Zach hooked a left off the highway and headed for Pass Christian’s downtown, such as it was. A man was pissing against a wall outside the Sea Witch Tavern. A dim, tempting blue light burned somewhere deep in the bar, like a siren luring travelers to a watery grave. The other buildings were dark and still.
After driving several blocks, Zach came upon a lone convenience store called Bread Basket, its neon flickering fitfully, flooding its little patch of town with erratic dead white light. There were no cars in the parking lot, but Zach saw a clerk nodding at the register, blond head drooping over the Slim Jims and Confederate lighter displays.
As he parked the car, the jazz tune finally ended. He heard a guttural voice as of a DJ roused from long and peaceful slumber. “Uh. Yeah. That was, uh … ‘Laura’ by Charlie Parker … a whole buncha times …”
The inside of the store assaulted his corneas like an acid vision after the calm silver and charcoal of the night. Zach observed that the clerk had been not napping, but studying with rapt attention a magazine spread out on the countertop. It was open to a black-and-white photograph of a lanky, bare-chested, feral-faced boy who looked a lot like the clerk himself.
“C’n I help you?” A plastic nametag was pinned to the lapel of the boy’s blue polyester store jacket. LEAF. Hippie parents would do the damndest things.
“Yeah. Can I smell your coffee?”
“Huh?”
“Your coffee.” Zach waved at the coffee machine and its trappings against the opposite wall. “Can I just smell it?”
“Sure … I guess.” Leaf glanced down at the photo again, then unhurriedly closed the magazine. It was an old issue of GQ. “If you’re lookin’ for Hawaiian Kona, though, you’re out of luck. It’s just evil ole homebrew.”
“That’s okay. I don’t actually want to drink any.” Zach crossed to the coffee maker, pulled the pot out of the metal apparatus that kept it at sub-boiling point, and passed it slowly back and forth beneath his nose. Hot bitter steam wafted into his face, moistened his tired eyes. He felt microscopic particles of caffeine traveling up his nostrils, into his lungs, out through the interfaces of his bloodstream and straight into the hard drive of his weary brain.
His heart gave a jump and began beating faster. The rush made his mouth dry. As he grabbed a bottle of mineral water out of the cooler, he found himself wondering why a cute kid who read GQ and knew about Hawaiian Kona coffee was working at a Bread Basket in Pass Christian, Mississippi.
At the register, Zach set his drink on the counter, added a lighter (patterned in gaudy pink and black zigzags, but no rebel flag), and pulled out his wallet. He hadn’t tried to access any of his various bank accounts before he left town, knowing that all of them could be watched. And he could get more. He’d only brought the stash of ready cash he kept for an emergency such as this; he had always known that he might have to bail out someday, and that he would have to do it fast. Now he found that the smallest bill in his wallet was a hundred.
“Can’t change it,” Leaf said apologetically. “They only let me keep fifty dollars in the register after ten, and I haven’t had shit for business.”
“I’m really thirsty.”
“Well—”
Zach caught the other boy’s eyes with his own and held them. Leaf’s eyes were long and slightly tilted, gimlet eyes, the same warm honey-gold as his hair. “Just give me the stuff,” he suggested. “I’ll get you stoned.”
This was a simplified version of a hacker technique known as social engineering. It could be used to reassure an operator that she was talking to a bona-fide telco technician; it was good for all manner of scamming, impersonation, and general fraud. This cute clerk was no challenge at all. The seeds of rebellion were already planted. Zach could see the kid mulling it over, talking himself into it.
He leaned an elbow on the counter and offered his most charming smile. “What do you say?”
“Well … oh, fuck it. Take whatever you want. I don’t care. I’m quitting soon anyway.”
“Thanks. That’s real neighborly of you.” Zach whisked the lighter into his pocket, cracked the mineral water open, and took a long gulp. It tasted flat and dead, but then he was used to the carcinogenic soup that passed for tapwater in New Orleans. Plenty of flavor in that.
Leaf snorted. “Neighborly. Like you live in Mississippi. I’ll bet you’re from New York or something.”
Zach hadn’t heard that one before. People sometimes thought he was part Oriental—a fact that amused Eddy no end—but no one had ever accused him of being from New York.
He decided the idea appealed to him. “Well, yeah,” he admitted. “How’d you know?”
“The way you talk. And you don’t look like you’re from around here. The only other place you could’ve come from is New Orleans.”
“Never been there.” In a burst of inspiration, Zach added, “Yet. It’s where I’m headed.”
Their eyes met again and locked. For an instant Zach imagined that Leaf was able to look straight into his brain, to see the lie and the convoluted reason behind it, the miles he had already run and all the miles still ahead. But Zach knew that was not true.
And even if it were, he could see in those warm honey-colored eyes that this kid wouldn’t care.
Leaf accepted Zach’s offer and locked up the store, and they went into the back room to smoke one of the joints Zach had rolled for the trip. Leaf lounged on a crate of toilet paper, long legs sprawled before him. There was a small defiant hole in one knee of the faded jeans he wore with his uniform shirt. The skin beneath was downed with fine gold hairs.
Zach leaned against the opposite wall watching Leaf’s nervous gestures, tasting Leaf’s lips on the joint. The stockroom of a convenience store in Mississippi seemed a stupid place to get waylaid this early in the trip. But the damn kid was making his mouth water.
“I’m quitting tomorrow,” Leaf said after his third toke. “I hate this fuckin’ place.”
“What are you doing here, anyway?”
“I’m an art student in Jackson. Photography. I was supposed to spend the summer here taking pictures, preserving the goddamn history or something. But it sucks. None of the rednecks know anything and none of the rich old farts will even talk to me. I don’t know which stuff is supposed to be important. I guess I’ll fail my project.”
“Can’t you do some research?”
“What do you mean?”
“Go to the library, find out where people lived, what houses are haunted, that kind of thing. Most of the old newspapers are probably on microfilm.”
Leaf looked up at Zach. The whites of his eyes were shot with a faint scarlet tracery of veins, but the irises and pupils were heartbreakingly clear. “I’m a totally visual person,” he said. “I hate reading.”
Zach bit his tongue hard, dug his fingernails into the soft meat of his palms. That was the kind of casual statement that could send his blood pressure rocketing if he let it. But now it produced only a faint twinge in his heart, like a filament stretched to the breaking point. So the kid was vapid; so much the better. It made things easy, and Zach would never have to see him again after tonight. “You hate all kinds of stuff,” he said.
Leaf shrugged. “I guess.”
“Tell me something you like.”
This was evidently a tough one. Zach could see the kid sifting through possibilities, rejecting them one by one. “I like the beach,” he said finally. “I never go in the water, but I like to sit on the sand and stare out to sea. It makes me feel like I’m looking into infinity. You know?”
A screen full of scrolling numbers flashed through Zach’s head. He nodded.
“I like sleeping.”
Another nod, this one coupled with the barest suggestion of a shrug. Tell me something I couldn’t have guessed. “I like you okay.”
They had both known they weren’t just locking themselves back here to smoke a joint, but the rest of their agenda had to be obliquely tested, so that no one would lose face. Zach
knew the game and approved. He smiled and raised an eyebrow, waited for more.
“Oh, just come over here and let’s fuck.”
Now that was Zach’s idea of an excellent pickup line. He slid across to the case of toilet paper and suddenly Leaf was upon him, face pressed up against his, one hand slipping under his T-shirt, the other squeezing his leg beneath his loose cutoffs. Leaf’s mouth found his and closed over it, hot little tongue probing and searching, piney flavor of the weed still on his lips. His spidery hands flew over Zach’s skin as if trying to memorize its warmth and texture. His touch was starving, frantic. The poor kid probably hadn’t been laid all summer.
Zach pushed him gently back against the wall, unbuttoned the tacky polyester uniform, stroked the boy’s smooth chest and the hollow of his rib cage, managed to calm him down a little. He kissed the side of Leaf’s throat; the pulse that beat there was as agitated as his own. The skin smelled of soap and salt, tasted of clean sweat.
Leaf slid to the concrete floor and sprawled between Zach’s knees, pressed his face into Zach’s stomach and mumbled something unintelligible. Zach cupped the boy’s chin, tilted the sharp feral face up to his own. “What did you say?”
“I want to make you come.”
“How?”
Those exotic honey-colored eyes tried to meet his, then wavered. Leaf wasn’t used to talking dirty. “How?” he asked again.
“I want to suck your dick.”
The words increased his desire, made him ache and burn. “Go on,” Zach said through clenched teeth. “Just do it.”
The boy’s hands fumbled with the button fly of Zach’s pants, friction driving his hard-on nearly to the point of pain. Then all at once Leaf’s hot mouth slid onto him, then pulled all the way back to a teasing, flickering tongue-tip, then swallowed him deeper yet. Zach felt the pot and pleasure swirling in his skull, deliciously mingling. God love the kid, it turned out he knew what he was doing after all.
Zach always appreciated it when people surprised him.
Twenty minutes later, stocked up with a handful of lighters, a sixpack of mineral water, and two bags of jalapeño potato chips, Zach renewed his acquaintance with Highway 90. It would take him through Biloxi, through the tag-end of Alabama, and all the way to Pensacola in another hour or two. After that, he thought, he would get off 90 but keep heading east, all the way to the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. Somewhere, he knew, there was a beach that was clean.
Leaf hadn’t asked him to stay overnight, hadn’t seemed put out in the slightest by the encounter. After getting each other off they had rested together for a few minutes, embracing loosely, catching their breaths. Zach had spent the moments appreciating the spare, elegant lines of the boy’s face and body, admiring the sheen of his silky hair in the half-light of the storeroom. Then by some silent mutual consent they rose and pulled their clothes together and went blinking back out into the unmerciful brightness of the store.
At the door they clasped hands briefly. “By the way,” Leaf told him, “I like your shirt.”
Zach glanced down at himself. He was still wearing the exploding Kennedy head. He wondered idly if some buried sixth sense had made him put it on this morning as a twisted metaphor for what was to follow.
“Thanks,” he said, and gave Leaf’s talented fingers one final squeeze. In its way it was quite a tender farewell.
The day had followed a steep curve down to hell, but now it seemed to be inching back up. The interlude with Leaf had relaxed him, left him feeling sharp and awake, as if Leaf had imbued him with some vital essence … as indeed he had. Surely there was some energy in come, some electrifying charge.
And Zach had given as good as he got. He always deserted in the end, like the bastard Eddy thought he was, but he always tried to make his lovers feel good in the brief spans of time he spent with them. He had even left Leaf with another tightly rolled, sticky joint to stave off tomorrow night’s ennui.
All in all, Zach mused as he reconnected with the silent ribbon of highway, it had pretty much been the perfect relationship.
Trevor awoke from a dream of blank paper laughing up at him, his mind a monochrome wash of panic, his heart clenching around a core of emptiness. If he couldn’t draw … if he couldn’t draw …
The sheets Kinsey had given him were twined around his legs, sodden with nightmare sweat. Trevor kicked them away and shoved himself upright. His bag lay on the floor next to the sofa. He pulled out his sketchbook, opened it to a clean page, and sketched furiously for several minutes. He had no idea what he was drawing; he was only reassuring himself that he could.
When his heart stopped pounding and his panic began to fade, Trevor found himself staring at a rough sketch of his brother lying on a stained mattress, small hands curled in death, head crushed into the pillow. He remembered that today was the day his family had died.
Trevor felt like throwing the book across the room. Instead he closed it and slid it back into his bag, found his toothbrush in the zipper pocket, then stood up and stretched. He heard his shoulders crack, his spine make a noise like a muffled burst of gunfire.
Despite the flattened cushions and the occasional sharp end of a spring, Kinsey’s sofa had been a welcome place to sleep. Trevor was surprised to find it comforting to be invited into someone’s home, to have a known human presence in the next room. He had grown used to cheap hotels and run-down boardinghouses. On the other side of the wall might be drunken sobs or curses, the moist tempo of sex, the silence of an empty room—but never anything familiar, never anyone who cared that Trevor Black was there.
Kinsey’s living room was sparsely furnished with more thrift-shop relics: an easy chair, a reading lamp, a wooden bookcase listing under the weight of too many volumes. Paperbacks, mostly. Trevor read some titles as he passed. One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Stand, Short Stories of Franz Kafka, whole shelves of Hesse and Kerouac, even Lo! by Charles Fort. Eclectic tastes, that Kinsey.
There were some crates of comics too, but Trevor did not look through them. He had his own copies of Birdland. Coming upon other copies in a comic shop or someone’s collection was always unnerving, like seeing someone he had thought dead.
There was no TV, Trevor noted approvingly. He hated TV. It brought back memories of a crowded dayroom at the Home, the sweaty smell of boys, voices raised in fury over what channel to watch. The stupidest ones had always screamed for a cartoon show out of Raleigh called Barney’s Army. Barney was a cartoon character himself, squat and ugly, announcing kids’ birthdays and cracking lame jokes between Looney Toons shorts. He was so badly animated that no part of him moved but his pitifully stubby, flipperlike arms, his prognathous jaw, and his big googly eyes. Trevor figured he had probably hated Barney as much as any real person he had ever known.
The bathroom tiles were spotless, deliciously cold against his bare feet. He used the Tom’s of Maine cinnamon-flavored toothpaste on the edge of the sink, then splashed cold water on his face. For a long moment he stood staring into the mirror. His father’s eyes looked back at him, ice rimmed in black, faintly challenging. Do you dare?
You bet I do.
The door of Kinsey’s bedroom was ajar. Trevor peeked into the shady room. Kinsey’s tall form lay sprawled across the bed, skinny legs half-covered by a vivid patchwork quilt. He was the only person Trevor had ever seen who actually wore pajamas—bright blue ones, the same color as his eyes, patterned with little gold moons and stars. Trevor hadn’t even known they made pajamas in Kinsey’s size.
For a few minutes he watched the gentle rise and fall of Kinsey’s chest, the draft from the open window that stirred Kinsey’s scraggly hair, and he wondered if he had ever slept so peacefully. Even when Trevor wasn’t having bad dreams his sleep was uneasy, sporadic, full of flickering pictures and half-remembered faces.
But the luminous face of the clock on Kinsey’s nightstand (no cheap digital job, but a molded-plastic relic done in early sixties aqua, its corners rounded and streamlined) told him
it was nearly noon. He had to go. Not to the house yet, no; but he had to take the first step toward the house.
Trevor slung his backpack over his shoulder, stepped out into the tranquil Sunday morning, and locked Kinsey’s door behind him.
The road that led out to Missing Mile’s small graveyard was hot and flat and muddy. Trevor was accustomed to walking city streets, where the languid haze of summer was shot through with blasts of air-conditioning from doors constantly opening onto the sidewalk, where you could always duck under an awning or the overhang of a building, into a little pocket of shade.
But this road, Burnt Church Road according to the crooked signpost where it ran into Firehouse Street, offered no shade except the occasional leafy canopy of a tree. The houses out here were few and far apart. Most had been built on farmland, and the road was bordered by fields of leathery tobacco and bristling corn. This was a nicer area than Violin Road; the dirt here had not yet been farmed to death. The houses were not new or fancy, but their yards were large grassy expanses unmarred by scrap heaps or the rusting hulks of autos.
The sun beat mercilessly on the road and on the coarse gravel that paved it, broken granite like the crushed leavings of a cemetery, mired in wet red clay, catching the light and shattering it into a million razored fragments. Trevor was glad when clouds began to blow in, a slow-brewing summer thunderstorm on the way. His brain felt baked in his skull, and his skin already tingled with fresh sunburn. His backpack was waterproof, to keep his sketchbook dry. If the storm held long enough, he would start a new drawing at the graveyard. If not, he would sit on the ground and let the rain soak him.
Trevor could feel the nearly silent presence of death up ahead, not precisely watchful, not even really aware, but somehow detectable. It was like a frequency on a radio, or rather the empty space on the band between frequencies: there were no signals to pick up, but still you heard a faint electric hum, not quite silence, not quite sound. It was like being in a room someone had just left, a room that still bore the faint scent of breath and skin, the subtle displacement of air. An epileptic kid had died on his hall at the Boys’ Home once, pitched a grand mal fit in the hours before dawn, when no one was awake to help him. Trevor had woken in the cool, still morning and known that death was close by, though he hadn’t known who it had come to, or how.
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