The Children and the Wolves (2 page)

And she was like, It’s the most pertinent word of the day, chucklehead.

In the game there’s a bunch of dirty children and a bunch of wolves and they battle each other. There’s a forest and the dirty children have to climb the trees before the wolves get them. There’s a magic white shewolf who howls at dawn and her howlsong is so powerful it shakes the treetops and some of the dirty children fall to the ground like loaves of bread and then the wolves eat them. If the wolves don’t eat they get weak and stupid and then the dirty children climb down from the trees and beat them with rocks and poke them with sticks and eat the wolves. The dirty children also got birds and they can eat them too but they’re sposed to resist temptation and wait for their eggs to pop out of the birds’ butt-holes and then they get to make wolfmeat omelets.

I only unlock the Frog when she has to go to the bathroom and she stares at me the whole time she’s going, even when she wipes. She’s got big space alien eyes and blond hair. One of her baby teeth fell out last week so I put a quarter under her pillow.

That’s from the Tooth Fairy, I told her.
No it’s not, she said.
I was like, Who’s it from then?
You, she said.
I said, So pretend I’m the Tooth Fairy.
Okay, she said.

So now she calls me Toofairy.

She holds the quarter all the time, except when she plays the video game. When she plays the video game she keeps the quarter in her mouth.

She don’t talk much but when she does she says poemish things.

Once she said, There’s a dog on the water.

And another time she said, My hair is video.

We took her from the dance studio over by Home Depot. She was coming out of ballerina class. She was dressed like a toy on a birthday cake. She had regular clothes in her Transformers backpack. We were in Bounce’s parents’ Lexus and Orange and me coaxed her with a ice cream sandwich and a panda bear plushie. We coaxed her like a cat in the snow.

You can have it, Orange told her.

Here, kitty-kitty, I said.

Take it, Orange said, handing her the plushie. It’s for you.

She walked right over and got in the car like we were taking her to Chuck E. Cheese.

Bounce was playing the Aristocats CD and the Frog knew all the words. She didn’t even want the ice cream sandwich but Bounce made her hold it anyway.

Hold it, she told her. If you drop it you’ll be sorry.

That was back in May and it’s July now. It’s been over a hundred degrees lately. You don’t never stop sweating. Sometimes I go chill over at the bowling alley with Orange just to be in the air conditioning. He’s got a private business arrangement with the guy who sprays the shoes down. Sometimes the manager comes out and tells us to fuck off. His name is Glen and he’s got so many acne scars it looks like his face got mangled.

He’ll be like, You’re not gonna bowl then beat it.
We’re gonna bowl, Orange’ll say.
Glen’ll be like, Then pay for a frigging lane and bowl. Mercury Lanes ain’t a cantina, it’s a bowling alley.

At night it gets so hot you can smell the fish rotting in the river.

Smells like prostitution, Mr. Merlo says, opening the patio doors. Prostitution and dead puppies.

I think the heat is keeping me from becoming a man. Like it’s killing my hormone makers. But I’m not waiting around. I do mannish things anyway. And the thing is that I ain’t afraid of nothing. I’d cut myself with my knife just as soon as I’d cut someone else. My knife is deadly sharp and good for stabbing. Bounce gave it to me for my thirteenth birthday. My birthday is April 8th and I’m a Aries, which means I’m a battering ram. I ain’t never stabbed nobody, but I’ve dreamt about it. Like Mexican gangbangers chasing me in the mall.

Get the gringo! they scream.

Get that nasty white bitch!

But then I whirl on them and go at their necks.

Sometimes I’ll stab the couch and work it around. The couch or the side of my mattress.

We don’t wait for the world, Bounce says. The world has to catch up to us.

The Frog sleeps on the cement floor cause it’s cooler than the couch. Even though she’s little she sweats like a man. Sometimes when I come down to the basement she’s sleeping on the floor like that. Like she fell a hundred feet and got stuck that way.

When I lock the bike chain on her leg she makes a clicking sound with her mouth. It’s gotten so I can’t tell if it’s the lock or her mouth making the sound. She can only move about two feet in any direction, just far enough to reach the couch. The bike chain is connected to a hot-water pipe, so she leans up against it a lot.

I keep the key to the bike chain on a shoelace I wear around my neck.

What’s that for? Dirty Diana asked the other night.

Her and her girl Miggy was smoking weed and watching Skinemax. Miggy works at the hospital with her. I was doing push-ups with my shirt off. I can do thirty-five without stopping. My goal is to do a thousand and have huge purple veins.

About the key I was like, It’s just a key I found. It’s for good luck.

Dirty Diana said, You’re gonna need plenty of that, crumbum.

At night I take the shoelace from around my neck and sleep with the key in my fist.

I got the copy machine from Lyde. He gave it to me cause I let him do me.

I’m going to do you proper, he said.

Then he started panting like a dog. His breath smelled like Taco Bell and his lips were quivery. He uses wave activator and it makes his head stink.

I’m a throwback, he says about the activator. I’m the futurepast. I’m one of those past perfect present niggas.

He looks dumber than anything I’ve seen and I’ve seen some superdumb shit.

Like my dad is pretty dumb. He pisses in two-liter Cherry Coke bottles cause he’s too lazy to slide out of his wheelchair. He’s put on about eighty pounds in the last year. He even started wearing diapers.

You think I’m changing you? I’ll say.
I can do it, he’ll answer.
I’m like, Big-ass baby.

I have to Febreze the whole house cause he stinks so bad. This social worker nurse used to come by but she got caught using someone else’s Social Security Number and the government sent her back to Mexico. Her name was Lupe. She had a big flat ass and a mouth like a circus clown.

Get another nurse, I told my dad. Your disability pays for it.
I don’t want another one, he whined. I want Lupe.
He won’t call for another one.

I miss Lupe, he’ll sometimes say.
I’ll say, Stop crying, sissy. Just stop.

And then he’ll take some Oxycotton or this stuff called Lortab and park his wheelchair in front of the TV and watch one of his reality shows and eat Breyers double chocolate ice cream right out of the carton.

Another superdumb thing:

There was this seventh grader who used to faint all the time. His name was Jason Salerno and in shop he was afraid of the electric saw.

It’s just a saw, Mr. Gass told him. We won’t even use that till next year.

But he would faint in every class. His body would collapse like a kiddie pool after you knife it. You could practically hear the air hissing out of his body.

Sometimes I would go up to Salerno in the hall and just say the word.

Saw, I would say. Saw.

He would start running to his next class.

Dumb.

About getting sucked off by a guy, I don’t give a rat’s ass. I just closed my eyes and pictured Bounce doing me.

Oh, Orange, she cried in my mind. Oh, Orange, you’re so big and hard.

Lyde calls me Huck Finn and whimpers when he’s doing me.

Huck, he’ll wheeze. Motherfucking Huck.

For a big security guard he sure is a pussy. He works at Best Buy so he can get Blu-ray DVD players and Canon products. He put the copy machine in a bag with a receipt and everything. So now we got posters of the Frog. Posters and flyers. Bounce brings good paper from her parents’ home office. Her mom and dad are sales reps for Plaxco, this company that makes prescription pills. Apparently there’s this new pill that lets you see the future. Bounce says she’s going to get some so we can have psychic knowledge.

We started the Frog Collection about five weeks ago. Our system is tight. Wiggins is the watchdog and Bounce and me are the brains and muscle.

When we collect, Bounce does most of the talking cause she’s got communication skills. She told me how in speech drama and journalism she always got the top grade and how she gave a speech about the human jaw, all the bones and hinges. How it can be broken and how you got to suck your food through a straw while it’s healing. Bounce can talk about the difference between the human jaw and the horse jaw. She can talk about the alligator jaw and how it snaps.

Bounce’s real name is Carla Reuschel, but if you call her Carla you better be ready to fight.

When we knock on doors I just stand there with the collection can. Bounce does a speech about the Frog and how we’re taking donations to help find her.

What do the donations go to? they’ll ask.

We make posters, Bounce’ll say. Posters and flyers. We post her picture on bulletin boards all throughout the Dumas community. The YMCA, St. Jude’s, the Library. We need to do something to find this poor girl. We use the Internet too.

The truth is we don’t do shit on the Internet — we don’t got a website or nothing — but in plop the quarters anyway.

Plop plop.

In slide the dollar bills.

Swish swish.

Even a twenty now and then.

Bounce’ll say, Andrew Jackson, you pretty bitch.

Little do they know, little do they know.

We’ve been averaging about twelve bucks a day. One day we made eighty-five. Sometimes people invite us in and feed us. Like grilled cheeses and microwave burritos. If that happens I take their salt and pepper shakers. I keep them in a pillowcase in my room at home.

You’re a good thief, Bounce will say.

I’m in love with her. We don’t do nothing yet but sometimes she lets me put my hand on her beautiful round stomach.

Let me have some, I’ll plead.
You beg like a dog, she’ll say.

She don’t care that Lyde does me.

It’s for the greater good, she’ll say. You’re taking one for the team. You’re crewing for the crew.

I know the good people of Dumas think I’m peculiar because my crew consists of a pair of poor, dirty, irresponsible, scholastically retarded, pubescently challenged seventh-grade loner chuckleheads. Tom Toomer Junior High School is made up of rich kids and poor kids. There’s not much in between. I happen to have been brought into this world by a set of parents who are supernaturally wealthy thanks to their accelerated ascent up the pharmaceutical conglomerate they both work for and now actually own shares of. I’m not supposed to take interest in the unlucky or the disposable members of my peer group. Then again, I’m not supposed to be doing most of the things I do.

We watched this film in advanced natural sciences featuring a herd of migrating wildebeests attempting to cross a river in the Sudan. A congregation of crocodiles came heaving up out of the water and slaughtered a third of the herd. You could see the bodies of several wildebeests being severed in half by the deadly crocodile jaws. It was impressive to say the least. The biomechanics of it. Mr. Flint was teaching us about the brutality of natural selection and the instinct to survive.

I see Wiggins and Orange as two lost wildebeests — two of the unlucky ones — and I’m just trying to help them get to the other side of the river.

I’m their river guard.

Big momma River Guard.

I met the chuckleheads in detention.

The detention supervisor, Mrs. Slakeberry, had to use the washroom and put me in charge of the room because she was aware of my startlingly high grade-point average. Wiggins, Orange, and I were the only ones in detention that day. Wiggins was pretending to be studying his language arts textbook and Orange was slumped so low in his desk chair it was like he lost his ass in a car accident.

I’m in charge, I told them.

They didn’t say anything in response because my commanding reputation obviously preceded me.

After a minute, I asked them, Do you know each other?
Orange said, I don’t know that fag.

Wiggins wouldn’t say anything, the stubborn little beauty. He was wearing a Chicago Bulls T-shirt and his big hazel eyes looked heavenly.