Boys of Blur (7 page)

A long, sharp whistle jolted Charlie’s eyes open.

The boys were all in the middle of the field, all on one knee, all with helmets off. And every head was turned toward Charlie—players, coaches, water boy, and even big Prester Mack, with his whistle in his mouth and a ball on his hip. Mack flipped the ball to a boy in the front of the crowd. Charlie recognized him as the boy caught the ball and jumped to his feet—white, skinny, slick black hair. At the gas station, his jacket had been labeled
SUGAR
.

Sugar turned. He cocked the football back with a long, lazy arm, and then he threw it.

Charlie could catch. He could run routes and dive for balls. He had done exactly that hundreds of times in the front yard while Mack chattered instructions and challenges, roaring like a crowd whenever Charlie made the catch, or mocking Charlie like a sportscaster when he failed.

But this was different. This ball was coming from more than forty yards away. This ball was coming in like a rocket. This ball was coming in while an entire high school football team and dozens of scattered observers were all waiting to see if Mack’s boy—if Bobby Reynolds’s boy—could catch.

Charlie hopped up, slipped on the grass, and slammed his back against the wall. His first instinct was to cover
his head and dive out of the way. In one burst of motion, Charlie pushed off the wall, stepped forward in a crouch, and then jumped. He stretched his arms above his head, straining to snag the nose of the tightly spinning ball.

He had jumped too soon. Charlie began to drop just as the ball reached him. It folded back his fingers and sprang up into the air. Charlie leaned backward, grabbing at nothing, watching his failure spin away behind him.

He landed on his back in the grass and his breath exploded out of him. His eyes were on the sky. The ball hopped on the corner of the locker room roof and bounced back off. Charlie kicked himself toward it. He stretched out one arm and felt the ball slap against his palm.

It rolled off into the grass.

Groans washed across the field from the players and laughter trickled out of the stands. He shut his eyes.

“Charlie Boy!” The voice was Mack’s. “Get on over here!”

Charlie didn’t want to. He didn’t want to get on over anywhere. He wanted the grass to eat him, to erase him from this scene completely.

“Charlie!”

Ignoring Mack was going to make it worse. Charlie rolled over and stood. He snatched that stupid ball up from a little nest of grass and jogged onto the field toward his stepfather.

The players were all stripping off their shoulder pads and dropping them onto their helmets. Sugar shot Charlie a smile.

“Nice effort, Charlie,” Mack said, and he held out his hands for the ball. Charlie tossed it to him hard and tight—harder than he needed to. Mack caught it and laughed.

Mack pointed away across the field, over the top of the cane, toward the swamp. Brown sugar smoke rose up in a jagged tower, slow and stiff at the base, torn and feathered by wind hundreds of feet up. Behind the smoke, gray clouds on the horizon were hatching a change in weather.

“Time we ran some rabbits!” Mack said.

A few boys whooped. A few boys groaned.

Sugar crossed his arms. The sleeves were missing from his sweat-soaked shirt. His arms were purple and green with old bruises above the elbows.

“Seriously, Coach?” he asked. “Rabbits? I mean, I know you’re old school, but that’s kid and tourist stuff now.”

“Tourists? In Taper?” Mack laughed, tucked the football on his hip, and walked toward Sugar. Charlie could see sparks growing in his stepfather’s eyes. His voice was part drumbeat, part growl. “Old school? Son, it’s as old school as going undefeated and wearing rings, old school as quickness and toughness and white stripes on grass.”

Sugar worked hard to meet his coach’s stare, but Charlie saw the boy’s Adam’s apple bobbing. Mack leaned his face close and let his words roll.

“Now, I know my team captain isn’t standing here whining like a pussycat at a granny’s back door. What is it you need, son? A little scratch behind the ears? Or would you like to win some games?”

Sugar said nothing.

Mack grinned and thumped Sugar on the shoulder.

“Nah. You’re no pussycat. Wildcat, maybe. But when this coach tells you something, you don’t open that gap-toothed mouth of yours unless a
yes, sir
or a
yes, coach
is hopping out.”

Sugar nodded. Mack turned back to the whole team. “Time I saw some speed, boys! And, you know, my wallet’s a little heavy. Think you all could lighten it for me?”

“Yes, sir!” the boys shouted.

“I’ve got a five for every muck rabbit,” Mack said. “A twenty for any cottontail. Practice is over when the team has snagged ten.”

Charlie watched the boys laugh and yell and bounce while Mack formed them up in two lines and sent them jogging away toward the smoke.

Mack faced Charlie. “Sorry about that ball. I thought you were watching.”

Charlie shrugged. The crowd was trickling away. Assistants were collecting balls.

“You want to get out in the cane and run some rabbits?” Mack asked.

Charlie looked at the rising smoke. At the cane. At the
pack of boys jogging toward it. He wanted to know more about the muck and the fields. About what was out there. He wouldn’t be alone. And the sun was up and shining. But he still felt his chest tightening at the idea.

“Are you coming?” Charlie asked.

“Prester Mack!”

Mack and Charlie both turned. A fat man in a yellow polo shirt stood beside a brand-new silver Range Rover parked on the grass next to the field. He held up car keys and jingled them.

“New car,” Mack said. He glanced toward the smoke. “Awful timing. I’ll have to sign something.” He pointed after the running players. “Catch up to them. You’re doing this, too, Charlie Boy. Go! I won’t be far behind you.”

While Charlie watched, Mack clapped his hands and jogged toward his new car. Stragglers who had been watching practice now drifted toward the silver beauty. It shone like lake water in moonlight—like a lure.

Charlie turned away from it. And he ran.

There were trucks in the smoking field. And huge machines with faces like monstrous steel insects, grinding up acres of sugar stalks with the leaves all burned off. Charlie was moving down a long dirt road beside a deep canal. Overhead, charred leaves fluttered through the air, slowly
turning to brown feather ash. Beside him, the machines chewed through patches of cane still crackling with flame—blades whirling and slicing, mandibles gnawing, filling huge bellies with diced sugar knuckles, spewing piles of sweet smoking segments into the backs of dump trucks that were slow-roll-floating over the soft dark muck on huge balloon tires.

Charlie slowed to a stop, transfixed by the total annihilation of the field beside him. Everywhere that he had seen a peaceful tower of smoke quietly climbing the sky, this onslaught had been going on below.

The roar of the harvesters was enormous, but a long, sharp whistle still found Charlie’s ears. He turned. Sugar was standing on another dirt road across the canal behind him. The lean quarterback pointed at a little stone and culvert bridge fifty yards farther up. Then he turned and loped away.

Charlie found the boys crouching in a long line in a shallow ditch between two fields. The black dirt was bare and loose on both sides of the ditch, and it swallowed his feet like soft sand as he crossed.

Sugar had taken his place near the center. Charlie stopped at the end, beside a boy with a baby face on a body the size and shape of someone’s front door.

Most of the boys had stripped off their cleats. Some had stripped off their shirts and tied them over their faces like outlaws.

“I’m Surge,” the big boy said to Charlie. He shifted slightly away, making room.

“Hey.” Charlie nodded and crouched down beside him. “I’m Charlie. What now?”

“Take off your shoes if you don’t want to lose ’em. They gonna light it soon. Then things is gonna be crazy.”

“Why do they burn it?” Charlie asked.

“Fastest way to strip the leaves,” Surge said. “Stalks is so wet, they don’t burn.”

A heavy white farm truck turned into the field beside Charlie. The driver looked out his window at the boys, and, for a moment, he looked concerned. Then he laughed and shook his head. The truck bed held a large gas tank, and a gun that looked like a water cannon was mounted on top, pointed to the side. A small pilot flame flickered beneath the barrel mouth.

“Here bunny, bunny!” someone shouted. The line of boys laughed.

“We downwind,” Surge said. “They light the sides and it burns our way. Every living thing comes our way.”

“Everything,” Charlie said. His eardrums were thumping with his heart. This was it. He had stepped into one of Mack’s party stories, and he wasn’t at all sure that he was ready.

“Smoke, snakes, rats, and rabbits,” Surge said. “But mostly smoke.”

The white truck eased itself into position between the canal and the crop. And then heavy, wet flame burst out of the barrel and into the wall of ripe cane, every stick of it clothed in dry brown leaves.

Spewing fire, the truck bounced forward.

At first, there was only a little smoke. Crackling. But the fire moved inward, into acres of dry and eager fuel. The wind pushed it toward the line of boys.

Heat slammed into Charlie like a breaking wave. Beside him, Surge pulled his shirt up over his mouth and nose. Charlie did the same.

The crackling became a growl, and the growl became a sucking roar. Sugar knuckles popped like gunshots. Brown smoke rolled across the ground; it rose and raced away through neighboring armies of cane. It swallowed boys. It climbed the sky and cut off the sun.

Charlie’s eyes streamed. A long black leaf with fiery edges grazed his cheek and broke on his shoulder.

Through the smoke he could see red tongues rising up taller than houses, snapping like circus tents in a storm.

Boys were whooping. Surge lumbered forward.

Charlie pressed his hand against his shirt mask and squinted at the black ground in front of the cane. Two rats raced out and veered toward the canal. Something much faster darted out—the first rabbit. Surge lunged and the
rabbit veered away, back down the line of boys. A human shadow jumped after it. Hunched-over human shadows were darting everywhere.

“Possum!” someone whooped.

Charlie heard a snarl and Surge yelled in surprise. A large shape rose over the ditch and then a hissing bobcat landed beside him. Fur kissed Charlie’s leg, and then the cat was gone.

The smoke was narrowing as the burn moved toward the center of the field. Charlie saw daylight and crawled toward it, ash tears dripping from his nose. A boy jumped over him, laughing. Another shape swore and dropped to the ground, rolling in the hot muck, slapping out a small fire on his shirt. Charlie rose to his feet and staggered away, just another living thing trying to escape the burn. And then a rabbit landed in the muck in front of him.

It was big. Its tail was cotton white. Without even thinking, Charlie grabbed at it. He missed. Muck flew and a foot thumped against his fingers as the animal reversed direction and exploded away.

Charlie was already running after it, back into the smoke.

Shapes flashed in front of him. He ducked under a tall boy’s arm. He slammed into someone’s back. Twice the rabbit reversed almost into Charlie’s arms. Twice it danced back into the burning field and reemerged like a rocket.
Twice it drew other hunters, and then shook them off onto easier prey. But it didn’t shake Charlie.

Flames were pouring out the side of the field now—licking the muck, smoothing ash over silty earth with fiery fingers.

Charlie hardly noticed. He was chasing, reacting, exploding after the animal. He was quick. His heart was pounding, his chest was tight, his breath was gone, and the soil pulled at his feet like deep sand. His legs and lungs were burning more than his eyes when he staggered out into the sun.

The rabbit leapt off the edge of the canal in front of him, landed in the still water, and began to swim. The field across the canal was now bare down to the black earth. Vultures swirled above it, looking for the remains of all that had been slow. Two huge harvesters with steel mantis jaws sat idling in the cane rubble, waiting for the next burn to clear the leaves.