Little Beasts

by Matthew McGevna

  Now that the boys are not whipping past Murray in their school bus, chanting poems, they can get a better look at him.

  Motor Murray is dressed in his usual reflector vest, which he got after being struck by a car two years ago. He was riding his normal route along Turnbull Road, only in the tricky shadows of dusk. When Murray was hit, he lay there for hours. Neighbors came out to the porch and raised their faces to the air as though some foul smell had wafted in, but they never went to him. Eventually, he pulled himself up to one foot and limped home. His right leg was shattered, and since the accident, he has walked with a considerable limp—his foot turned slightly inward. At some point he fished a cane out of a garbage pile and has grown dependent on it when he isn’t on his bicycle.

  Murray gingerly dismounts. Under his reflector vest he wears a greasy T-shirt that matches the streaks of gray in his dark hair. His pants are gray, and a hole where a wallet should be exposes the dirty lining of a pocket. James watches Dallas’s face drop.

  “Oh leave it alone, Murray, the cops just left a second ago,” Dallas says.

  It’s the first time Motor Murray notices the young boys standing there, their shoelaces loose. A general look of uncombed humanity.

  “You see the owners coming to claim it?” he answers. “Stuff just sits out here and rots.” He lifts a painting from the pile and loads it into his cart.

  James figures the people who lived here left with only what they could grab. No space wherever they were heading for things like paintings and dressers.

  Dallas shakes his head. He walks over to a kitchen chair the men threw and raises it high in the air. In one quick motion, he drives the legs of the chair onto the street and closes his eyes as it splinters into pieces. Murray is already yelling at him.

  “If they can’t have it, why should you!” Dallas shouts. Murray raises his cane as if to strike them and the boys run for a spot to reenter the woods.

  As they gain some distance from Motor Murray, they turn to watch him limp impotently after them. They can make out the round, ruined hole of the man’s mouth and the muscles in his neck. As though his face is not large enough to expel the kind of venom he wishes to project across the impossible distance. Even the sound of his vitriol is flaccid by the time it reaches the boys, who stand at the entrance to a small trail behind a plot of abandoned property further up the road. They can only make out a few words.

  “You’re dead! . . . I’m . . . kill! . . . Little bastards!”

  Is this exactly how they hear it? Have they perhaps filled in the actual words with a familiar sentiment? For how many times have they heard someone threaten to kill them?

  “You’re a dead man,” Felix’s older brother Bob said just last weekend when Felix used his shoes to catch tadpoles in the creek.

  Yesterday James’s father said that if he caught him pouring out his whiskey again there would be nothing left of him, which is the same as being dead. How many shouts from the neighborhood teenagers, after catching the three of them rolling their garbage cans down the street, end with the promise of murder? It isn’t to be taken seriously, even if James’s mother constantly pleads with him to avoid teenagers when he sees them in the street. To stay close to home. To be within shouting distance so she can presumably hear him and fly on mother’s wings to his rescue.

  In fact, it is so common that, for most boys in Turnbull, it has become almost the point. The game’s end. The prize winnings. With each foul threat Motor Murray screams, the boys count little electronic points in their heads, like a game of psychological Pac-Man. Every curse, or rattle of his cane, means the boys are gobbling up the ghosts. And doesn’t Murray’s open gob sort of look like the ghosts in Pac-Man? Isn’t Murray himself sort of a living ghost?

  The boys watch him turn away and head back to his cart. He seems to do a dance with the ground. His cane, and the inward turn of his lower leg, flex in opposite directions as he steadies himself with his bent right arm, which extends outward as if he were about to escort a woman to the dance floor.

  Felix thrusts his hands into the air and whoops loud enough for Murray to hear. But he doesn’t turn, and the three boys disappear into the thick of the woods, laughing.

  * * *

  The horseman—death—gallops. He is not supposed to limp. We gallop from death and it gallops after us. Time is described as a flighty thing. Fleets of angels reportedly sing us to our rest. A smooth ride across the Styx comes courtesy of a silent ferryman. It is a tidy affair. The universe ties off the end of a loose strand. And yet the boiling, disjointed barks of Motor Murray on his way back to his rickety cart are like a prophecy of doom.

  The boys march down the sloping hill that ends at the shallow, cold stream, electric with energy. A fun sort of fear. Unaware of time, unaware of rules, and equally ignorant of the fact that in a few short knots down time’s invisible strand, one of them will be dead.

  The world’s vague threats will suddenly sharpen, the way a soft rumbling thunder will focus into a deafening peal. And it will not be tidy. The bones in the neck will feel like they’re cracking. The disbelief will quicken the process. Bloodshot eyes will fill the afternoons every day after this one. The sheriff will yawn and watch men drain puddles in the roadway and assume it will be the day’s biggest task. But he will be wrong.

  And yet, the boys can’t see much further than the canopy of trees in the foreground that line up like soldiers at the creek’s jagged edge. The boys leap like semicolons across the murky stream.

  James, following the others, shorts the bank and his heels land with a mucky splash. He swings his arms to gather his footing and rights himself just before he hears his mother scream his name from atop the hill that leads to home.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “JAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMES!”

  The sound of her voice carried through the treetops like a desperate aria.

  He recognized the pitch of his mother’s call more than his name, which distance had diluted. James stared up at the leaves stuttering in the breeze, as if they were the ones who’d called out to him.

  “Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaames!” she wailed again. The same rising wave of sound upon the long a thinned out at the m, and crashing with an awful hiss at the end. The eight-year-old watched his friends Dallas and Felix clamber up the steep bank on the other side of the creek. His heels slanted gingerly at the edge of muck, his backyard rising through the trees before him. She would panic upon the third call, James knew. He gained his footing, overtook Dallas and Felix, and bounded up the steep hill to his house.

  James could already hear the older kids in his neighborhood answering his mother with their best impersonations. It had become a ritual, the duet between him and his mother, that when she would routinely call out, “Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaames!” they would answer back with his trademark, “Yeeeaaaaaaaaah!” Even this block-wide mockery was not enough to deter him from answering this way. His mother, Janet, was never fooled, and found the impostors funny.

  His mother called out once more, and in unison, the neighborhood kids answered back, “Yeaaaaaaaaaah!” James kept running, up the steep hill, through the tall weeds that grew as high as his waist. He passed his favorite oak tree. From this vantage point, he could see the ridge of his roof, and of the roof that once served as a barn for Clover, his dad’s horse, which had died when he was too small to remember.

  James reached the top of the hill and used both hands to cup his mouth. “Yeaaaaaaaaaah!” he shouted.

  His yellow shirt was soaked with sweat and water from the stream. It clung to his body, all ribs and pale flesh. His wild mop of curly brown hair was moist around the hairline, and sticking like wet noodles to his forehead and cheeks. James took some time to catch his breath before completing his jog to the back door. Moments later his mother pulled the door open. It was made of heavy oak, and had swollen over the years from water damage. He could see the upper corner of the door jerking inward, until it finally broke free. James was still out of breath.

  “Oh,
there you are,” his mother said, planting a meaty fist on her hip.

  “What’s the matter?” James asked.

  “Nothing,” his mother answered. “Just wanted to know where you were, that’s all.” She raised her plump arms in the air, gathered her hair away from her neck, and fanned herself. Even in her thin housedress, the heat pressed down on her short, round frame.

  James shook his head at her. “I ran all the way up here for nothing?”

  “Not nothing,” his mother said. “You’re within reach, somewhere?”

  “I’m in the backyard.” One of the many lies he’d rather tell. A picture of where he had actually just been emerged in his mind.

  “Oh,” his mother said. Pausing for a moment, she asked, “With who?”

  James looked exasperated. “With Felix and Dallas. Who else?”

  “Oh,” she answered and stood in the doorway. She peered at him—a smile forming at the top of her fleshy cheeks. “What?”

  “You just called me all the way up here for no reason,” he said and almost smiled. He could never really be angry with her. Besides, he was relieved to know she hadn’t somehow learned of his spying on the sheriff through that odd network of moms that always seemed to teleport information across the neighborhood like magic carrier pigeons.

  “I just like to know where you are, that’s all,” she repeated.

  “I know. That’s where I am.”

  “Okay. Do you want lunch?” she asked, keeping him standing there.

  “I’m not hungry.” He pushed his wet hair back from his forehead.

  “I think I might have some corn chips.”

  James smirked, and started to walk back down to his friends. His mother stopped him again.

  “Listen, don’t get overheated, you know how you get. If you sweat too much, come up and have corn chips. It’ll put salt back in your system.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “And don’t go too far, I’m going to call out for you again.”

  James looked at his mother with a blank expression.

  “I worry,” she said. “There’s a lot of crazies out here, you have to be careful.”

  “Mom. I’m fine.” James turned to go back to join his friends.

  “How far you going to go?”

  “I can always hear you calling, and I can always run back here.”

  “Okay, don’t . . . you know. Just be careful,” she pleaded, but James had started running back down the hill before he heard his mother struggling to close the bloated door.

  At the bottom of the hill Felix and Dallas were leaning against a tree. Even in a reclined position, Dallas Darwin stood over Felix, pushing his wavy black hair away from his eyes. His mother’s new preferred haircut fell over his face, forcing him to smear it aside from time to time, but he never complained to her.

  Perhaps it was all the Bible lessons. Through no effort of his own, Dallas knew the Bible like most kids knew baseball, or crude jokes. He knew Shadrach, Meshak, and Abednego, he knew Jonah, and Abraham, and the meaning of the twelve lamp stands in Revelation. He knew how many years is a “time and half a time.” He knew the earth was supposed to be a place for perfect humans. He knew the healthy way to live was the Christian way.

  “Yo, screw this, Jim,” Dallas said, taking a leaf he’d rolled up like a cigarette from his thin lips. “We’re playing Star Wars. Felix and I decided you’re going to be Princess Leia.”

  James’s face dropped in horror. Immediately he cast his memory back to the image of Princess Leia, clad in a leather bikini, crying out to be rescued.

  “Why?” he whined.

  Felix Cassidy smiled. “Because your brother is cooler, and you’re chained to your fat mom like Jabba the Hut.” All three dissolved in laughter. “That was Dallas’s joke,” Felix added.

  James had gotten used to cracks about his mother’s weight. Besides, Dallas always made up for it.

  “All right, enough. James, you’re Luke Skywalker,” Dallas said. It was the first time James had ever been Luke Skywalker. Sensing Felix’s jealousy, he glanced at him—his gold-colored eyes jarred open, looking like bright pennies in the sunlight.

  “Fine, I’m Darth Vader,” announced Felix, squinting at James.

  “You can’t be Vader,” Dallas said, frustrated. “We’re running from the Stormtroopers. Why would Vader run from the Stormtroopers?”

  Felix shook his head, silenced by the unimpeachable logic. “All right, I’m Chewbacca then.”

  “Good,” said Dallas. “That way you can’t talk. Let’s go.”

  They stalked through the woods following the creek back upstream until it began to dry out, and the land rose to a steep green hill. Beyond it, cars zizzed by on Turnbull Road. Once inside these dense forests, all three boys would leave their lives behind: their poor Long Island town—the fights over groceries; even the sheriff’s evictions despite their potential for fun; the menacing kids on the corners; shouts from windows; mothers calling out in the damp air; stray dogs left behind by transient masters; police helicopters grazing the treetops in search of suspects. They would become their own rebel group. Make mud-bombs. Sharpen sticks into spears and plan wars, escape routes. Learn how to survive in the woods. They could pretend to grow vegetables, hunt for rabbits. Turtle soup. Build snow igloos in winter. A balloon would serve as their weatherman, or an inflated shopping bag. Climb a tree and let the bag free to catch a ride on the wind. Watch it float above Turnbull and imagine they were inside it. Swirling over Turnbull Road gazing beyond their neighborhood. Softly touching down somewhere remote and silent. Or they could shed themselves and crash-land on the moon of Endor, where they’d wanted to be since they first saw it back in May at the local drive-in.

  Even though James was Luke Skywalker, Dallas led them through the shrubbery, squeezing deftly between the thorns. He pivoted away from the creek bed and the other two obediently followed him uphill. They marched behind Dallas in crouched positions—the house where they’d watched the eviction at their backs—straddling logs, ducking beneath sharp branches. James spooked slightly when a green butterfly came alive from its perch among the leaves and fled to another branch above him.

  Suddenly, all three boys froze at a rustling noise in the deep brush to their left. Dallas motioned silently for them to get down. They all crouched in silence. In a burst of shaking leaves, a stray dog bounded over a small bush and tried to squeeze between Felix and Dallas, just as Dallas began to rise. Felix grunted. Dallas jumped to fill the small gap for which the dog was heading, and landed a perfect tackle around its front legs. His weight bore down and the dog was instantly on its side, rolling down the hill with Dallas’s limbs wrapped tightly around its body. The dog’s muscles bulged from under the boy’s arms, and in a matter of seconds it began to whimper. Giving up the struggle to free itself, it merely wiggled as it lay unnaturally on its back, with its pink and white soft belly facing the sky. Dallas was under the dog, calling for the other two.

  “Chewy, Luke, get over here! I’m not wrestling with this thing for my health.”

  James and Felix bounded down the hill to help Dallas. They were getting caught up in the sticker bushes, freeing themselves for the moment by twisting away, and getting caught up again, but they were too excited to care. Felix laughed aloud.

  “You’re crazy!”

  “I can’t believe you just caught a dog!” screamed James, pulling the final sticker bush away from his body and gripping a hand around the dog’s left ankle. When Felix got there, Dallas slipped out from under the dog and got back to his feet. He dusted the dirt from his jeans.

  “That’s no ordinary dog. This is a spy.”

  “A spy?” asked James. Squinting in the sun, Dallas’s silhouette stood over him.

  “This dog is not flesh and blood. It’s a robotic spy, sent by sentries. They want to know if there are any rebels left. We can’t let this thing go.”

  “Well, what do we do?” asked James.

  “We take Spybot with
us. Spybot will lead us right to them so we’ll know where they are.” Dallas turned his head to the side to get a better look at the dog, which had twisted its body while listening to its fate. Its head was lying flat on the ground, tired and shocked from the wrestling match, but its eyes were rolling up, down, and around. Its brow wrinkled upward as it tried for an expression of bored concern, panting for air with his tongue lying limp and almost touching the dirt.

  “Get him up,” said Dallas as he turned back to climb the hill. Felix took his hands off the dog and immediately it sprang to its feet and strained at James’s grip on its left ankle.

  “Easy, easy, boy,” said James as he looked at Felix. “You want to help me here or what?”

  Felix wrapped his lanky arms around the dog’s neck and chest. Felix was all arms, as if they were years ahead, waiting for the rest of his body to catch up. He could make a loop of them and jump through. Slam-dunk arms, his older brother Bob called them.

  His face was near the dog’s head, and each time it jerked to get away, Felix had to throw his head back to avoid getting hit with an errant floppy ear, or a nervous tooth. The force made his wavy blond hair swing back and forth across his face. He could smell the dog’s breath. It was young looking, maybe two, and it wasn’t wearing a collar. Dallas wandered off into the deep part of the brush and disappeared from view.

  “What the heck are we going to do with a dog?” James asked.

  Felix looked around as if the answer to this question was in the breeze. Dallas came back through the brush, holding a short, corroded piece of white clothesline.

  “Found this tied around a tree,” he said, kneeling beside the dog.

  Felix loosened his grip around its neck. With a fast knot, Dallas stood up with the makeshift leash and handed it off to James, who took the rope and looked down at the pitiful thing. The shock was wearing off, and the dog was beginning to go back to its dog business, sniffing the ground, poking its snout into the boys’ legs, licking the knuckles of the hand that gripped its leash. James had immediately recognized it by its color, but the power in its legs confirmed for him that this was the same dog they had watched leap out of the abandoned house and dash across the backyard just an hour ago.