After The Flesh

by Colin Gallant

  “He’s jealous,” Freddy told her. He was curious why she was being so hesitant. She clearly had something to say – obviously if she ran across the field to catch him. I could have told him, explained to him that she had feelings as well, that she didn’t just disappear into limbo when she was not with him.

  “Why would he be jealous?” She asked.

  Freddy gave her an arched look. His hands rose to her hips, drawing her closer. “He’s jealous of me.”

  Carrie sighed. For a moment it looked as though she would cry.

  “Say it,” he told her quietly.

  Her eyes rose to his. She suddenly looked much older than her fourteen years. The set of her jaw, the slight crease of her brow, the flat, serious, blue-gray of her eyes all reminded him suddenly of a picture of her grandfather he once saw.

  A moment later the image crumbled, replaced once more by the sad girl. “Mom and I are going to San Diego.”

  Freddy frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “My aunt is sick: Cancer.” She licked her lips, her eyes distant. “I guess there isn’t a lot of time left for her. She didn’t tell us anything was wrong until this weekend. I tried calling you but … we’re leaving tomorrow.”

  Freddy said nothing. He though he needed to or was supposed to but in that moment anything that came to mind would only sound contrived.

  “I’ll be gone most of the summer – at least a month anyway,” she continued after a moment. She stayed within the protective circle of his arms, her finger continuing its exploration of his chest. “I just wanted to talk to you before we left. I needed to know if everything is okay after … you know.”

  “I’m here now. We can talk.” Freddy’s expression had not changed. Nor did it now. He could sense her trepidation. He should have also been able to feel her hurt.

  “What’s wrong, Freddy?” She asked abruptly, her eyes meeting his with sudden steel. Beneath that hurt was a smoldering anger.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” he said with a snort. Freddy glanced away and just as quickly looked back. “Nothing is wrong,” he repeated, emphasizing each word. “Why do you think something’s wrong?”

  “I’ve tried calling you,” she began, “I stopped by your house on your birthday even. We haven’t spoken since … well, since,” she stopped herself, a slow flush creeping up her cheeks.

  “Since I went down on you?” Freddy finished for her without blinking.

  Carrie’s blush deepened. Her eyes flicked around the Green. “Yeah,” she replied in a murmur.

  “Didn’t you like it?”

  “Yes!” she replied quickly – possibly too quickly, “it was great. I just ...”

  “You just wish my dad didn’t walk in when he did, right?”

  Carrie smirked. “Yeah. Something like that. He could have waited about five minutes.”

  Freddy laughed. “It’s a good thing we weren’t actually doing it.”

  Carrie’s blush deepened. She glanced back at the ball diamonds. Her team mates were well out of earshot but still she needed to be certain before speaking with confidence. “Are you mad at me for saying no?”

  “Of course not,” Freddy shook his head, “I was a little disappointed at the time but I got over it pretty quickly.”

  “Where have you been then? Why haven’t you called me?”

  Freddy was prepared. He already had an idea of what to say but it still needed some tweaking. “My father gave me ‘the talk’.”

  “The talk?” Carrie cocked her head to one side. “You mean like the birds and the bees?”

  Suddenly he decided only the truth would do. Only the truth would heal the breach and banish the anger from her eyes she was controlling so well. “Okay, not really,” Freddy smirked. He glanced away, squinting into the evening sun. “He hit me.”

  “He hit-” Carrie gasped but Freddy and I both knew she was not wholly surprised. She had time to think about it and John Cartwright did have a reputation after all. Her concern was genuine but it seemed her hands now tracing his cheeks, his ribs and chest just wanted to touch him.

  Freddy liked that very much. He was surprised how easily he admitted his moment of weakness to her but really to him it was not a weakness. Even beaten as he had been, he still felt it was a small victory. He decided to confess everything.

  “Actually, he beat the shit out of me. I was being a little cocky – an asshole even. I kinda brought it on myself.”

  Carrie opened her mouth to respond but he silenced her.

  “No, I’m not making excuses for him. But I should know his temper. He was pretty much ready to lay into me before you left. Thank God he waited until you were gone.” Freddy laughed viciously. “Besides, he won’t lay a hand on me again.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Freddy became very serious. He grasped her shoulders, meeting her gaze evenly. “What do you know about the internal combustion engine?” He smiled at her puzzled look. “Don’t worry about it – just know that I’ve got a bit of insurance against ol’ Johnny now.”

  “I don’t want to know,” Carrie decided.

  “I guess the reason I didn’t call is that I was a bit embarrassed,” Freddy said, “I didn’t want anyone to know. Today is the first day I’ve felt comfortable leaving the house.”

  Once she had completed her examination of him the deep crease of concern in her forehead softened. Carrie lowered her eyes and laid her head against his chest. She hugged him tightly.

  Freddy groaned, laughing. She was quite strong. “Holy shit, Darlin’. I just healed up!”

  She sniffled into his T-shirt.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Carrie looked at the ground and said nothing.

  “C’mon,” he encouraged her, lifting her chin with one finger. It was a gesture he knew belied his youth but they did it in the movies all the time and it worked wonderfully. It worked for him just as well.

  Carrie met his gaze with something half way between a pout and a frown. “I thought you didn’t want to be my boyfriend anymore.”

  Freddy chuckled. “Of course I do,” he assured her, “I can’t think of anyone else who would put up with me.”

  Carrie smacked his chest.

  I’ve noticed the secret to successful deceit lies in two things: Convince yourself the lie is indeed true before speaking or speak without thinking; keep it simple and remember what you have said. Freddy was capable of both and even at just fifteen I don’t think he had enough of a conscience left to feel a twinge.

  “Seriously,” he gazed at her intently, pausing to consider his words. “I want to be with you. Not seeing you this last while has been hell.”

  I wanted to cry out. It was as if in that moment a window opened into his mind allowing me a nightmare glimpse of his true intent. Freddy’s mind was a dark realm where these simple things in our world became twisted into what lay beneath the shadows and behind the illusions. Indeed, Freddy’s little world existed only in the corners where few notice or care to recall what has been laid aside. His demons moved freely, holding the key to the express elevator permeating every layer of his conscious and subconscious.

  Although I was well-hidden, I sensed he knew I was there – had known all day – and all my fears collided. I did not want to be around when Carrie left. My world turned upside down and I ran. But it was like running in sucking mire. Every step drew me further down. I could feel him behind me, all jaws and claws. He would have torn out my sanity like a quivering gobbet of dripping flesh and left me in the cobwebby corners of my own mind to scream in the darkness. But I escaped. The ground fell away beneath me and I was falling.

  But it was also the sensation of flying, leaping from the heights of a great cliff, soaring until hitting the cool, quenching waters far below. I did escape but I took with me the image of hell burned into my soul. It was cold fire encasing my body much like the waters but without relief. This fire stripped me and left me naked in the dark.

  I had fainted. When I came around a
gain minutes or mere seconds later Carrie was leaning up to him, kissing him lingeringly. I could not scream. I was too weak to fight him for her. I was reduced to being a passenger on his distended amusement park ride. Freddy chuckled a deep, evil sound in my ear as Carrie gazed up at him in adoration.

  “I’ll call you,” she promised, “maybe not every day but as often as I can.” She kissed him again and turned away. Carrie scooped up her bat and glove and ran across the field. Her shadow, slender and as emaciated as a corpse long in its grave, capered along at her side.

  Freddy smiled as she glanced back with love in her eyes. When she turned away his gaze became flat and emotionless. He walked his bike off the Green, ignoring me, one finger absently rubbing his left eyelid.

  The ride dipped suddenly, dropping away before me into a rasping, spark-shot darkness. I still could not scream even as my bar began to come loose.

  -

  Summertime in Prince William Falls, that brief spat of true heat between early July and mid-July, was made for the Slough – the Slough being the less savory name in those parts for Windsor Lake. Built in the mid-seventies, Windsor Lake held spring run-off to feed the dam as the river dropped through the summer. The children of Prince William Falls – or any town for that matter – would lose track of the days and weeks as their summer progressed. All too soon the days would merge into the memory of one long outing filled with barbeques, Musk oil and calamine lotion.

  In Prince William Falls the children could never completely lose their ability to gauge time. As summer progressed, they could measure their remaining days of freedom by the water level in the Slough. As the torrid days of summer first blossomed then began to cool towards the inevitable return to school the water level would begin to drop. We knew even before the leaves began to change our days of freedom were not endless.

  Myself, I have always had a slight aversion to water. Although I could swim well, I would often opt to remain on the man-made beach with a good book as opposed to risking a dunking, a de-trunking, or a four-on-one water fight that were the trademark pleasures of my peers.

  Once Carrie left, Freddy fell into the routine of spending his mornings on the Green or riding around town. He would people-watch. He was always people-watching. It became his newest and most favorite hobby during those last years in Prince William Falls. He would just watch, allowing his imagination to run freely, living and reliving a score or more conquests I cannot begin to recall.

  By noon he would typically be discovered by one or another of the loose group of friends we hung around with during the school year. By one o’clock we would be at the Slough with little to worry about outside getting our swim suits yanked down – typically just as several girls were walking by. This was all in good fun of course but it could be particularly embarrassing – considering how cold the water was.

  -

  It was mid-July – the thirteenth or the fourteenth I recall. On that particular day we were at the Slough with only a small group, the others having wandered off on various family vacations or on some odd affair or another. But, for some, the twenty-first century was closer than the nearest horizon. With the latest in video game consoles, these individuals worked feverishly on their potbellies and their Nintendo thumbs. We few were of the dying breed who preferred to be active and outdoors. I figured the Mario Brothers could wait until it was minus twenty outside and there was two feet of snow built up against the door sill.

  Josh Bryant was there. He was a bit of a jock and he knew it but oddly he was still cool. I think we hung around him more for the girls he attracted than anything else. Dave Green was the Barney to Josh’s Fred. You could hear Dave long before you could see him. His bravado could be cut with a knife. Josh usually smoothed things out after Dave came through and offended everyone within earshot but they were still best of friends and had been since the second grade He was a small guy with a small guy’s syndrome and the two of them should have been nigh on inseparable, if not for Jeff – and pot.

  Jeff Leary was there that day as well. He thrived on antagonism. He was into martial arts and wrestling and would screw around – all in good fun – with just about anyone. At the Slough he tried with Josh and got dunked, tried later with Dave and got depantsed. Freddy would just ignore him and everyone ignored me.

  The last member of our little group was Cindy Macpherson, the Queen Bee. We called her Çin, as in sin, because she told us to. It was her thing. She was going to be a fashion designer and one day soon she would blow this hell hole and head for New York. She told us that as well. As far as girls went, she was a little behind in the development area. She had no breasts to speak of yet and the line between her armpit and knee could have been used as a ruler. I don’t mean to be cruel, only honest. She did have the physique of a ten-year-old boy. But she was fun to be around and she could curse better than any of us. We let her rule over us with a cashmere fist.

  She was also a self-confessed lesbian. That might have been awkward for most but it made us almost cosmopolitan and it made others notice. The girls thought she was rank but her fashion sense couldn’t be argued with. The guys didn’t know what to think of Çin but she was entertaining.

  Freddy was my in. It was that simple. I went where he went and hung out with who he hung out with unless he didn’t want me around. In Carrie’s absence I became important to him again – if only for a short while. Çin’s in was different. Her parents set up camp up on Crocker Heights and they were, in a word, loaded.

  In 1991 Çin received an unprecedented one hundred dollars a week for allowance. She was overly generous with her money and naturally we accepted her into our group. I know it is cold but when you compare my empty wallet and Freddy’s occasional ten-spot to Çin’s bulging pockets – and her ability to get more in a pinch – even I could weather the occasional pangs of guilt.

  -

  Shortly after one on the thirteenth or fourteenth, Freddy came out of the change booth and strolled down the dark rock and sand beach. I remember the sun was quite warm – actually pretty damned hot – but a cool breeze was blowing across the lake in fitful bursts, creating just enough turbulence to take the edge off. The Slough was busier than usual for a week day, considering how cold the water still was. Consequently, I was forced to find a spot out in the sun and uncomfortably close to the water’s edge.

  As he walked by Freddy favored me with only a brief moment of his time, as if to offer pre-emptive discipline to a child you know will misbehave. “Don’t do shit,” he hissed at me in a voice as cold and sharp as the sudden wind gust that followed.

  I shivered involuntarily, nearly dropping my library book in the sand, a copy of Thoreau’s Walden I had spent four months waiting to get my hands on. It was difficult going but I was promising myself it would be worth it in the end.

  “Don’t do shit!” he repeated, expecting me to object. “Don’t even speak!” With that he ran into the water, splashing out to the others. He brought down the customary glares and quick-tongued reprimands from mothers and the elderly sticking to the warmer shallows with his splashing and curses, including a lusty exclamation comparing his testicles to ‘hairy-fucking snowballs’. Too quick to catch, he was out of their reach and out to the dock, the domain of the teenager and well beyond the reach of their discipline.

  “’Bout time, Cartwright!” Josh splashed him amicably, laughing and blinking water from his eyes as Freddy responded in kind.

  “Took long enough,” Dave added from the dock. “What happened? Did you decide to tug one off in the change room?”

  Freddy grinned and snatched him by the arm, hauling him bodily into the water. He hauled himself up onto the wooden planks and waited for the smaller boy to surface. “Sorry, your mom likes to cuddle afterward.” We started with mothers and then moved on to sisters and even fathers. Once these avenues of depravity were expended, we would broaden our insults to include farm animals and household pets.

  “Fuck you,” Dave declared. He made a grab for Fr
eddy’s foot.

  Freddy avoided the grab and moved back out of easy reach. As the slurs continued a water fight ensued. Many of the younger kids moved away. Freddy sat on the dock, answering any taunt cast his way quickly and viciously. He drew back and watched, a decadent smile darkening his eyes and curling one corner of his mouth.

  I became emboldened and took to the water. Freddy said nothing. The water fight died down and someone found a football. Conversations drifted between cars and baseball and we all boasted with the naiveté only the young can possess. We believe the world to be free and righteous and our opportunities endless. In our futures we were still wealthy, famous and invincible.

  The innocence is gone now, fled with the dreams. It has been replaced with the quiet resignation fate always grants us. I recall in passing my own aspirations as they shifted with the caprice of the winds, imagining myself as the next Don Johnson or Arnold Schwarzenegger. The archetype of such aspirations is commonplace but only to the commonplace. There are those who care nothing for immortality. Their want is to travel or learn. There are those who from an early age wish to combat the tyranny that abounds in the wider world. Not everyone seeks the power, prestige and wealth Hollywood offers but we all wish to leave our mark on the world, a sign boldly declaring for generations to come: I was here!

  The path is opened to us all but it is the climb that stalls us. There exists another path, often travelled but rarely chosen. Once on it we find we cannot turn around or veer off it. Freddy did not speak of his path to the others. He spoke to me – always to me. I saw his path clearly even if he did not. It did not climb but rather dropped away with ever increasing speed. He would not see the bottom until it was too late.

  The conversation shifted as it inevitably does to girls and sex. I grew quiet and drew back. Josh as always boasted of his conquests first. He did not have a girlfriend but rather a group of girls he dated off and on. A year older than us, Josh had a car. This by itself placed him in a rare class of our peers we held in high esteem. He managed it by repeating the first grade. It was a touchy subject with him and on occasion even mentioning it would spoil a perfectly good day.