Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet

by Joanne Proulx

  “Whatever you say. You’re the one playing God here, Luke.”

  “Listen, Fang, you don’t have to do this, you know.”

  He howled at that. “You went and got your girlfriend, you beat me out of bed, you dragged me out here. So spare me, Luke.”

  “You’ll be fine. You go up. You go down. No sweat. We walk out of here. Everything’s different. Everything’s better.”

  “No sweat.” Fang was smirking, a sad, knowing smirk, his big pointy teeth refusing to be contained. And in the face of that smirk, in the face of those teeth, the sun felt too bright and the air too warm. The wind was gone, the birds silent, the fields frozen in time. Fang was the only thing moving.

  He took a step toward me. “What’s the matter, Luke? You scared? You scared?”

  I couldn’t answer. I was having trouble dragging oxygen into my lungs. I couldn’t understand where all the anger had gone. I tried thinking about Stan, or Faith, or my mess of a life, tried reclaiming my rage, but it didn’t work. It was Fang, fucked-up, stoner Fang in front of me. No one else. I stretched out my arm and leaned against the rock. It was cool beneath my hand, immune to the sun’s touch. Its permanence radiated through me. I couldn’t pretend it had come to us. I had brought us to it. I’d traded a rope for a rock. A huge, fucking killer of a rock.

  “You want me to die for you, Luke?” Fang’s voice roared in my ears. “Is that what you want? You want me to die for you?” I shook my head. The ground ran in front of me, thinned beneath me, became a spiderweb of truth and lies. Fang’s hands were on my shoulders, shaking me gently. “Because I’m going to die anyway, right? You said so, right? So let’s go. I’ll do it for you, man.”

  Only my hand against the rock and Fang’s hands on my shoulders kept me from falling.

  Fang was shaking me harder now, and his fingers were biting into me, bruising me, and when I dared to lift my head to meet his eye, God, there it was, everything, everything I’d ever known of him was right there, just waiting for me. I knew what was happening. It had happened to me before, with Stan and Mr. Bernoffski, with Howie Holman, with the nameless people stuffed in the drawer of my bedside table. The difference was, Fang wasn’t dead. He was standing right in front of me, doing this to me, making me feel everything he did, singing me his brutal, wanting song.

  And right then it hit me. I suddenly understood I was doing it to him, too. I’d always played so close and so small, I thought I was hiding from everyone, all the time. But in that tangled-up moment I could feel my friend looking into me, listening to my tortured tune, knowing my thoughts, knowing me.

  I was the one who pulled away first. I stepped back, out of Fang’s reach, air rushed into my lungs, pushing him out, he was back outside, just a desperate boy, no, two desperate boys, standing at the bottom of a towering rock.

  “You know what I want, Fang?” I cut every word cleanly from my throat. “I want you to go up. I want you to come down. I want us to walk away. To get in the car. To drive home. Okay, Fang? I want things to be better. Things can be better than this. You understand that, Fang? You understand?”

  He nodded. His face was white, set, hard as stone. He turned and reached for the rock.

  FANG WAS HALFWAY UP when I heard the slam of a car door. Faith’s long skirt ballooned around her as she sank into the grass beside me. She pulled the white cotton in tight, pulled her legs to her chest, made herself as tiny as possible. She alternated between burying her face in her hands and staring at the body on the wall in front of us.

  Fang was small on that broad face of rock. But he moved with ease. He looked brave and strong. His path was straight. His movements sure. He climbed farther and farther from the ground, farther and farther from us.

  “Oh God, Luke.” Faith’s eyes sparked green terror. “He’s going to fall.”

  All my No, no, he’s not s didn’t calm her. I had to shuffle over and pull her against me. She pushed me away, once, twice, but the third time she didn’t resist. With a resigned shudder she let me put my arm around her, press her head to my shoulder, lay my fingers across her lips to stop her deadly chant. She let me hold her like that, and we huddled together in the silent grass and the shadow of birdsong and we watched Fang climb.

  In the months since Stan died, I thought I’d known fear. But sitting there with Faith leaning against me, and Fang far above me, I realized I had not. The fear I’d tried to drug, ignore, embrace, was an adrenaline-charged, high-speed fear that shook me awake at night and kept me running during the day. Real fear, honest fear, was chill and motionless. And in that field it hollowed me out, turned the girl beside me to glass, nailed Fang to a black tower of rock. Then it carved my thoughts into crystal wedges that would not be ignored.

  I knew whatever reasons I’d had for dragging Fang out there no longer applied. I knew any plan, any power, I’d believed I had, had been given over to God, gravity and the boy on the wall. I knew that he could fall. And if he fell, I would fall with him.

  I buried myself in Faith’s sweet, rosemary scent and held on tight.

  “HE MADE IT.” The relief in her voice broke all over me. She threw my arm from her shoulders, knocked my face from her hair and scrambled to her feet. “He made it.”

  She pointed up at the dirty feet dangling over the lip of the rock. The rest of Fang was missing, tipped back, lying flat on top of the safe, dark shelf. I pushed myself from the ground before he could even think about standing up, spreading his arms, screaming desperate, crazy screams, stepping into nothing, killing us both. I flew to the bottom of the rock and stood a hundred feet below my friend.

  “Fang?” I hollered. “Fang, can you hear me?”

  High above, his legs bounced.

  “You’re awesome, Fang. You’re fucking awesome.”

  His legs stayed put, hanging limp, refusing to respond. I pressed my cheek to the cold rock. The soles of Fang’s feet, grayed by powdery stone, were all I could see of him. Then they disappeared. I stepped back from the wall and watched my friend get up. He didn’t scream. He didn’t say anything at all. He was as silent as me. I watched him step to the edge of the cliff. I watched him lift his head and arch his back and stretch his arms so wide it seemed he was hanging on nothing but blue sky.

  Only then, when I’d taken him a millisecond from death, did I open my mouth.

  “I love you, Fang.” I yelled it as loud as I could.

  And then, again, that one good, true thing. “I love you.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I cleaned up the Sunbird a bit before we all got in, plucking pictures from the seat and the floor and the back window, dropping them into the battered shoe box. Fang must have trampled the box on the way up, because when I put it on the seat beside him, its dented lid was the only thing holding the whole cardboard mess together.

  The car radio was on low, and a staticky version of “Seven Nation Army” accompanied us down the I-75. All the highs and lows of the song were lost, hammered flat by the Sunbird’s shitty speakers. Not that I really cared about the quality of the music at that moment, but still, it was what I noticed.

  I let my head drop onto the headrest and kind of melted into the seat. The sun-baked car didn’t have air conditioning and the back of my shirt turned into wet adhesive, binding clammy skin to black leatherette. I didn’t bother trying to adjust the air vents or play with the fan or anything that might have provided a bit of relief. I used all my energy to stare blankly out the window. I wasn’t sure, but I think Faith was sort of suffering from the same limp-rag syndrome I was, too wrung out to even give the gas pedal a bit of shit. We cruised along in the right lane at a steady fortyfive miles per.

  Only Fang seemed to be charged up by the climb. He had a lot of enthusiasm for big windy sighs and jittering around on the rear seat. And I couldn’t believe it was even him when he poked his head between the bucket seats and in a real authoritative tone told Faith to “turn off the radio.” He pulled all his anxious energy up front with him, and when he disap
peared into the back he left it hanging there, thick and heavy in the now-silent front seat. The Sunbird seemed to pick up speed, draw closer to the car ahead. I sat up a little straighter, waiting for whatever fucking thing was coming next.

  It didn’t take long.

  “They’re going to publish the list of names in the paper. Tomorrow.”

  My mind leapt to my bedside table drawer. Fang couldn’t, couldn’t, be talking about that list. Only my dad and I knew what was hiding in my drawer. Still, I was squirming. I glanced at Faith, who was looking very tight, very tense behind the wheel. Her eyes, cautious and guarded, bounced off mine before locking onto the strip of highway.

  When I turned around, my shirt pulled off the seat with a sucking smack.

  Fang was white again, pure white, wringing his hands between his bouncing knees.

  “What are you talking about?” My question was edged with accusation.

  “You know. The men in the park. The ones who got arrested. In the bandstand. In McCreary Park.”

  “Oh.” My panic eased, shifted. My mind jumped again, but it jumped to nowhere. “So—so what?”

  Fang closed his eyes. He swiped at a ribbon of sweat on his upper lip. “Jack called me last night after One Drum. He told me the names would be in the paper tomorrow.”

  “Jack? Who the fuck is Jack?”

  “Jack Kite. Mr. Kite. Your dad’s boss.”

  “My dad’s boss? Why would my dad’s boss call you?”

  Fang gave me a pleading look.

  “Why would he call you, Fang?” I was like a knife now, rigid and straight, stabbed into the passenger seat.

  “Because we know each other, okay? Because my name is on that list, Luke. My name is on the fucking list.”

  “Your name is on the list?” I heard myself sounding like a retarded parrot, but what he was saying just wouldn’t sink in.

  “My name is on the list.”

  I turned around and stared through the windshield. Stunned. Fang’s name was on a list. But a different list. A different fucking list. Fang. My friend. My friend. Always wanting it to be just me and him. His sulky dislike of Stan. His weird, trembling moment in the motel bathroom. His crispy new Hilfiger shirt. Jesus Christ. Fang curled in a ball, bawling after stepping off the Jefferson roof. Fang down on all fours at the Palace, gasping for air, not because he was having a bad trip, not because his mother was a fucking alcoholic, oh no, because he’d been busted in the bandstand before the concert. Jesus Christ. The desperation I’d seen at the bottom of the rock, so real and so deep and so big. The truth behind it all.

  Fang was right about one thing: I hadn’t known, had refused to know, didn’t want to know now.

  We exited the freeway, were heading along Highway 6, cutting through the wetlands park, when Faith reached up to adjust the rearview and looked into the back.

  “Fang?” Her voice, her eyes in the mirror, were ultra-careful. “They don’t print minors’ names.”

  He pursed his lips and shook his head at her. “Birthday’s in February. Just turned eighteen.”

  I’d missed the big coming-of-age party, but still, it didn’t seem like a good time to offer up any belated congrats. I was trying to think what to say when something crunched under the Sunbird’s wheels. It was a soft, wet, sickening crunch, and it got everyone’s attention.

  “What was that?” I spun around and stared out the rear window. There was nothing on the road, nothing but long grass either side. But when I turned back around, the pavement was alive, blanketed green by bouncing frogs.

  Faith hit the brakes. I hit the dashboard. Another couple dozen frogs, paid for by me and Stan, exploded under us before we skidded to a slippery stop.

  “What the …” Faith’s question trailed into nothing.

  I pushed myself back into the passenger seat. We all stared at the frogs, the hundreds of frogs climbing out of the pond on our left, fighting their way up the bank, leaping for the hot pavement. It took about ten or fifteen real, decent jumps for one to make it to the other shoulder, where they disappeared into the thicket of tall grass edging the road.

  “Did you ever see that movie?” Faith’s voice was shaky. “Where the frogs fall from the sky.”

  “Magnolia. Aimee Mann soundtrack. God’s wrath raining down upon us.” For some reason, I laughed.

  Then a car jerked to a stop behind us. The driver beeped impatiently before swinging into the oncoming lane, giving us an annoyed flap of his hand as he came alongside the Sunbird. We heard the snap of fragile bones, the pop of bursting skin as the car rolled by, leaving a trail of collapsed green sacs in its wake.

  I stopped laughing. There was nothing coming from the back seat, either. I looked over at Faith. Her face had completely crumpled. She swung her head toward me. “Does God hate us, or what?”

  “No, Faith. God doesn’t hate us.” But I wasn’t so sure.

  A Jeep came barreling toward us, heading out of Stokum. It never even slowed down. Some of the frogs sat stunned and motionless as the 4x4 flashed over them, hot and fast. Others kept jumping, smashing mid-leap into its charging bumper or disappearing under the tires skinned green, spotted red.

  Another fifteen or twenty cars almost rear-ended us, sitting motionless in the middle of Highway 6, before Faith started edging the Sunbird forward. She did her best, she drove slowly, trying to avoid as many frogs as she could. But they kept moving, jumping, they were everywhere, and our slow-motion journey through the bouncing wetlands only seemed to prolong the slaughter and make the crunch of bodies seem sharper and more deliberate.

  By the time we made it through the park, I wasn’t sure Faith could even see past the tears streaming down her cheeks and falling like fat drops of rain onto her long white skirt.

  FROM THE COMFORT of the passenger seat, I watched Fang slouch up his front walk, the battered Converse box pinched under his arm. The shoes he’d never bothered to put back on dangled from the fingertips of his other hand. Faith, still disintegrating behind the wheel of the Sunbird parked alongside the curb, managed to give me a wet, worried look that pushed me out of the car.

  Fang was already heading around the side of the house when the slam of my door stopped him. He stood motionless, staring down at the path of dirt we’d worn into the grass between his place and the neighbor’s. I leaned up against the car. The warmth of the metal seeped through the ass of my jeans.

  “Fang?” In the crook of his arm, the shoe box buckled. “Are you okay?” I asked, sounding all hesitant, like I didn’t really want an answer.

  “Fucking-A, Luke.” He turned around and gave me a heartless smile. “Fucking-A.”

  “Listen …” I tried to come up with something, but ran out of gas after one word. My arms suddenly felt apishly long, knuckles threatening to scrape the pavement. I shoved my hands into my pockets, balled them into fists.

  Fang kicked at the ground a bit. His dangling shoes brushed against his leg. I was pretty sure he didn’t want to step back into the craziness any more than I did. He looked up, his head tipped to one side, watching me out the corner of his eye.

  “You know what I can’t believe?” he said.

  “What?”

  “Those frogs. What the fuck was with that?”

  “No clue. No fucking clue.”

  Fang gave a bit of a snort, then shifted the shoe box to his other arm. Other than that, he didn’t make a move. He just kept watching me, glued to the side of the car.

  “So, you want to hang out or anything?” My offer was lame and late in coming, and Fang knew it was insincere as shit.

  “Naw, it’s okay,” he said. “I guess I’ll see you at school … tomorrow.” He kind of choked up the last word, seeing how it was tomorrow that he was going to be shoved out of his closet. But I didn’t want to think about that, and I sure didn’t want to follow him inside, and, like the coward I was, I jumped at the out he’d given me.

  “For sure. Tomorrow. At school. And hey, give me a call if you want me to co
me over later or anything like that. I’m serious, okay?” The false enthusiasm in my voice kind of sickened me, as did my hand fingering the door handle behind my back. I dropped my eyes. The Sunbird’s mud flap, flecked bloody green by the wetlands massacre, was impossible to miss. I concentrated on the curb instead, the straight, narrow sidewalk. When I finally looked up again, Fang was gone.

  AT MY PLACE, I convinced Faith to wait while I got a brush and a bucket and scrubbed the car. I cleaned the tires, polished up the front bumper, practically licked the mud flaps clean. Then I dragged the hose out and washed the roof, the trunk, the hood. Faith sat in the car the entire time, staring straight ahead at the water streaming down the windshield.

  When I was done, I stood behind the dripping Sunbird. I don’t know what I was thinking, really, what I was expecting. All I knew was, I didn’t want her to leave. That I’d given her no reason to stay. I stood there clinging to my bucket of dirty water until she finally turned around and looked at me.

  I held her eye as I set the bucket down in the middle of the driveway. Then I went and opened her door. It was hot inside, steamy almost. I squatted down and, to steady myself, pressed one hand against the door frame. The other one crept for her ankle. I rested my forehead lightly on her thigh.

  “Luke, don’t.” She pushed at my shoulder.

  “Faith, please …”

  “I have to go. Let me go.”

  But I couldn’t. I kept my head on her leg and my fingers wrapped around her ankle. She started crying, man was she crying, and I could tell it wasn’t just about the frogs. And instead of feeling sorry, I felt a flicker of amazement that someone like me had been able to touch a girl like her. To hurt her. To make her weep. I wondered what else I could make her feel.

  Her leg jumped beneath my forehead, she squirmed in her seat, but I just tightened my grip on her ankle and searched for some way to keep her in my driveway a bit longer. I finally thought of one small thing, and I begged her to come into the house with me, said it would only take a second, that it was important and that after, she could go, if she wanted. I was tugging at her arm while I talked and I kind of pulled her out of the car and clamped her hand in mine and dragged her up the stairs and onto the porch and into my house. I took her by the shoulders and pushed her against the wall inside the front door and told her to “Wait, just wait” while I ran to the kitchen.