Fighting in the Shade

by Sterling Watson

  “Repeat after me,” Sim Sizemore said. He had a fine, strong, masculine voice, Billy thought. The voice of an actor or a preacher. His handsome face was elevated, and the fire threw shadows into his nostrils and eye sockets. A skull, Billy thought. Death. Sim Sizemore continued, louder, “A city of fire stands behind us. We are fire and we are ice.”

  The naked boys repeated it, raggedly, murmuring, their eyes averted to the dark sky or the roiled sand, their hands creeping to cover themselves.

  Charlie Rentz stepped forward. “Louder! Again!” And there it was, that thing in his eyes. A strange, flaming avidity. A killer’s look. The boys all met those eyes and obeyed. Rentz repeated the incantation, and the boys did too, so loudly that seconds later their voices wailed back at them from the far shore of the lake, thin and ghostly on the dark water.

  Tommy Bierstadt stepped forward. His jersey was number 22. He was a tough, stocky kid, a shifty runner just as likely to fake a tackler out of his jockstrap as to go right up the middle of his face. He had wiry, close-cropped black hair, a square face, and cleft chin. He watched the assembled boys with solemn eyes, then let his face soften and grin. “All right, you guys, what you just heard, what you just said, isn’t some shit from an English class. It ain’t poetry. It’s words that have been said here as long as there’s been football in Oleander.” He looked back at the veteran players behind him. Solemnly, they nodded. “You guys don’t have to remember what we just said. None of it except the last part, about the city and not telling. What we do here tonight is secret. You don’t tell about it. A city stands behind us. Nobody back home knows about this, but they know. You have to understand that. They don’t know, and we don’t tell, but they know. They see us play, they see us burn, and they know. You guys get what I’m saying?”

  There were a few “Yeahs!” some clapping, some hoots, and some blank faces, some of them scared.

  Tommy Bierstadt’s voice went low and menacing. “You assholes better get it.” He cupped an ear with his hand. “Let me hear it!”

  The naked boys shouted as loudly as they could. Billy shouted with them and a ghostly reply came back from the dark water behind him. In a way he had enjoyed the throwing of the torches and the weird, churchy words. Or were they witchy words? When the torches were thrown and the words about fire and ice were spoken, he had felt his mind turn off and his feelings open. He had seen the same understanding in the eyes of other boys. Seen them relax, stop covering themselves, seen them try to find their way into the meaning of this night.

  Sim Sizemore stepped forward and led them in the school fight song. It was a stupid song, Billy thought, copied from some college with words changed for Carr High. Only geeks and girls knew the words. The naked boys expelled more noise than language as they sang it, ending in an uproar of laughter. There was a pause of shuffling feet, and then Gary Bland reached into the gym bag at his feet and pulled out seven pint bottles of bourbon whiskey. He uncapped each bottle, passed it to the torchbearer next to him who sipped from it, then passed it to the next boy in a red jersey. When the first bottle came to the end of the line of torchbearers, it was handed to the crowd and received with a cheer.

  And so it was with all of the bottles. Around the horseshoe they went. Billy watched some boys nip, some drink and swallow, wincing and water-eyed, and some throw their heads back and send bubbles up the brown necks of the bottles. He was glad he stood on the far side of the horseshoe. The first bottle came to him empty, and he tossed it into the woods. The next one had a trace of whiskey in it. The boy beside him, who had almost drained it, gave him a challenging look, so he drank, gagging at the burn. The next bottle was half full, and Billy took a frank drink, promising himself it would be his last.

  The boys knew the whiskey was a preparation. Some wobbled on their feet, dull eyes half shut with fatigue. Some leaned on others, wide eyes loopy, mouths gaping. A few, like Billy, had their wits about them. Or enough wit to worry. When Gary Bland pulled a package of hot dogs from the gym bag, this anticlimax urged scoffing laughter from the more sober boys. Bland handed the package to Sim Sizemore with a comic flourish. It steamed into the smoky air in front of the fire.

  “All right, you guys,” Sim Sizemore said, “now comes the fun part.” He tore open the package of wieners and selected one, turning it this way and that. He leered and put the wiener into his mouth, tried to bite through it, couldn’t. “Frozen, gentlemen. For a reason. For a reason you are soon to know.” He turned to Gary Bland. “Mr. Bland, the information, please.”

  Bland reached into the gym bag again and pulled out a piece of paper. Sizemore took it from him with the insinuating flourish of a carnival barker, cleared his throat, and read from it: “Mr. Trimble, step forward.”

  A tall, dark-haired boy presented himself to the torchbearers.

  “In front of me,” Sim Sizemore ordered, pointing at the sand. “On your hands and knees.” The boy looked back at the naked group, shrugged, admitted a thin smile to his face, and did as he was told.

  And so it went. Names were read, boys stepped forward, or were thrust forward by comrades amidst grunts and laughter, until a line was arranged, faces to asses, hands and knees in the sand.

  Sim Sizemore looked out at the naked, wide-eyed crowd, grinned broadly, and said, “Look at them, gentlemen. We call this the elephant line. It’s a thing you see in the circus. Don’t they remind you of elephants?” He stepped over and lifted the toe of his shoe between a boy’s legs. “Elephants have tails, gentlemen.”

  Some of the boys laughed. Billy was, above all else, glad that his name had not been called. But he knew a growing dread. This had been a day of surprises.

  Sim Sizemore ordered the boys to press their faces into the asses of those in front of them and to walk, like circus elephants, around the fire. They did it. A few protested, one or two stood up, faces resolute, slapping the sand from their knees. But something, the stern gazes of the boys in red jerseys, shouts of “No!” and “Pussy!” from the crowd, made them drop back down. Billy was not sure why they did it. Was it that others obeyed? That your face in the ass of another boy was, compared to some other fate as yet unrevealed, not so bad? That it would be over soon? That no one but these boys, who would face fire together in the coming season, would ever know? Billy wasn’t sure. He tried to imagine himself in the elephant line. What it would look, smell, feel like. His imagination failed him. As the last of the protesting boys gave in, faces flaming with humiliation, as the line began to move, slowly, awkwardly turning around the fire, Billy tried not to watch. But he did. Could not help it.

  Some did exactly as told and others faked it. The fakers only held their faces close. They seemed to be getting away with it. Good for you, Billy thought. You saved something. He didn’t know what.

  As the elephant line went around, boys laughed, or watched in awed silence, or looked away. Some had questions in their eyes. What next? Billy watched the boys in red jerseys. Had they done this as young players? It stood to reason that they had. Now they were the impresarios of the elephant walk. Living proof that it was not so bad. They were the promise that someday other boys, boys on their hands and knees now, would carry torches.

  When the walk was over, the elephants rose, spitting and wiping their faces. One or two asked loudly for whiskey, gargling, spitting into their hands and scrubbing their faces with the stinging liquor. One or two drifted away, later to be heard splashing in the lake. A boy walked into the trees and retched.

  Sim Sizemore stepped in front of the group again. He smiled sagely. “Fascinating. Fascinating,” he said, “but we’re not finished yet. Not by a long way.” He held the piece of paper in front of his face, then peeked from behind it at the crowd of naked boys. “Elephants have to eat.”

  ELEVEN

  Billy’s was the last name called. There had been a special glee in Sim Sizemore’s voice when he’d said, “Billy Dyer, step forward, young man,” the words echoing out across the dark lake. Lane Travers, drunk and s
truggling to balance on all fours, crouched in front of Billy, breathing in nauseated gasps. Billy’s face was six inches from Travers’s ass. His neck ached. His mind was a riot of nonsense. A single bare footprint in the sand under his eyes was the only clear thing. The old hilarity, its blood whiskeyed up, wanted out. Wanted it badly. The boys around him reeked of sweat and bourbon and fear and the hunt. The watchers had all been kneelers. They owned the dubious bravery of having fallen and risen. They howled and hooted now for the new herd of elephants. Billy looked back through his legs, past his dangling penis, at a boy named Connors. He did not know what he would dislike most, his own face or the one behind him. He remembered the fakers who had only held their noses close. He would try to be one, hoped that Connors behind him had the same idea.

  Sim Sizemore said, “Mr. Bland, give me the ointment.” The actorish glee in Sizemore’s voice, his swagger and pause, made Billy want to spring up and plant a fist in the middle of that pretty face. Gary Bland reached into the gym bag again and pulled out a jar of peanut butter. Sim Sizemore, playing to the first herd of dirty-faced, dirty-kneed elephants, dipped a steaming, frozen hot dog into the jar of peanut butter, held it up, and announced, “Behold the ointment, gentlemen!”

  The old elephants cheered. Billy looked across the dying fire and saw something like hate in their faces. They had been humiliated, why shouldn’t he be? He swung his eyes back to Sim Sizemore who stuck the wiener into his mouth and elaborately sucked off the peanut butter, smacking his lips and grinning. Then he walked to the head of the elephant line and did something Billy could not make out. He could see Sizemore’s legs backing toward him, hear him bending, saying, “Here you go” and “This one’s yours,” to the boys on their hands and knees. When Sizemore got to Billy, the jar of peanut butter came into view. Sizemore dipped a frozen hot dog into it and shoved it at Billy’s sandy fingers. “There you go, Dyer!” Sizemore said for the crowd. They cheered, but he had more to say to Billy. Before he moved on to the last boy, he leaned close and whispered, “Up yours, pussy. I’m going to enjoy this.”

  Billy, like the others, supported himself now on three legs and held a peanut butter–dipped wiener in one sandy hand. Sizemore stepped back from the elephant line, licked peanut butter from his hands, grinned at the crowd, and said, “Now, gentlemen, we have already seen that elephants walk, and, as I said, they have to eat.”

  The elephants who had walked cheered and called out, “Yeah!” and “Do it!”

  Sizemore continued, “The truth is, gentlemen, elephants have to eat while they walk. It’s a fact of elephant life, and that is the trick these elephants are going to perform for us now in our little circus.” He paused, then said to the boys on the ground, “I think you all know what I want you to do.”

  Sizemore waited, and the crowd of old elephants laughed, hooted, shouted, “Do it!” The boys in front of Billy slumped, their humped backs falling with this new burden. But somewhere ahead of him a boy did it. Billy heard the brief struggle of limbs in the sand, the cry of pain. Then he felt a hand fumbling behind him, the cold intrusion at his buttocks, pressure.

  And he was up. Shoving, running, stiff-arming Sim Sizemore, tearing through the file of torchbearers like a ballcarrier hitting the line. Arms flailing, knees pumping, he made for the sand path that led up to the shell mound. Running hard, barefooted on the steep path, he watched his ground, picking footfalls among roots and rocks. He was looking down when a black shoe tripped him. He fell hard, bruised his shoulder, and gashed his knee on a pine root. He rolled, looking up into the surprised, delighted eyes of Coach Rolt, who had just made his first tackle.

  Billy got to his feet. Down by the dead fire, some elephants still knelt. A few had risen with confused, aggrieved faces, one or two with wieners protruding from their anuses. The six torchbearers looked up at Billy in utter shock.

  He had dreamt of glory on the gridiron. Now, it occurred to him, he had done something no gridiron feat could equal. What he did next made things worse. He stepped over to Coach Rolt, the fat man who had never played football, the weak man who rose every morning, looked at his empty face in the mirror, and pulled on the mask of ridicule. The man who had tripped him. Rolt sneered and opened his mouth to give an order, his right arm rising to point Billy back down the hill. Billy punched the open mouth so hard that Rolt’s front teeth appeared white and then red where his upper lip was torn away. And Billy ran.

  Behind him, he heard only, “Get him!”

  It was Charlie Rentz.

  The boys roared as one and charged up the path. Billy had a good head start. He was as fit as any of them, his heart strong, his lungs young and big as bellows, his legs hard and honed, and he had drunk less than most. As he sprinted up the slope, past the dark pavilion, into the field under the tall pines where cars gleamed in the moonlight, he wished he had not drunk the whiskey. The night world bobbed before his eyes, rising and falling with his knees. The moon, just over the horizon now where the white sand road disappeared into the pines, was a golden disk, a burnished shield protecting some warrior high in the heavens who would fight no more on earth.

  In his crazy, terrified mind, Billy admired the pure, full moon, then laughed aloud at himself for the trouble he was in. With the rush of his breath in his ears, he could not hear the boys running behind him, but he could feel them. Their pounding sent a message to his moving feet. They were not gaining. Some were dropping out already to puke beer and bile. Billy looked down the white road and wondered if he could simply keep on like this until they all dropped away behind him. But what if they caught him at the end of his run, exhausted, on his knees in the road, and did to him what they had intended to do back there by the fire? Or worse. His mind returned to the afternoons of August on the blazing practice field where these boys, staggering and heaving under the low, hazy heavens, had been hereos to him. Now they wanted to kill him.

  When headlights flickered among the trees beside him, he knew the road was no longer an option. He searched the dark forest for a way in, a game trail, anything but this solid wall of palmetto, briar, and vine. He saw a lighter darkness among the trees, an impression of depth, and just as the first of the speeding cars drove its headlights into his back, he swerved into the trees.

  The game trail was narrow, low, and winding. He ran in a crouch, briars and vines raking his flanks and face. Behind him a car roared past, disappearing toward Oleander. That would be Coach Rolt running for a doctor. But a second car stopped, slewing in the sand. Two doors opened and closed, and Billy fell.

  He hit hard and rolled, raking his naked back against a scrub oak trunk. In the sudden silence, he held himself in a ball, his hands wet with blood from his gashed knee. His breathing loud in his ears, he lay still, listening. From the road a hundred yards behind him, someone shouted, “Look at this!”

  A footprint, his blood on the sand? He pushed himself up, weary now and dizzy from his fall. His breath ragged, he limped down the trail. He could hear them behind him. They had found the path. They had chased him by car, whoever they were. They had spent no fury running. They were fresh and full of an ancient anger.

  He stopped, leaned onto his thighs, his chest heaving, trying to breathe silently. He looked up for the moon, for a sign from the warrior of the night heavens. He saw not moonlight but the weak flicker of a flashlight beam among the trees.

  Billy ran on, but they were gaining. He heard them whispering behind him. “This way!” “No, over here.” When they were close, their voices hoarse with the lust of hunting, he searched for a way into the body of the forest. He lifted the fronds of a low palmetto clump and crawled, trying his best to be silent on the littered earth. He crawled on, exhausted, sour threads of whiskey rising in his throat. He gagged at the vile taste and thought, insanely, At least I didn’t eat peanut butter. He stopped to breathe, to listen. He heard them whispering. Sizemore and Rentz. The flashlight beam played among the trees to his right, swung left above his head, turning black leaves green. He
crouched on a nest of fronds, tried to still his breath, hoped his hunters would move on, lose heart.

  Rentz whispered, “Look, he stopped here.”

  Then Sizemore: “Let’s get the fuck out of here. I’m tired of this. Let him spend the night out here with the skeeters and chiggers. The cocksucker.”

  “Go on back if you want, pussy.” Rentz’s voice unyielding. “I’m gonna find that little turd.”

  Pussy. A cold hope came to Billy. Maybe he could take them one at a time. If he could get at Sizemore first, change that pretty face of his like he had changed Rolt’s, Sizemore would show what the guys whispered about him. Chicken Shit Right and Chicken Shit Left. The light played in the trees above Billy’s head, then fell, filtering through the brush onto his chest, his bleeding shin. He glanced down, cursing the traitorous glow of his skin.

  “There he is! I see him!” Rentz.

  Sizemore. “Come out, shithead!”

  Billy’s hands shook, and his heart beat in his eyes. He could not stand up. If he went out to them, it would be crawling. They’d catch him on his knees, kick and punch until they ruined his chances. He tried to think. The flashlight beam was steady on his chest, but not in his eyes. “Come in and get me!” he called. “You first, Sizemore.”

  There was silence. Then a crash and roar. Like a bull, Rentz charged the tangled weave of briar and palmetto. A linebacker tearing into the blockers that shielded a ballcarrier. Trees and fronds shook with his wild assault. The roaring poured from him, renewed with each breath. He was close, impossible though it was, his knees pumping, big arms ripping and tearing at the tangled green. Billy scuttled to his right, slipping out of Sizemore’s light. He crawled and snaked under low branches and over roots back to the game trail, punching his head out above the moonlit sand just behind Sizemore who crouched, watching the wracking progress of Rentz. In the roar of Rentz’s outraged lungs, Sim Sizemore did not hear Billy.