Rotters

by Daniel Kraus

  “Don’t start figuring too much,” he growled. “You’ve got it in your little head that I pushed her around? Or what? Slashed her with a knife? What happened to her ear—” He cut himself off and I heard a slow intake of breath. “She was right to leave me. I accept that. And I’ll take responsibility for all of it. But I never laid a hand on her. You try to remember that, kid.”

  A light haze of rain began scattering pinpricks into the surface of the river. The impending twilight made him look cut off at the waist, and I thought of the old reverend and his missing leg.

  “How do you know Knox?” I asked.

  Harnett’s dark eyes searched even darker waters.

  “We all know Knox,” he said after a while.

  “But how?”

  “He’s an old friend of Lionel’s.”

  “Who’s Lionel?”

  “Lionel taught the trade to me and Boggs.”

  Now we were getting somewhere. I explored with the shovel but kept an eye on my father. “And who’s Boggs?”

  Harnett shrugged off the rain.

  “No movement can exist entirely in secret,” he said. “Knox was a preacher in North Carolina when Lionel was just getting started, before I was born. They grew up together. Knox knows us, all of us, and he travels around, passes word, acts as a messenger of sorts. He doesn’t do this as a favor. Quite the opposite. He thinks keeping us connected makes us want to change, like it’s a support group—AA or something. He intends to save our souls, every one of us. He’s persuasive, too. We’ve lost quite a few to him over the years.”

  “Will he come back?”

  “Always does.” Harnett flicked his eyes from the water for just a moment. “You better keep at it.”

  I looked at the sloppy hole, the dented shovel, my scrawny limbs, and it seemed an impossible task.

  “Knox told me to stay away from Boggs,” I said.

  “You don’t need to worry about that,” Harnett said.

  “Knox thought I did.”

  “There are territories.” Harnett sighed. “The whole country is divided up. I’ve got the Midwest. Boggs is way out west. He wouldn’t come this far. He wouldn’t dare.”

  Harnett sounded uncertain. It was an unfamiliar inflection and I didn’t like it. Quickly I tightened my grip on the shovel and tried to clear my mind. I lifted the handle high, aimed, and closed my eyes.

  “This Boggs guy,” I heard myself say. “What exactly did he do?”

  The shovel blade whistled as it flew, cleanly severing a tree root thicker than my wrist. In that instant, everything clicked into clockwork perfection: my sweaty palms molded to the lacquered wood so that bone and tool were of one body. The Root, I told myself with assurance and satisfaction. That is my shovel’s name.

  Praise was what I wanted and I turned to the river, the Root raised victorious, my face askew in a grin. For a moment I saw the cresting of a slick belly and a webbed fin, and then a fish squirmed through Harnett’s fingers. He put his hands on his hips and turned toward me, panting in the rain with a look more menacing than any I’d seen since the day I’d arrived in Bloughton. My elation dimmed. I made the connection.

  Boggs had something to do with my mother.

  I did the only thing I could. I dug. My muscles strained against the weight of the wet dirt. I gave in to it: the riverbank patting my knees, the Root’s handle rubbing my shoulder, the rain mussing my hair—it was as if she were right there. I worked faster. Mud flew and my ears recorded every splat so I could retrieve it later. I was at the trumpet case in mere minutes, and as I began to shove the hole back together, I became aware that Harnett stood just behind me, struck mute by my surge of power. I finished the work, panting, and squinted up at him through the rain. His eyes glowered at me, and then glinted jealously at the Root. He jutted his chin at my trumpet case.

  “Take it out,” he said.

  I tried to catch my breath. “What?”

  “You’re in such a hurry,” he said. “Some great big hurry to get to some sporting event. Or else it’s some practice every goddamn day after school. While we have things to do, the Merriman grave, you’re busy with this piece of tin. So get it out.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to hear this thing that’s causing me so much trouble.”

  Each latch on the case weighed one hundred pounds. I scooped away the mud. Inside, the brass was tawny and water-spotted. The mouthpiece fought against insertion.

  “Play,” he said.

  “It needs tuned,” I muttered.

  “Pick it up and play.”

  I mashed my lips in frustration; it was just coincidence that this was also the right comportment for playing. The instrument was cold against my lips. Rain made impatient noises against the metal.

  “What am I supposed to play?”

  “I don’t care,” he said. “Something easy.”

  All I could remember was the Bloughton Screaming Eagles fight song. As inappropriate as it seemed, it was at least fantastically easy: G, C, F, F, G, C, F, F, A.

  I licked the rain from my lips and blew. G, C, F, F—and then trouble, the wrong note. I backed up: F, F—and two fingers fought for the same button. I shook the rain from my shoulders. This was something I could play in my sleep. F, F—and the next note split into octaves. Harnett’s expression rested somewhere between bemusement and loathing. F, F—and here I hesitated too long, so I looped around as if to gain speed before leaping: F, F, F, F, F. Harnett openly smirked now, the black and gray bristles of his beard twisting cruelly. My muddy hands shook; cold rain streamed down my back; my lips reddened and bled: F, F, F, F, F. Now I saw what Harnett was saying—this whole thing was a farce. My lungs and lips stuttered like a child so aggrieved he can’t get out his first sob: F, F, F, F, F, repeated until it was the sound of our breathing, the thump and squirm of our organs. It was the saddest of father/son theme songs, and no coincidence for either of us that the letter it was based upon stood for failure.

  32.

  I HEARD THE BAND before I got there. Slowly I pushed my face into the chain-link fence and gazed across the field. Moths attacked the massive lights, which scribbled white commas on wet helmets. The bleachers smelled like popcorn and ketchup and sounded like the biggest family in the world. With the exception of one garbageman, the entire town of Bloughton had turned out; I spotted the trench-coated Principal Simmons and his wife; a row back, eyeing them, Vice Principal Diamond; I found the long-suffering Laverne as far from the two of them as possible, huddling with three pipsqueak kids beneath a Screaming Eagles blanket; I didn’t find Heidi or Foley, but found my mother over and over before realizing that the lips were different, the hair too short, the left ear lacking the telltale notches.

  Even from a distance I could tell that getting wet was not for Ted. His conducting was stiff and fussy. You think this is tough? I wondered of him. Try digging a forty-five-degree, five-foot hole in the side of a rocky riverbank. I made the same challenge to Woody and Rhino and Coach Winter, all of whom stood beleaguered and winded on the sideline. At halftime, the band played while Celeste Carpenter and her four-woman homecoming court were escorted onto the field by a group of guys in alphabetic jackets. My view shifted and I found myself fantasizing about the dazzling green grass of the thirty-yard line, as yet untouched by cleats. My free hand instinctively flexed: the Root could cut through that turf as if it were cream.

  Sometime during the second half I trudged home, my new white uniform gray with mud from passing cars, my trumpet case squeaking with each step. Harnett was waiting. With a pair of scissors he pointed to an overturned bucket. I sat and felt his rough fingers gather a handful of wet hair at my nape. I heard the snicker of metal and felt the blades slide cold against my skin, the damp segments of hair tickle down the back of my shirt. “I bet you name your scissors, too,” I muttered. Through his calloused thumbs I thought I felt the vibration of laughter; he rotated my scalp an inch so that I could see the Root where he had placed it, fully cl
eaned, right next to the door.

  33.

  FOLEY SHOOK A FORK free from a thatch of interlocked utensils and tossed it onto his tray. The cafeteria smelled like overcooked beef.

  “It’s just the way it is here,” he was saying. “People attack anything. You have to not care.”

  “But I do care.”

  “Then you have to learn to act like you don’t.”

  We shuffled another few feet, waiting for our turn at the steaming vats. “I try,” I said. “But now that they hate me, it’s like they won’t ever let up.”

  “They’ll let up when you stop making it so interesting,” he said. “After I got power-dumped in middle school, they all called me Feces Foley. A name like that, you’d think it’d stick, right? And for a while it did, until I just embraced it. I even wrote it on my assignments: ‘Why Erosion Matters, by Feces Foley.’ And bang, it went away.”

  “You think I should sign my papers Joey Crotch?”

  “Why not? You gotta own it, man. You’re Joey Crotch. Joey Motherfuckin’ Crotch! And I’m Feces Foley! We’re like a kick-ass band. Joey Crotch and the Feces Foley Experience.”

  I considered this. “Huh.”

  “Yeah, huh. Look, I became invisible there, and when we moved here, I just did the same thing, easy as hell. You can do it, too. You’ve got to. That’s what it’s all about—being totally nothing until college. That’s where you start existing, not here.” He lowered his head and sniffed through the steamed glass. “Gimme a hunk of corn bread.”

  I nodded at the cook. “Me too.”

  “And what the fuck happened to your hair?” Foley asked, tucking away a strand of his own. “Someone take a lawn mower to that bitch?”

  “My dad,” I said. A glance in the mirror that morning had properly demoralized me. There were patches cut so close the scalp shone. Other areas sprouted like potted plants. There was nothing I could do but keep my head down, though even that stance posed a problem—my father had carved a bald spot right into the top of my head.

  Foley continued. “All those ass-hats are just prejudiced because you’re not from around here. This whole place is so unfucking-believably prejudiced. You’re fat, you’re gay, you’re skin’s a little darker, you got a weird name. They’ll go after anything. And it’s not just the kids, either; it’s the teachers. It’s everyone. Look, this is exactly what I’m talking about!”

  Foley pointed at a standard offering of the Bloughton High cafeteria menu, the Meat Po’boy.

  “Po’ boy is racist?” I asked.

  “Goddamn straight it’s racist,” Foley said. He lifted his head to the cook behind the counter. “One Racism Sandwich, please.”

  The woman glared but served it up. Foley smiled at her. “And a Racism Sandwich for my friend here, too.”

  My friend. I blinked and moved my feet and lifted my tray for the food and tried to keep breathing. Foley pulled out a black wallet affixed with a metal skull and crossbones, yanked out a few bills, and stuffed the change into black jeans. Black underwear showed through a few premeditated holes, while a black Judas Priest patch dominated the right buttock. Everything Foley wore was black, every day, which I now suspected aided his power of invisibility. Slightly embarrassed by my teal polo and blue jeans, I followed with just a nod to the cashier; I was still on Simmons’s free-lunch list.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “Where you going?”

  I had automatically assumed abandonment and had veered away to search for a seat. But Foley was gesturing me over. My heart thumped and my stomach roiled. I sat down and stared at food I was now totally incapable of eating. Across from me, Foley was already smacking his lips.

  “See that kid?” Foley chewed his food and jutted his chin. “Another Racism Sandwich. They used to rail on that kid and call him a homo pretty much constantly.”

  Being branded as gay was the worst thing that could happen to anyone at Bloughton High. During past lunches, I had witnessed members of Woody’s gang casually pause beside this kid and ask with fake earnestness how much he liked the taste of dick on a scale of one to ten. You heard this stuff ten times a day in any high school, so by itself it didn’t faze me. What gave me nightmares was the kid’s shell-shocked shudders.

  Foley moved on, pointing in another direction. “That tall girl there, they’ve done crazy sexual shit to her just because she’s retarded, which is hardly her fault—she’s another Racism Sandwich. And that girl over there, Steffie Vick? She’s a Racism Sandwich, too. Too fat.” Foley shrugged, gauging Steffie’s weight. “Guess she’s more like a Racism Buffet. But that doesn’t excuse what they do to her.”

  “Me,” I suggested.

  “Racism Big Mac,” Foley agreed, nodding at me earnestly. “Goddamn Racism Happy Meal.” We looked at each other for a moment and started laughing. I picked up my po’boy.

  “ ‘Why Civil Liberties Matter to Me, by Feces Foley,’ ” I said.

  “Dick,” he muttered. But he was smiling.

  We ate in silence for ten minutes, the best ten minutes since a bus hit my mother.

  “I’m glad you quit band,” he said at last, picking at his teeth with a pinkie.

  Trying to quit had felt to me like kicking nicotine must feel to smokers. It also had the same conclusion: it didn’t work. The weather had not improved since homecoming night, and by the time I had walked into Ted’s rehearsal room earlier that morning, I was cold and wet and shivering. Ted had been there, early as usual, deep in his supply closet.

  “I quit,” I had told him.

  It had been dark in there, yet light had caught his round glasses.

  “You’ve got heaps of talent,” he said.

  Of course you’d say that, I thought.

  “You’re a good performer.”

  So are you.

  “I hope your father didn’t put you up to this.”

  You wish it were that easy.

  “This saddens me, Joey.”

  You don’t know sadness, I thought, remembering what the trumpet had meant to my mother. It was a sentiment worthy of someone ancient and weary. Yet my outward reactions were those of a child: I shrugged and tried to flee.

  “Don’t take another step.”

  Ted’s voice had deepened considerably. I turned around at the entryway.

  “You don’t want to be in Ted’s Army, fine,” he said. “You might have your reasons, and I suppose it’s even possible those reasons are valid. But I’m not going to have it on my conscience that something I did drove away a player like you. So here’s what’s going to happen. You and I, we’re going to keep practicing.”

  I blinked at him.

  “Nothing to say? Well, that’s just as well. I’m prepared to say everything. You come in when you can make it. Most days I’m here from six-thirty in the a.m. until six-thirty in the p.m. You show up at either end of that spectrum and I’m all yours. We’ll practice. You and me. Just to practice. All unofficial, whenever you have the time. If there’s some peer pressure involved in your decision, forget about it—they don’t have to know. If you’re following some parental edict, Joey, listen to me. Parents don’t always know best.”

  Boris would have insisted I take the offer, but I doubted that I could any longer achieve a song other than F, F, F, F, F.

  Ted nodded. “It’s settled, then. You come by when you can. I’ll be here. And if anyone asks either of us, we just tell them the truth: Joey Crouch quit.”

  He raised an eyebrow and waited. It was beyond my powers to disassemble such an unimpeachable plan, so I just nodded. He made a shooing gesture, returned to restocking his closet, and then spoke with his back still turned.

  “What are you still doing here? Go, go, go, go, go.”

  So, yes, I had quit, though only in a manner of speaking. I hated to begin my friendship with Foley with a lie. But what other options were there?

  “Because, no offense, but band was part of your problem,” Foley continued. “Everyone goes to your stupid football games, we’re a
ll required to attend your gay pep rallies and supergay assemblies, and you’ve all got those megagay costumes and big-time-gay hats. That ain’t helpin’. You don’t seriously like that music anyway.”

  “I like jazz,” I said.

  “I suppose you also like shuffleboard and prunes.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “You don’t like jazz.”

  “I do,” I insisted.

  “You just think you do,” he said. “You don’t know any better. No offense. But no one’s shown you what real music is. I think you’re ready for something a little more aggressive. Welcome to high school, Joey Crotch.”

  I thought about some of the jazz players Boris and I had listened to who had sounded plenty aggressive to me, like Peter Brötzmann and Mats Gustafsson, but I kept my mouth shut. The Judas Priest patch on Foley’s butt was my only clue. “Like Judas Priest?”

  He shrugged. “For starters. There’s a whole underworld of bands out there that will smash your fucking face in with their fucking boots,” he said, his eyes shining. “Music that will rip out your rectum and stuff it down your throat.”

  “Great,” I said.

  He pointed a finger at me. “I’m gonna post you some tracks.”

  “We don’t have a computer.”

  “Then I’ll burn you some discs.”

  “We don’t have a player.”

  He ducked his head in exasperation. “I’ve got an old Discman. I’ll give you the damn thing. Just listen to the CDs. Keep an open mind. And prepare to kneel at the steel throne of the mighty bloodbeast.” He raised his pointer and pinkie fingers, both slick with po’boy grease, and attached the makeshift horns to his thrashing forehead, his blond locks swishing about his grimacing face. I couldn’t help laughing.

  The laughter became a choke. Someone was tapping on my shoulder. Black shirt, brown sweater, pale skin—it was Heidi Goehring. I choked some more, for a moment imagining slobbery bits of my po’boy landing upon her thick glasses. Amazingly, instead of flinching she only smiled politely and swished her strange bowl cut at a nearby table.