by Nathan Hill
Samuel stopped walking. His immediate fear was that the police were looking for him. And in some way this was a relief. And a comfort. Because it meant that his disappearance mattered. He played the scene out in his head, the phone call from the school to his father, his father frantic with worry, calling the police, who would ask where Samuel might go, and his father telling them Bishop’s house! because his father knew about Bishop, had dropped him off here, and would remember this because he was a good and caring father who would not one day just leave.
Samuel felt devastated by this. What had he done to his father? The agony he must have caused. His father waiting at home, alone now, both his wife and son disappearing on the same day. And Samuel walked toward Bishop’s house, walked with haste: He would turn himself in, be driven home, be reunited with his father, who must have been sick with worry by now. It was, he knew, the right thing to do.
And he got as far as the headmaster’s house before noticing something that stopped him again. Around the small post that once contained the block of poisoned salt was a line of thin, bright yellow ribbon. It was wrapped around four small stakes in the ground, making a square containing the empty post. The ribbon had words on it, and even though it had been twisted and so some of the words were upside down and backward, the message was easy to comprehend: POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS.
Samuel glanced at the headmaster’s hot tub and saw more of the ribbon there too, surrounding the entire pool and deck area. And the scene in his head changed: The police were looking for him, but not because he’d ditched school.
So he ran. Into the forest. Down to the stream. Splashed along its banks and breathed in the damp leafy rot and ran in the wet sand, water bubbling up and squishing out of the ground wherever his shoes landed. The sun was blocked by the trees above him, the woods taking on that misty bluish color of midday shade. And he saw Bishop exactly where he expected him to be: in the large oak tree by the pond, up on the sturdy first branch, hiding, mostly obscured except for his feet, which Samuel saw only because he was looking for them. Bishop climbed down out of the tree, landing on the ground with a flutter of the surrounding leaves just as Samuel arrived.
“Hey, Bish,” he said.
“Hey.”
They eyed each other a moment, not knowing what to say.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” Bishop said.
“I left.”
Bishop nodded.
“I just came from your house,” Samuel said. “The police were there.”
“I know.”
“What do they want?”
“No idea.”
“Is it about the headmaster?”
“Maybe.”
“The hot tub?”
“Could be.”
“What’s going to happen to us?”
Bishop smiled. “So many questions,” he said. “Let’s swim.”
He yanked off his shoes without untying them, pulled off his tube socks and threw them, inside out, on the ground. His belt buckle jingled as he undid it, then he pulled off his jeans and shirt and jumped toward the water trying as best he could to avoid sharp rocks and twigs, all flailing skinny legs and arms and underpants, which were gray-green camouflage briefs, about two sizes too big. When he made it to the pond he jumped off a tree stump and cannonballed in, broke the surface with a loud Whoop, then came back up and said “Let’s go, soldier!”
Samuel followed him, but carefully: Untying his shoes and putting them where they wouldn’t get wet. Pulling off his socks and stuffing them inside the shoes. Taking off and folding his jeans and shirt and placing them gently on top of the shoes. He was deliberate about this. He always was. When he reached the pond he didn’t jump in but rather waded, wincing as the cold grasped first his ankles, then knees, then waist, then the water reached his underwear and the chill spread.
“It’s easier if you jump in all at once,” Bishop said.
“I know,” Samuel said, “but I can’t.”
When finally the water reached his neck and the pain subsided, Bishop said, “Good. Okay. Here’s the scenario.” And he outlined the premise of the game they were to play. The year would be 1836. The place would be the Mexican borderlands. The epoch was the Texas Revolution. They were to be scouts in Davy Crockett’s army, spying on the enemy, caught behind Mexican lines. They had important information concerning the size of Santa Anna’s army, and now they needed to get it back to Crockett. The fate of the Alamo hung in the balance.
“But enemies are everywhere,” Bishop said, “and rations are low.”
His knowledge of American wars was thorough, impressive, and frightening. When he played war, he played it immersively. How many times had they killed each other around this pond? Hundreds of deaths, thousands of bullets, bullets sprayed along with the white spittle ejected from their mouths as they made the bullet sounds, the machine gun’s tch-tch-tch-tch. Ducking behind trees, yelling, “I got you!” The pond had become sacred to them, the grounds hallowed, the water holy. They felt a kind of formality here, like the feeling one has entering a cemetery, this being the site of their own many imaginary deaths.
“Someone’s coming,” Bishop said, pointing. “Mexican troops. If they catch us, they will torture us for information.”
“But we won’t tell,” Samuel said.
“No we won’t.”
“Because of our training.”
“That’s right.” Bishop had always insisted that members of the U.S. military underwent advanced and mysterious training that allowed them to resist, among other things, pain, fear, booby traps, and drowning. Samuel had wondered how anyone could be trained not to drown. Bishop said it was classified.
“Hide,” Bishop said. Then he dropped below the water. Samuel looked upstream to where he’d been pointing but saw nothing. He tried to imagine enemy troops advancing on their position, tried to call up the usual fear he felt during these games, tried to see the bad guys, which up until now was always very easy. To see them, the bad guys, whatever bad guys they were fighting that day—Soviet spies, the Vietcong, the redcoats, storm troopers—all they’d have to do was say it aloud and they were there, before them. Their imaginations melted into the real world. This was usually so simple that Samuel had never thought about it before, not until this moment, when it stopped working. He saw nothing, felt nothing.
Bishop popped out of the water to find Samuel staring at the trees.
“Hello? Soldier?” he said. “We’re gonna get caught?”
“It’s not working,” Samuel said.
“What’s not working?”
“My brain.”
“What’s wrong?” Bishop said.
His mind felt overwhelmed. All he could see was his mother, her absence. She was like a fog that obscured everything. He was not even able to pretend.
“My mom is gone,” he said, and even as he said it, he felt the crying come, the familiar throat constriction, the way his chin tightened and balled up like a rotten apple. Sometimes he hated himself so much.
“What do you mean, gone?” Bishop said.
“I don’t know.”
“She left?”
Samuel nodded.
“Is she coming back?”
He shrugged. He didn’t want to talk. Another word would make the crying start.
“So there’s a chance she won’t come back?” Bishop said.
Samuel nodded again.
“You know what?” he said. “You’re lucky. Seriously. I wish my parents would leave. You might not understand it now, but your mother’s done you a favor.”
Samuel looked at him helplessly. “How?” His throat felt like a hose with a knot in it.
“Because you get to be a man now,” Bishop said. “You’re free.”
Samuel did not respond. Just hung his head. Below him, he dug his bare feet into and out of the mud. This seemed to help.
“You don’t need your parents,” Bishop said. “You may not realize it now, but you don’t need anybody. This i
s an opportunity. This is your chance to become a different person, a new and better person.”
Samuel found a small, smooth stone on the bottom of the pond. He picked it up with his toes, then let it go.
“It’s like you’re going through training,” Bishop said. “Difficult training that will eventually make you stronger.”
“I’m not a soldier,” Samuel said. “This isn’t a game.”
“Sure it is,” Bishop said. “Everything is a game. And you have to decide whether you’re going to win or lose.”
“This is stupid.” Samuel made his way out of the pond, back to the tree where he’d organized his clothes. He sat down in the dirt and brought his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around his legs and rocked slowly back and forth. At some point the crying had started. His nose was now running, his face squished, his lungs spasming.
Bishop followed him out. “Right now, I’d say you’re losing.”
“Shut up.”
“You have a losing quality about you at this moment.”
Bishop stood above him, closely, his dripping underpants sagging ridiculously between his legs. He tugged them up.
“You know what you need to do,” Bishop said. “You need to replace her.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Not with another mother. With another woman.”
“Whatever.”
“You need to find a woman.”
“For what?”
“For what.” Bishop laughed. “A woman to, you know, to take advantage of. To take liberties with.”
“I don’t want that.”
“There are plenty who will let you.”
“That won’t help.”
“Sure it will.” He took a step closer, leaned down, and touched Samuel’s cheek with the palm of his hand. It was cold and damp, but also tender, soft. “You’ve never been with a girl, right?”
Samuel looked up at him, still hugging his own legs. He was beginning to shiver. “Have you?” he said.
Bishop laughed again. “I’ve done all sorts of things.”
“Like what?”
Bishop stood silent a moment, then withdrew his hand. He walked over to the tree and leaned against it, pulling up his soggy underpants. “There are lots of girls at school. You should ask one out.”
“That’s not going to help.”
“There’s got to be someone, right? Who are you in love with?”
“Nobody.”
“That’s not true. Tell me. There’s somebody. I already know who it is.”
“You do not.”
“I do too. You might as well say it.” Bishop took a few steps toward Samuel and put his hands on his hips, one leg out, a pose that was conqueror-triumphant. “It’s Bethany, isn’t it?” he said. “You’re in love with my sister.”
“No I’m not!” Samuel said. But he knew as he said it that it wasn’t convincing. He said it with too much urgency, too loudly, too much protest. He was not a good liar.
“You’re in love with her,” Bishop said. “You want to fuck her. I can tell these things.”
“You’re wrong.”
“It’s okay. Listen. You have my permission.”
Samuel stood up. “I should go home,” he said.
“Seriously, ask her out.”
“My dad is probably wondering where I am.”
“Don’t go,” Bishop said. He clutched Samuel’s shoulders, to stop him. “Please stay.”
“Why?”
“There’s something you need to see.”
“I should go.”
“It’ll only take a second.”
“What is it?”
“Close your eyes.”
“How can you show me something if I’m closing my eyes?”
“Trust me.”
Samuel blew a long loud breath meant to convey his impatience at all this. He closed his eyes. He felt Bishop let go of his shoulders. He heard the sounds of Bishop moving in front of him, a footfall, then another, something wet splatting on the ground.
“When you open your eyes,” Bishop said, “only open them a tiny bit. Like a squint.”
“Fine.”
“No more than a squint. Okay? Do it.”
He opened his eyes, only a fraction. At first there was nothing but indistinct smudges of light, the abstract brightness of the day. A blur of Bishop before him, a round pink blob. Samuel opened his eyes a little wider. Bishop stood there, a few feet away. He was, Samuel could now tell, naked. His underwear lay wetly at his feet. And Samuel’s gaze drifted to his crotch. This was involuntary. It happened all the time, in locker rooms, at urinals—any opportunity to compare his own body with the bodies of other boys: Who was bigger? Who was smaller? These questions seemed enormously important. So he looked. But where Bishop’s prick should have been, Samuel saw nothing. Bishop was leaning forward, canted at the waist. His legs were slightly bent at the knees in a sort of half bow or curtsy. He had hidden his prick, Samuel could now see. He’d tucked it between his legs so that all Samuel saw was a smooth, soft nothingness.
“This is what she looks like,” Bishop said. “My sister.”
“What are you doing?”
“We’re twins. This is what she looks like.”
Samuel stared at Bishop’s body, his skinny torso, ribs showing through the skin, but rigid also, tense and solid. He stared at that triangle of skin between his legs.
“You can pretend I’m her,” Bishop said. He stepped toward Samuel and pressed his cheek to Samuel’s and whispered into his ear, “Just pretend.” Samuel felt Bishop’s hands on his waist, then felt them gently pulling down his underwear, felt the wet fabric plop against his feet, felt the tiny wobble of his own prick, withered by the cold.
“Pretend I’m Bethany.”
Then Bishop turned around and all Samuel could see was the small pale sweep of his shoulders and back. Bishop took both Samuel’s hands and guided them to his hips. He leaned forward, pressed himself against Samuel, who was having that feeling again, of dislocation, detachment, like at the bus stop this morning, as if he were seeing everything from a great distance. It looked absurd. It wasn’t even him, he thought, down there. Only an odd combination of parts that had never before been put together.
“Are you pretending?” Bishop said. “Is it working?”
Samuel didn’t answer. He was far away. Bishop pressed harder against him, then released, then again, finding a slow rhythm. Samuel felt like a statue, incapable of doing anything but holding this pose.
“Pretend I’m her,” Bishop said. “Make it happen. In your mind.”
Bishop pressed into him and Samuel felt that surge that happened so often in class, at his desk, that cascade of tension, that explosive nervous twitching warmth, then looking down, seeing himself rising and swelling, knowing that he should not be rising and swelling but doing it anyway, unstoppably, and how this seemed to clarify things, how it answered something important—about him, about what had happened to him this day—and being absolutely convinced suddenly that everyone knew what he was doing right now. His mother and father, his teachers, Bethany, the police. Samuel was sure this was true, and it would remain with him for years, the event of his mother’s departure locked in his mind with this moment in the woods, with Bishop, bonded in this way, pulsing against each other, Samuel not exactly liking it but not hating it either, thinking the whole time that his mother knew exactly what he was doing and she disapproved.
It was, he decided, the reason she had gone.
| PART THREE |
ENEMY, OBSTACLE, PUZZLE, TRAP
Late Summer 2011
1
SAMUEL STOOD at the threshold of his mother’s apartment, his hand on the slightly ajar front door, readying himself to open it but not yet feeling able to. “Don’t be scared,” his mother had said. It had been more than twenty years since she last uttered those words to him, and ever since that morning he’d felt haunted by her, always imagining that she was around, spying o
n him from a distance. He’d check the windows at odd moments and scan crowds for her face. He lived his life wondering what he looked like from the outside, to his mother, who might be watching.
But she never was watching. And it took a long time for Samuel to remove her from his thoughts.
She had been a quiet sleeping memory until this moment, and he tried to calm himself and center himself by repeating some of the advice he’d found last night as he scanned those websites: Start fresh. Don’t insult each other. Maintain boundaries. Go slowly. Have a support network. And the number one thing, the big primary commandment: Be prepared for your parent to be radically different from the person you remember.
And it was true. She was different. Samuel walked into her apartment finally and found her sitting at a large wooden table near the kitchen, waiting for him like a receptionist. There were three glasses of water on the table. And a briefcase. There were three chairs. She sat looking at him—not smiling, not having any reaction at all to his presence, just simply waiting, her hands in her lap. The long brown mane of her hair had been replaced by a short cut of military severity, turned to such a silver that it looked like a bathing cap. Her skin was wrinkled in that way common to people who have lost weight—under her arms, around her mouth, near her eyes. He was not expecting these wrinkles, and realized that in his imagination he had not been picturing his mother aging. He had to remind himself that she was, by now, sixty-one years old. She wore a simple black tank top that revealed the bony knobs of her shoulders and her thin upper arms. He worried suddenly that she hadn’t been eating, then felt surprised to feel this way, worried.
