me, but they make no sense. It doesn't matter what anyone thinks. I'm too high to worry about these things. I'm too high to worry about anything but the quiet walls and the soft, warm mattress dancing and bending beneath me.

“Oh my,” Grandma says. “Sleep on your stomach. You don't want to choke.”

It wouldn't matter if I did right now. I cannot move or think and worry about anything but the particles of dust pressing down on me while I try to sleep.

My dreams are blurred and fused. Angels and demons wrestle in a pit of daffodils and roses. A cacophony of grinding metal grates along my nerves. I try to run, but my legs are frozen. There is nowhere to go. There is no way to escape. I spin and fly and fall and float. Everything happens at once. This is how it ends. This is what happens when I wash away the world and dip into drugs' frayed edges. I'm helpless and sick and anxious. I'm stuck here. I wonder if morning will ever come.

S
HE SITS WITH
a book in the Commons. The room is too small for everyone to have lunch together, so some of us sit in the halls, the courtyard outside, the Pit. Bekah sits at a table reading Poe. No one bothers her. She is impervious to the noise. Two thousand throats bark their names. Posters and pictures make the walls flutter. Teachers gather at the edges watching, making sure no one gets hurt.

“What part are you at?” I ask.

She looks at me. Her eyes are thick behind her glasses. I want to touch her hair, sweep it away from her face.

“The Tell Tale Heart,” she says.

“Is it good?”

“I like it.”

She puts the book on the table.

“Can I help you?” she asks.

“I was wondering,” I say. “I was wondering if you'd go for ice cream with me.”

“Ice cream?”

“After school.”

She stares at me. I become small. Light glares from her lenses.

“Ice cream.”

“I'm buying.”

“After school?”

“We could walk down together,” I say.

“What's your name?”

“Bill.”

“Okay, Bill.”

And that's it. I have a date. Her name's Bekah. She sings in the Choir and reads Poe while I smoke cigarettes in the Pit. It probably won't work out, but you never know.

D
OWN THE STREET
from school there's a restaurant. Down the road from that there's a convenience store. Lunchtime, I go the restaurant. Barb and Ed's. I buy an order of fries and tartar sauce and Diet Pepsi. I eat and I smoke.

I walk down to the convenience store. Chong stands behind the counter smoking a cigarette. He always says my name when I come in.

“Bill!” he says.

I buy a pint of two dollar wine because Chong is the only one in town who sells to minors. I walk back to the Pit. Richie and John John sit on the curb getting high. The girls, Mina and Bekah and Tammy stand against the brick wall watching for cops or teachers or the security guard who walks around campus looking for students skipping class. There is no one and the girls each take a sip or two from the pipe.

The wine is too sweet and too thick, but it smells of mouthwash and we could cop a buzz with no one
knowing. Not much of a buzz. A pint doesn't go far with seven people. It's gone in ten minutes or so.

The bell rings and we walk in a line from the Pit to the door to the Ag shop. This is the room where they castrate sheep and pigs. Someone told me they use their teeth to hold the testicles. I don't know if they're full of shit or not, but I decided, if I ever take the class, I'll flunk it. Testicles are for fun not dinner.

M
R.
N
EFF SAYS
that gays are sinful. Mr. Neff says they are unnatural. Natural law says a man should woo a woman. Men wooing men, women and women, they would destroy the fabric of biology.

Mr. Neff says that people choose their lifestyles. Gays are unhealthy, sick with hepatitis, AIDS. He says sex is for married people.

Mr. Neff found Jesus in Vietnam. He found Him on a hill surrounded by trees covering the sun, with dead men in the undergrowth. Mr. Neff found Jesus in the smell of cordite and blood, guts and brains spread over the broad leaves all around him.

Mr. Neff says there are no gays in the real world. No gay dogs or birds. No gay deer or 'possum.

Mr. Neff is wrong. Bulls mount steers all the time. Flamingoes and penguins pair off all the time, loving one another with a commitment not even we can match.