Quiet, Lorne muttered, because maybe Max tried to slur out a word. Maybe he had tried to ask a question.
What are you doing?
Lorne dropped Max. He’d found his place. Max stretched out on his stomach. Sleep. Finally sleep. Then hands were on his belt. The leather slithered as it left the loops. The belt hit the floor. Lorne’s palms dampened his sides. They ran up and down. Lorne jerked Max’s shorts to his knees. With one hand, he pressed Max’s face into the roof and into the filth and pine needles.
In the dream, Max tried to turn off his mind and just let Lorne do whatever he wanted. After all, it was just a dream. Pan had done it. This is what Pan had done. For a moment, Max imagined he was Pan. This was what it felt like to be Pan. Maybe he had fallen into Pan’s dream, and this was exactly what he wanted. But when the morning stretched across the new sky and pried Max’s eyes open with her hot fingers, his shorts were unbuckled and his boxers were muddy. He was far away from the others who were asleep on the other side of the roof. Max’s palms were torn as if he’d been dragged. His belt was looped in a pile, and his mouth tasted like he’d sucked on a star.
THE STADIUM LIGHTS BLOTTED OUT the faces in the stands. They pounded down fake brightness, turned the boys into celebrities. Max felt like a celebrity. He was one of them, at last. He was called into the game late in the fourth quarter. Max took his spot against the opposing team, St. Paul’s Angels. On every passing play, Wes was hit hard by the Angels’ blitzes. It was getting worse as the night wore on. Wes’s teammates helped him up each time, but the impacts accumulated. Before each play, Wes scanned the defensive line to try to figure out where the next hit might come.
Coach hulked up and down the sideline.
You boys tired? You’re looking tired! Wake up, Davis. Wake up!
With less than two minutes left in the game, God’s Way was down by four points, but they had the ball at midfield with two time-outs left. The ball flew sharply through the air, and Max stretched his hands out to snatch it between two defenders.
Cheers erupted from the stands.
Max sensed his father’s pride, even though he couldn’t see him. He pictured him clamor to his feet and yell run in German. Max thought—You do like it here. Max turned on his heels and sprinted as fast as he knew how. Adrenaline was a real thing. It flamed up, burned through his muscles, and edged him on. Max clenched his mouthguard between his teeth as a player from the other team flew at him—helmet, shoulder pads, and arms like one hard missile. Max fixed the ball high against his chest like the wide receiver coach had taught him. He stuck his other hand out and used a stiff arm to push away the tackle. His head pounded, and his knee felt sore.
God’s Way quickly got back into formation as the clock ticked. Thirty seconds left. Thirty yards to go. Again, Max caught the ball, and this time he had a wide-open sprint to the end zone. A player dove for his legs and tripped him up. Max started to fall but reached the ball over the goal line before his knees touched the ground.
Pain sung through his skull, but Max sprang up and stood staring at the scoreboard as people yelled. No one had ever cheered for Max like this, like he was the hero, like he was the one to be proud of. He extended his open palm to the player who tackled him. The crowd watched Max pull him up. They watched his gesture and thought: Isn’t he a good, good boy?
The team dumped the icy contents of a watercooler over Coach’s head. He yelped, delighted. Their fists flew up and punched with something fierce and free.
In the locker room, Coach called Max over and presented him with a tiny gold cross. Max blinked. His eyes were filled with streaks. He blinked again. Still there. He had just showered, and a towel was tucked around his waist. Coach dropped the chain into his open hand.
Just tuck it under your shirt, said Coach. And you got him right there always.
Him?
Christ, said Coach. You got Christ there wherever you go. He’s going to look after you. Make sure you’re protected.
Max stared at the necklace. Tiny nails fastened the small body to the small cross. The head hung down in what Max assumed was anguish. Max felt like the body on the cross. Pinned to the post. He wanted to feel the anguish against his chest, driven through the meat of his palms and into the bones of his feet. The Judge wore a cross just like this one. Quaid wore one just like it, too. Lorne, too, wore one. And it had swung from his neck in Max’s dream.
Max wondered if the Judge felt the cross bounce against his clavicle when he walked, if the cross lifted off his body and fell back with each stride. Maybe the motion reminded him that life is winning. Max secured the clasp at the back of his neck and it settled against his skin. He looked Coach right in his eyes.
Thank you, Max said.
PAN HAD CALLED FOOTBALL BARBARIC, but Max still thought it was romantic. He thought of the romance as he dressed by his locker, as he pulled on his light blue shirt and buttoned his wrinkled jeans. Football still reminded him of the Romans and their Colosseum, all those people looking on at the spectacle, all those people watching what a body could do to another body. The boys had left for the party already. The metal lockers underscored the emptiness of the room and its four tall corners and its firm flat benches. A light overhead sputtered as if it, too, were done and wanted Max to leave, turn it off, and go.
The night was crisp and clean, and Pan was in the parking lot waiting. He wore a pink skullcap over his hair. His lips were painted blue, as if an ode to winter. He nodded when he saw Max, like it hadn’t been long since they’d talked outside of school. Pan looked skinnier, as though his bones had sucked the skin in. Somehow, Max knew Pan would be waiting. He had felt the waiting. Intuition, Max thought.
We won, he said.
Ain’t that something, Pan said. I saw.
You saw?
Pan looked like he might not be angry anymore, and Max thought maybe this would be the night they made up for good.
Did he want that?
So, Pan said. You know. Hi.
Hi, Max said.
He scrapped his vocabulary for another word. Any other word.
Guess you’re going to be at Davis’s tonight, said Pan.
Max tightened the grip on his gym bag and said, Yes? And you—?
Let’s ride together, said Pan.
You’re going? Max said, confused. I thought those parties were beneath you.
To this Pan only shrugged.
They shared the sidewalk for almost a minute as Pan finished a cigarette. He crushed his Virginia Slim into the ground with the toe of his boot and adjusted his blouse.
Cute necklace, said Pan. I love how in vogue dead bodies are around here.
Pan avoided the main streets and took back roads. Maybe he wanted privacy. Whatever the reason, Max appreciated it, because he didn’t want to share Pan. Or maybe he didn’t want to be seen with him. They rode down a quiet road, and Pan pulled onto the side. He reached over and unzipped Max’s fly. Pan bent his head down and took Max into his mouth. Max watched the oily crown of his head move up and down. The cast-off pink skullcap stared at him from the floorboard. It looked suggestive, like a discarded thong. They pulled back onto the road and drove a little farther until Max found himself in the same parking lot where they had once slurped down ice cream cones and wished to life every dead bug on the windshield. The parking lot looked different to Max now, less exotic and almost sad.
Max touched his face to the furless skin of Pan’s stomach. How he missed that stomach. He shoved his nose into the space between his ribs and inhaled. He smelled like a root. Pan spit in his eye. Max blinked it out like a tear. They gasped at the air like someone was drowning them and drove the rest of the way to Davis’s house in silence, with Pan’s hand resting on Max’s thigh.
PAN PARKED AT THE END of the cul-de-sac. They stepped out of the car. Max itched for something else. The yards here told the same stories with their shimmering shrubs and pompoms of hydrangeas. They said happy families inside.
No trespassing.
Guard dog on watch.
Enter at your own risk.
They heard rap music as they approached Davis’s house. Pan twerked for a moment on the sidewalk, then moonwalked past the elephant ears, those thick palms of green plant. Max thought about asking Pan if he wanted to just leave. They could go somewhere, the two of them. But Pan seemed eager to keep moving.
A boy from Max’s team greeted them at the door. He held the two of them together side by side in his mind. Max knew this boy not so well. The boy’s shoulders hung up around his ears, and he moved with the slow, swollen movements of someone who had ingested large quantities of steroids.
Max translated the knit brow and guarded gaze as suspicion. Like—Who brought the witch?
Going to let me in or what? said Pan.
Pan took off his leather jacket in the freshly painted foyer and hung it on a peg beside a row of identical fleeces. He turned to Max.
Toodaloo.
Pan walked past a window framed by tacky floral drapes and across a carpet already gathering mud from the boots the boys failed to leave by the door. In Germany, shoes by the door was a necessity. One rich kid elbowed another when Pan passed. They lifted the rims of their Solo cups to hide their smirks. The rich kid with Chiclet teeth and a greasy bowl cut laughed the loudest. He was neither attractive nor funny nor particularly smart nor kind.
Max had half a mind to follow Pan up the stairs but then what? Pan was on his way to Lorne. He knew it. And Pan wanted him to know it. His intuition hummed.
Dozens of guys lounged around the house. They outnumbered the girls almost two to one. They sat on counters and cast their large limbs over furniture. The girls danced with one another, swinging their arms by their sides, throwing them in the air, and shimmying their bodies to the slow beat of the bass. Max let his eyes linger on Hayes, sore-muscled, freshly showered, doe-eyed, and draped across the couch.
On the back porch, Max dug through a chest of crushed ice until he uncovered a canned beer. He did not want the beer. He wanted to hurl the beer through the upstairs window where he imagined Pan was talking to Lorne. Max thought of his dream: Lorne had not been gentle. Max fumed beside a game of beer pong and watched boys attempt to flick weightless celluloid balls into plastic cups. Behind them, taxidermy deer heads protruded from the wall. Maybe one day Max would hold a rifle to his eye and life wouldn’t win.
That’s a whitetail, said Davis. He tipped a beer in the direction of two more. And that one is a buck and doe pair. Cute, ain’t she?
Sure, said Max.
Hey, buddy, said Davis. He touched his arm. You all right? Something gotten into you?
I am fine, said Max, and he took a swig from the beer he’d poured into a cup. Buddy.
Max looked over at Wes, who seemed sober.
You ever been hunting, Max asked him.
Nah, not really, said Wes. Not really my speed.
I love to hunt, said Max. I am starting to pick it up like a new hobby. I maybe even buy a gun. Max positioned his arms like they held one and pointed it at the wall. He tilted up his empty arms as if firing a shot at the space between the girl deer’s eyes.
Right, right, said Wes. It’s good to have a hobby.
Beer pong progressed. The boys called for a group of girls, and the girls appeared on thin, thigh-gapped legs, sipping vodka and Gatorade. One guy stumbled to the stereo and wrenched the volume dial all the way up until the rap music was inside Max’s brain.
Wes! Wes! The boy with the hunched-up shoulders called for Wes and tried to get him to dance for them. The spectacle embarrassed Max, the way they pulled Wes into the middle of their circle and clapped wildly. But Max did nothing. Couldn’t fathom intervening even if he’d known how. They pulled Wes back into the center of the circle each time he tried to sit down.
Pan’s body appeared on the back porch with Lorne. Max watched through the sliding glass door as Lorne lit Pan’s cigarette for him, something Max had never done. Seeing Lorne made him uneasy and scared. He thought of the roof. Maybe it was only a dream. It might have only been a dream. Their boots pointed toward one another. Cowboy and army. Max shivered. A knot knit in his gut. Pan reached out to light Lorne’s cigarette for him, too. It was a tender gesture, and Max encased it in amber. Then someone said: Hey, Max. When he looked again, Pan and Lorne were gone. It felt almost like he’d made it up. He bit his empty cup open at the top and then slowly ripped the red plastic in half. What was Pan up to? He imagined Pan telling Lorne about Max and his power. Satanic. Lorne might call it. Sin. He imagined Pan saying faggot just like Quaid had said.
Party’s lame, said Boone. Let’s go find more chicks.
Max couldn’t stand to be in the house a second longer, so he left with Boone. They climbed into Boone’s truck and headed out to Cole’s father’s field. Max surfed his hand through the thick air and closed his eyes. Boone took advantage of the solitude on the highway and broke 110 miles per hour. The truck shook. Gears whirred. The engine ground out the strange noise of something being pushed past its limits.
Truth or dare, said Boone.
Uh, said Max. Truth.
That’s no fun.
Should I dare then?
Naw, you already said truth. Lemme think.
Boone squished his face like he was searching.
Got it, he said.
Max waited.
Tell the truth.
He set his jaw and rolled an eye at Max like he was watching to make sure he would follow through.
Did whatshername give you a taste of those DSLs yet?
Max was surprised by the question. Billie?
Mmm-hmm.
Uh. Yes. Uh. Yes, she did do that.
Yeah, that’s what’s up. Boone stuck a fist in his direction and waited for him to bump it.
Boone blinked at the dirt road rushing toward them. He brought the tip of his Coke bottle to his lips and spit something black down its plastic neck. He lifted his butt and adjusted the denim around his crotch. Even this simple motion formed a pit in Max’s stomach. A song about forgiveness streamed from the speakers. It ended. A song about fishing replaced the sad melody with an even sadder one. Max never knew catching fish could stir up such melancholy in a person. But the gruff voice that flowed from the speaker made waiting for a fish sound unbearable.
The truck slowed. Boone pulled over behind a convertible jeep. The sound was a great groaning wind. Somewhere a low laughter rumbled and gathered like a storm. Boone used the flashlight on his phone to light the path toward the laughter. They walked through a patch of dark air concentrated with mosquitoes. Max wasn’t nervous coming out here anymore. He’d been back during the day and seen how alive the fields were. A clearing appeared before them, but no Pan. He was back at the house with Lorne. Lorne, his first husband. The alcohol turned Max’s mind into a slow-moving thing. He swayed between anger and hunger. Billie brooded near the fire, smoking, staring into the flames. Guilt edged at him.
Max walked right up to her and said, Want to take a walk?
Oh shit, said Boone. Go on.
Billie did not move her eyes from the fire. Sure, she said. As long as you don’t take me cow-tipping.
In the tall stalks of the field, Max and Billie walked side by side, awkward as two people who’d only just met. She moved with a lightness. Those same macramé bracelets choked the columns of her wrists. Copper charms hung from them. The paleness of her arms repelled him. He wondered what it would be like to take her hand. He wouldn’t know what that kind of desire would feel like. But he wanted to know. If he were a girl, he’d like Billie.
What’s that say? he asked, surprising himself by how gruff his voice sounded.
The beer had done it. He pointed to a line of Magic Marker scrawled on her forearm.
Lyric from a Bikini Kill song, she said.
He didn’t like her tone. No attention for him. Not even a smile.
What’s wrong with you tonight anyway? Max asked. Everyone’s in a bad mood. Pisses me
right off.
Nothing. Everything’s freaking grand. A real ball.
They walked toward a pond. He took the truth stone from his pocket, the one Pan had given him on their walk that night, and hurled it into the field. He remembered the shark tooth in his wallet. Maybe he’d give it to Billie. They could use it to carve their initials into a slab of stone like people did when they loved each other and wanted the love to be remembered.
Hey, he said. Truth or dare.
Truth, she said.
Boring, he said, but that’s what he wanted her to pick.
Billie wore a black spaghetti-strap tank even though it was cold. He liked her white T-shirt better than this one that showed off her cleavage. What would Internet Boyfriend think if he could see her now, wandering the fields with him, her breasts shoved into a perfect V for him to admire? If Max were her boyfriend, he’d let her do whatever she wanted with her cleavage. He wouldn’t care. He thought he could smell her vagina, though maybe he made that up. Something smelled like tuna and he knew that’s how vaginas were supposed to smell. Davis likes the smell, thought Max. A good smell. Pheromones. Her biology should talk to his biology and say: desire.
Whatever, she said. Truth anyway.
Fine, he said. Tell me about Pan. What do you think went wrong with him?
Billie looked confused.
Why, she said. What’d Pan do to you?
Her tone was accusatory and protective.
I mean, said Max. Nothing. He did nothing to me.
Why then? she said. You in the market for some fishnet stockings or something?
No, Max said, bumping up against anger again. She was making this difficult for him. Make it easy.
I thought you were friends with him, he said. I thought maybe you had some insight. I just want to know how he got weird. When he became witch.
Are you trying to figure out how to ride a broomstick? she said. Or where to get a discount cauldron?
You are making fun, he said.
Don’t try to fuck with him, she said. He’s harmless. You’ve got nothing to worry about.
Boys of Alabama Page 22