“I’m Super-fucking-man!” I called out.
“You’re a freak!”
“Would you rather see the future or read minds?”
“See the future,” he yelled, breathless from pumping hard. “I don’t want to know what shit other people are thinking about me.”
“Climb the sides of buildings or breathe underwater?”
“Breathe underwater!”
“Be invisible or fly?”
“Invisible!”
“Invisible! Yes! I want to be invisible too!” We both screamed into the night.
When we finally reached the drainage canal, the bike bucked over some loose rocks and we both flew off.
“This is what you want to show me?” Kevin said after he finished calling me names. “There’s nothing here.”
I walked around, searching for the landmarks, then sank down and began to dig with my hands until the top layer of soil broke apart, revealing softer dirt beneath it.
“What is this? Buried treasure?” He crouched down and started to dig with me. After a while, I saw a glint of metal.
“Holy shit!” he marveled, working faster until he uncovered the gun. “How did you know it was here?”
“I put it here,” I said, and told him the story of the gun and the dead man in the sea.
“It’s evidence, little brother,” he said, lifting the gun. “You could be thrown in jail for this. You’re an accessory.”
“Maybe the gun doesn’t have anything to do with the dead guy.”
“A gun and a dead guy in the water? Put two and two together.”
“You can’t tell anyone.”
“With my record? They’d throw my ass in jail just for seeing this.” He raised the gun in the air. “Pow,” he said softly. “Does it have bullets?”
“I don’t know.”
He checked the chamber. “Fucking thing is loaded!” He stood and aimed the gun into the distance, then whipped his body around and pointed at another imaginary target. “My name is Bond. James Bond,” he said with a bad accent. “You be M,” he continued in his normal voice.
“What?”
“Be M. Send me on my mission.”
“Okay.” I was excited to slip back into the habit of my fantasy games. “There are hijackers about to take over an airplane. You must go and deactivate the bomb before it explodes and kills hundreds of innocent people.”
“Got it,” he said. “Over and out.” He crept around, hiding behind a section of rusted piping, springing up, then dropping back down as if to avoid being seen.
“The hijackers!” I said, pointing. “They’re boarding the plane.”
“You be them!” he said, running toward the imaginary airplane.
I ran in front of him and did my best to look beady-eyed and shifty.
“Alright! Everybody down!” Kevin said, waving the gun back and forth along an imaginary line of passengers. “If you do what I say, no one will get hurt. No sudden moves!”
I lay down on my stomach, reached for a stick, and held it up.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“It’s the bomb. It’s dynamite. I’m the hijacker.”
“I’m the hijacker.”
“You’re Bond.”
“Get down or I’ll blow your fucking head off.”
“You can’t change the rules.”
Kevin pointed the gun at me. “Shut up or I’ll have to blow up this airplane and everyone in it.”
I stared at the gun; my heart was pounding. Kevin looked at me, but I could tell he wasn’t seeing me. He’d gotten lost in the game.
“I’ll do it, too,” he said. “I don’t care what happens to me. Nobody cares what happens to me.”
I thought about running, but he might think I was an escaping passenger and shoot me. He continued to aim the gun at my face. His jaw muscles worked and his eyes darted back and forth.
“I quit,” I said finally.
Something shifted in his face and he returned, but he still pointed the gun at me. “You can’t quit. That’s not part of the game.”
“I don’t want to play anymore.” I stood up slowly.
He let the gun fall to his side. “It’s cooler to be Bond than a hijacker anyway,” he said. Then he turned around and fired the gun. I heard a click, then nothing. “Doesn’t work. I guess it drowned, too,” he said.
“It’s the wrong kind of gun,” I said, remembering what Richard had said about the rain in Vietnam.
“Fucking useless,” he said, throwing it to the ground.
I picked it up, walked back to the hole, and dropped it in.
“What is this place, anyway?” Kevin said as I filled in the hole and smoothed the dirt over it.
“A drain.”
“It smells like shit.”
“It’s not that kind of drain.”
“It still smells like shit,” he said, sniffing the air.
I breathed in deeply. The air was touched with something rank and rotten.
FIFTEEN
By the next morning, hundreds of dead fish were washed up on the shore. I stood with Laurel, Richard, and Malcolm on the beach, staring down at grey hulls of tilapia piled on top of one another. The water, teeming with algae, had turned the color of canned peas. Other people wandered through the devastation as though searching for loved ones after a war. The smell of death and rot began to permeate the air, first sweet, then rancid and choking. I pulled the bottom of my T-shirt over my nose and mouth.
“Come on, boys,” Laurel said. “Come away from here.”
During the next few days, workers from the Parks Department collected the fish in trash bags and took them away, but the odor lingered. At night, I could smell death on my sheets.
The next day, I found her sitting on the trailer steps, rocking gently. Malcolm played by the road, dragging a stick in the dirt. “I’m sad,” she said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. The fish, I guess.”
“The water’s polluted.”
Her hands were swollen. She couldn’t wear her jewelry anymore, and her fingers bore the ghost shadows of her rings. “It makes me depressed.” She reached over and wrapped her hand around my wrist. “I’m scared for this baby.”
“Were you scared for me?”
She shook her head. “I was so young. And you were my reassurance.”
“That what?”
“That I would never go home again. You anchored me here. Mal, too. But it’s such a world. And so much can happen.” She looked at me as if waiting for me to say something helpful or give her a solution to her quandary. Did she want me to say I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice and drop this new baby, too? Malcolm started down the road.
“Come back here, baby,” she called. “Mal?” But he didn’t respond. “Goddamn it. Mal!” she muttered.
“I’ll get him,” I said.
When we returned, he sank into her lap and began to play with a strand of her hair.
She gently pushed his arm away. “No…no, baby. I don’t want to play.”
He sucked in a laugh and continued to twist her hair.
“No! I just…I…Ares, get him off me. I just…I can’t have him all over me right now! It’s just too much touching. It’s too much!” She pushed him off her lap and he tumbled onto the ground. His face contorted, and he opened his mouth, but no sound came out. It was just like that day at the gas station. The silence was horrible.
“Oh my God,” she said, covering her face as I went to him. “Oh my God.”
A WEEK LATER, THE BIRDS began to die. Malcolm and I stood by the shore where three pelicans lay like torn sheets. Two were dead, but one was still living, although it couldn’t move its wings or lift its head. Its chest rose and fell in shallow breaths. Malcolm squatted and gently ran his hand over its body.
“He’s resting,” I said, hearing the hollowness of my lie. “He’s tired out from all the flying. He’ll be better soon.” He started to lift the bird. “No, Mal,” I
said, laying a hand on his arm. “You can’t take him home.” He made a low, heaving sound, and I realized he was crying.
I steered my bike with one hand. The other supported the sling I’d fashioned out of a pillowcase, tying the ends around my neck. The bird rested inside this cradle. Malcolm, on his bike, followed me as I turned toward the park ranger station. I left him and the bird outside the visitor’s center and asked the woman at the information desk if I could speak to Mr. Poole.
“Who?”
“Jerry Poole. He works here.”
“Is he a volunteer?”
“He’s a biologist. He has a badge.”
The woman escorted us to another building then told us to wait while she went inside. After a few minutes, Mr. Poole came out of the door. He wore a white clinical coat over his clothes. He looked surprised and then happy to see us, but his expression fell when he saw the bird on Malcolm’s lap.
“Where did you get him?”
“Near our house. He’s dying.”
“Yes,” he said. “You shouldn’t have moved him. We’re taking care of them, as many as we can.”
“My brother is upset.”
For the first time, Mr. Poole focused on Malcolm. “This is the boy who comes to the house?” He squatted down. Malcolm looked to the side, unable to meet Mr. Poole’s gaze. “You’re the one who likes birds, huh?” Mr. Poole said.
“He doesn’t talk.”
“Here,” Mr. Poole said, reaching for the bird. Malcolm drew back.
“It’s okay, Mal,” I said. “Give him the bird. He can make it better.”
“I can try,” Mr. Poole said.
“Give him the bird, Mal,” I repeated. But when Malcolm would not release the bird, my embarrassment got the better of me. “Mal, do it,” I said harshly.
“It’s okay,” Mr. Poole said. “He can carry the bird himself.” He reached for Malcolm’s shoulder.
“Don’t touch him,” I said quickly.
Mr. Poole did not react with distress or confusion. He seemed to understand and accept something about Malcolm that most people could never get used to. I put my hand on Malcolm’s back. “Come on, man,” I said. “He’s gonna fix the bird.”
A room inside the building had been set up as a make-shift animal hospital. Sick and dying birds lay on all the available surfaces. A few men and women stood over the birds, tending them. The only sound came from people talking in low whispers and the clinking of equipment. The birds made no sound at all.
“Let’s put your guy down here,” Mr. Poole said to Malcolm, indicating a wooden table covered with a disposable sterile cloth. Surprisingly, Malcolm did what Mr. Poole told him. “You see his eyes?” Mr. Poole continued, talking in a low, confident tone while he prepared a dropper full of medicine. “He can’t move them right now. So we have to give him some medicine so his eyes don’t get infected.” He held the dropper out to Malcolm. When Malcolm took it, Mr. Poole opened the bird’s eye.
“Squeeze,” I said, helping Malcolm depress the dropper. Some of the liquid squirted over Mr. Poole’s hand. “Sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay. I put in more than he needs.” He refilled the dropper, handed it to Malcolm, and carefully turned the bird’s head so the other eye was accessible. Without being told, Malcolm squeezed out the medicine again.
“Good job,” Mr. Poole murmured. “Now we’re going to flush his body,” he said. “Get out all the bad stuff.” He filled a syringe with water, opened the bird’s beak, and squirted the water inside, massaging the neck at the same time. Malcolm reached over and put his hand on the pelican’s throat. “That’s right,” Mr. Poole said. “Help him swallow.”
“Is he going to live?” I said.
“I don’t know,” Mr. Poole said, concentrating on filling another syringe. “We’ll keep him here for a while. With any luck, he’ll be out there fishing again.”
“Will he be the same as he was? Will he be damaged?”
“We’ll tag him and track him. It’ll take a while to see how well the rehabilitated ones do back in the world, how strong their systems are after we get the poison out of them.”
“What happened to them?”
“All those fish that died the last few weeks? The birds ate the rotten fish and got sick.”
“Won’t he get sick again? If he eats more fish?”
“Maybe,” Mr. Poole said. “Hope not. But we can do our best. We can show him we’re not giving up on him.”
“Do you think he knows that we didn’t give up?”
“I do,” Mr. Poole said. “I think every living thing knows when it’s cared for.”
Malcolm did not put up a fight when it was time to go. He lay his cheek on the bird’s body for a few seconds then followed me outside. He was calmer than I’d ever seen him before. But all I could think about was that no matter what you did for one bird, you were going to lose in the end. Bad things would keep happening. Fish would die and birds would eat them. There was no way to stop it. By the time we got home I was suffused with a leaden sadness. I knew what Kevin meant when he said he felt like there was nothing inside him. The feeling exhausted me, rendered me unable to do anything but lie on the couch and watch Malcolm stack books into a pile. It made me into my own audience as I went to the refrigerator for a glass of milk, as I pulled a shirt over my head and prepared for bed. I did all these things thinking: I am drinking a glass of milk. I am dressing. I am brushing my teeth. I am checking the stove. I thought about the fact that I was doing all those meaningless things at the same time that the world was the way it was.
That night, I stood outside for a long time and looked toward the Chocolate Mountains. Even from that distance, I could see the explosions of people preparing for wars that, at the moment, were only in their imaginations, but that would one day become real.
SIXTEEN
Richard woke early, made eggs and toast, and helped dress Malcolm for school. Laurel moved through the motions of her morning—dressing in her spa uniform, putting her lunch of leftovers in a plastic container—saying nothing. When she was finally ready to leave, she kissed Malcolm.
“I’ll be late,” she said to me.
“I’ll be here,” Richard said.
“Of course you will.”
“Are we gonna do this now? Again?”
“Maybe.”
He looked at her and decided not to push further. “Alright. Let’s go, guys. I’ll give you a lift.” He put a hand on Malcolm’s back and guided him to the door.
“I don’t want to go with you,” I said.
“Don’t make things complicated,” Laurel said.
“I’ll ride my bike.”
“Ares, just do what Richard says.”
“Hey, that’s fine,” he said. “He wants to be on his own. I get that.”
“This is what I hate,” Laurel said, her voice shaking. “I hate other people making decisions for me. I hate it.”
“This is between me and Ares. You don’t have to worry about it at all.”
“Don’t do that,” she said. “Don’t condescend to me. This is my life. I’ll worry about what I want to worry about.”
“God! I just want to ride my fucking bike to school, Mom.”
“Great,” she said. “Just great.”
That day, I stole a basketball from the gym. When I went onto the yard, I dribbled it all the way to the bike stand. No one asked me where I’d gotten the ball, not even Coach Watson, who passed me as he headed toward his car. All my life I had worried so much about what other people thought of me, but it turned out that nobody really cared what anybody else did. My thefts were futile. I was never in danger of being found out by a world that wasn’t looking.
That night, when I rounded the corner of Mrs. Poole’s house, I saw lights flickering inside Kevin’s darkened room. I tossed a handful of pebbles at his window, but he did not appear. Just as I was about to leave, he pulled aside the drapes and lifted the window. The lights still played in back of him.
&
nbsp; “What are you doing?” I said.
“Watching movies.”
I leaned into the window. A small projector was set up on the desk, and a grainy, washed-out image played on the wall opposite his bed. On the film, a little boy rode up to the camera on a tricycle and leered into the lens.
“Is that you?”
“Yeah.”
He moved back into his room and I hoisted myself through the window. He sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the silent image.
“Whose house was that?” I said, as the image switched to a birthday celebration where four-year-old Kevin, his hair much blonder, wore a paper crown and blew out the candles on a cake. He was surrounded by other children. A woman wearing a printed apron over her dress entered the frame and leaned over him. She looked up at the camera, smiled, and waved. She tried to coax Kevin to do the same, but he was too busy sticking his fingers into the icing.
“Is that your real mother?”
“No.”
“Who is it?”
“I don’t remember her name. That kid with the big afro was Antoine,” he said, pointing to the screen. “I remember him.”
The image changed. Kevin, wearing another outfit, rode a scooter down a narrow alley following a girl who rode a tricycle. He pushed hard until he crashed into her and she fell. He turned to the camera as if someone had called to him. He did not look chagrined. He looked like nothing had happened at all. The image tilted down to the ground, swung wildly around, and then went to black. When the picture returned, young Kevin was in a kitchen. He was screaming at someone. He picked up a folding chair and hurled it toward the camera. An adult man came into the frame and grabbed him. Kevin threw his fists in the air, trying to land a blow. The man turned to the camera and said something, and the image went black.
“What were you mad about?” I asked.
“I don’t remember,” he said flatly.
The next image showed a group of kids dressed for Halloween.
The God of War Page 16