The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (22 page)

He sniffed. “What you got to say about it, pussy?”

Rusty and Wade straddled over on their bikes, and Rusty said, “What’s the problem?” and left his mouth open like an animal.

They said there wasn’t any problem, that Tim was lending them his bike. The one with the cold told Rusty to put his hands in his pockets. Rusty didn’t do it, but because he wasn’t yelling or calling them niggers I knew he was scared too.

Tim said, “What do you think it feels like to be surrounded by people of another color yelling names at you, trying to take your property and threatening to hurt you?”

The front one, with corn-row hair, said, “Seem to me like it’s y’alls turn,” and the one in back chuckled, leaned forward, and they slapped palms.

Tim said, “Shit, man, I’ve always been for civil rights. Ease up.”

They both laughed at him, though it seemed forced, lots of exaggerated shrugging. Then the one with the sniffles said, “Where you was, Civil Rights, when they shot that young boy?” and the one in front said, “Right on, brother.” I felt like everybody was attempting to speak in some mutual phony language.

Rusty said, “Don’t talk to these fuckheads.”

“Say what?” said the one in front.

Wade tightened all his muscles into scary knots and barked, “Fuck you!” and a white woman, marching past, held her fist up and shouted at us, “Racist pigs!”

I wished for the proverbial machine gun. I would’ve killed everybody around us, solved the whole goddamn problem. And
then a girl walked by holding a framed picture of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, and I had to remind myself for the thousandth time that everybody was a separate person.

I looked for Joey, didn’t see him. At the next street over, a car was honking, creeping through the crowd. Marchers swarmed it. A man in cutoff slacks leaped onto the hood and started casually bouncing dents into the metal, the car bucking on its shocks. Another man dived onto the roof. There was a breaking of glass, a flash of light. The men jumped off the car and the crowd regrouped, a wedge of men tipping the car up onto two wheels.

The boy yanked up on Tim’s handlebars, nearly jarring him off the bike, then did it again while he was off balance. Tim grabbed the boy’s wrists. The other one sprang a headlock on me. Wade and Rusty dropped their bikes and came over and Wade got my attacker in a headlock too. My neck bones clicked.

A boy broke out of the crowd shouting, “Hey! Hey! What it is, brothers, what it is?” He pulled at the shoulder of the boy struggling with Tim. I was seeing this sideways through elbows. Wade backed off, the boy released my head.

The new arrival was Craig Dockery, our nemesis from Blessed Heart. We greeted him by name though, as if that made us acceptable to all blacks.

“Check it out,” said the guy with plaited hair. “We was marching, right? And then he rides up screaming ‘Kill niggers’ and reachin for this knife.” He pointed at Tim’s untouched machete. We all shrieked, “Bullshit!”

Craig laughed and looked at us, then back at the other two. “For real? Naw, you jivin me, my man. Tiny Tim don’t use that language. Now this one here might could’ve.” He thrust his chin towards Rusty. “You get him pissed-off. They all right, man. They my school friends.” Craig was talking street style, not the way he did at school. He held his hand out to me. His lip was still swollen from my fist, and my eye was still bruised from his. I
gave him a stiff, wary soul-shake—thumb around thumb, sliding into a finger clasp, fist tapping hand-backs, then release— a ritual that always seemed too elaborate to be heartfelt. I can’t say I ever liked Craig, but at that moment, from a complex emotional distance, I was so grateful I could’ve wept.

We heard a whomp! and saw that the upturned car was back on all four wheels and scooting jerkily away, the crowd laughing.

“Man, you actin the Tom,” said the sniffler.

“Everybody got to live together,” said Craig. “One night y’all might be in
their
neighborhood.”

The boys sucked their teeth and sulked off, muttering about motherfuckers. We collected onto our bikes. Tim thanked Craig, and Rusty managed a grudging “Preciate it.”

“Some of these street niggers ain’t used to white folks,” Craig said. “Y’all mind yourselves. I want you healthy for Monday when I whip your ass.” He rejoined the crowd, showed us a carnivorous smile, sauntered away.

Joey crept out from the lee of a parked van, and we were too upset to berate him. We excused ourselves humbly through the marchers, walking our bikes. Some people scowled like they wished us dead, others smiled and wished us “Good evening.”

When we got across, we pedaled full-speed until Joey’s lungs stopped working, then swerved into a neighborhood park and skidded up around a bench. Tim dug the bottle of sacramental wine from his pack and unscrewed it, poked it into his mouth, and threw his head back like a starved infant. Joey collapsed across the seat of the bench, sucking air, belly heaving. We had to pry the bottle away from Tim, less than half left to share between the rest of us.

We rode past the Highway 80 Drive-In. Its glowing marquee announced
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
and
Super Fly T.N.T.,
but several of the letters had been subtracted and rearranged below to spell TITTY. The drive-in was so decadent that it allowed this to stand, lit up like Christmas, on its busiest night.

Rolling on through Thunderbolt, a subdivision on the Worthington River, we kept our conversation equal to the dark and quiet, but dogs began a barking relay, and in many houses a curtain swept back to reveal a concerned resident framed in light. A police car was approaching from down the road, moving slower than we were. We turned into one of the marinas, watched some swaying fishermen hang a barracuda on the scales at the dock, then slipped out the other gate, behind the cruiser now.

Most of the driveways we passed contained trailered boats, usually beside a Mercedes or Cadillac. “Try and look rich,” Rusty advised.

We pedaled up two bridges and coasted down them, then swung onto the small road to Marshland Island and followed Tim into the trees.

We traded snacks and ate them, more for ceremony than
from hunger. All spicy, the mixture grumbled in your belly. We watched by flashlight as Joey nibbled the meat off a pig’s foot. It had intact toenails. I wasn’t tempted to sample it.

Still munching, we opened the shoe polish applicators and painted one another’s faces, daubing leafy smudges with the wet foam tips, exchanging earth colors. The smell made me dizzy, watery-eyed, like breathing gasoline fumes. Rusty held a flashlight on us, watching.

Tim said, “Shew!” and shined his light in each of our faces. “We look pretty good. But you guys stand out because of your arms and necks.”

“I don’t want this stuff on my arms,” Wade moaned. “It stinks.”

“I volunteer,” I said, feeling so soiled already I figured it might as well be complete.

After painting our arms we went all the way and ruined our T-shirts too, except for Wade, who was wearing a camouflage tank top, and Tim, who had borrowed his dad’s fatigue shirt. It hung on him like a smock. His long blond hair was a giveaway, but I didn’t mention it.

“All right,” Rusty said finally, as if we’d worn him down with pestering. “I guess you better camouflage me too.”

I marked him up like foliage, one color at a time, quick and spotty.

“This is our last night of gangsterism,” said Tim, digging into his pack. “Now is a good time to eat those Eucharists.”

He divided them up and we ate them, crisp first, then mushy, bland but magical. I’d never had more than four in a week.

Then crackling gravel and the whir of an engine stopped us. We killed our lights, swallowed our mouthfuls, touched one another in the dark. Headlights burned past, white beams containing insects and engine smoke, leading the silhouette of a truck. Music thumped and sloshed from its open windows.

Out of sight, the truck paused at the entrance to the compound, music slightly louder as a door clunked open. Chains
tinkled, hinges shrieked. We guessed the gate was being opened. The truck revved, stopped again, and after more sounds of metal on metal, zoomed out of earshot. We stayed quiet for a minute. Small wild animals began to stir in the undergrowth around us. Claws scritched on pine bark. A hand clamped my elbow, activating the funny bone, and Joey said, “What the hell was that?” Everyone shushed him.

Tim whispered, “It’s just a raccoon or a possum or something.”

“What are we going to do?” I asked. “That truck’s inside now.”

“Doesn’t make a shitlick of difference,” Rusty said aloud. “They ain’t gonna be near the animals this time of night.”

“That’s true,” Tim said, flipping his flashlight on and scanning the area. “Okay, let’s finish getting ready. We’ll leave the bikes here.”

I held a light on Tim while he assembled his blowgun and hung it by its strap across his back. We threaded the machete scabbards onto our belts. I felt altogether safe and powerful, because of our collective cunning, strength, and weaponry. From the chattering, laughing, and cursing of the others, I knew they felt it too.

“We’re ready,” Tim said. “Anybody want to say anything?”

“Yeah,” said Rusty. “This wasn’t my idea.” He laughed.

“Hold on a second,” Joey said. “I need to use the bathroom. Did anybody bring toilet paper?”

“Tim’s usually got a pocketful of snot rags,” Rusty said.

“I need them for my allergies,” said Tim. “You ought to plan ahead, Joey. Here.” He unfurled a wadded banner of tissue from his pocket and tore some off for Joey.

Wade said, “I need to take a leak.”

We all turned around and took a few steps and began to empty ourselves.

“Hey,” said Tim over a pattering palmetto, “does anybody else’s urine come out in two separate streams when you first start, then join together?”

“Nuh,” said Rusty. “You got a disease.”

I said mine did occasionally. We made zipping noises, and Rusty called, “You about finished, Joey?”

From behind an oak, Joey snapped, “Don’t rush me! I feel bad!” followed by a vile noise that you felt awful laughing at, but couldn’t help.

We skirted the fence through the woods around to where the marsh began. There was a half-circle inlet on our right that ended in a wooden footbridge joining the woods trail to a loop of trail through the marsh. Across the river a few yellow porch lights shone. Our camouflage worked surprisingly well in the gloom. I could barely make out my friends’ shapes against the trees, except for Tim’s albino hair.

Rusty turned his flashlight on the marsh. “Now, we can slop through the marsh all the way around this little bay, or we can wade right across to that footbridge. That’ll save time and mess.”

Joey said, “Let’s go back to the road and climb the fence.”

“Sure,” Tim said. “Joey, I’d pay money to see you clamber over that barbed wire.” He pulled a trail map out and directed a circle of light over our route. “This dock-bridge leads right onto a trail.”

“This water isn’t going to hurt us any more than that damn shoe polish did,” said Wade. “What’s the big deal?”

“Yeah, you go first,” said Tim.

The intervening marsh grass crackled like a roll of caps afire, so we went slowly to lessen the noise. River mud slurped at our shoes, the sound of flushed toilets. A pattering like rain beside us prompted my flashlight on, revealing a side-stepping square yard of fiddler crabs ticking towards their muddy holes. A few of the big ones challenged us, raising their single oversized claws.

We slogged to the end of the reeds, the mud deepening, getting slicker. Water ran into our shoes, provoked cursing. Joey fell and sank backward in a bed of muck. He turned over, trying to get up, smearing his belly with mud too. We had to help him. Tim took the lead into the water, lighting the way.

We waded towards the bridge. I took off my backpack, in case the water got too deep, so it wouldn’t get wet.

“This water’s cold,” Tim said. “It hurts.”

“It ain’t that bad,” said Rusty.

“You’re taller. All of you. The water’s right on a level with my privates. They’re all drawn up from the coldness.”

“I could carry you piggyback,” Wade volunteered.

“No, I can handle it. I just want you all to know I’m suffering more than anyone else here.”

A few steps from the footbridge, something smashed the water like a tossed log. We squealed curses, Tim screaming, “Don’t move! Don’t move!” and we froze there and Joey halted across from us where he was trying to scramble up into the marsh. I smelled boy-sweat, shoe polish, river mud.

“What is it?” we said.

“Shh.”

I remembered my machete, got it into my hand. Tim heard my blade sliding out of canvas and unsheathed his too. Rusty and Wade produced knives. Joey climbed another grass-crackling step onto land. Tim’s flashlight ignited a pair of eyes floating on the water just ahead of him. His light began to jiggle.

“Oh … my God!” He sounded like someone was pounding his back. “It’s a … huge … alligator.”

“You sure?” asked Rusty quietly.

The gator’s mouth opened, top jaw breaking water with a hiss like a flattening tire, the pale pink mouth wide, dripping water from ripsaw teeth. Joey groaned from the sidelines. Rusty wheezed. Wade, retreating, bumped into me. The mouth closed gradually, eyes vigilant, the same style of movement as a snake.