The Children and the Wolves

by Adam Rapp

  I wrote to this guy named J.T. Clarke, not because I like his books, but because he looks pathetic.

  Dear Mr. Clarke, I wrote.

  Your author photo makes you look like you often fall prey to your own physical ineptitude. Do you always wear those glasses, or did you put them on for the photo to intentionally look less masculine?

  Sincerely,

  Carla Reuschel

  Honors English

  Tom Toomer Junior High School

  Personally I think books are useless and I told Wilbur Logg as much.

  This is how that started:

  How many of you enjoy reading? he asked.

  His big sad poet eyes. His thinning gray poet hair.

  Of course, Sophia George raised her delicate little hand. Wilbur Logg asked her what her favorite books were and she started listing all the so-called great ones, like The House of Mirth and Lord of the Flies and The Old Man and the Sea.

  Then Cory Bath said something about The Great Gatsby and how it still relates to the world today and I must’ve made a hate face because Wilbur Logg looked straight at me and said, And what’s your name?

  That’s Carla, Mr. Moyer said. Carla Rueschel. One of our best and brightest.

  Wilbur Logg said, What books do you like, Carla?

  I said, I don’t.

  Oh, he said. You’re in Honors English and you don’t read?

  No, I read, I said. I just don’t like books.

  He said, And why’s that?

  I said, Because they bore me, kid.

  Everyone was pretty shocked I called him kid.

  Wilbur Logg said, I’m sorry you feel that way, Carla.

  Bounce, I said.

  Mr. Moyer took his glasses off and made a pained face.

  Wilbur Logg rubbed his bushy gray poet eyebrows and said, I personally think books are one of the greatest things about being alive. Novels. Plays. Volumes of poetry.

  I said, But a book doesn’t really change anything. It’s just a lot of words.

  And the Poet said, I think a book can absolutely change things.

  Like what? I said. Your grade from a B to an A?

  He said, Literature can inspire revolution. Words are absorbed purely by the reader. The reader creates the world of the story with the author. He or she is in essence a performer. It’s an experience that can excite all the senses.

  I said, Not in my opinion, Wilbur.

  Carla, Mr. Moyer said, come on now.

  I said, Thinking’s not doing.

  But thinking can lead to doing, Wilbur Logg said.

  Doing’s doing, I said. I’m a doer.

  Then Wilbur Logg turned to Mr. Moyer and said, Mr. Moyer, is Carla always this tough?

  Mr. Moyer said, She can certainly be challenging but she’s one of our finest.

  I said, Don’t talk about me like I’m not here, Arthur. And watch your adverb placement.

  Carla, Mr. Moyer said. Don’t be disrespectful, please.

  Then I recited Mr. Moyer’s mailing address just to keep him off balance.

  I said, Arthur Moyer: Three-fifty-two West Street, apartment seven.

  That sure as shit shut him up, the chucklehead.

  After a silence during which I ate half of a Heath bar, Wilbur Logg said, I’m sorry you feel that way about books, Carla.

  I said, It’s Bounce, you slug.

  He said, Excuse me?

  Nothing, I said. Don’t mind me.

  Sophia George wanted my Heath bar. I know the anorexic vegan wanted it more than anything.

  Wilbur Logg said, I’m sorry you feel that way about books, Bounce. Hopefully someday you’ll read one that will change your mind.

  Not likely, I said.

  And he said, Well, you’re missing out on one of life’s great joys.

  I offered, You sort of already said that, sporto.

  That got a laugh too.

  Then he opened a small paperback book with a goat on a mountain called The Goat on the Mountain and Other Poems and he read us a poem about drinking black coffee and some pears on a table. Utter useless bullshit. While he was reciting the poem he made a face like God was whispering in his ear.

  After he was finished Mr. Moyer led an applause and then Wilbur Logg closed his book and said, Does anyone here understand the meaning of capitalism?

  No one answered. You could hear the light buzzing over us. I love that sound. It means school isn’t working, that the teachers are losing the battle.

  He said, I realize you’re only in the eighth grade, but I understand you’re all quite advanced.

  Sophia George raised her hand. Sophia George with her big brown eyes and her delicate hands. Her ass the size of a cantaloupe. She plays the piano and she’s never late for class. I’m going to put an end to her piano playing. I have a plan that involves a popular carpentry tool used for driving nails.

  Wilbur Logg called on her and Sophia George said, Free-market economy.

  Good, he said. Very good. Anyone else?

  Skip McKee said, The opposite of Iraq.

  And what is their economic system? Wilbur Logg asked.

  Iraqi, I said, and everyone laughed.

  Some of them laughed because they were scared but Todd Bender thought it was genuinely funny. You could tell by the way he put his hand over his mouth all discreet.

  Then Wilbur Logg went on to talk about how our country is greedy and how everyone wants more more more and how everything is bloated and supersized and how all our food is pumped full of chemicals and hormones and how our bloodstreams are clogged with cholesterol and how, even though presumably we live in a free-market economy and dance to the narcotic choruses of let freedom ring and the egalitarian dictates of a people-be-heard democracy that all of this grotesque consumerism limits our freedom. He said it isn’t our fault — meaning the twelve eighth graders in Mr. Moyer’s Honors English class — that we are owned by these false systems, but that the fault lies with the older generations and the fault lies with television and the fault lies with Sears catalogs and the fault lies with the Internet and the fault lies with the media and Fox News in particular and on and on and on like that.

  He was so filled with passion, I thought his neck would burst. I could almost see blood splattered on the chalkboard.

  There was a long pause during which he caught his breath and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.

  You could hear the lights buzzing over us again.

  You all are in prison, he added somberly. You don’t realize it, children, but you’re in prison.

  I ain’t no chile, I said.

  I said it like a nigger, and Todd Bender laughed again.

  Then in my regular voice I said, If I’m in prison, I’m having a pretty good time.

  Wilbur Logg took a breath and said, Bounce, may I ask what it is that you do for a good time?

  I answered, Why, you looking for a good time?

  He said, I’m talking about extracurricular activities.

  I said, I watch TV. I play video games. I go to the mall. I eat Cinnabons and Sbarro pizza.

  He said, And what are you passionate about?

  Extreme fighting, I answered. Especially cage matches. The hardcore jams. Bare-knuckle battles. Stuff you can’t even see on pay-per-view.

  Where might one see this sort of thing? he asked.

  On the Internet, I said. And I supersize my combo meal every time I go to Mickey Dees.

  He shook his head and said, God help you.

  And that’s when he sealed his fate.

  God help me.

  I said, God has a cotton-ball beard and werewolf hair.

  I said, God’s too busy conducting conference calls with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

  That’s enough, Carla! Mr. Moyer said, his glasses off again. No more!

  I just smiled and ate the rest of my Heath bar.

  And that night I decided to kidnap the Frog. Sometimes it takes the smallest thing to start an important, irreversible chain of ev
ents. I’d been seeing her by the Home Depot. That’s where I go get my Slurpees and throw rocks at the old man who breaks down boxes in back of the 7-Eleven. I never hit him — I miss him on purpose. I just like watching the foolio jump.

  The way I explained it to my crew was like this:

  We were in the cafeteria, eating chicken-cutlet sandwiches.

  Orange, I said, Wiggins, we’re about to change the world.

  I told them about how we would kidnap the Frog and then when the time was right, we’d start collecting money on her behalf. And how we would use the money to make a famous poet disappear.

  What’s wrong with the Poet? Wiggins asked, hot-lunch crumbs all over his Salvation Army T-shirt.

  He takes up the wrong kind of space, I answered. There’s the right kind of space and the wrong kind of space. It’s as simple as that.

  And that seemed to satisfy him.

  To Wiggins I said, You trust me, right?

  Wiggins nodded.

  You too, Firebox.

  Orange also nodded, the chucklehead.

  They were in like Flynn.

  I said, My perfect little monkey boys.

  Orange, with his long stupid face and his curly red hair, and little Wiggins, with his hazel cat eyes and long pretty lashes and his old man walk and the knife he keeps in his pocket like a promise.

  Three is a magic number.

  A prefect triangle.

  An unholy trinity.

  theres a monster crying upstairs

  I think hes a good monster cause his crying has a song in it

  sometimes I can hear him breathing in the floor

  I wanna give him a hamburger

  a hamburger and a flower and a cupcake with blue sprinkles

  His house is a old red barn.

  Bounce got the address cause her English class had to write to him after he visited. His barn house is outside of Dumas, off of Frontage Road, where the cornfields turn into dirty black hills.

  When we pulled up to the Poet’s barn house I looked in the window expecting to see some cows or sheep or a huge horse attached to a tractor or like a big white windmill with some pigs under it but it was just him and he was rocking back and forth in a rocking chair and smoking a pipe.

  Bounce dropped me off and was like, Be a good monkey-scout. Efficiency wins the war.

  I knew I had to scout good and fast cause I had to walk home and it was already starting to get dark.

  I knocked on the door to see if he had a dog. There was a big black one with yellow eyes and it barked with viciousness. It was too big for me to fight. I figured it could kill me before I could stab it. I ain’t afraid to stab no dog, it’s just risky, specially cause black dogs like to bite white people, cause dogs is racist just like everyone else.

  After I saw its yellow eyes I ran back to the road and jogged home.

  It was so dark I started to get nervous about UFOs. But sort of excited too. There wasn’t no cars and the corn was breathing. I had to stop jogging cause my lungs were burning. I puked in the gravel and then I had to sit down for a minute. The crickets and the corn and the mystery bugs and the heat was like hypnotism on my mind. I was sweating like a fat church nigger. I could smell my own stink coming through my clothes. Sometimes I think my stink makes me want to commit crimes against people and against societies. Legendary crimes like burning down houses or making mass murders or robbing that place where they keep all the gold in Fort Knocks. There’s a good stink and a bad stink. Mine is mostly bad.

  The moon was sick and gray like it had a fungus. It kept disappearing behind the clouds and it seemed like it was losing power. Like it might fall a thousand feet and turn into space slobber.

  When I got home, Dirty Diana was asleep in her nurse’s uniform. It looked more like a costume than a uniform. Like she got drunk and passed out at a Halloween party.

  Before I fell asleep I couldn’t stop picturing myself fighting the Poet’s big black dog. Like a real hellified fight to the death. I would stab him but he would keep coming at me with his yellow eyes. Like he couldn’t be killed no matter how many times you stabbed him.

  * * *

  The next day we were at the Mickey Dees on Bantum Boulevard, eating Extra Value Meals. I was supersizing like a fiend.

  He’s got a dog, I reported. Big black dog.

  Bounce was like, So we’ll poison it.

  I went, Poison it how?

  We’ll put the poison in some Alpo burgers. Throw them in his backyard.

  Orange said, Bye-bye, Fido.

  So then me and Orange had to go to this guy’s place on Locke Street. His name is Tab and his house was half-broken down like there were some walls missing and you could see the wires and the pipes in the ceiling and there was a mound of dirt in the kitchen. The whole place smelled like wet paint and cat piss.

  Tab is old — like at least fifty-something — with a brown wig and a brown mustache and yellow stains under his eyes. His homo roommate Neal went to get the poison. Neal is only a couple of years older than Orange and me. He has long hippie hair and he wears bright red lipstick.

  When Neal came back with the poison I said, Are you like sposed to be a clown?

  He smiled and went, Do you like clowns?

  He handed Orange a brown bag with the bottle of poison in it.

  I pointed to the mound of dirt and said, What’s that for?

  Flowers, Tab answered. Do you like flowers?

  I was like, No.

  Neal said, We’re starting a vegetable garden.

  I said, In your kitchen?

  Tab said, Is that what you think this room is? One man’s kitchen is another man’s vegetable garden.

  Then Neal asked us if we wanted tea.

  He said, Tea, boys?

  Orange was like, We gotta go.

  Tab was wearing a fuzzy blue bathrobe and slippers. His mustache had yellow in it, which matched the stains under his eyes.

  I noticed that part of a ladder was laid over where some of the staircase was missing. Somewhere in the house a baby was crying. It might have been on a TV but I think it was real. It was either a baby or a cat getting heated.

  Then Orange crumpled the bag of poison. He was scared, I could see it in his eyes. He nudged me and then I paid him for the poison and we backed out of the crazy house.

  * * *

  That night we soaked the Alpo burgers in a pan of the poison and put them in a big Ziploc bag and then Bounce drove me to the Poet’s red barn in the Lexus. I walked around to the back, near this little shed.

  Through a window in the shed I could see the Poet writing at a desk. There was a spiral notebook in front of him and he was making a face like he was praying. His desk was made out of a door and there was stacks of books and jars of pens all over it. There was a coffee machine and a clock radio too. His big black dog was sleeping in a blanket on the floor.

  I was starting to roll on some Oxycotton Bounce gave me when we soaked the Alpo burgers. She likes giving me Oxycotton. The other day she gave me some Speed Stick deodorant too.

  The crickets sounded like Coke bottles sliding on a icy street. Even though it was hot as fuck I was thinking about ice and winter and a big snowman holding a Domino’s pizza. Like the delivery man got froze in a blizzard.

  I think I got too close to the window cause I could see my breath steaming on the glass.

  This man don’t got nothing, I thought. Just a dog and some books and a coffee machine.

  For a second I felt myself passing through the glass, like I was a ghost or like I was the sound of those crickets. My one knee wobbled and I had to keep myself from falling. Sometimes my knee falls asleep and I have to punch it.

  Instead of planting the Alpo burgers in the backyard I threw the Ziploc bag on the roof of the shed.

  On the way home I said, That man don’t got nothing.

  Bounce was like, Poets don’t want anything.

  I said, How come?

  Bounce went, Because they think they’re
above it all. They look down on us consumers.

  I was like, What’s a consumer?

  And Bounce said, An American. A happy American.

  Then I said, It was just him and his dog.

  She said, Poets don’t know what real living is.

  I said, You think he’s got a family?

  Bounce turnt to me and said, You feel sorry for him.

  I flipped on the air-conditioner and she flipped it off and went, Don’t feel sorry for that old chucklehead.

  I don’t, I said. I don’t.

  Then Bounce told me I was too sensitive.

  I was like, No I ain’t.

  Then we drove some more and she went, You planted the Alpo burgers, right?

  Of course, I answered.

  Lying to Bounce made me feel all loose inside. Like my stomach was a sponge full of sewer water.

  Bounce said, It’s what he represents that matters, Wiggins.

  What does he represent? I asked.

  She said, He takes the fucking un out of fun. The sin out of Cinnabon. Life’s too short for that, right?

  I nodded and then she turnt the headlights off and it was so dark it was like we were nowhere. I could feel a thrill in my nuts and stomach. You could almost hear all the houses whispering to each other.

  Look at those freaks, they told each other. Look at those nobody kids.

  The crickets and the houses and the clouds slipping around in the sky.

  I said, What would your parents do if they found out you was driving their car?