by Chris Rush
“Are you okay?” Donna asked.
When we went back to the blanket, Valentine put his hand on my shoulder. He understood everything. “Love is making him cry.”
I looked up into his impossibly beautiful face.
“You’re one of us now,” he said—and then, “You’re one of mine.”
I closed my eyes and saw stars, paisley, jellyfish.
* * *
BEFORE GOING HOME, Valentine slips me a folded piece of paper, another tiny pill. The next night I can’t sleep, thinking about it. At midnight, I take a chip. When I wander upstairs at four, I’m peaking. In the kitchen my father is making his eggs. I watch him from the doorway. Like an X-ray, I can see inside him. Can see his heart, like an octopus.
Ten minutes later—an hour?—I see him out the window, walking around the yard. As the light grows, I see he has a gun in his hand—a spray nozzle attached to a bottle of pesticide. He’s at war with the dandelions. In his other hand, there’s a glass of scotch. As he sprays each flower, he’s saying: Die, die.
The sun is rising, yellow on his yellow hair.
I need to tell him that everything is okay.
But he disappears behind a curtain of sunlight sweeping the world.
* * *
A FEW WEEKS LATER, Donna drove me out to Valentine’s stash house in the Pine Barrens. Up a long dirt drive sat a shack on the edge of a mossy spring. Inside, our leader was sleeping on a bare mattress, blond head on a paisley pillow. We stood there for a moment, watching him breathe.
The house was dark and sweet, like cinnamon.
Valentine opened his eyes and said: Peace.
Jo came from the kitchen and kissed us hello. She and Donna went off to chat, leaving me alone with Valentine. I sat on the floor next to the bed as he rolled a joint. He lit it and only after five or six hits did he pass it to me. It was wickedly strong. I handed it back, coughing, already far too stoned.
It took all my nerve to say, “Valentine?”
“Yes?”
“I’d like to take some acid back to school.”
“You want to buy some?”
I swallowed, said, “Yes.”
Valentine did not take his eyes off me. “Have you been saying your prayers?”
I bowed my head, embarrassed by the question, wondering if he was making fun of me.
“How much?” he asked.
“Like five.”
He opened a suitcase, pulled out a dusty plastic bag, then poured a mound of pink pills onto a silver tray. He thought I meant five hundred. I didn’t know what to do.
“I just want to share some with a friend. We’re in the choir,” I added stupidly.
“Sacrament belongs in a church. Take a thousand.”
“I really just want five.” I could hear my voice going up. “And I don’t have that much money.”
“You will. Go ahead, count ’em out. I’ll get a baggie from the kitchen.” When he left the room, I felt dizzy. I wanted Donna’s advice but she was busy with Jo.
Fingers coated with pink dust, I counted out a thousand hits.
Valentine, walking back in with a jar of baby food, licked goo from a tiny spoon. “I love this stuff. Especially the vanilla.” He poured the pills into a baggie. I didn’t want to disappoint him. I asked what I should charge.
“You get them for a buck a tab. Sell them for three.” He smiled. “When you have the cash, have your sister call me. It’s all for the Glory of God.”
* * *
I SAW EVERYTHING but understood nothing.
At home, something was going very wrong. Dad was drinking too much. And Mom was spinning like a top. I asked myself: Have they always been this strange?
The anchor of my childhood, the thing that kept our house from drifting out to sea, was the love between my parents. Being ignored was not so terrible, because Mom and Dad had put on such a great show for everyone to see.
I loved my parents because of how much they loved each other. They were showing us what was possible if we were good and patient. I also understood that love made people selfish. But now they seemed selfish not only toward their kids but toward each other.
I spent little time with either of them that summer. Mom was a blur, coming and going, shopping like crazy. She came home with a car full of bags and boxes, although every closet was stuffed with clothes she’d already forgotten. Plus, her turtle collection was growing. It was an infestation. She’d bought hundreds more.
My father said less than ever, but every night at dinner, he said, “Chris will say Grace. He’s almost a priest.” I could never tell if he was mocking me or honoring me. But it always made my brothers laugh.
Mom, too, was strange when she spoke to me, almost petulant, as if I’d abandoned her by going away to school. I followed her around the house trying to tell her how glad I was to be home, but we had no adventures that summer. No trips to the stores or the cemetery.
She seemed to be looking over some cliff, her eyes far-off. But the night before I went back, she made the simple effort of doing my laundry while I watched her in silence. I remember her dark hair, stiff with hair spray—her apron, white with green piping. In the kitchen, she ironed my clothes and folded them, a perfect pyramid, crowned with a pair of socks.
5.
Virgin in Ruins
AFTER A RAINY SUMMER, Low House was dank and moldy. It smelled like a stable; even with the windows open, there was no getting rid of the scent of thirty boys stacked to the ceiling on spermy mattresses.
When I first saw Pauly, I was worried; neither of us said a word.
He looked older, a vampire in cashmere, greasy black hair across his eyes. He seemed tired, a little sad. I reached for his hand, and soon we fell back into our old rhythms. The murdered rat was never mentioned.
It was comforting, hearing Pauly ramble on, telling me about his summer. Apparently, he never left the house. “I was held hostage! My mother never stopped feeding me!” He opened his coat to show me how fat he’d gotten. “Feel it.”
“Pauly, can we go to the orchard?” Halfway there, I squealed. “I smoked pot with my sister!”
“That’s expected. You’re an artist.”
“And I took acid!”
“Really? I assume you’re speaking of lysergic acid diethylamide and not hydrochloric, which would mean you tried to commit suicide.”
“Pauly, stop—look.” I knelt down and opened my pack and pulled out the plastic bag.
“What the hell is that? You’re shaking like a leaf!”
“It’s called the Pink. It’s LSD.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind? Put that away!”
I went to stuff it back in my pocket, but Pauly said, “No. You can’t take that to your room!” He searched and found a tree with a hobbit-hole. “Put it in there.”
“What if someone steals it?”
“No one comes out here but us, dickweed. Give it to me.”
As he lodged the baggie in the hole, I asked, “Shouldn’t we take a couple out for later?”
“What, you’re a drug addict now?”
I was too embarrassed to say it wasn’t a drug, it was a sacrament. Besides, that wouldn’t have been a selling point for a Luciferian.
* * *
NO LONGER A FIRST-YEAR, I’d graduated to a room on the second floor of Low House. I had a view of smoky hills and wizened trees that pelted my window with nuts. Father Jerry did not stop by the first night—nor the next. I recall the combination of relief and disappointment in my gut.
But I didn’t think about him for long. I had other things to worry about. Bringing a thousand hits of acid to St. John’s was preposterous—enough LSD for every person on campus and their families.
As if to make up for my mad crime, I threw myself into my schoolwork. I wrote essays on Mary Shelley and mortal sin, on Conrad and the war in Vietnam. My sister’s boyfriend was on his way there.
I got As on everything.
In art class, I boldly used t
he largest sheets of paper to draw fantastic landscapes, with elves hiding behind the foliage. I drew the creatures’ faces and bodies to blend in with the branches and the rocks. Of course, I believed firmly in both elves and the Lord Our God.
I desperately wanted to share the Pink with Pauly—I thought it might be good for him. Angel food, I thought. Finally, a few weeks before Christmas, I took a pill from my blazer pocket and pushed it into Pauly’s hand. I smiled.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
* * *
IN THE CHURCH, feeling very high, we listen to one of the monks on the pipe organ, the music a vine growing inside us—beautiful, complicated knots, like ancient code unraveling. Then we are two boys running in the woods, the forest a fantastic blur of color, glitter, and fire. We climb a tree in a windstorm and sway, as if held in the arms of a giant.
I’m a giant, too. Looking down at myself, I notice how small my clothes are, how tight. I’ve grown six inches in the past year—and no shopping trips with Mom.
“I’m huge,” I tell Pauly.
But he can’t stop staring at the sky.
Maybe he can see God. I stop talking, leave him to his own trip.
* * *
“SUBLIME,” PAULY SAYS the next day, and, being Pauly, he can’t help blabbing about it. And not just to me. He’s bragging to all the other boys.
“Shut up,” I whisper.
He takes me aside. “Isn’t that why you brought it? You’re supposed to sell this stuff, right?”
“Yes,” I say back. “But only to people who are ready for it.”
“Everybody’s ready—believe me.”
And they were. Word spread quickly.
Pauly walked around campus in his long black coat and pinky ring, like some kind of Gothic door-to-door salesman. He told the older kids where to find me—and in the afternoons I’d go to the quarry past the pond and wait. That was my office. I kept the pills stashed under a rock—the cash, too. We used film containers scrounged from Camera Club to distribute the product.
In their St. John’s blazers, our customers were excited, their hands trembling as they gave me their money. My hands shook, as well. I tried to remember what Valentine had said: You’re helping people evolve.
There was a strange elation, giving out LSD to upperclassmen who’d once bullied me. Even a couple of jocks got in line. As thrilled as I was, part of me was terrified. I warned everyone to be careful. “These pills are really strong.”
It took only two weeks to sell everything. Suddenly I had thousands of dollars. Part of it would have to go to Valentine, but the rest was mine.
* * *
IN ART CLASS, while working on some elfish fantasy, I was told that Father Boniface wanted to see me. Father Bonny had punished me harshly for my girly haircut. The punishment for selling acid would probably be death.
Bonny’s office, full of art books and paintings, always had a box of tissues on the teak desktop, ready for boy tears. I took my seat.
Leaning back in his leatherette, Bonny lit a cigarette, his lighter boldly monogrammed with a gothic B. He blew smoke in my face. “So I’m told you’re quite the little artist.”
“Yes.” I swallowed. “I like to draw.”
“Yet you spend all your time in the woods with the older boys.” A puff, a pause. “I wonder if you could tell me what that’s all about?”
“I don’t know. They like me, I guess.”
“Evidently, Mr. Rush.” He took another puff and then leaned forward. “Christopher, I’m speaking to you as a friend. These boys are toying with you. From this moment on, you are forbidden to talk to any boy older than yourself, under any circumstances. I need to end this nonsense, before the stain is too great.”
I was confused. Was this about the acid?
“I don’t understand, Father.”
“Just do what I say. I’m watching you.”
* * *
PAULY SAID, “We just have to be more careful…”
I saw him speaking but had no idea what he was saying, because I was watching flowers grow out of his head. We were tripping—again.
At thirteen, I took LSD as often as possible. Taking acid was like entering a painting or a storybook—a glowing dream world, lush and lovely. I felt no conflict between the real and the unreal. It was so easy to slip in between.
And why not? Acid always told me: Everything will be okay.
Plus, the way Valentine explained it, LSD was a kind of brain vitamin.
In the winter orchard, Pauly and I lay on wet leaves in our good coats.
After a while, he turned to me. “Who are you?”
“What?” I said. “I’m Chris!”
Am I Chris? The question confused me. Nameless amoebas floated in my brain—galaxies multiplying in all directions.
Pauly was hovering above me now, staring at my galaxies, breathing hard. I asked him if he was all right.
He said, “You look like a girl.”
“Why are you saying that?”
“Because I love you.”
“Shut up.” I pointed at the trees rustling in the wind.
“I love trees,” whispered Pauly.
When I glanced at my friend, I could see his bulging hard-on.
I had one, too. I sighed. “Yes, trees are very sexy.”
We kissed.
* * *
I CALLED DONNA. She was in college now. We talked nonsense; we talked about Mom and Dad. I changed the subject, telling her how I’d been selling Valentine’s stuff.
“Me, too,” she said. “Glory to God.” I repeated the words back to her. It sounded silly. We were quiet for a bit, and then she told me that Derrick, her boyfriend who’d been drafted, was now missing.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. My mind was racing, thinking about the war, the weirdness of life. I got out of bed and walked around Low House in the dark, trying not to make a sound. I crept by Father Jerry’s room. His light was on, his door ajar. He was sitting in his rocking chair, reading with half-frame glasses. His room, tiny as a closet, contained little—a bookshelf, a bed, a small desk.
A vow of poverty.
He owned even less than I did.
* * *
AS FOR ME, I had a pile of money. All the acid was gone.
But across the campus, the Pink was still very much in use. Every day, I saw boys goofing about—their pupils like big black dots. I knew I was doomed. Then, in March, two seniors were busted. Both were football stars, with prestigious college scholarships. It was a school scandal.
Ten weeks before graduation, Bonny had them both vigorously expelled. To my amazement, neither boy revealed who’d given him the acid.
* * *
NOT LONG AFTER THAT, on a foggy night, I snuck off to the woods with Pauly to get stoned. Sounds were amplified, perhaps by the watery mist in the air. I thought I could hear people talking miles away. Then something moved in a nearby bush.
Quietly, Pauly said, “Who’s there?”
A black figure flickered in the mist. It did not seem real. I said, “Dracula?” and started to laugh—but then the dark form moved closer.
Pauly said, “Run!” As I ran, I heard the words Mr. Rush! Come back here immediately!
Fuck—it was Bonny. And though I escaped into the thicket, there was no hope. He’d seen me with Pauly, a forbidden older boy.
After lights-out, Father Jerry came to my bunk. It was the first time he’d been in my room that year. He did not touch me—only told me to get out of bed, after which I followed him to a room in the basement. Bonny was there, waiting. He locked the door and told me to sit down.
The room was freezing. All I had on was my underwear.
Bonny sat opposite me, watching me shiver. After a long time, he said, “Mr. Rush, you know why you’re here. Tell me what you were doing out there in the dark with Mr. Pinucci.”
“Nothing, Father. Pauly and I were just having a conversation.”
“Oh, a conversation? About what,
I wonder.”
“Music,” I blurted.
Father Bonny shook his head. “So why were you hiding in the dark then?”
“We weren’t hiding.”
A sudden shout: “I saw you kiss him!”
“No, Father!”
Bonny’s face went red with fury. “You are a liar. What else do you do with him?”
“Nothing!”
After ten minutes of interrogation, I fell apart. I began sobbing, shaking. Bonny, in black cassock, watched me blubber. He lit a cigarette, snapped his lighter shut. “Your crying disgusts me. Go to bed.”
* * *
A FEW DAYS LATER, I was taken from class and sent into one of the elegant lounges in the castle, off-limits to students. I was shocked to discover Bonny and my father, whispering together on a couch. Their meeting had obviously begun well before my arrival. I said nothing. Dad, in a silvery suit, refused to look in my direction. I sat down, frightened.
Father Bonny was speaking, but it took me a moment to understand what was going on.
“… in spite of his behavior, we’ve already determined that a number of military academies, such as Valley Forge, would be willing to accept your son on such short notice.”
My dad paused, took his time, inhaled on his cigarette.
“Father, are any of the institutions you’ve contacted Catholic schools?”
Bonny shook his head. “No, sir.”
“Well, I’ve always thought a Catholic education is essential, certainly for my children.” My father gestured toward me, still no eye contact. “If I recall correctly, I’ve paid for Christopher to attend St. John’s through the end of May. Perhaps the simplest solution to the situation you’ve described would be patience. I’m sure that you can handle a thirteen-year-old for a few more months. It would make my life much simpler if the boy stayed put, for now.”