Boys of Summer

by Steve Berman

  He turns back to Harris to say, “I think I owe you an apology,” but the boy is already gone, lumbering uphill with his hands in his pockets.

  Part II

  Harris does not return to the lake, not even to watch a group of graduate students haul the monster onto a giant blue tarp and then drag it into a U-Haul truck. In the sun, the monster has pruned and turned a speckled pink. The skies have blackened with crows and vultures, screeching and clobbering each other in midair, while a student waits with a long-handled broom to shoo them off the carcass when they get too close.

  Cody, on the other hand, cannot seem to pull himself away from the lake. This is all well and good for the kids in Blue Bear Cabin, who have eschewed all their other activities in favor of a vigil around the monster. Cody has never seen them so quiet. They stand shoulder to shoulder, forming a long row, still and silent.

  “What is it?” Heather Cromley asks him, her eyes hidden beneath the shadow of a baseball cap. She sounds older, as if witnessing this spectacle has unleashed some adult understanding that had been cocooned inside her all along.

  “I don’t know,” Cody says, which is the truth.

  They fall quiet again, listening to the asthmatic gasps of gasses shifting inside the animal’s stomach.

  No one knows, and tomorrow, the monster will be gone from Lake Oxwater forever.

  *

  Harris does not say anything when Cody follows him into the woods, the light of their campfire trembling in the distance. Harris has never missed a campfire; Cody used to like watching him handle roasted marshmallows with the tips of his fingers.

  “Where are you going?” Cody calls out. The woods are dark, and full of bears and snakes and other terrible life forms. All around him, he hears branches creak and snap. “Hey, man! Stop!”

  Since the monster’s death, Harris has been content enough to offer his mouth up for kissing, but he’s refused to speak about Oxwater Lake and shies away whenever Cody’s hands wander below his waist. I really should have figured, Cody thinks. With his narrow shoulders, and children’s books, and the way his eyes wobbled in the sunlight, Harris has always seemed entirely asexual.

  Ahead of him, Harris finally comes to a stop and slumps against a tree trunk, pushing his sneakers beneath a pile of last year’s fallen leaves. He does not look up when Cody approaches, swinging a branch ahead of him to tear down the cobwebs.

  Harris’s face is hidden by turquoise shadow.

  “I’m sorry,” he mutters. His voice does not sound human. Cody thinks of a wounded dog, grunting and struggling in the dirt. Cody is afraid of big dogs. Cody is afraid of darkness, and car accidents, and earthquakes, but he thinks of the monster now, bloated and bruised on the shoreline, and only feels sad.

  “Don’t be.”

  “I just…I think…” Harris begins, but can’t finish.

  Cody drops his hand down on Harris’s neck, cradling the base of his skull. “Don’t be,” he repeats. “I understand.”

  *

  It’s because he loves the darkness, Cody realizes. This happens late in the night, as his pulse finally falls in line with the rhythm of the croaking frogs outside. Harris loves the mystery. It is why he won’t leave this place, with its bottomless lakes and its nightmarish forests, and the monsters that whip and churn beneath the water. He regards the civilization outside in the same way he watches a storm collecting along the horizon—a rush of electricity and light that will cast away the hidden places of the world.

  Harris never actually wanted to see the monster, Cody knows. Harris just wanted to know it was there, to feel his heart overflow with desperate happiness, because it meant Camp Oxwater still kept secrets from him.

  *

  For the first time in Cody’s memory, the campers beg and whine until someone drives into town and picks up a dozen newspapers from the general store. Everyone is desperate for news on the monster—the palm-sized articles that appear on the third page of the local section, detailing the latest scientific findings from the university.

  Only the Red Rabbit kids are forbidden to handle this literature. Harris performs regular raids on their cabin when they disappear for archery or horseback riding, scooping them up in one shot and waddling to the Dumpsters. Cody catches him there, standing in repose, as if awaiting instructions.

  “What are you doing?” Cody snaps, and watches Harris’s spine tilt slowly to the left.

  Harris refuses to answer him.

  *

  That evening, the monster is spotted for the twelfth time. Cody has to ask Harris’s mother to confirm the story three times before he begins to make sense of it. This is what happened:

  Peter Bentley and Bree Watts, leaders of Green Goose and Purple Porcupine respectively, had snuck down to the edge of Lake Oxwater to engage in what Darcy Webb had insisted were the most heinous of activities.

  “He had his hand on her breasts,” she hisses, and Cody decides not to mention that he’s been trying to get into her son’s pants for the last two weeks. “The thing rears up out of the water behind them in one swoop. Bree had my husband’s camera with her, and she managed to snap a photo. Here.”

  Cody takes the Polaroid. He does not mention that this is not the first photograph of the monster in existence. It is better than his, showing the long neck of the monster parallel to the tree line. Harris will be so pleased.

  “You know what I think?” Darcy says, reaching out to take Cody’s wrist in her hand. Her hands are calloused from years of gardening gloves, and firewood, and glue.

  “I think there’s a lot of monsters out there in the lake. I never told anyone this, not even Harris, but—I swear, sometimes, I hear them call out to each other in the night. They are lonely sounds, and lately louder and more desperate. I think they know one of them is missing. I think they’re looking for him.”

  Cody pushes the Polaroid back into Darcy’s hand and folds her fingers over it. Cody can remember when Darcy Webb looked like a supermodel from the sixties, tanning topless on the dock in a pair of oversized white-rimmed sunglasses. Now her clothes are bleached from insect repellent and Cody is certain that she has forgotten how to apply mascara, but he wishes he could keep his hands suspended over hers for just a moment longer.

  “Oh, Cody,” she says. Her breath is cold against his cheek. “Please make sure Harris doesn’t go out on the lake at night. You’re the only one he’ll listen to.”

  Cody thinks of the bronze key, still dangling from Harris’s throat. “Sure thing,” he lies.

  *

  “We’re breaking out of here,” Cody whispers through the screen. Harris is staring up at him from beneath the comforter, a cloth mask pushed up on his forehead. When they’d shared a cabin, Harris couldn’t sleep with the lights on, but Cody was too terrified to leave them off. Harris had worn the mask in compromise.

  “Grab your shoes.”

  Cody watches Harris stumble out of his bed and feel for his sandals in the dark. The camp has been in chaos since the latest monster sighting, and they have not spoken all day. From outside the cabin, Cody cannot tell whether or not the curve to Harris’s lips is a grin or a scowl. It doesn’t matter. By the time he appears outside, shrugging on a white T-shirt, Cody has covered Harris’s mouth with his own.

  “You seem optimistic,” Harris mutters.

  Cody doesn’t quite understand, but he’s enjoying the kissing and the way Harris’s eyes seem to retain the reflection of his lantern, even after he’s turned away. “I thought you’d be happy.” Cody’s hand travels down Harris’s breastplate. The key is there, heart-warmed and heavy. “You were so upset when you thought it had died.”

  “It did die,” Harris says, which Cody supposes is true. “Of course there are more out there. They must mate, Cody. They must reproduce in some way.”

  Cody knows this. He’s going to study biology at Columbia. He wouldn’t even believe in monsters if he had not seen them for himself.

  “Then, what—?”

  Ha
rris kisses him to shut him up. It’s not fair play, but Cody lets it happen. He takes Harris by the wrist and tugs him in the direction of the storage cabinet. Together, they pull the boat down toward Oxwater Lake, switching off at intervals.

  It is an unusually cool night. The scent of pine, crisp and antiseptic, fills Cody with complete gratification. Even the sky is winter-clear. He was to squint against the stars whenever he looks up.

  The lake is flat. Harris rolls his jeans to the knee and drags the boat in. For a moment, watching water creep up the fraying strands of Harris’s pants, Cody thinks he will never be able to leave this place. Not if this boy is here, reading and dreaming and sneaking out in the middle of the night to search for monsters he has always known were there.

  “Let’s go,” Harris says, and they do.

  The sky is reflected perfectly on the surface of the lake. Cody has to fight a wave of vertigo, hand heavy on Harris’s knee. It feels like they are encased in a shell of stars and infinite nothingness.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Harris says, not for the first time.

  “I’m not,” Cody says and means it.

  *

  They do not spot the monster that night or the next. It doesn’t matter. After their third excursion, they haul the boat back into the storage shed, and Harris takes Cody’s hands. For a long time, he does nothing, staring down at the places where their calluses rub together and flake off into the soil below.

  “Do you hear that?” Harris says quietly. Cody’s nose brushes against his cheek.

  It takes him a moment, and he feels it first—a low-frequency vibration in his jaw and eardrums. Cody thinks of the electrical wiring outside his window in New York, or the potential energy suspended in the air a moment before lightning hits.

  “Is it them?” he whispers. The sound burrows into the valves of his heart, deep and lonely. Darcy Webb was right. This is a mourning call, an expression of grief. He has never heard it before, but it must be embedded deeply into his genetic code, his most primitive of memories.

  Harris says instead, “I’m not ready to leave this place,” and punctuates the sentence by kissing the crook of Cody’s mouth. “But I may be, one day.”

  Cody understands. He doesn’t think he’s quite interested in summer courses, anyway.

  They walk without speaking, stepping carefully over luminescent white stones and crickets and candy bar wrappers. Owls watch from overhead, faces flat and cruel and beautiful. Harris’s hair is damp beneath Cody’s fingers.

  They come to the edge of the forest, and then Harris kisses him in earnest, placing his palms on Cody’s stomach. After a moment, Harris tugs the shirt off him and flattens it against the ground. He allows himself to be guided down, feeling dried grass crackle beneath them. Harris’s mouth finds the untouched places behind his ears, along his jawline, his Adam’s apple.

  Cody Simmer and Harris Webb are not afraid because they are together, clinging to one another in the darkness, while the voice of a lonely monster winds its way through the woods around them.

  Brass

  Marguerite Croft & Christopher Reynaga

  His name is Ben, and he plays the tuba. This means he marches at the back of the marching band. I play the trumpet, which means I march in the middle. I wish tubas marched in the middle and trumpets marched at the back so I could watch Ben march all day long.

  Ben is a waver, which is probably how surfers would dress if there were beaches anywhere near southern Idaho. He pegs his cotton pants, wears long-sleeved button-down shirts untucked, and has a swept-back crown of Running on Empty River Phoenix hair.

  I’d like to watch him ride the waves of Los Angeles or San Francisco or whatever big city he’s talking about lighting out for this month. I’m not even sure he surfs, but waves aren’t the only thing missing in this small town. Half the storefronts we passed on Oakley Street are empty, and though I can hear the crowd on Main Street cheering, the people of this town are still slipping away.

  Ben isn’t wearing waver clothes today. His broad arms are flexing in the red jacket with the heavy gold piping, and the Romanesque helmet with the Legionnaire symbol on the sides. Not even Ben can make that uniform look good, but as the sun shines off his skin as we round the corner, he tries without even realizing it.

  My uniform is insufferable under the Fourth of July sun. We’re playing “Mony Mony” for the gazillionith time. In my head I hear Mr. Turner chanting, “Left. Left. Left right left,” just as he has all summer back on the football field.

  Sweat has made a dam along the interior of my helmet. My back is damp, my crotch is catching up. My armpits would be slick if I hadn’t stuck a couple of my sister’s maxi-pads under my arms. There’s a party after the parade, and I don’t want to stink when I talk to Ben.

  The drums roll and we jump from “Mony Mony” into “Day-O,” another song I never want to hear again after this long, hot summer is over.

  I can hear Ben’s oom-pah-pahs behind me. I think about how our feet are marching together, at the same pace. His left foot strikes the ground in perfect tandem with mine. Never getting closer or farther away.

  I first met Ben in the seventh grade, just before he came out. Our last names are the same until the fourth letter, so we’ve always had to sit together when our teachers assign seats alphabetically, him just behind me. We talked often enough and probably would have been better friends if I’d been more into alternative rock bands, like R.E.M., and he’d been more into watching Doctor Who reruns. I saw Ben all the time, but I didn’t notice Ben until last January when he showed up to band practice, just after Christmas break. Somehow he’d gotten taller, his buzzed hair had grown, his shoulders had broadened, his smile was less crooked. Suddenly he was less of a geek for playing the tuba. His long fingers and wide shoulders were perfect for handling the giant brass instrument that had once seemed ridiculously big in his hands. I wondered about the muscles hiding under his shirt, and I remembered how Mr. Turner joked that band geeks were the best kissers because we had awesome embouchure.

  The class always cracked up at that, and I’d steal glances at Ben to see if he laughed nervously too, but he never did. I never knew who Ben might have kissed, though I suspected Knox or Tommy Costas from the way I’d seen them talking in the hall, their faces close enough to make me blush as I hurried past.

  I’d close my eyes and wish he’d talk to me like that.

  When we talked it was just about things like movies we’d seen the previous weekend, or the places he wanted to go. Places I longed to go with him, but never had the guts to say.

  I couldn’t remember all the conversations we’d had, but I did remember the important ones. I remembered the time I baked a cake for a history project. The cake fell and the frosting melted from sitting next to the classroom heater all morning. Everyone laughed, but Ben said those things didn’t matter—he said all that mattered was how sweet the cake tasted, as he popped a bite into his mouth. There was the time I had been sick for a month and Ben called to find out where I’d moved to, and when he found out I hadn’t escaped town, said that he hoped I got better soon. And then there was last year when I came out, and some of the guys in the band completely shunned me. I hadn’t expected it to hurt this much—Ben made it look so brave years ago, even though he got pushed around. Ben had come up behind me as I emptied the water keys on my trumpet and packed it away. He told me to forget those guys and this whole town if that’s what it took; he understood. He put his hand on my shoulder for a second and it was hot like the sun.

  We play “Mony Mony” one more time and stop at the end of the parade line, just below the faded red marquee of the Empire Theater. We’d held band fund-raisers there for new uniforms. This year we’d watched a screening of Young Einstein with Yahoo Serious. I’d sat with Ben, and for the whole movie I thought about how hot Yahoo Serious looked, and how ridiculous his hair was, and what would it feel like if Ben reached over and took my hand on the velvet armrest.

  Ben, who se
cretly folded his lab notes into origami in class. Ben, who was so talented, he could jam the melody line on the tuba better than the flutes and clarinets. Ben who had the guts to do whatever he wanted—even if what he wanted was to get the hell out of this town and never look back.

  Our hands stayed apart—the fingers of Ben’s left hand softly drumming his knee, my right hand curled beneath my thigh to hide the chapped red skin from my dishwashing job.

  I hear the final shrill bleat of Mr. Turner’s whistle and the perfectly formed rows of marching legionnaires break against the end of Main Street like a wave. The others spread outward, tucking away their instruments, pulling open the buttons of their jackets. I turn and turn and can’t find Ben until I catch sight of him far down the street, lugging his tuba toward the cars.

  I never took track in school, but I make it look like I might try out.

  *

  “Thanks for ditching the party early to give me a ride to work,” Ben says.

  We sit in the front seat of the blue station wagon that’s technically my mother’s but that I like to pretend is mine when I get to drive it. We’re in the back parking lot of Grocery Outlet, where Ben works as a stock boy, pulled close to a stack of splintered pallets. The windows of Breyer’s Shoe Store next door are boarded up neatly, but there’s already a bit of graffiti scrawled across one window. Clouds move across the moon, and the car is illuminated only by the store’s rainbow sign.

  Ben’s fingers pull against the busted door handle, which does nothing most even numbered days. “Kind of a junker, isn’t it?” He laughs.

  “It’s not my car,” I say. I reach across Ben, our faces almost touching, and yank the door handle, but nothing happens. I yank again and realize that I can smell the salt of his sweat from the march. I realize if I don’t make happen what I want to happen, the rest of the summer will be an empty waste. If I can’t try to start having something with him tonight, it will never happen.