The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (8 page)

“What you wanna do that for, motherfucker?” The black boy’s
sneakers smacked dirt coming towards us, and we both ran, machetes slapping our flanks, ran until the road became paved and there were plenty of streetlights.

Tim stopped under a light, leaned back against the post, and smacked his fists on his forehead, sliding down into a squat, gagging on tears. He stood up and streaked dirty palms across his cheeks and looked at me as if I was part of all this.

“There’s no God, Francis, I hope you realize that. I’m not ashamed for crying.” One of his legs was dashed with blood. He was shaking. He told me he’d never killed anything more than a mosquito. “I would’ve like to cure that dog,” he whispered, eyes red, “but it was past that. There was no reason for it to be alive except to suffer. Explain that.”

We didn’t spend my three dollars. I went to bed numb and exhausted and plunged into sleep. I dreamed about it. I woke in the darkness and God wasn’t there anymore.

The highway had marsh on each side now. Egrets snaked their necks down and plucked minnows and fiddler crabs out of a creek. The bus crossed the bridge toward Marshland Island, half wrapped in a fence that wound among oaks and pines. Our bus passed through the gate and rumbled down a dirt road.

Mr. Thomas parked in a field between a rusty water tower and an old plantation house with brick wings added on. The effect was of a mansion with school buildings attached. Everywhere was green or striving toward green, and you smelled river mud and pine and salt water.

The teachers led us off the bus and packed us together on the field. Sister Ascension, the principal, plodded towards the building to find our guide. She climbed each step by raising one foot onto it, then bringing the other up alongside, like a toddler.

The traffic was a distant swish. I saw an osprey drifting in slow circles over the deeper part of the island, near the river.

“I wish I had my .22,” said Pete Hancock. Pete was one of those kids whose lips move when they’re reading.

“If it weren’t for their claws,” said Sister Rosaria, hand at her brow above the vulture nose, “I’d say they were God’s best creatures.”

Ascension came down the steps, her upper arms shuddering at each new level. Behind her was a tall guy in a flannel shirt. The nun, flushed from the effort of descending, said something and spread her rubbery lips in a smile, and the man faked a good-natured laugh, tilting his head back and squinting into the sun. He had a shaggy beard and mustache, brownish, and his hair was tied back in a ponytail. He wore little round glasses, hiking boots.

Mrs. Barnes clapped twice and said, “Listen up, people,” and fixed an expectant smile. She turned to Ascension, and we turned too.

“Class,” Ascension’s voice was round and hollow, “this is Paul Steatham. He’s a naturalist. He’ll be showing us around and teaching us about the plants and animals on the island.”

Paul Steatham petted his beard and smiled, eyes glittering.

Rusty mumbled, “That guy’s smoked a few joints in his life.”

His mother, right behind us, said, “Russell Scalisi, if you embarrass me in front of these teachers, I’ll sell the television.”

Paul, with the beard, explained that the animals on the island were originally native to Georgia. He spoke of extinction as if it was a clattering machine that might someday crush our own fingers. Because his voice was deep and rich, an axe thunking a tree stump, everyone listened. He asked us to stay on the trails and be quiet and not to tease the animals.

“These creatures aren’t completely wild,” he said, “because we feed them and they’re used to seeing people. But they aren’t pets. Some may eventually be released into the wild. They can be dangerous, okay? Now who’s got a question?” He set his hands on his hips.

Eric Johnson, who was going to be a doctor like his father, raised his hand up stiff.

“Yessir,” Paul said.

“What are the animals here used for?”

Paul pinched his beard and stroked it. “Nothing. They’re not much use to us in our technological world. On the other hand,
we’re not much use to them either.” His eyes crinkled at Eric, and his voice mellowed. “That was a good question, man. This island is just sort of an ark, I guess.”

Ascension beamed. “It’s our duty to preserve and protect God’s creatures.” Paul nodded.

Tim grabbed Rusty’s shoulder and stood on tiptoe. “Do these animals of yours have souls? We’re taught that they don’t. Do you believe that?”

Sister Rosaria turned. She had on her harlequin glasses now. Her beakish nose pointed at Tim.

The man rolled his head and showed his bristly throat and chuckled in polite embarrassment. “I can’t answer that one. Depends on your point of view. A Native American would say they have souls. I do know they’re incapable of sin. Even when an animal kills, it’s in innocence. Maybe they don’t need souls.” His eyes slid towards the teachers. He grinned. They smiled back, relaxed and charmed, except for Rosaria, who had reddened. She was coming our way.

“He’s one of us,” Tim said.

Rosaria pinched Tim’s earlobe from behind, yanking it down so hard Tim smacked to his knees, and I wondered if she’d seen our awful comic book. The nun’s teeth clenched, coffee-stained.

“Mr. Sullivan,” she said, “you just stay beside me today. Any more cleverness and you will not graduate. Do you understand?” She jerked the earlobe for emphasis.

Tim stood up but kept his head cocked to ease the pull. He looked at Mrs. Barnes. She opposed physical punishment. Mrs. Barnes diverted her glance to Rusty’s mother, who was frowning at us.

“You’re a very small boy,” said Rosaria, who was very small herself. She released the ear with a tug. “You’ll probably be tiny all your life. You should compensate with intelligence and generosity, not rebellion and clownishness.”

Tim hated himself for being small. He hung from the monkey
bars for fifteen minutes every day, to stretch himself. Even a friendly mention of his height made him rabid. I knew he would get himself suspended now. I waited for the fireball of four-letter words. It was conceivable that he’d slap her face. But he only said, “Yes, Sister, I’m sorry. I was showing off.” He swallowed hard.

She said something only he could hear and smirked kindly. Tim was even smaller now, a drooping of the shoulders, downcast eyes. As we walked along, he gradually drifted away from her, and Rosaria fell in with the teachers at the back. Tim was quiet beside me.

Paul guided us into the trees. Dead branches laid end to end marked the sides of the trail. We passed a pool of water, the surface solid with mulchy leaves and a dusting of new pollen. Frogs chirped and plunked in before we saw them. Melissa Anderson tightened a bow in her hair and asked if there were any snakes around.

Charles Sapp, our class reptile expert, sneered, “No, snakes only live in storybooks, Melissa.”

Therese Parker, the girl with the pet raccoon, smiled adoringly.

Paul said, “Yes, please don’t bother the snakes, girls.”

Twigs and leaves crunched underfoot. I imagined I was an Indian and tried to walk silently, but couldn’t. The trail ran under pines and mossy oaks and magnolias. Several of the boys found sticks to carry. The teachers kept telling us to stay on the trail. The girls clumped together in the center and pretended to be frightened, except for Therese Parker, who kept squatting at the edges to cluck at squirrels.

Birds squawked down at us or crackled through the dead leaves. The dullest of them, the mockingbirds, whistled and chirped and trilled as if they were trying to make us believe there were hundreds of them.

Sister Ascension walked at the front with Paul, her bulk filling
the trail by half. Paul took slow steps to stay beside her. The breeze lifted her powder-blue veil, exposing the hair on the back of her head. At the rear, the teachers and Mrs. Scalisi all said how pretty it was, smiling up at the treetops, taking greedy breaths while diamonds of sunlight slid across their faces.

We crowded clattering onto a wooden bridge that spanned a marsh. Minnows flickered in the water holes. Rusty leaned out over the railing and turned his head from side to side. Suddenly he pointed right beneath the bridge. “There’s an alligator!”

And then we could see it, a fat alligator basking at the edge of a water hole. The girls drew back to the other side of the bridge and clung to each other, tittering. The boys pressed against the rail, mouths open, clutching sticks. At the far end, a drainpipe splattered water out of an embankment. Charles Sapp calmly said, “There’s another one,” and aimed his finger at the marsh grass.

A huge gator, mud-gray, lay in the sun like a crusty statue. Near the drainpipe, behind him, a squirrel buzzed and fluffed its tail, and we wondered how many of them the gators got.

Paul began telling us about alligators, that they were related to the dinosaurs, to birds too, and like magic, like your eyes adjusting in a darkened room, a dozen of them materialized before us without any movement, sprawled in the mud, in the grass, or reduced to nostrils and eyes on the water’s skin. Two orange and yellow babies, thin as snakes, slipped into the near pool. Paul made a soft oof-sound and cupped his hands around it, and the baby gators answered in the same voice. The girls moved closer for a peek.

Donny Flynn said the big ones looked rubber. He wanted proof they could move. He took some pennies from his pocket and cranked his arm back, enclosed in a plaster cast, but Mrs. Barnes said, “Don’t you dare,” before he could launch them.

Paul led us to a fence enclosing a stretch of pines and scrub. A little creek fed into a pool near the fence. As we stood there, five deer appeared. If you didn’t concentrate, they vanished into
the color of the woods, and you had to wait for the slow dip of a head, a flank twitching, before you could fit the outlines together again.

I pressed up to the fence. There was a blur of brown and tan and then the buck trotted over to me. He scraped his hooves on the ground beside the pond. He nodded and lowered the tines of his antlers through the chain-link and rasped them on metal, rolling his head. I put out my finger and touched the point of his antler, smooth, cool, and my heart hammered. The girls were cooing around me now, wanting to pet the deer.

Rusty and Tim crowded up beside me.

“I don’t see how my dad can shoot those things,” Rusty said. “Pretty neat, hunh?”

Tim said, “This is wild. I’ve got spring fever or something, man. I’d like to get ahold of a girl right now.”

“There’s about thirty of them right behind us,” Rusty said.

“I mean girls I didn’t know before they had breasts.”

I’d known most of the girls since first grade, like sisters. But lately they had changed shape, they wore their uniforms differently, and even their voices had changed to fit the additional curves. The difference fascinated me, especially that moment with everything warming and sun-printed and greening, and part of what I felt for Margie touched them.

Paul rested a flanneled arm across the fencetop. “In a natural state, these deer would be preyed on. That keeps them fast and graceful, almost invisible, and prevents overpopulation. I’m sure you’ve studied that catastrophe. We’re coming up on the predators next.”

Rusty, Tim, Wade, and I lined up across the front and walked in step.

The trees dripped moss and sunlight. An occasional deerfly stung, was slapped against a neck, fell, and then rose buzzing to sting elsewhere. Our black uniform shoes gently thundered to a bend in the trail, then clapped up a long wooden plank onto a deck. A fence skirted the marsh in a wide oval and wires ran
along it to a metal box mounted on a pole. I saw only trees and grass and the river beyond.

Past a green palmetto fan slid something brown. There were gasps, steps taken backwards or forwards. It was a large cat, a panther. The cat slunk by underneath us, its shoulder blades jabbing smoothly beneath the fur as it padded a worn path in the grass all the way around along the fence. The cat stopped and looked up. Its eyes flashed and held on Tim, who was leaning dangerously out over the log railing, his toes six inches off of the deck planks, his eyes bright as the panther’s. My breath snagged as he tipped past his balance and flailed, treading air, but Rusty already had him by the belt, pulling him back before anyone else saw.

The cat dropped its gaze and prowled. Everyone crept closer. Paul, fallen behind with Ascension, crossed his arms, satisfied with our awe.

Tim whispered, “That animal saw something in me.”

Rusty, whose mouth had been hanging open, said, “He saw eighty pounds of meat, is what.”

Tim glowered. “Eighty-three.”

Wade said, “I’m going to draw one of those. Look at its muscles.”

I said nothing. Another cat, slightly smaller, appeared from the opposite side and began pacing towards the first one. The original cat raised its paw, fat as a mitten, and both panthers tensed and flattened and snarled at each other so that my eyes got wide. The panther swiped the air between them. The girls gasped, drew back again. Sticks were forgotten in the boys’ hands as they stared at these animals that could surely kill them. It smelled like the scariest part of the circus.

“Mountain lions,” Paul said quietly. “Cougars. Some folks up in the Appalachians call them ‘painters’ or panthers. They used to rule this part of the country, but there aren’t many of them left.”

“What happened to them?” asked Therese Parker, staring at
the cats, her hands twisting nervously into her plaid skirt so that it raised above her knees, showed gooseflesh you wanted to sink your teeth into.

“People killed them because they were dangerous, unpredictable. Now everything’s safe.” He smiled with one side of his mouth. “Automobiles and nuclear plants and all.”

Craig Dockery, the kid who’d hurt the duck, asked which would win, a cougar or an African lion. Paul said it depended. Donny Flynn said his granddaddy had shot a cougar in Florida. Paul asked if he ate it, but Donny didn’t know.

Tim nodded us over to the side away from the others.

Rusty said, “So how do we capture one of those things?”