The Tricky Part: One Boy's Fall from Trespass into Grace (14 page)

“Let’s call it lights out in five minutes, OK, guys?”

Most of the boys were already drifting off. Robin was awake, though, across the room from me in a top bunk, and it was his face I watched, his gentle eyes, as Bob leaned over and whispered into my ear.

“You were great on that glacier today, kiddo.” His breath, his compliment, was warm on the back of my neck. “You really slid down that mother; you’re getting gutsy.” He tapped the back of my neck with one finger. “Come visit me after lights out . . . OK?”

I held still.

“Marty.”

I could hear how particularly, how much, he wished to see me and I turned my face to him. He tousled my hair and I felt the crazy muddle ignite inside me, the fire of rage and want burning me up.

Bob went for the light switch and, when I looked over, Robin tossed me a rueful grin. I tried to smile back but my face was frozen. The room went dark.

“Goodnight, guys,” Bob said.

The door squeaked to a close. I buried my head in the pillow, pulled the rough blanket tight around me, and knew just what I’d do, the one weapon I could think to use. Silence. I closed my eyes, determined to sleep, to stay right where I was.

The next day—for the morning hike, for the meals, for the fishing—I stuck to my strategy. It felt right and good. In fact, I thought, I wanted this war of silence to last forever. For the rest of the trip in Wyoming, for the rest of my life. Borders closed, locked and guarded. Don’t let him get near you, I thought. I’m thirteen now, for God’s sake. Screw him, and screw his creepy girlfriend. And with every moment of my silence, with every maneuver to avoid him, a fury built within me. A mounting pressure that felt something like strength. Like
balls
.

That afternoon, I stood alone, tossing horseshoes near the empty, red-stained barn. Everyone else had gone to the lake for a swim, for the good fishing, but I was practicing solitude. It was sometime near five o’clock, still very hot. The mosquitoes hadn’t yet risen off the nearby ponds. The air was dry and still. I was aiming a shoe when, with no warning at all, he appeared. I’d seen him go off swimming with the others, so I was startled. I pretended not to notice, but the white of his T-shirt, the weight of his stance, was vivid against the barn door. My heart began to bang for battle. I gripped tight to the shoe and tossed it. It landed well past the post, kicked up a puff of dirt.

“What’s up with you?” His question drifted across the dusty barnyard, faded into the trees.

I shifted another horseshoe to my right hand, leaned forward, and swung it back and forth, enjoying the lethal heft of metal. I squinted, took a step, and let it fly. It arched high and way short, and landed with one flat thud. I saw out of the corner of my eye that he was holding his camera. The good one, the large lens. It had a fancy strap, a colorful, psychedelic weave that draped over his shoulder. He lifted the camera to his eye and pointed it my way.

“Don’t.”

He held it steady against his face.

“Don’t!”

He hesitated, then let it drop and held it next to his hip. Long silence.

“Why didn’t you come to see me last night?” I imagined my remaining horseshoe sticking out of his head, the way it would bleed, knock him cold. “Do you want to talk?”

It was a good toss—nearly a ringer, it smacked, ricocheted off the post, and skidded to a stop. I stuck my hands in my jean pockets and wondered which way to walk—the path to the lake or the one to the bunkhouse. Then I heard the
kriiick
of the shutter.

“I said
don’t
, damnit.” It was out of me like a shot, not the way I wanted. I sounded shrill and childish and I hated the way my will seemed to leak with the words.
Keep silent
, I thought,
best to say not one damn thing
. I stuck the heel of my boot into the dirt as if slamming on a brake.

“Oh, come on. A souvenir of Wyoming.”

“Just don’t.”

I wanted to bolt, but not enough for my feet to obey. My heel dug deeper, carving a crater toward China.

“Let’s talk. Let’s go into the barn.”

I shook my head. No way. No talking.

He hit the latch from beneath with the heel of his palm and the large door swung open. The cooler air from within, the faint smell of hay, brushed past my face. It seemed as though the barn had been waiting, holding its breath. He moved aside to let me pass.

“Watch your feet.”

A board, easy to trip on, framed the bottom of the doorway. I stepped over it and into the dim light. The ground inside was less packed, soft in the soles of my boots. My eyes were drawn to the ceiling, which sloped steeply up beyond a high, wooden beam hanging like the transom of an old chapel. The sun spilled in from somewhere above the hayloft and cast its amber light in one rectangular chunk across the wooden wall to my right. The building was startlingly quiet, not an animal in sight, though the fodder and waste of them were mixed in the dirt, whiffs of their living in the air.

From behind me came the squeak of hinges. Bob was yanking at the door. The back of his T-shirt was streaked with dirt and with yellow stains at the pit of each arm. His Levis were snug at his buttocks; I could see clearly the shape of his wallet, the white, rectangular fade of it stenciled on his left pocket. My feet moved backwards as if to find the spot to take a stand. The time had come, I thought, to find the right words to say what’s wrong. To make an end.

The sight of light and trees from the barnyard narrowed to a sliver, then to nothing as the door slammed. The rattle of its closing sent an instant charge through me and my knees began to shake. I had to bend them to steady my stance. It was fear, it seemed, as much as desire that caused my dick to stiffen. Hunger and danger—fused. I folded a fist into each front pocket to hide the swelling. He grabbed the inside latch of the door and spun it until it snapped into its cradle. He set his camera on the ground with great care, the bright strap of it flopping in the dirt, then he stood with his back against the door. Dueling distance.

“What is it?” he asked. I studied the scratches and stains on the pointy toes of my boots. “Why didn’t you come to see me last night?”

I glanced toward the locked door. Maybe Robin had added things up, was looking for us.

There were three fences, small pigpens, I guessed, or goat stalls, jutting from the wall to my right. I stepped over to the first one and sat against it, my hands still stuffed in my pockets. Bob moved into the room and stood near the large center beam.

He patted the wooden pillar. “This was built to last.” He looked up toward the loft. “What’s wrong?” I stared at a pair of reins and a bridle dangling from hooks on the wall behind him. “Why didn’t you come?”

I let my chin fall to my chest. “I didn’t want to.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t
want
to.”

A fly dove recklessly at my face. I swatted it away.

“Why?”

“Because.” My voice, barely a breath, was swallowed into the dirt. I searched for the fury that had grown and lodged itself like a tight ball in my chest, but it was gone, or melted, somehow, to nothing but sorrow. Useless for a fight.

“What is it?”

There was a rusty pail near my feet. I gave it a little kick and it fell with a clatter to its side. The bottom of it was caked with mud. “I have to end it,” I said.

“What?”

“Everything.” My throat clamped shut, my eyes filled up. Fucking tears, I fought them with all my might. I had a stand to take, there were things burning inside, things to say—about being older, the boots not fitting, Robin seeing us, Karen hating me—but, of all the words, only two fell out of my mouth. “I jumped.”

He took a step toward me and I couldn’t stop the flood of tears.

“That’s OK,” he whispered.

“No. No it isn’t.”

“The Green is a serious river . . .” He moved another step toward me.

“Don’t . . . just don’t.” He stopped. “No one else would do what I did.”

“Don’t worry about anyone else. You’re a great—”

“
She
even said it!” I looked at the dirt, wiping my face on the baggy sleeves of my large button-down shirt—a hand-me-down from Dad. “She said I have no balls.” He was quiet for a time and with a new and sudden worry I whispered, “God . . . don’t tell her I told.”

“Well, come on. We know that’s just not true. Don’t we?”

I looked up at him then, at the stupid grin on his face, at his pink hand slapping at the fly circling his brow. I stared right at him until his smile disappeared, until his hand came to rest.

“It’s turning out all wrong,“ I said, my voice clamped in a growl.

“What is?”

“
I
am!”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“But look at me . . . at
us
. We are . . .”

“We’re not
that
, I’ve told you! You’re not
that
.”

“How do you know?’

“
I know
. You’ll see. You’ll grow up and you’ll meet a girl.”

A girl . . . a girl . . .
for an instant the image—long blond hair, breasts under a white sweater—flashed through my head and I grabbed onto it as to a lifeline. God how I wanted to believe him: me with a girl, me a normal boy kissing inside a barn, with Lisa or Tammy or Paula. It was three seconds of comfort to trust that he might see what I couldn’t yet about my own body, about the way the world unfolds.

He stepped a little closer, his arms outstretched, his palms open. “We
love
each other. That’s entirely different.”

“Different from what?”

“From the way homosexuals are.” A jolt of sickness at hearing the word aloud. A word not said but looked up in dictionaries of disease. “You and I are different.” His head was tilted to the left, his face somber with facts of life. I looked at his glasses, held together at the nose by a hunk of gray tape, I looked at him and thought,
he must know
. He must have seen one, or some, of
them
. Seen what they are—these awful people without love. “We help each other, that’s all,” he said, reaching toward me, displaying the chalky calluses at the base of each finger. “We’re two good people, helping each other. There’s nothing bad in that. Homosexuals are people without love.” He stepped closer and my knees began to shake again and my groin to pulse. He took off his glasses and hooked them into the V-neck of his undershirt. He bent down carefully as he got close to me and reached for the bucket near my feet. I took in the smell of horses and hay and of him, aware of how much I liked it all. The animal odors. The animal life. He took a step back, flipped the bucket bottom up, hitched his pants and sat on it like a rancher on a milking stool.

“Come here.”

I didn’t move. I remained, hands in pockets, leaning on my little fence, making believe I might stay put, stay blameless. He opened his arms wide and held them there, as motionless as the statue of a saint, and I knew I couldn’t bear the being separate. “Marty, come here.” His voice traveled down my throat like heat from a furnace and my legs moved toward the warmth, toward the body right in front of me.

“It’s all right,” he said, reaching for my belt.

As his hands worked my buckle, I thought I might melt for gratitude, for the relief of being touched. Thank God, at least
this
existed on earth. At least I’d found it. The consolation of flesh. He unsnapped my buttons one by one, then peeled away the cotton to get to me. He paid no attention to pleasuring himself. This time it was all for me, a gift, like sealing with a kiss the end of our quarrel. My pants fell to my ankles and I gazed at the burnt, bald crown of his head moving, at the wisps of brown hair spiraling clockwise. I gazed, utterly amazed at the way warm and wet could answer, for the moment, every aching worry, every troubling question. He took hold of my hips and I gripped his shoulders, closed my eyes. I knew I didn’t really like him, that there was barely a trace of love here, and I knew what that made me and I tried not to care. And as I moved my hips back and forth I looked around the filthy, beautiful barn, and heard myself whispering,
Yes, oh yes
.

We left the barn and walked down to the lake to join the other boys and Karen. Some were fishing, some swimming. I sat down on a log, my body heavy with failing. I’d failed, again, to stop it. He asked if he could take my picture. Yeah, OK, what the hell. I still have it, me sitting on that log. In it I’m holding—I don’t remember why—a rumpled piece of paper towel. My face is drawn, circles under my eyes, my hair a thick long mop, my lips parted in a faint effort at a smile, the clunky braces on my front teeth peeking through. My father’s old shirt, white and baggy, barely tucked into my recently buttoned Levis.

Everyone else went up to dinner. I remained on that log, I remember, for a long time. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to listen to the birds, to watch the light change and soften over the lake. I remember observing how the changing breezes and the many bugs skating along the water caused little wakes of light, dappled patterns, to constantly shift. I watched the fish poke through the surface to eat what they could. The tall pines swayed, growing darker against the darkening sky. Movement, incessant song and movement, the world going on, and I remember thinking, so clearly, as I watched the gloaming, how I was not, could not be, a part of this. The natural world. I sat on that log at the side of the pond, wanting to ask the bugs, the birds, the beautiful trees:
How did this happen?
It was the first time, the first place, it occurred to me that I must leave here. Leave the world.
God made all that is
, I thought,
and it is beautiful, but I cannot be a part of it
. He could not have intended
this. This mistake
. I didn’t think of it as suicide so much as the idea of ending being. That something, someone, so unnatural as I, could not remain among that which lives. This feeling, like sex, seemed to come from my body. A certain dreadful sense that the only solution to the error that has been made is to erase it. The feeling then moved from my body to a kind of rational argument: If something is bad, you must get rid of it. End it. Simple.
I am bad so I must go
. And I knew then that this was the only answer, the only choice. That I needed the strength to end what wasn’t good. This one thing I had to have the balls to do.