by Ben English
*
When he was seventeen
The world was gone.
When he looked back in years to come, he would overly romanticize the kiss. Jack knew this. There was simply no way anything could possibly be this good. He’d make it into something mythic, more than just kissing a girl in a black bikini. He’d remember her smooth, strong heat and the realization that another person, a complete person, was totally open to him—as if Mercedes was giving him a certain clue, if not the outright key, to a secret worth knowing. He felt as if his body were a wave about to crest and thunder down around her, through her if he could. Jack felt himself changing, spinning down into the gravity well of that kiss, and he knew he’d get the memory wrong. Nothing could be so perfect, his imagination must already be at work. And yet…and yet…
They let the kiss go right up to the point where it would have become ridiculous, and both laughed a little as they broke off. “That was pretty good,” Mercedes said, not releasing him. “You really made a turkey and cabbage sandwich?”
“I ate about half of it,” he admitted. The rest of the world was slowly fading back into solidity around them. “Kind of distracted at the time.”
Mercedes resettled her arms around him and squeezed as hard as she could. Before Jack could start another kiss, she laughed and said, “Shouldn’t I be playing harder to get?”
“Make me jump through hoops, siphon the lake, eat a pickled armadillo—” She cut him off with a second kiss.
“Oh, Jack. You didn’t plan on this, did you?”
What was she thinking, what? He leaned back, examining her face.
“What?” She smirked, then frowned as a quick wind threw her hair across their faces. “This would have to be the best time for witch hair. Medusa hair.”
He replied instantly. “You’re beautiful. Your brains, your heart, your goofiness, the whole Mercedes. I like it all.”
She hesitated for a moment, and spread her fingers carefully on his chest. “It’s all yours, Jack.”
Now it was his turn to hesitate, and Jack wondered if this was the time for panic. But there she was, simply smiling, the empty lake behind her and the very last of the sunset pouring deep, dark green into her eyes.
Empty lake. He groaned.
“What?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
“We’ve got to go. Al’s boat doesn’t have night lights. And when he gets to the pier and doesn’t see the boat, he might just lose it. Sorry.”
She looked disappointed, but smiled for his benefit. “We’ll get our own boat one of these days, Jack.” He loved the sound of her saying his name.
Jack started the engine and let the girl settle in at the bow before easing the throttle forward. Mercedes sat with her back to him and scooped her honey-gold hair into a ponytail, twirling the bulk of it around a small plastic comb until it was all back and out of her eyes. Jack marveled at this trick, then scoffed at himself mentally. Easy, kid, an inner voice seemed to say. Love is the illusion that one woman is different from all the rest.
Shut up, he politely responded. But he checked himself, all the same. Jack took several deep breaths, filling his lungs with night air. The day’s heat was vanishing with the sun.
He was just seventeen.
There was still enough light in the sky to guide the boat, but he kept them to a slow pace. Could be logs floating in the water, or night swimmers they wouldn’t see until the last moment, or something. Had to be some rational reason for prolonging this moment, alone with Mercedes, on Al’s boat. Even after repeated dunking in the lake, the wind through her hair carried the scent of apples and pears. Jack shook his head, and massaged his sore arms.
There would be some food left at the party.
As they approached the dock they watched the first bonfire go up, still at a distance, though music faintly carried back to them. There were just a few lights still on at the floating jetty. Though the docks themselves extended a hundred meters or more into the water, they were dark except for lighter, bobbing patches that marked the hulls of other watercraft. He and Mercedes were late enough that the area was deserted for the night.
Jack killed the engine as they glided into the slip, and Mercedes leaned out, ready to help secure the boat. Jack watched her back go rigid with alarm.
“It’s okay,” he said, “I’ll tie up.” The dock had rubber bumpers, and the hull wouldn’t get scuffed.
—hands came out of the darkness, pulling the boat forward. Jack heard the barest creak from the houseboat next door, and something white streaked into his head, turning the world inside out. Everything blurred and tangled up, and when things began to sort themselves out he was on his face, retching against the cool metal deck. Mercedes stood in the front of the bow, yelling at someone up there in the dark: Kyle Dremel, who was swearing and swelling up to her just like on the grade school playground. Gap-toothed Floyd stood next to him, eager, hands flexing.
Jack coughed again and pushed himself up. His head felt like an eggshell under a broken piano. Mercedes looked back when he groaned, and Kyle took a handful of hair as she turned, slapping her hard, twice. She cried out, and Jack felt something drop away inside him. Tears sprang to his eyes, and he gathered himself to rush forward—
—“Damn, Jackie, that’s a hard head! Next time I’ll wear my steeltoes.” The speaker was amiable, good natured. The tone of a friend, and it shot a line of ice all the way through Jack, all the way back to his first beating, and the panicked, choking terror he’d learned as a little boy.
He remembered the voice best of all. Reasonable, velvety, and precise. The voice of someone who smiled a lot. Even grownups tried to sound like Merrick, tried to mimic the steady intelligence in that voice.
It was a voice that assumed obedience from those who heard it. “Did you hit her the way I showed you? Open-handed, so as not to leave a mark for later?”
Kyle nodded, hand still in Mercedes’ hair. Jack tried to avoid her eyes, and she groaned. Another, heavier line of ice all the way through his heart.
He could barely breathe.
Jack turned, and Merrick stood above them on the deck of the houseboat. Sneakers, eye level with Jack, were the whitest thing in the night. The shoes and his teeth.
“If it isn’t the Little Orphan That Could. Or could you, Jackie?” he grinned, looking at Mercedes, then back. “Floyd was ready to head over to the party, sure you’d gone there. I told him, no, Jackie’s a good kid, he’ll bring the boat back, tie it up nice and neat with all the right Boy Scout knots.” Merrick stood like a young god at ease. He was the only blond in his family. Even with the fear thick in his blood, Jack was awed by Merrick’s presence. There was no other word for it but beauty.
“Where’s your little pissant richboy buddy, Jackie?” A beat. “No answer? Come on up here.”
Jack could barely think, let alone move. A fourth man, one of the goatees, came up the dock. “Nobody. Pearly’s still looking out.” He was older than everyone else but still deferred to Merrick.
“Don’t worry, he won’t miss anything exciting. Here, Sam, help Jackie with their stuff.”
They brought a few of their bags aboard the houseboat, which had a wider deck and completely shielded them from the quay. As Jack stepped over onto the higher boat, dark water swirled below him. It looked as deep and empty as the starless sky above.
If he could only think of something good, something quick—but Jack felt dead and slow inside, all the way to the bone. His head didn’t hurt as much as before, but maybe that’s how it went with concussions. All his senses felt odd, compressed somehow. He put their duffel bags on the table, and turned.
Kyle spoke up, again in Mercedes’ face. “You screwed up my ‘ski, milk cow! Needs a new starter, a new primer kit.” Floyd Heaton took up position on her other side, forcing Mercedes back against the low rail at the deck’s edge.
“Jackie, you have some food left over, right? Something good? Alonzo’s mom still makes those killer sandwiches?”
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Jack looked at Floyd, then at the bags. “Get them yourself.”
Merrick tut-tutted. “Now, that’s just not nice.”
Enough adrenaline filled Jack that his hands trembled. “You can go—”
And then Merrick brought out the bat.
It was an Easton Redline, graphite-reinforced aluminum, mostly black except for red, silver-bordered letters. Thirty-two inches of metal and a great sweet spot.
Merrick’s eyes swept up and down Mercedes. “You two are lucky we don’t call the cops.”
“You’d—”
“Shut up. You broke my truck window. You got glass all over the inside. I’ve kept track of how many times I’ve cut myself,” he said to Mercedes. “Then you trash my little brother’s jetski—what kind of behavior is that?” He swung the bat carelessly, loosely at the end of one arm. Jack’s eyes followed it.
“I heard your daddy’s almost dead, and they sent you up here ‘cause he couldn’t stand the sight of you.” She clamped her mouth shut. “So you’re hanging out with our local loser?” He tilted his head toward Jack. “He’s got maybe one friend around here, doesn’t party—what, he giving you orphan lessons?”
Mercedes still had some spit left. As she started to speak, Merrick whirled on her, so fast his two cronies jumped. “Shut up, shut up!” He rabbit-punched her twice, hard, in the chest, and she gagged, folding. Kyle and Floyd each took an arm, holding her off the deck.
“Aw, man, don’t bruise ‘em up!”
“Piss off, Floyd, you’ll get your share.”
Jack’s guts turned over. His ears no longer rang from Merrick’s kick. Sam moved from his side and approached the girl. She breathed in shallow, weepy gasps. Merrick crouched in front of her, hands resting on the bat. “Same as kicking a guy in the balls,” he supplied helpfully to the girl. “You’re going to learn all kinds of things like that tonight, once we get to the mine.”
“We taking her to the mine, Merk?” asked Floyd.
Kyle’s eyes went wide at Jack. “Don’t tell-“
“—Doesn’t matter,” Sam said, watching Jack closely. “He remembers. He saw the baseball bat. He remembers Cecilia.”
He’d pretty much reached the limits, he realized. All that crap the poets wrote about despair and desperation might be true, but nothing felt like this. He stood, rooted to the spot, taking the smallest of breaths, his thoughts ridiculously pedestrian. I wonder how they clean the blood off the bat? It was all he could do to stand up, never mind actually doing anything. Nothing! Here he was, and everything he was made of didn’t matter. Jack’s mind initially shrank back from imagining the things they were going to do to Mercedes, the ways they were going to break her, every part of her—and then he fell into those thoughts, mentally retching again. It was an end to hope, and there was nothing he could do. Nothing.
I’m just seventeen.
Sam took another step toward Mercedes. “Get the sandwiches, Jackie boy.”
The pressure on the inside of his head increased, almost like a special torture, and his senses opened up. Time slowed slightly, letting him experience everything in an agony of detail. Tears ran hotly down his face, and the pressure on his head lightened suddenly, and changed. It felt for all the world like someone set their palms softly on the crown of his head. The sudden lift of the world’s weight made him dizzy for a moment.
The instant Sam came near, an odd thing happened. Merrick stood, still swinging the bat. Floyd and Kyle hauled the girl back up into more or less a standing position. And a dry, cool voice, utterly unexcitable, spoke up from the back row of Jack’s mind.
They’re almost in position.
What? Who’s in position?
Merrick touched Mercedes under the chin, gently. Wiped saliva from her lips with his thumb. She heaved, getting her breath back, and simultaneously shrinking from him.
Look around. Remember who you are.
Pay attention.
The night was suddenly full of detail, of designs. He couldn’t take them in, and yet he perceived them all. Jack felt something like regret at the lack of time to examine the world captured in that instant. A thousand thousand details multiplied around him without repetition. It was beautiful.
Other things to do, explained the voice.
“So Jack,” Merrick said, offhand. “How about those sandwiches? You two wouldn’t have any beer, of course.”
Jack turned away, and began rummaging through the bag. “Root beer.” For some reason, Floyd found this hilarious. Jack brought out the bag of Oreos and half turned, his hand brushing up against a small plastic box.
Small plastic box.
See?
He spoke as he thumbed a button, hoping his voice would cover the brief, tiny whine. “Al’s expecting us to bring this stuff to the party.” His voice sounded just as pathetic as he expected. Funny how he suddenly had mental breathing room, space, time to think, when he got out from under the weight of all that panic. Everything was falling into place, like a big, coiled machine. He could see their patterns, and maybe a way through them. There was even the beginning of an idea. If it worked, they wouldn’t be able to follow.
Jack finished laying the food out and turned back. Sam worked his fingers under a black shoulder strap. “Who’s ready for some popcorn?”
The girl was looking directly at him. Jack finally returned the gaze. “Mercedes, non temere.” Don’t be afraid. “Tenere il vostro alito.” She stared at him with something like shock, and immediately took a deep breath.
“Eh? Buh?” Merrick stepped forward.
Not fast enough. “Guys?”
Jack squeezed his eyes and turned his face away.
The flash on the disposable camera was closer to lightning, and both Kyle and Sam actually stumbled. Already in motion, Jack ducked under Merrick’s arm and scooped a blocky anchor off the deck. It wasn’t too heavy to swing into Sam’s stomach, and Jack continued the momentum into Floyd, rolling them off the deck. The anchor leading the way, Jack caught Mercedes—mouth closed and eyes screwed shut—under the arms in a lifeguard carry, and shoved off the deck with all the strength he could muster.
Merrick shouted in the split instant before they hit the water, and Jack sensed more than saw the older boy dive after them. Jack clung tightly to Mercedes, and just as tightly to the anchor as it pulled them down into the dark, dark green.
Something caught at his ankle, and Jack kicked hard without looking back. Mercedes clung to him, welded to the side of his body as they descended, head first. The surface was a dimming, pale wall behind them.
What he hadn’t expected was the cold. Even during the day, the hottest summer sun only warmed the first few meters of the reservoir. Now, the deep cold turned into a quiet vice, crushing them. He felt Mercedes groan, and the pressure squeezed air from him as well.
With a jolt, the far end of the anchor hit the bottom. Jack released it and slowly righted them as they floated upward. He held her as close, hoping she trusted him, felt her wanting to breath. Jack pictured their angle and ascent speed. About 30 more seconds and they’d surface. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to orient their position in the water with the dock layout above. He saw it all in his mind’s eye.
He whip-kicked them into a rising slant, and they surfaced underneath the dock, between two of the floating steel drums that supported the wooden platform. There was barely a foot of space between the black water and the planking. The warmer water didn’t help; she shook and trembled uncontrollably against him, trying not to cough.
Jack braced his feet against two of the drums, cringing as they shifted and thudded against the dock. Pulling Mercedes close to himself, his free hand found the back of her neck, soft and smooth. Twining his fingertips through her hair, he began brushing along the lines of muscle and tension. She laid her jaw over the ridge of his shoulder and began breathing quietly, deeply, but he could feel her fear.
From somewhere above them, from the other side of the darkness, Merrick cal
led out. “I was going to let you go.” The voice moved weirdly across the surface of the water, seeming to come from every direction at once. “I was going to let you go, Jack, maybe just break your jaw and your fingers, something to think about on your way to the big swim meet.” The voice still sounded merry, hale and full of welcome. “Think you can make it to the finals with a broken leg?”
Footsteps thumped above them, almost directly overhead. The spaces between the wooden slats admitted little illumination, and all Jack could make out was a shadow of more absolute dark against the night sky. The shadow hovered above them. The dock creaked, wood-on-wet-wood.
Further away, two sets of heavy feet jogged up another finger of the pier. Sounds moved weirdly at this level of the water; he couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like they were having trouble finding what they were looking for.
The shadow above wavered, and moved on. A splash came from the opposite direction, near Alonzo’s boat.
Jack’s mind whirled in shock, and yet, it didn’t. On one level, he was terrified of what he’d just done, even more terrified of his imagination’s version of the tortures Merrick and his crew planned to inflict on Mercedes. He knew them well, knew their cruelty since he was a child, and now that he’d seen Merrick with the bat –
Yet on the other level, he saw what needed to be done.
(Tactically, it’s simple.)
Tactically, it was simple. Isolate each of the boys, beginning with the weakest. Strike them so hard they knew they were beaten even before they could hit back. Break through to the lighted area at the hill near the pier access, make sure Mercedes was safe, then finish Merrick. His body mass was enormous; best to strike for the head and throat.
But I’ve never thrown a punch in my life.
“I can’t fight them,” he thought aloud.
“What?” The girl whispered back.
Jack leaned his torso back, and cold water swirled between them. She shivered. “I can’t fight them, Mercedes.”
He couldn’t see her expression there, in the dark, but she shifted against his body. The tenor of her embrace shifted from panic to something else, something like solace, and then she eased away. “Its okay,” she whispered. “There’s five of them, and only two of us.”