The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (7 page)

“Just looks like a book to me,” Rusty said.

“Yeah, well the Bible’s just a book too.”

Wade said, “The Bible’s thicker.”

“Listen to this. ‘You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.’” For us, Tim explained this in terms of drinking, though I more or less understood anyway.

“Okay,” Rusty said. “That’s not bad.”

“That’s nothing, here—” and we leaned in toward Tim. The book’s cover swarmed with naked couples embracing, flying
together, and there were gaunt bending trees and a flock of birds, earth, air, fire, and water all swirling together at the bottom where a naked figure lay on a wave of fire, kissing another figure who floated on a fire-brightened cloud. The title blended organically with the picture. Tim said the original was painted in watercolor mixed with gold dust.

Tim quietly read a passage that said ancient poets had created gods to represent earthly places and things, and that later the priests had tricked people into forgetting the gods were symbols. “ ‘Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast.’ See? It’s been twisted around so authority can use it on us like a bullwhip. Think about those Nazi evangelists on TV. The Crusades. The Inquisition. Galileo rotting in prison cause he said the earth moved around the sun …”

Every day, Tim Sullivan burned down the world, and then you lived in the places that withstood it, the ones that were strong to begin with. You loved this. You discovered that you could think too.

“Let me see those pictures,” said Rusty. Across the aisle, Joey O’Connor was listening. We were on Highway 80 now, crossing the bridge over the Worthington River. The ground dropped away and became water, then rose up to meet us on the other side after an interval of shrimp boats.

The rest of the kids were in clumps of Go Fish, or flicking paper footballs, or singing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” The teachers were being tolerant. The book had made us too quiet. Mrs. Barnes was turned towards us. Wedges of sky covered her eyes. She said, “Bring me whatever that is, Mr. Scalisi.”

Rusty passed the book, the guilt, to Tim. Tim stared at him. Rusty shrugged. Tim swayed up to the front and presented the book to Mrs. Barnes as if it was a museum piece. Mr. Thomas watched in the big square mirror.

“Blake,” Mrs. Barnes said, turning her eye mirrors on Tim. “A little advanced, I think, even for you.”

“It’s written simply enough for a six-year-old.”

“So are the instructions for handguns.” She flipped the pages and they cascaded in her lenses.

Sister Rosaria wagged her head at Tim, disappointed again. “You can pick this up after school,” she said in her fluted nasal voice. “We’ll have a literary discussion.”

Tim sulked back, mouthing something. He sat behind Rusty and said, “Thanks, buddy.”

The book was a cult relic now. Rusty had memorized a proverb and was repeating it like mantra: “The nakedness of woman is the work of God, the nakedness of woman …”

Tim said, “William Blake saw angels when he was a boy. He was really small, even after he grew up, but he once stood trial for beating up a soldier and throwing him out of his garden. Blake and his wife liked to sit naked in that garden and read from Genesis.”

From across the aisle, Joey O’Connor said, “Jim Morrison named his band The Doors after something Blake wrote about cleansing the doors of perception.” Joey collected records.

“Is that right?” Tim said. “Hey, I told you all Joey wasn’t a moron.” Tim’s hangover dissolved in the enthusiasm for his hero. “Blake wrote the poetry, drew all the pictures, and even printed it himself. If he was alive now, I figure he’d be working for the comic books. That’s what I’m going to do. Imagine a comic that would completely change the world, save it, like a new Bible.”

“I thought y’all were supposed to be atheists or cubists or whatever.” Joey twitched behind his glasses. His kinship to Sister Ascension, our principal, horrified him into occasional blasphemies of his own. “I mean, do you believe in God or what?”

“Not the name-brand God they serve here,” Tim said. “That old guy with the beard, granting wishes out of the clouds to whoever says the most rosaries. That’s bullshit. I believe in everything.” Tim crossed his arms and sat back, a small king happy among eager faces. Even some of our ordinary classmates,
the ones he labeled lemmings, were listening. “For me, the dog that pissed on the altar Sunday was as holy as anything else in this world. Holier.”

The guys snickered.

“God
is
dog
spelled backwards,” Tim said, and his eyes flicked at me.

“Duh,” Rusty said. “
Wow
spelled backwards is
wow
.”

When Tim first appeared at Blessed Heart he had a strange accent and alien ideas. He read important books and had a chemistry set and knew the names of famous artists. I didn’t know I was Southern until I saw what the North had done to him. He said he’d trade me what he knew and teach me how to draw if I’d teach him about the Georgia outdoors. I didn’t know what the hell he meant. I was a generic residential kid, not backwoodsy, not even suburban.

He wanted me to guide him into the woods for some adventure. So, about three months into the sixth grade, we walked to Casey Canal to look for snakes. Tim was wearing a red-andwhite-striped jersey like he’d seen on Pablo Picasso in photographs. We carried Kmart machetes in scabbards on our hips.

We floated an old door in the canal and called it a raft. It overturned. Tim dunked and his army cap spun on the surface. He broke water and snatched the cap and paddled to the shallows, spitting brown water. He fell onto the bank and lay there staring at me, dazed.

“I just learned to swim,” he said. “This is a great day. I taught myself to swim.”

“That was dog-paddling,” I said, rather kindly. I peeled my shirt off and wrung it until water splattered. “It was instinct. You couldn’t have kept that up for long.”

“Hug a nut, Francis. I have never swam before in my life, and I just swam through water that was over my head.” He shook his hair out and grinned. “It’s true what my dad says, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

“Okay. So you swam.” I wriggled back into the chilly shirt. My nipples were like BBs.

“The next deep part we get to, I’m going to swim all the way across to those woods. I don’t have the slightest fear anymore.”

We waded along for a while. Then Tim froze, cursed sharply, drew his machete, stared at the water.

“What?” I asked.

“Water moccasin!” He slashed the water around him. Some creature slid over my ankle. We slaughtered the water, laughing hysterically, and the water slowed the fat blades and turned them against us. I whacked my knee underwater. I heaved up on the bank, laughing, and Tim flopped beside me, and every root and fallen limb was a snake now. My knee leaked watery blood. My kneecap, though nicked and bruised, had kept the slice shallow.

“It was probably just a catfish or gar,” I admitted. “It’s kind of cold for moccasins.”

“We’d better stay out of the water anyway, now,” Tim said, pleased that real blood had entered into this. “We don’t want to attract sharks.”

“There aren’t any sharks in canals,” I said, thinking him bigcity ignorant. The grass prickled the backs of my bare legs. The wound was hurting less. “This is fresh water, so-called.”

“Yes, I know that, Huck Finn, but there’ve been freak shark attacks in fresh water. I can show you the books. Go ahead and take the chance if you want. You could get an infection too.”

Anyway, I was cold. So we walked, poultry-skinned, our nipples beaded, teeth clicking.

“I’m starving,” Tim said.

“Me too. But I don’t have any money.”

“Me neither. We could find a store and steal something.”

This was new to me and seemed mortally dangerous. I dug my fists deep into my pockets.

“But we’re wet and muddy and bleeding,” Tim said. “Carrying weapons. They’d be suspicious.”

We walked on, sneakers mushing, our breath beginning to trail in the November chill. We were in the black section now. Wooden houses swaybacked from decades of gravity, paint curling off like shavings. Wire and scrapwood fences held back the scruffy dogs. A rooster fluttered out from beneath a house and fluffed itself bigger at the fence, raising leg spurs at us. People called this Niggertown, the poorest neighborhood outside of the projects. We shouldn’t have been there, but Tim was brave and naive, and this was part of my paper route.

“I’ll get us some money,” I said. “I can collect from some of my customers.”

I tried six houses, fumbling with various crippled gates, before someone answered a door. A TV was flickering the window shades blue. The door peeked open, a vertical slice of black lady, two inches wide including an eye. She decided I wasn’t a threat, and the door swung in to the extent of a chain latch, wide enough that I could’ve squeezed through. The woman’s ankles bulged over the sides of her Keds, and her breasts were big as cabbages. Inside smelled something like dried sweat.

“I was afraid you was another Jehovah Witness,” she said.

“No, ma’am. I’m just collecting for the
Morning News
.”

“You’s early.” Her eyes ran down me and she smiled, then tried to harden it. “Mercy, that’s a big knife. You lookin to cut somebody?”

“No, ma’am. It’s for moccasins. We were at Casey Canal.”

“I don’t tolerate no snakes around my place, no sir. My grandson cuts that grass every second week. I hope you killed some.”

Tim was enjoying this from the sidewalk.

“Let me see do I have any money I can give you.” She didn’t
close the door or step back, but simply reached down into her blouse, and I suppose her brassiere, and extracted a balled handkerchief. She unrolled it. “You have to scuse an old lady. I was on my way to the bingo.” She licked her finger, then unfolded a wad of bills and counted slowly.

“If you can’t spare it, ma’am, that’s all right.” I remembered back to our old paperboy pestering my folks. I took a step backwards. “I’ll just come back on the first.”

“No, now, you’ve got some money comin. I know how y’all chirren need your spend in money. If y’all don’t have none, you take it out your mama’s pocketbook, ain’t that right?” She narrowed her eyes into that suspicious, amused look women save for naughty boys. “I had six chirren of my own.”

“You could just pay me half,” I said. “We really only want to get a box of chicken or something.”

“I see. That’ll work out real nice.” She counted three moist bills into my hand.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Now don’t forget to mark me down.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Mind you don’t let no policeman see you carryin that knife, hear?” Her brow bunched. “You want me to get you a Band-Aid?”

“No, ma’am, thanks anyway.” I had an idea the blood might prevent me from getting in trouble for being late.

“That’s all right.” She smiled, a front tooth outlined in gold. She closed the door a little, watched through it until I fastened her gate behind me. Her door clicked shut.

“Did I see her pull that money from under her tit?” Tim asked.

We followed the dirt road. I liked dirt roads in the summer. They seemed pleasant. But when it was chilly, like now, they seemed cruel somehow.

And then I saw the worst thing since my brother getting hit by a car. A dog limped beside the road, sniffing at trash cans. She was yellow, where the fur remained, raw gray in the patches
taken over by mange. She held up one leg, the paw sideways, out-of-joint. One eye was a crust. Her swollen teats dragged in the dirt and her tail was curled in between her legs.

Tim’s face drained so pale it scared me, like someone hemorrhaging.

I said, “I can’t believe they let their animals suffer like that,” requiring blame, wanting to say “niggers,” but unable and knowing better, even back then.

Tim crept towards the dog with his hands opened as if to stroke her, chin quivering. The dog limped away, her one eye terrified white. Tim sobbed out a cloud of frost and screamed curses in every direction. He kicked a trash can until it buckled, then jumped on it, flattening it with a horrendous metal scraping. The dog hobbled farther away.

Light appeared at the corner of several curtains and shades. Across the street a big black kid stepped out onto a porch where the moths were already swirling at the light.

“You bet quit dat poundin fo I come make you quit.” His accent was so extreme I could barely understand him and was sure Tim didn’t. The boy held the screen door open, ready to go back inside as soon as his threat took.

Tim shrieked, “Whose dog is that?!” and I was afraid now because he didn’t care what happened, his anger was so big.

“What dog?” the black kid said, stepping forward. The screen door whapped shut. “Ain’t none a my dog. My dog inside by the TV. I was a little white boy, I’d be somewhere’s else about now.”

Tim hissed, crying, teeth bared, and ran to where the dog was crawling through garbage. He slipped his machete from its sheath and reared back with it.

I squeezed my eyes shut, but the slap of the blade, or whatever I heard, would return to me in fevers, in anxious half-dreams, and at moments when I thought I was happy. The dog never made a sound.