Flesh and Bone

by William Alton

  The cattle come and lower their heads to the hay piled in the yard. They pay no attention to me. I’m the hand of god. I bring them their hay and it doesn’t matter how it gets there.

  “Bill,” Grandpa says. “You’re going to burn the barn down.”

  I grind my cigarette out on the wooden floor.

  “You know better than that,” he says.

  I hang my head. I have nothing to say. There are no excuses.

  “The troughs are empty,” he says.

  There’s a well on the side of the barn. You have to lower a bucket and pull it by hand. It’s hard. I hate it.

  “Go on now,” he says.

  The barnyard is thick with mud and cow shit. I fill the troughs and the cows push forward to get their share.

  “You have school,” Grandpa says from the loft.

  I go to the house and change. I brush the smell of shit and hay and dirt from my hair and teeth. I walk down the road and wait for the bus to come for me. Rain makes me miserable. My bones ache. I imagine summer, heat, a blue sky and sunlight. I imagine rising and disappearing over the mountains. Someday I will vanish and no one will find me.

  Remembering His Lips

  HAROLD OFFERS ME a ride to school. The sun’s just barely over the horizon. Trees stand like skeletons in the darkness, black on black. Riding beats standing at the bus stop.

  “You want a cigarette?” he asks.

  “I’ve got some.”

  “I have some pot if you want a sip before school,” he says.

  We pull into the woods and smoke the weed. Lights bury themselves in my eyes.

  “Good shit,” he says.

  He kisses me on the cheek, his whiskers a rough whisper on my face.

  “Have a good day,” he says.

  I float into the school, the walls bending around me, my face burning with the memory of his lips.

  Wasted

  I’M MORE THAN a little high. Four Oxies, a bowl of weed and half a pint of two dollar wine. I stare through the window of Richie’s car, my eyes focused on the tip of my nose, everything else fluid and blurred.

  Richie cautiously aims the vehicle along the road out of town. Trees march past and fields stretch into the mountainous horizon. Staying in our lane is difficult.

  “Jesus,” Richie says. “Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.”

  We pull into the long driveway to my grandfather’s house and the ruts rattle the car. When we stop, I sit and stare at the barn across the pasture and the cows and chickens in the fields. Rows and rows of berries march in straight lines to the edge of the woods.

  “I have to go,” Richie says.

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know how I’m going to get home.”

  “Watch the fog line.”

  “That doesn’t work,” he says. “The fog line dances.”

  “Do your best.”

  I make it to the lawn and lie on the grass and try to drag the spinning, dipping world to a halt, but there is nothing I can do with the nausea. Somehow I make it to the verge and puke into the dormant rose bushes.

  When the rain begins again, I stumble onto the porch and knock. I knock and knock and knock and Grandma opens the door.

  “Bill?”

  “I need to lie down.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “I need to lie down.”

  She helps me to my room and pulls the blankets back. I fall onto the mattress. Grandma pulls my shoes off.

  “We’ll talk about this tomorrow,” she says.

  “Okay.”

  “There are rules,” she says.

  Yes. There are rules. I broke them all tonight. I’m paying for it now.

  “What would your mother think?” Grandma asks.

  I let the words flow over me, but they make no sense. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks. I’m too high to worry about these things. I’m too high to worry about anything but the quiet walls and the soft, warm mattress dancing and bending beneath me.

  “Oh my,” Grandma says. “Sleep on your stomach. You don’t want to choke.”

  It wouldn’t matter if I did right now. I cannot move or think and worry about anything but the particles of dust pressing down on me while I try to sleep.

  My dreams are blurred and fused. Angels and demons wrestle in a pit of daffodils and roses. A cacophony of grinding metal grates along my nerves. I try to run, but my legs are frozen. There is nowhere to go. There is no way to escape. I spin and fly and fall and float. Everything happens at once. This is how it ends. This is what happens when I wash away the world and dip into drugs’ frayed edges. I’m helpless and sick and anxious. I’m stuck here. I wonder if morning will ever come.

  Courage

  SHE SITS WITH a book in the Commons. The room is too small for everyone to have lunch together, so some of us sit in the halls, the courtyard outside, the Pit. Bekah sits at a table reading Poe. No one bothers her. She is impervious to the noise. Two thousand throats bark their names. Posters and pictures make the walls flutter. Teachers gather at the edges watching, making sure no one gets hurt.

  “What part are you at?” I ask.

  She looks at me. Her eyes are thick behind her glasses. I want to touch her hair, sweep it away from her face.

  “The Tell Tale Heart,” she says.

  “Is it good?”

  “I like it.”

  She puts the book on the table.

  “Can I help you?” she asks.

  “I was wondering,” I say. “I was wondering if you’d go for ice cream with me.”

  “Ice cream?”

  “After school.”

  She stares at me. I become small. Light glares from her lenses.

  “Ice cream.”

  “I’m buying.”

  “After school?”

  “We could walk down together,” I say.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Bill.”

  “Okay, Bill.”

  And that’s it. I have a date. Her name’s Bekah. She sings in the Choir and reads Poe while I smoke cigarettes in the Pit. It probably won’t work out, but you never know.

  Lunch

  DOWN THE STREET from school there’s a restaurant. Down the road from that there’s a convenience store. Lunchtime, I go the restaurant. Barb and Ed’s. I buy an order of fries and tartar sauce and Diet Pepsi. I eat and I smoke.

  I walk down to the convenience store. Chong stands behind the counter smoking a cigarette. He always says my name when I come in.

  “Bill!” he says.

  I buy a pint of two dollar wine because Chong is the only one in town who sells to minors. I walk back to the Pit. Richie and John John sit on the curb getting high. The girls, Mina and Bekah and Tammy stand against the brick wall watching for cops or teachers or the security guard who walks around campus looking for students skipping class. There is no one and the girls each take a sip or two from the pipe.

  The wine is too sweet and too thick, but it smells of mouthwash and we could cop a buzz with no one knowing. Not much of a buzz. A pint doesn’t go far with seven people. It’s gone in ten minutes or so.

  The bell rings and we walk in a line from the Pit to the door to the Ag shop. This is the room where they castrate sheep and pigs. Someone told me they use their teeth to hold the testicles. I don’t know if they’re full of shit or not, but I decided, if I ever take the class, I’ll flunk it. Testicles are for fun not dinner.

  On the Outside

  MR. NEFF SAYS that gays are sinful. Mr. Neff says they are unnatural. Natural law says a man should woo a woman. Men wooing men, women and women, they would destroy the fabric of biology.

  Mr. Neff says that people choose their lifestyles. Gays are unhealthy, sick with hepatitis, AIDS. He says sex is for married people.

  Mr. Neff found Jesus in Vietnam. He found Him on a hill surrounded by trees covering the sun, with dead men in the undergrowth. Mr. Neff found Jesus in the smell of cordite and blood, guts and brains spread over the broad leaves all aroun
d him.

  Mr. Neff says there are no gays in the real world. No gay dogs or birds. No gay deer or ’possum.

  Mr. Neff is wrong. Bulls mount steers all the time. Flamingoes and penguins pair off all the time, loving one another with a commitment not even we can match.

  Mr. Neff says the gays are out to take over the world. He says they’re recruiting young people in the classroom, on the street, in the secret bedrooms at the back of homes. He says gays are more likely to fuck kids than straights.

  Mr. Neff says he will do anything he can to help us if we’re thinking about being gay. He says he knows counselors who specialize in this. He says he can save our lives, not to mention our souls.

  Mr. Neff says Jesus will forgive anything. All we have to do is ask. All we have to do is turn away from sin. I don’t know what sin is, but I know that no matter what I do, it’ll come back to me. No matter what I do, I’ll be on the outside looking in. I’ll be the boy who liked boys. I’ll be the boy who liked girls. I’ll be the boy who’d fuck anything.

  Failed Venture

  WHEN THE RAIN comes again, I stand in the Pit watching the windows glisten. Rainbows stretch over the street’s greasy asphalt. I light a cigarette and watch Bekah come out. She’s short and soft and her hips are gloriously wide. She comes and stands with me. Soon there will be more of us, but for now, we’re alone.

  She smiles and lights a cigarette and presses her shoulder into mine. She smells of smoke and sandwich meat, jasmine and shampoo.

  “Where’s everyone?” she asks.

  I shrug. I’ve been skipping my classes. I’ve been skipping lunch. I’m here only to buy some Oxy from Richie. Richie’s mom has a bad back. She takes Oxy and Dilaudid. She’s lives with pain. Richie sells her pills to his friends.

  Richie and John John come out and light up. They stare at me. I’m pretty rough right now, wild hair, dirty clothes. I’ve been gone a while, spending all of my time floating on my mattress in an opiate haze. Sometimes I’d get up and smoke some weed. I’d steal some of Grandpa’s whiskey from the kitchen. Mom hasn’t bothered with me. She writes the notes for school when I need them. She thinks I’m adjusting to the move, the divorce. She gives me my space.

  “What’re you doing?” Richie asks.

  “I need Oxy.”

  “I don’t have any,” he says.

  “You always have Oxy.”

  “I’m waiting for Mom to refill the prescriptions,” he says.

  “Jesus.”

  “You’re going to get busted,” John John says.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Whatever,” he says.

  Everyone stares at me like I’ve done something sick and unexpected.

  “I should have some tomorrow,” Richie says.

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll call you,” he says.

  “I’ll be home.”

  I walk away from the group. I can hear them talking about me. I can hear their whispers. Their pointed little rumors will run through the school before long. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is the high I’m waiting for. All that matters is the hours between now and tomorrow when Richie will bring me the Oxy. For now, I’ll make do with weed and whiskey.

  At the End of the Day

  NIGHT BEGINS WITH bats. Trees stand black on black along the road. The rain writes poems in the mud on the road’s shoulder. I listen to the plinking noise of water dripping from the gutter to the small pool gathered under my window.

  Grandpa sits in on the porch stropping a knife, a steel blade as long as my forearm. I don’t know what he intends to do with it. The thing is too big for farm work. Grandpa has a six inch knife he wears on his belt, but loves this short sword.

  I call Mom at work.

  “When are you going to be home?” I ask.

  “Three, maybe four.”

  “Grandpa’s scaring me,” I say.

  “He’s harmless.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m busy,” she says. “Deal with it.”

  The phone cuts out. I stand in the yard and the rain presses my hair against my head. A car flashes past on the road. I go into the house. Grandma’s watching her stories on the television. She likes soap operas and talk shows.

  “Makes me feel fortunate,” she says.

  I have chores in the morning. I have school. I go to bed. At least the door locks. I don’t have to worry about Grandpa with his huge knife or Grandma with her fascination with other people’s lives.

  Gifts

  BERRIES, BLOOD AND bees sing in the little wind coming from the mountains. Harold takes me to a rodeo and we sit in the bleachers drinking beer and cracking peanuts with our thumbnails, digging the meat out with our fingers and chewing them to mush with our dirty teeth. Bulls and horses shit in the arena’s sawdust and dirt. Clowns rush the horns and cowboys climb the tall metal fence, escaping the pissed off bulls crashing around, looking for something to gore.

  A vendor sells leather belts in the parking lot. Harold buys one with my name stitched into it. I wear it now like a ribbon of courage, daring anyone to ask where I got it. I tell myself that I would tell them that my boyfriend bought it for me. I tell myself that I’d be brave and tell them that I’m in love with Harold, but I won’t. I won’t tell them that because Harold is not my boyfriend. I’m not in love with him. He’s the occasional fuck.

  After the rodeo, Harold takes me home. The house is dark. Mom’s working and Grandma’s at Bible study. I’m drunk from the beer and the peanuts have filled my stomach so that there’s no room for supper. I sit in the living room and stare at the blank television. The room spins around me and I close my eyes. It’s comfortable here, but I cannot stay. Mom doesn’t like it when I sleep on the couch and I don’t want to be here when Grandma comes home. She’d smell the beer on me. Grandma disapproves of my drinking. She’d want to know where I got it and I’d have to lie to her. I don’t like lying. Lies are too hard to keep track of. Eventually someone’s going to find out.

  Someday, someone’s going to find out about Harold. There’s nothing I can do about it, but it won’t be from me. I’ll never tell anyone anything. Hopefully, I’ll be gone when the word breaks. Hopefully, I won’t have to worry about what people think. I doubt it though. Secrets always come out at the worst possible moment. I know that I’ll have to leave when the word reaches Mom, when my friends find out, but until then, I’ll just pretend I’m just like everyone else. I’ll pretend to be normal instead of this torn up kid waiting for his life to end.

  Target

  POSTERS AND NEON signs make the basement all green and red, blue and yellow. Couches and tables cut the floor into sections. Small windows pierce the concrete walls up near the ceiling, sealed shut, just in case someone wants to break in.

  The Oxy comes on fast and the weed is sweet and harsh. We sit on the floor. The floor is hard and smooth and a carpet keeps the cold concrete from seeping into our legs.

  Richie and I kiss on the couch. The couch cradles our naked bodies. This is what we do when we’re high and have the house to ourselves. I close my eyes and let his lips run down my chest and belly. He takes me in my mouth. I take him. We fuck and grunt and squeal.

  The sun goes down and the windows go dark and Richie turns on the lamp. Shadows etch his bones and muscles.

  “You’re beautiful,” he says.

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “You are,” he says. “You even taste like oranges.”

  I don’t know what that means, but I guess it’s a good thing.

  “Are we a couple now?” I ask.

  “This is just fucking,” he says. “I only go out with girls.”

  That makes sense. Dating guys in this small town is dangerous. No one knows what’ll happen if you come out to all the Christians and their rules. No one knows what’ll happen if you make yourself a target.

  Lonely

  A CREEK RUNS at the edge of the woods down the hill from the house. Stones jut out
of the water, covered with moss and lichen. The water is all white noise. Leaves are beginning to unfold in the trees. Crocuses bloom in the dark, wet soil, purple as bruises.

  I sit on a stone and toss twigs into the rushing water. I smoke cigarettes and line the ground-out butts on the stone beside me. The sun is diluted behind a bank of clouds. Soon summer will come and things will dry out. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I’m learning to live with rain.

  I think about the desert from which I come. I think about the sagebrush, the junipers, the poplars and tall dry grass.

  When I was a kid, there was a hill at the edge of town that I’d climb with my friends. We’d wander amongst the radio towers and the giant rigging that held the star that lit up every Christmas.

  I miss my friends. I miss walking in the heat, the snow in the winter. I miss going to the lakes north of town and jumping from the cliffs rising there.

  I’ve made friends here, but they don’t know my history. They don’t know what I’ve gone through. We have no history. They’re the folks I get high with, nothing else. Not that I had many friends back home, but the ones I did have knew me. I knew them. Our secrets kept us together. We shared a kind of misery. Here, all I share is time and space.

  I walk home and kick my shoes off on the porch.

  “Where have you been?” Grandma asks.

  “The creek.”

  “Were you careful?” she asks.

  “Always.”

  I go to my room and close the door. In here, I can pretend that I do not share a house with my grandparents. In here, I can pretend that I have friends who know everything about me, friends who know when to ask questions and when to let things lie. I dream of having places to go and places I am comfortable. Right now, all I have is Oxy and weed and Boone’s Hill.