Boy Overboard

by Peter Wells

  So we looked at each other across the space, none of us moving till Dirk’s voice came from the other side of the fence, he was lost in the mass of the Chinese gooseberry vine, its tendrils and dark furry weights of fruit:

  ‘Geo-offfff?’ called and half-whined, ‘Pop’ll give us a hiding if we late for footie practice,’ and the way he said footie practice instantly recalled Geoff into being the older boy he aimed to become. He turned away from us, hiding his child’s face, rejecting my brother’s and my rituals as children’s games.

  The last we saw of him was his behind, struggling as his legs fought to get over the barrier of the back fence. My brother turned to me, looked at me briefly, then turned his head away.

  ‘They’ll be back,’ was all he said.

  Worm

  ‘AREN’T WE GUNNA play stiffies again?’ Geoff asked sullenly.

  ‘It’s my turn,’ Dirk said aggressively. He tried to push his brother out of the way. ‘Aint it?’

  ‘No,’ said Geoff, insistent. ‘It’s mine. You promised,’ he said almost shyly. And looked down.

  His look of hunger made his skin, usually so burnished, take on an acrid yellow colour, so the small creases round his eyes appeared as minutely rustled as wet tissue paper. His faded-green eyes, too, had an empty look, like the sea at low tide, when the mud below is clearly visible, and when you put your foot in, small puffs of mud rise up and fluff out the aqueous space into dimness. He raised his hand up into his mouth and began biting at the quick round the nail.

  I was amazed at how he seemed to be turning into my brother (all his nervous mannerisms had been spawned onto him), whereas my brother — standing very still, so still I sensed something momentous was about to happen, he seemed to represent the force of imminence itself — simply stood there and looked, not at Geoff, but as if at that moment he was looking right through Geoff, as if Geoff were an empty pane of glass slightly smudged so my brother had to concentrate all the more intensely to see right through; and it was as if he were seeing there, in that unknowable space in which lay all diversion, all entertainment, all filling in of the vast and abstract weight known as time what we were about to do: in fact he seemed to tremble with the force of the knowledge which was passing through him.

  Looking at him I felt that same depth of being impressed (while at the same time on guard against the sudden immersion into shame which I knew I would feel if anyone else saw the nonsensicality of the games we were playing); while I hung there, awaiting what my brother would say next, Dirk let out a little rustle of exasperation.

  He had a limited concentration span, he simply wanted to do, to explore, to feel, to apprehend and tussle to the ground whatever sensations, excitements, delights and incidental food were coming his way.

  ‘It’s my turn,’ he said sullenly. ‘You made a promise.’

  ‘We haven’t made a pact,’ my brother then said.

  He spoke lightly, but distinctly, with startling clarity. This was at such variance to his habitual stutter, which erupted in the face of challenging situations, it was like my brother had inside him a new voice, a voice of such complete certainty it persuaded simply by the fact of its existence; it was this voice which indicated he could always see slightly further ahead than any of us, that he could make up tricks with rope, with paper and card and paint, even invent stories and tell us how the world spun on its axis, why water did not cover the world, how there was a winter, summer and spring and who Hone Heke was and sundry other essential tales.

  ‘We’ve got to swear on oath,’ he says. ‘Eternal brothers. Forever and ever.’

  I listen to the deep maroon carpet of his voice.

  I see before me unrolling and opening further and wider and deeper a long continuously existing pathway of carpet. Small golden fleurs-de-lis sprinkle this, like stiff and slightly artificial flowers. A slim rod of brass, like a sceptre, keeps the fall of plushness taut.

  ‘Like the Queen,’ I say. ‘On the way to her coronation.’

  I glimpse up the nave through overarching vaults the small concupiscence of our quartet, all dressed as brides, or better still, as virgin boys, all of us with our own particularly shaped fleur-de-lis, which we leave uncovered in our nakedness.

  My brother barely nods. It is so serious.

  Dirk, who when bored and simply absent-minded allows small bubbles of saliva to foam at the very edges of his mouth, now makes a small ppppppping sound, of agreement or disapproval none of us can tell. I feel an overwhelming awareness of his raw red pleat. I watch his lips, slightly cracked from sun, stretch their pinkness into an undulant smile.

  ‘I swear,’ he says. ‘Bloody. Bugger. Bastard. Bum.’

  Then he stands there, smiling round at all three of us.

  Standing in the nave.

  ‘No!’ my brother cries now in positive anger, his voice echoing the length of our abbey. (That we are only in our hut is immaterial. My brother has taught me this: what we are surrounded by can change with the slightest will, the smallest smudge of a fallen eyelash.)

  My brother says, pointing to Dirk: ‘He must be punished.’

  Immediately, a laugh explodes out of Dirk, a sort of milky pappy staleness of air as he curves away from us and tries to make for the door.

  My brother simply leans forward and shoots the slim bolt home through its groove. As if in some subterranean way we all four of us feel that bolt drive its way along the slightly greased alley so that, as our eyes meet, it is as if the bolt joins all of us together, runs through each one of us and makes us connected.

  ‘Jamie, pull the curtain.’

  I grow and grab the dark.

  Dirk, feeling the shade fall on him, has gone still. Like a rabbit. But Geoff, a smile cracking open his pumpkin, leaps forward. He grabs his brother in his arms, from behind, his arms pressing into Dirk’s throat tightening.

  ‘Bloody bugger,’ he says, copying.

  In the sudden and illicit half-light of the room he yanks his younger brother back so his feet leave the lino momentarily.

  ‘Not too hard! We mustn’t kill him,’ my brother commands at the sound of Dirk’s gurgling. ‘Yet.’

  All three of us, with an abstract grace, watch the purple darkling of Dirk’s face. His veins ride up.

  My brother has in his hand, as we all know he would, the coiled snakes of rope. This rope is new, bristly to the touch. If you run it quickly through your hands, it spins the flesh off and leaves behind ribbons of blood, searing snakes of ache. It is coarse, and cuts into your flesh when tied.

  If escaping, when climbing down, you must go slow.

  This we know.

  ‘Please. Maddy. No.’ Dirk gulped, when Geoff released his hold just slightly. He was speaking as perhaps he knew he was meant to. ‘Not the rope. Please.’

  But his please, I noted, had a special note of entreaty to it.

  Behind him, Geoff’s face had taken on a strange gleam, his brown flesh taking on another lustre. A cruel look overcame his usually slack mouth. He was grinning.

  ‘Hah, Dirk,’ he said. ‘You’re the idiot now. Eh?’

  He turned round to me and Maddy for reassurance.

  But we were silent.

  My brother, kneeling, first of all pulled Dirk’s pants down in one quick humiliating pull. Dirk, as if to protect himself, pulled his pelvis in:

  ‘No,’ he half moaned, half whimpered. ‘No,’ he said again, but whatever he was going to say next was cut off as my brother span him round and began tying his wrists together. He did this silently. He seemed, in fact, to be briefly lost to us all, as a small frown played down his forehead.

  For one moment, his eyes passed over my face, and I shivered because I didn’t know whether he recognised me, whether I was next for this new game, or whether what we were doing was part of the swearing of eternal allegiance.

  Dirk’s hands were tied behind his back. My brother’s fingers had felt inside the tightness, testing that he was not hurting Dirk. But Dirk was grizzling like a s
mall boy, pretending to moan but in such a way he displayed all the hammy exaggeration of a bad actor. Actually, he was moaning too much, and swaying his hips back and fro, almost like an island maiden about to be sacrificed in a silent film. A small smile played round the raw edges of his mouth, between his moan.

  His eye caressed each one of us. He was hungry now.

  Geoff was squatting at his feet, pulling his grey boxer shorts out from under his bare feet. He took Dirk’s underpants and, displaying a small yellow stain to us, he made yukky sounds. He held the underpants right by Dirk’s nose.

  When Dirk opened his mouth to yell out, Geoff stuffed them in. His face was full of glee.

  I noted he looked briefly intelligent. When he caught my eye, I looked away.

  While this was happening, we began to be aware that Dirk’s dalk had begun to stiffen, first of all filling out, then rising up until it went through all the degrees, quite speedily, like in a time-lapse film, from half mast to fully erect.

  It lay flat and hard against his belly.

  A series of quick shivers passed through him and then he became solemn, the proprietor of a stiff. At this moment I saw our cat staring in through the window, head slightly on its side, trying to make sense of this strange ritual happening inside.

  Silently now we three began to undress, without anyone saying anything. There was only the swift snap of the elastic of Geoff’s Jockey underpants as my brother impishly pulled them back and let them make a satisfying hard smacking sound against Geoff’s bent behind.

  Geoff, obligingly, grinned.

  ‘Thirrrrl,’ Dirk struggled to say, through the gag of his underpants. I knew he was saying the worst word he could think of: ‘Girl.’

  ‘What do we swear to?’

  We now all stood there naked. One by one our cocks had risen into columnar hardness. For one long second, we feasted our eyes, as we had done so many times before, on the strange individuality of each of our secrets. Although I knew, logically, these had nothing to do with the fecundity and earthiness of root vegetables, somehow I could only think of a hard fresh cauliflower (my brother); a slim stripped leek, long and shiny (Geoff); Dirk’s was like a nobbly carrot, blunt and aggressive; my own was made of green jade, an asparagus cooked to perfect succulence, still snappy but soft to the teeth. In every detail it seemed perfect, like a replica fashioned by the most exquisite of craftsmen, as did all the other boys’ secrets which surrounded me. This was how I saw it, as something almost separate from myself, like a new shirt, or the towelling shorts my mother had made for last Christmas.

  My brother swiftly drew out his penknife, a knife with a thick pearly handle, which boasted a bottle-opener, a corkscrew and many other conveniences. It was bigger than the knives we habitually played with, but it was heavy with practicality, rather than menace.

  I shivered.

  ‘We’ve got to swear eternal brotherhood,’ my brother said now. ‘We protect and look after each other. Offer help and come to the aid of each other. Utter secrecy and silence. Forever.’

  Utter.

  Mutter.

  Stutter.

  Nutter.

  Looking from one to the other of us.

  So saying.

  He slit.

  A red flower.

  I shivered to see the thin lip go white and then scarlet.

  ‘You’ll bleed to death, Maddy,’ I murmured drowsily. For a kind of sleepiness had overcome me. I felt as if instantly my veins had become clogged with honey and I needed to go to the toilet. My eyes longed to fall shut into a divine kind of slumber.

  ‘No,’ he said to me almost abruptly. ‘No. We live forever. Once. Once,’ he said to me, ‘you do this.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘You gotta do this.’

  And he held the blade against my pulse.

  I saw down below, through our joined arms, our matching dalks; I wanted to laugh: they looked like two old men coming together for a natter, old men who would always meet up, to argue, dispute, fall out, make up and discuss.

  But my brother was serious. His eyefall cascaded all over me, I felt a kind of terrible disdain in his glance, as well as — perhaps worse — a kind of rapt appeal. We both knew unless I agreed, the other two brothers who were natural cowards and reticent before all new experiences would not do so. They were standing there like peasants before the door of a church through which one could glimpse blazing candles, gilt, the strangeness of incense, and all the other wonderful peculiarities of closed sects, mid-service.

  I nodded just imperceptibly, whimpering at the same time as I leant forward, and put my hand, for strength, on Maddy’s shoulder.

  ‘Baby,’ said Dirk contemptuously, having at last spat out his underpants. My brother and I froze. But in that instant, as if miraculously, blood popped its diamond and ruby diadem up through the strange white mark, almost as if drawn by chalk, which ran across the outer side of my wrist.

  I felt now a sharp pain.

  Maddy grabbed my wrist and he licklicked it.

  His eyes my eyes.

  I looked away. The saltiness of his saliva caused me to whimper again. But more than this, I felt the contempt of Dirk who, standing there wrists tied together, was looking at me. Yet when I looked at him more closely I saw something else in his eyes. There was a kind of wild exhilaration there, a daring. His truth burst out.

  ‘I’m gunna tell,’ he murmured.

  As if to render him silent, Geoff held out his own wrist mutely, offering himself up to make up for his brother’s mutiny. At the same time his eyes moved over to look, in a worried glance, into his brother’s face.

  My brother, almost nonchalantly, slit Geoff’s wrist.

  ‘Turn Dirt round,’ he commanded, instantly changing Dirk’s name, so we understood how meaningless Dirk’s threat was.

  Geoff and I jumped to obey, spinning Dirt round so fast he fell sideways so he tumbled over into a humiliating posture, his head and shoulders resting on an old kitchen chair. His tied wrists writhed on the slightly sweating curve of the small of his back.

  All three of us laughed, almost uneasily, as we looked down at the raised vulnerability of his bumcheeks.

  Leaning down Maddy quickly knicked the back of Dirk’s wrist.

  A curl of blood unwrapped.

  ‘Quick!’ Maddy said.

  Maddy held his wrist out. I lay my own against his, still sticky with his saliva. I felt the bird’s breast of his pulse against my body. I shuddered, I didn’t know why. I looked into Maddy’s race to see what was readable there. I couldn’t quite read it. He, Geoff and I, then Dirk all lent our small wounds against each other.

  ‘Eternal brothers.’

  There was the satisfactory fall of silence.

  ‘Together forever.’

  Achilles, seeing my eye rest on him, first of all attacked his coat, licking it with concentration, then, turning sideways while remaining sitting upright, cascaded away from the glass.

  I watched him stalk away through the daisies.

  For one moment, sensing me looking at him, he turned round and sent an immense sequinned gaze right into my heart.

  ‘I’m gunna tell,’ said the formed hard voice of Dirk, who had been left propped up in his downward facing position. His voice had the blood-filled density of someone looking downward too long.

  My brother now pulled him back upright. I could tell Dirk was dizzy. He simply stood there, rocking back and forth on his feet. But as he regained his sight, he looked naturally downward, to the point of gravity … and what did he see, what did we all see, but the columnar strength of his cock looking back up at him, so strong and firm it was as if muscular ramparts held it forever up, a thick broad arrow which occupied all his living cells, his actual intelligence, independent from his own body, so his slight, but nuggety body, the body of a nascent scrum forward, seemed merely an attachment to it, a loose vagary, an afterthought.

  ‘Gunna tell,’ he said again, edgily.

  Geoff
abruptly leant forward to him and, with his fingers, playfully flicked Dirk’s cock so it banged against his belly, and imme diately it stood out harder and fuller — more in a begging question.

  ‘Tell what, Dirt?’ Maddy said with such simple force, a blush began to rise up Dirk’s face, and as it did so, a strange and parallel thing began to happen: his dalk began to lose its columnar stiffness, it began to retract, and so that by the time Dirk’s face was dyed a strange dense red his dalk now hung, slack and downcast between his legs.

  ‘Tell what?’ My brother said again with his characteristic dryness.

  Geoff let out a vindictive guffaw, or was it victorious?

  Dirk looked at him threateningly, and even tried to tussle with the ropes.

  ‘I no say a word,’ Geoff said simply. He went to the door and, pausing for my brother to unshoot the bolt, he quickly went outside.

  I glimpsed him totally naked. With a shock I realised he had short legs. I had never noticed these before. I wondered what any neighbour would think if they saw him.

  Under the apple tree, he bent over, momentarily and with complete innocence revealing to us the soft bruised hole in his bum. Quickly he was back in the hut. My brother shot the bolt and we saw what Geoff had in his hand.

  It was a worm.

  I looked down at this strange blind thing, squirming into mid-air, palpitating and retracting its rings as it moved about Geoff’s blunt fingers. Immediately, I was struck by how this worm seemed like the worms which we all carried, as boys, and men: it had the same blindness, the same moist pinkness and somehow overwhelming and vulnerable nakedness. I had seen them bloated with rain. I had seen birds pulling them from the earth. And now Geoff went towards his brother.

  ‘Whatcha gunna say?’ he, demanded of his younger brother.

  His brother said nothing, then his eyes moved round the hut, from Maddy — the source of all this witchery — to me, and then to his brother. For one second I saw the worm and Dirk’s cock in motion. It seemed it needed only the most incidental excitement for his cock to start into life.