What is that supposed to mean, said Max. The way I liked Nils?
She brought the vegetables together on the cutting board with the edge of her knife. She watched the knife and not her son.
She said, That would be difficult here.
As if Max didn’t already know. He yawned into his hand and acted bored. He caught his reflection in the kitchen’s glass door, the one that slid open to the backyard patio. He looked normal enough, he thought, but maybe he didn’t see himself right. Maybe his desire was obvious. Maybe he walked around with it written across his body and everyone could see. He felt exposed standing before his mother in the kitchen. Exposed in a way his new Alabama uniform of polo shirts and camo jackets couldn’t cover up.
I think he’s great, she said. Pan. For the record.
Max did not know what she thought she got, what she thought she understood about him or Pan or Nils. Max looked at his phone. It lit up like it was speaking.
LONG-DISTANCE CALL BETWEEN HIS mother and aunt as overheard on speakerphone.
MOTHER: If only you could see our next-door neighbor.
AUNT: Tell me.
MOTHER: She’s a certified nut job. And Max loves her.
AUNT: Loves her? Really.
MOTHER: She’s always walking around in football jerseys holding dead azaleas in her hands and talking about Jesus.
AUNT: Max is curious. It makes sense that he likes what’s different.
MOTHER: Well, everything here is different. So, he’s in paradise. But, you know, he is more swayed by power than I expected. It makes me think he doesn’t have strong enough self-esteem. Did I fuck up somehow?
AUNT: Show me a teenage boy that has strong self-esteem.
MOTHER: Kids with good self-images do not get swept up by someone else’s personality. They can differentiate.
AUNT: It’s called peer pressure. It’s called being a teen boy. He needs to separate himself from you. Build his identity in opposition to yours. Of course, he’s not going to be into painting or whatever. That’s what his mom does.
MOTHER: This is different. Trust me. The boys he’s become friends with—there’s something not right with them.
AUNT: How are his headaches?
MOTHER: Fine. Better.
AUNT: How’s therapy?
MOTHER: He hasn’t gone since we left. But he’s not sleeping the day away, and he’s stopped wearing slings on his hand.
AUNT: Well, I don’t see what’s worrying you. This sounds good.
MOTHER: He wants to go hunting. Which, I tell you, terrifies me. I never would have thought hunting would interest Max. He’s sensitive. You’ve seen him with animals.
IT AMUSED LORNE THAT MAX had never held a gun.
Not yet, man, Price said.
Max followed Lorne and Price into the mudroom of the Judge’s house, where Lorne laced his boots underneath the gaze of many decapitated animal heads. The doe appeared especially elegant with her long neck and black eyes.
The Judge kept a gun cabinet crowded with rifles and shotguns used for hunting. The doors of the cabinet were made of glass, so the guns could be gazed at and ready to access for home defense. Lorne showed him the bottom drawer, where his father stored cleaning supplies and extra ammunition. Price explained to Max that to have a gun was a right. Those long hard bodies were powerful things to hold. They were to be respected, tucked into an armpit, cradled like an infant, pointed far away from the body. They were for the event of bad guys, intruders, militia formation.
Max popped his thumb joint. His stomach clenched and unclenched.
These were real? Max asked, looking at a duck’s green feathers, its wings extended into a kind of rigid eternal flight. He brought his hand toward it as if to stroke the wing, then thought better of it and shoved his hand into his pocket. He imagined birds shot dead into the dirt. He couldn’t pick one up without it flying off his palm.
Course they’re real, said Lorne. Killed that one myself.
He explained how he sliced the neck of the deer to stop its suffering, then hauled it into the pickup with his dad. It was his first kill, so his father had rubbed the innards all over his face and neck. The hot blood came steaming off him. He said you could taste her intestines in the air.
A picture memorialized the occasion. There was a little Lorne in a too big camo coat, cradling the giant deer’s head against his thighs. It was nighttime, and the flash had the power of a searchlight. The animal had been smeared across his cheeks into a kind of war paint. Max fixated on the deer’s tongue, large and pink.
We’ll take you deer hunting soon, said Price. Ever get your teeth in some venison jerky?
He tried to hand Max a plastic baggy of twisted, leather-look flesh.
No but thank you for the offering, Max said and deposited the picture of Lorne and his kill back on the cedar shelf where it had been.
Suit yourself, said Price. He shoved a wad in his mouth and chewed. Dude, you have to stop talking formal as fuck.
Sure, Max said. Okay. He scraped his mind for something not formal. I’ll try, he said. I’ll try, man, he added.
Lorne snorted.
Been doing this a long-ass time, Lorne said. A damn long time, brother.
Lorne’s eyes sought out another picture on the shelf. He picked it up and handed Max a framed photo of boys lined up to pose during what Lorne explained was a Youth Dove Hunt.
See? said Lorne. A long-ass time.
During the youth hunt, men took boys into the field and taught them how to kill. The boys aimed at branches to learn how the gun kicked. They aimed higher and higher until the kick hurt and knocked them over. They trained their eye at the smooth arc birds made when carving a flight through the blue cap of day. The boys returned with bags full of dead birds. Their hands were washed but their pants still smelled. The boys in the picture were reed and wire, not yet the bulk of body Max encountered on the field. In one picture, a boy whom Max recognized as Knox held a limp bird by its wing. His face was serious. Dead grass grew tall behind him and farther back skinny trees were scattered in thinned-out patches. The sunset blasted the horizon with streaks of red.
In the photos, the boys were dressed in camouflage shirts and pants and wore orange caps. This was the same outfit Lorne and Price each had on as they stood before Max in the mudroom. A kind of cartoonish twig pattern covered them: army green and tree-trunk brown and dirt tan. Lorne looked Max up and down, took in his khaki pants, and the new golf shirt he bought. He shook his head and chuckled.
You look like a fag, he said.
He riffled through a closet to search for a similar uniform for Max.
Just wait another month or so when it cools down and the deer come out. That’s when you get them good bucks. Here, try this.
Max took the camouflage bib overalls. Their fingertips touched, and Max looked away, embarrassed. The tag called the pattern Bottomland. The undershirt was described as Shadow Grass Blades.
Max undressed in front of the boys almost daily in the locker room, but here it felt different. Lorne didn’t pretend to give him privacy. He crossed his arms and leaned against the gun cabinet and chewed on a piece of mint gum that Max could smell from where he stood. Price paid no attention. He texted with a girl.
I like her, Price said, but her sister and momma look like they fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. I got no clue how she turned out so hot sauce.
He talked about how he was trying to persuade her to be his experimenter, but she would only let him make out with her. Price explained that if she didn’t give in soon, he was going to move on to Betsy, who had been giving him eyes and was D.T.E.
Down to experiment, he said, exasperated, when Max looked at him like he didn’t understand.
Max felt his legs hit the cool a.c. He thought he would shrivel beneath his new checkered boxers. These were not the form-fitting white briefs he wore in Germany. They held nothing in place. It took him by surprise, but Max felt himself harden while
Price talked about experimenting. Lorne’s eyes smothered him, and the stiffening moved down. His hardness struck at the fabric surrounding it, one quick thump, as if it were reaching out toward Lorne. Lorne must have seen it, because his gaze did not waver, and his eyes flashed hunger again. It was a hunger Max recognized. Lorne stood in front of the row of rifles. The guns made Max uncomfortable at first, but the longer he looked at them, the less scary they seemed.
Morning had begun to inch at the horizon when the boys squeezed into the truck with the Judge. It was so humid and sticky everything moved slow, even Max’s mind. Max loved being up early like this. He clutched the thermos of coffee between his thighs and sank into the fancy leather seats. He felt like he was playing dress-up. He flexed his calves beneath his thick canvas pants. He was getting so strong. The truck sped through the morning. Everyone stayed quiet. Above them, a smattering of stars, the moon clipped high into place, far away from the sun.
The Judge turned on the evangelical radio station and the voices were like angels among them. You’re a good good Father. The Judge hummed. Max closed his eyes and worry whipped through him.
You cold, Germany, he heard Price say. You’re shivering back here.
On the edge of a cut cornfield, they ate breakfast sandwiches and drank from the thermos. Price explained how if you didn’t kill a dove when you shot it, you’d have to pop off its head with your thumb.
The heads come off easy, said Price.
They sat on a fallen tree trunk, faces set to the field. It was hopelessly boring, and no doves came, which relieved Max. He put his eye to the scope and watched for a twitch or flicker of life. Still nothing.
Strange, the Judge said.
Max said a prayer to God. He said thank you for not bringing the birds to the guns. As soon as he prayed, a bird burst from the trees nearby.
The Judge rose gracefully and with speed. In the same gentle manner that he did everything, he shot the bird. The boys watched it fall from its flight path to the ground. Max could taste gunpowder, burnt and lingering. Now there were birds, many of them. The Judge whispered in Max’s ear and helped direct the barrel to where he needed to point it. Max kept his breath in his mouth. The gun nudged into his shoulder. Max could sense the lives of every animal that had fled the earth. His mouth watered. He hated the gun in his hands, heavy as a limb. He closed his eyes when he fired, but he knew by the gasps around him that he shot the dove. He felt it, too. The smell found his nose.
The Judge led him through the clammy air to collect their slain birds.
Simple as one, two, three to run out and get them, he said.
They found the Judge’s dove easily. It landed right where it looked like it had. The Judge bagged it, tucking it into the back of his vest, but Max’s couldn’t be found. They looked and they looked. They walked through the weeds and across a blanket of loamy soil, past cut cornstalks, but there was nothing. They discovered a patch of hot blood in the dirt and a few feathers and the Judge said: Curious. How strange. Seems like it just flew back to heaven. Thought we’d have seen it fly away.
You some kind of witch, son? the Judge said.
Max shrugged. He felt nauseated and blamed it on the coffee when he excused himself and dumped his gut into the grass nearby. He burped and wiped his mouth with the back of his shooting hand.
Max didn’t try to shoot another bird, but Price and Lorne killed a few dozen apiece. When they left, their hunting buckets full, they passed families walking toward the field. It was a small miracle no one asked Max to carry one of the buckets.
Stupid. He admonished himself. Stupid to think coming here could be okay.
In the truck, the Judge turned up a program that featured himself talking. Max sat in the back with Price, who texted with his girl-not-yet-experimenter.
The reason we have more school shootings isn’t because of the Second Amendment. It’s because people have lost sight of God. Prayer has fled our schools. They put sin on the television and endorse it. These secular, godless lifestyles. It’s almost like we’ve asked for it. We’ve pushed God out of schools, so of course we’ve ushered in chaos, violence, and death. We need more love in the schools. More God. It’s more God. Not fewer guns. You need to put in the good, and it will overwhelm the bad. These children, they are craving relationship. They are craving the love of their Father.
The Judge turned down the radio and looked at Max through the rearview mirror. His eyes were blue as crushed ice.
What do you think about all that now, Max? Make sense to you?
Max understood that he wasn’t expected to respond, which was good, because Max didn’t know what to say. How someone like the Judge could be wrong about anything seemed nearly impossible. Max agreed that more good was needed. He’d thought about what the Judge had said about mystery. Mystery was the constant in Max’s life. To live with mystery made sense to him. To accept mystery as a part of things.
We’re building up a Christian army, son, and not everyone is up to the task. But what do you think? You want to be a warrior?
A warrior, said Max.
He had repeated what the Judge had said, and that must have sounded like a yes. Max didn’t want to be a warrior, but he did want to belong.
The Judge squinted at him. Max tried to empty his brain of anything bad, feeling certain the Judge was in there, digging at the gray matter. The Judge nodded as if he had glimpsed all he needed to know about Max from that one swift survey and, yes, oh yes, he had approved.
THE JUDGE DROVE MAX, Lorne, and Price to his HQ to make phone calls. He was needed upstate for a campaign dinner. Before he let them out of the car, he prayed for the boys. They bowed their heads. Max felt the Judge’s palm hover just above his scalp. He fought the urge to clasp the Judge’s hand and thread their fingers together. He wanted to touch him.
Father God, said the Judge.
Another language bloomed in the Judge and pushed its way out. His words slurred. The sounds approximated words but were not words that Max knew. Price drove his knuckles into the back of the passenger seat and groaned. Thin white scars crisscrossed Price’s wrists. Price had been sent away to a rehabilitation program a few years ago for what Davis called the sad spells. The women who ran the program used horses to heal depression and rage. She claimed horses absorbed the ailments of those whoever rode them. The sad spells had receded. Price’s wrists had grown new skin.
The Judge’s voice lifted and fell. The mouths of the boys vibrated. But not Max’s voice. His teeth caged the sound in. His lips sank shut. Holy noises left the Judge and became Price’s voice. Lorne caught the end of the strange sounds. Max felt the Judge touch his head. Shivers spread through him. The Judge moved his hand over the crown of each of their heads. Price gasped, and the spirit fled him. Their prayer had finished.
Rise up, Alabama! Davis yelled when he saw Max, Lorne, and Price stroll into the office. Y’all look damn worn out. What’d y’all kill? Tell me. I want to relive it right here.
Max shot himself a magic bird that flew right back to heaven, said Price.
Damn. Look at you, Germany, said Davis.
I’m ready to make my calls, Max said, hoping to steer the conversation. His body still shook from the car prayer. The warmth of it hugged him. It gleamed in his mind.
Price punched Max in the breast and smiled.
Get you a Coke from the vending machine, Price said. Sugar up.
The college game played on the television set, muted. The players looked giant as they marched across the gridiron. The camera panned the audience to show the painted faces. Arms shook pompoms. Hands jabbed #1 foam fingers and threw rolls of toilet paper into the air. Max watched as an elephant mascot ran through the green field flipping himself and riling up the crowd. Max could almost hear the collective roar of the stadium. He’d been practicing this new sport nearly every day now, and he felt like he understood it, the fervor it stirred up in people. It gave them a common purpose, a good team and a bad one. People in Alabama, he
had come to realize, needed things to be one thing or another. Their team or not. With them or against. He understood where the nickname for the team came from, because they did look like a crimson tide, sweeping over the landscape, covering everything in red, drowning anything that wasn’t them.
The camera zoomed in on the quarterback with his parted, worried mouth.
Wish I had a body like that, said Davis who stood, hands on his hips staring at the quarterback, too.
Max admired Davis’s triangle. His eyes slide down the backside of his thigh, the carved slab of calf, the thin ankle.
You will, said Max. He pulled out a chair. Just keep with the weights.
Max stared at a piece of printer paper lined with campaign promises.
Rules for making a phone call, said Davis. One: Mention God’s name within the first two sentences. Two: Offer to pray for them before you get off the phone. Three: Tell them you play football. Rest is right here on this paper.
Pray with them? Max said.
Yeah, man. Listen, it’s not rocket science, just make stuff up that sounds nice. Just follow what we say. After you’ve prayed once, you’ve prayed a thousand times. Jesus will take the wheel.
Max tried a few numbers. Each time the person on the other line hung up right away. He kicked the table leg after the fifth dial zone droned into his ear.
I don’t know what is going wrong, said Max.
Davis smacked the desk in front of him. I know what it is, man. It’s that Nazi accent! They think you’re pranking calling.
MAX FINISHED HIS MORNING RUN and walked into the kitchen. He stood before his parents shirtless, adorned only in his green athletic shorts. He picked up his sweatshirt from the bench in the breakfast nook and wrangled it over his shoulders. god’s way was spelled out in block letters across his chest. His mother had not gotten used to the name. She looked away. He pulled out a chair at the breakfast table and sat down before an empty bowl and began to heap it with yogurt. He stirred in honey and jam. More honey. More jam.
Your sugar intake has skyrocketed again, said his mother. Can you maybe use two spoons of jam and not three? It’s awfully sweet.
Boys of Alabama Page 13
