Flesh and Bone

by William Alton

  “There are others.”

  Mexican boys kick a soccer ball around. A woman in blue sweats practices her serve in the tennis courts, the ball smashing into the fence over and over.

  “It’s not safe,” I say.

  “What’re they going to do?” he asks. “Kick my ass.”

  “It could happen.”

  “I’ve been in fights before.”

  Zephyr carries a knife clipped to his belt. Right now it’s folded and safe, the handle black plastic, the clip shining aluminum. I imagine the blade flipping open, weaving like a snake’s fang in the air. I imagine it punching through flesh, blood rolling out over Zephyr’s hand.

  “Are you hungry?” he asks.

  “I could eat.”

  “I’ll buy lunch.”

  We walk to Scottie’s. Someone somewhere is burning something. Smoke rises and the smell of wood turning to ash carries through town. A semi-truck belches and roars on the street hauling logs from the mountains to the mill. The mill is out by the lake. Scottie’s is busy. Too many people fill the booths and tables. Zephyr gets a couple of burgers and some fries and we sit on the curb. No one seems to see us. No one cares that I want to kiss him. No one knows that I am in love.

  “God I hate small towns,” Zephyr says.

  “We could go to Portland.”

  “What’s in Portland?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “It’s somewhere to go.” “Bored here.

  Bored there,” he says. “What’s the point?”

  I stare down at my feet. I watch the cars on the street, the birds flapping through the sky.

  “Do you miss your boyfriend?” I ask.

  “We broke up.”

  “Really?”

  “Long distance relationships don’t work,” he says.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He found someone else.”

  A thrill of something rushes through my middle. I eat my burger and try not to look excited. I want to kiss him right here, right now. I can’t though. I don’t know how to do it. There are too many people around. I’m not as brave as Zephyr or anyone else. I’m a coward. I die a thousand deaths.

  “Are there clubs in Portland?” he asks.

  “I’ve been to a few.”

  “Maybe we’ll go dancing.”

  “I have to call my mom,” I say.

  “Tell her you’re staying the night with me.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’re going to have fun,” he says and grabs the back of my neck. “I’m going to teach you how to dance like a real faggot.”

  I don’t know if this is a good idea, but it’s a date of sorts, or the next best thing.

  Come Evening

  SUPPER IS POT roast and potatoes, collard greens seasoned with salt and vinegar, corn bread and molasses cooked beans. Harold finishes his cigarette, dropping ashes into his plate, on the table and floor. John John eats with a simple ferocity and his mother picks at her food, moving it around her plate, pretending no one notices she’s not eating much.

  A raw silence sits at the table with us, glassy and hard. Forks scrape the ceramic plates. People’s lungs bellow into the quiet air. No one seems to care but me. I want to go home, but I don’t know how to walk out of this.

  “You not hungry?” Harold asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Diane worked hard,” he says.

  “I know.”

  My skin feels tight and thick. I can barely move.

  “The beans are too sweet to miss,” Harold says.

  I lift my fork and poke at the food.

  “Diane does that,” he says. “Look at her. She’s just a bone.”

  The windows are fogged. The walls seem too close, too heavy. If there were somewhere for me to go, I’d leave right now, but Mom’s working and Grandma’s sick. Grandpa’s down at the Eagle’s Club drinking and playing poker. No one wants me. I’m stuck here. I’ll only be free after eating something.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?” Harold asks.

  I shake my head.

  “You don’t need a girlfriend,” he says. “You’re too young.”

  I’m shy and awkward. The collard greens are too sour and the pot roast is underdone. My belly turns.

  “You want a beer?” Harold asks.

  I’ve had beer before. The bitter taste of it might clear my head. Harold gets a beer from the kitchen and sets it on the table

  “Don’t tell no one,” he says.

  I sip it. It goes to my head. I’m weak and wobbly. My hands seem too far away. Harold lights another cigarette, chewing the smoke with his yellow teeth.

  “You done with that food?” he asks.

  “I think so.”

  “I’ll walk you home.”

  Rain makes the night cold. Wind makes it loud. Trees rattle their fingers against their trunks. Fog blinds the valley. Harold puts his hand on my neck like a leash, steering me through the night. At the edge of the yard, we stop. Lights burn in the windows. Grandpa’s hounds come sniffing at us, making sure it’s okay for us to be there.

  Harold leans in. He leans in and kisses the side of my neck. Shivers run like water along my ribs. The hairs of my arm tingle and twitch.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow?” he asks.

  “Sure.”

  “Tomorrow then.”

  He walks away. I don’t know what just happened, but something’s changed. Something’s never going to be the same again.

  Getting High at the Still

  THERE’S A CLEARING down by the creek, hemmed in with oak trees and elms, all kinds of pine and cedar, chestnuts and yew. Harold keeps his still there, a mess of copper tubes, vats and crates of Mason jars stacked amongst the trees.

  We walk through the woods, the soft ground giving under our feet. Rain and fog and smoke cloud the way. The creek laughs just over the rise. We pull up a couple of crates and build the fire. The mash boils and the whiskey dribbles. The place smells of ash.

  He loads the pipe and we smoke pot and it’s good pot. My lips are numb. My nose tingles and my eyelids get heavy, drooping down until the lashes hang over my eyes like bars.

  “You ever drink this shit?” he asks.

  “Only Everclear.”

  “Close enough.”

  “I got sick.”

  “Too much too fast,” he says. “This is sipping whiskey.”

  The leaves on the ground press into each other. Crows and jays scream at the sky.

  “I like you,” he says.

  His hands reach for my face. His hands hold my chin and my eyes close. The kiss is gentle and kind. It’s wet and warm.

  Slowly, the light spreads through me. He shows me the rain, the wind. He eats me alive and leaves me lying naked on the leaves, the sky dark and folded over me.

  All I know is that this is not real. All I know is that the tears on my cheeks burn like candle wax. In the end, I’m alone and the wind says my name.

  Drive

  RICHIE AND ED, John John and I stand in the Pit with Tammy and Mina and Bekah smoking cigarettes, passing a pint bottle of Boones around, waiting for the lunch bell to ring.

  “This shit tastes of mouthwash,” Mina says.

  “It’s only a buck fifty,” John John says. “I got four bottles.”

  We pass the bottle and the sick vibrations of a wine buzz work their way out from my belly to my hands and eyes.

  “I have class in ten minutes,” I say.

  “Let’s go to the lake,” Ed says. “I have the car.”

  We walk through the parking lot and pile in, the girls on our laps. The engine is rough and loud. We drive to the edge of town, out to Dilley and beyond. We drive into the forest and Ed punches the gas. Wind folds the smoke from our cigarettes back into our faces. Rob Halford screams on the radio.

  Over a hump in the road, over a small dirt dam, and the lake is there, green and brown, dead trees rising from the shore like the bony fingers of the earth itself. The beach is mud and stone and the wate
r ripples in the wind.

  “I’m not going in there,” Renee says.

  “Where’s the rest of the wine?” Richie asks.

  We build a fire at the edge of the grass and the rain starts to fall, cold and mean. No one wanted to be the first to turn back. No one wanted to be the first to give in.

  A cop comes and blocks us in.

  “Can you say the alphabet backwards?” he asks.

  “I couldn’t do that sober,” I said.

  “Didn’t think so.”

  We all ride back to town in cuffs. The girls are pissed. No one’s getting laid tonight. No one’s going anywhere but home.

  Picnic

  BEKAH MAKES A picnic. I build a fire. There’s chicken and wine, chips and fruit. The wood cracks and laughs in the pit. The sky is thick with clouds, but there’s no wind. We sit in the grass smoking cigarettes.

  “It’s going to rain,” she says.

  “We can go.”

  “No.”

  She has a sharp face, a chin pointed and her eyes wide and green. I touch her hand. She’s warm and soft. Veins run blue and thick through the pale, pale skin. Her teeth are crooked and small. I kiss her. She smiles.

  “Why here?” she asks.

  “Here?”

  “You have a house,” she says. “A room.”

  “Grandparents,” I say. “My mom.”

  “Pushy?”

  “Curious.”

  She opens the wine, dark and thick. We talk. We talk about Poe and Hawthorne, Ginsberg, Simic and Edson.

  The rain comes. A drop, two, then a sheet of hard pellets.

  “Next time, my room,” she says.

  “Your room?”

  “You can’t expect me to get naked out here,” she says.

  “Not at all.”

  Clubbing

  LIGHTS BURN THROUGH the darkness. Cars rumble and growl on the street. Rain, again, washes away the oil from the engines. Bats return to their roosts under the bridges and in the hollows of trees growing thick and green on the hills. Beggars and runaways ask for money on the street where the train stops to let me off.

  The Silverado is a club on Burnside. The music from the dance hall is electric and loud, carrying into the night whenever the door opens. Tonight, the line is short and I only wait thirty, maybe forty minutes before getting to the door.

  Drag queens, old men looking for young ass, underage queers dance and shout, drinking soda pop and juice, smoking dope in the corners. Everyone’s out hunting for someone to take home. Pretty boys shout their numbers at me through the smoke and the lasers lancing out from the corners. Strobes chop everyone up. Nothing seems real.

  In the bathrooms, the stalls are filled with couples and threesomes, sucking and fucking, moaning and laughing in the dim, yellow light from the exposed bulbs in the ceiling. A beautiful queen in red silk reaches around my waist and lays her hand on my dick.

  “I know what to do with this,” she says.

  We find a corner. There are too many people around, but my queen doesn’t care and who am I to argue? She goes down on me, her mouth is wet and warm and I’ve never felt this way. She works me like a top, spinning me through the room, the walls vibrating, strangers staring at me with my dick hanging out. My queen swallows me completely and when it’s over she kisses my neck.

  “You taste like toothpaste,” she says and leaves.

  Where’d she go? I don’t know her name. There are no names here. No one cares that I’d just gotten a blow job in the corner of a dance hall. No one cares that this is my first time in the scene. To them, I’m just meat. They’ll eat me alive if I’m not careful.

  I go to the parking lot and smoke a cigarette. I watch the rent boys working, the hooker girls chatting on the corner. A cop drives by, slowly, watching everything, seeing nothing. This was a bad idea. I don’t belong here. I’m a small town boy. Cities are for the courageous and outrageous. I am neither. I’m just a baby queer looking for his feet.

  Lifting the Shop

  “I’M DISAPPOINTED,” MOM says.

  I don’t know what to say.

  “How much did you steal?” she asks.

  “A case,” I say. “Maybe two.”

  “That’s twenty bucks,” she says. “You stole twenty bucks of beer?”

  “I guess so.”

  She lights a cigarette. She stands in the middle of the room and stares at me.

  “You couldn’t drink it all,” she says.

  “I have friends.”

  “Friends?”

  “People I know.”

  “The only reason you’re not in jail is I went to high school with the chief.”

  “Really?”

  “He’s buying me dinner Friday,” she says.

  “You have a date?”

  “It’s about time, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I can’t believe you stole beer,” she says.

  “I can’t believe you’re going to fuck the chief.”

  Her Night Off

  MOLD AND STEAM fill the bathroom. Cracks make the mirror wild and uncertain. Mom stands there, making up her face, lining her hair into a simple part.

  “You’re coming home tonight?” I ask.

  “I don’t know.”

  “His name’s Bobby?”

  “Bobby,” I say. “The Chief?”

  “Not the Chief.”

  She brushes her teeth and lights a cigarette.

  “Are you fucking him?” I ask.

  “Not yet,” she says.

  “But you will?”

  “Probably.”

  I think about that. I don’t like the idea of my mother getting naked with a man. It occurs to me that she has tits, that she does things I want to do. My skin crawls. My belly gets cold.

  “What’s it like?” I ask.

  “Sex?”

  “Sex.”

  “I can’t explain it.”

  “Try.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She doesn’t tell me these things. There are things in the world that mothers don’t tell their sons about. There are things in the world too big to talk about.

  Giving In

  THE BED IS huge, king sized in a queen sized room. What room there is to walk in is cluttered with clothes needing washing and empty beer cans. He lies naked next to me, his hairy legs thin and white against the dirty mattresses.

  “That hurt,” I say.

  “You okay?”

  “Give me a second.”

  Harold lights a cigarette. Smoke rises to the ceiling and rolls against the plaster. Pain roils in my gut, but there is a warm tingling too. I’ve never felt anyone inside of me before. He was slow and kind, rubbing my back, waiting for me to ease back on my own. I took all of him and he came fast so it was over, but now I’m a little ashamed. These kinds of things aren’t supposed to happen. What if someone finds out?

  I reach for a beer on the nightstand. Soon I’m going to need the bathroom, but right now I don’t want to move too much. I don’t want the feeling to fade. The pain’s mostly gone now, but the fullness, the feel of someone moving into me lingers.

  The beer is warm and bitter. It washes the taste of salt from my mouth and catches in my throat. I cough and roll onto my back. Harold rests a hand on my belly, his fingertips soft in the hair just starting to grow there.

  “Did you like it?” he asks.

  “I did.”

  “Want to do it again?”

  “I want to give it to you.”

  “To me?”

  “To you.”

  He bites his lip. His eyes narrow.

  “I don’t think so,” he says.

  “No?”

  “I don’t do that,” he says.

  “Never?”

  “Not today.”

  I close my eyes. Not everything goes your way, not even when it’s all about love.

  Smack

  I LIE ON the couch, sick, high, heavy with heroin. Ed’s on th
e floor, sprawled on the carpet, nodding. My eyes roll in my head. My tongue is thick. Something sour covers my tongue. Posters paper the walls. The room is dim, a single lamp on the nightstand.

  “Jesus,” Ed says.

  “No shit.”

  I nod and time becomes fluid, slipping through my fingers like water running over skin. Outside, somewhere, a dog barks. Ed’s mother is in the living room watching television. The noise soaks through the walls, muted and strange. I cannot move. I cannot think. Ed crawls to the radio. Music rushes out of the speakers and pounds against my skin. My bones turn to sand, shifting and grinding.

  Light glows in the window, yellow and warm. Dreams slip through me. I cannot tell what is real. Ghosts come and chatter at me. They whisper my name over and over. I close my eyes. Everything fades. Everything turns to darkness and I’m free.

  Basement

  BLACK SABBATH SCREAMS from the radio. There are no windows, only concrete walls papered with concert posters and a concrete floor padded with thick rugs. We all lie around on couches, in chairs and on the floor. Waves of color ripple through the room. Green and silver tracers twist and dance. There is a weird kind of music, noises coming from the ceiling, the walls, the floor.

  “Can you see that?” Richie asks.

  “Back home,” Mina says. “We ski to school.”

  She comes to the couch and lies on top of me. The weight of her body is comforting. I cannot fade away with her there. I cannot disappear.

  “You’re so pretty,” she says.

  Her face is swollen. Her teeth strain against her lips. Light pours from her eyes. She is divine, beautiful, solid. I kiss her throat and I feel her heart beating there.

  “Back home,” she says. “Sex is just sex.”

  I cannot think about that right now. There’s too much noise, too much light. People watch us. I cannot fuck with an audience.

  “This is not cool,” she says.

  I close my eyes and I can smell her lying on top of me. She smells of soap and a little sweat. She smells of cigarette smoke and make up. I kiss her throat again. I kiss her lips.