by W. R. Bolen
A piece of flaming twine fell from the net into the biggest gas puddle in the pit. With a Wumph, fire soared five feet into the air and a trail shot from one puddle to the next, causing a chain reaction of flames to run wild instantaneously. The biggest stream headed right for Turbo. He let out a high-pitched scream, dropped the gas canister, and dove out of the pit just as flames hit the spot where he had been standing and ran wild around the three-gallon container. When he hit the grass his left sandal was on fire, so he kicked and yelled in terror until it flew off into the yard.
The rank smell of burning rubber and twine mixed with the scent of gasoline as the net melted away in a blaze. Sunken pools of fire were scattered throughout the sand, and a thick cloud of smoke formed above the yard, trailing off into the sky. I took a sip of my beer and stared into the flames, abiding by the law of nature that man must be eternally obsessed with fire, as the blackened net crumbled to the ground.
“Well, that was fucking close!” Turbo yelled as he brushed himself off.
“Way to go, you fucking slapdick,” said Monte. “Now how are we supposed to play?”
“Go buy us another net when the drugs wear off, you fucking pyro,” Rogers said with annoyance.
“I’m not buying a fucking net! I pay my dues on time, which is more than anyone can say for you, Rogers.”
As Turbo hurled rebuttals, the flames finally found their way into the gas container. It exploded in a compact blast that blew Turbo face first into the grass and rained sand down onto the patio. I instinctively ducked to my knees for cover, and Trendall laughed with his head between his legs, basking in the fact that for once he was right to be paranoid.
The new president of Alpha, Taylor Ashcroft, sprinted out from inside the house with his hands in the air.
“What the hell is going on out here?”
I tore my gaze from the inferno that used to be our volleyball court and pointed to Turbo.
“God damn it, Turbo!” Ashcroft yelled. “What the hell?”
All he could do was shrug his shoulders.
We heard sirens in the distance, and the fire truck arrived within minutes.
Ashcroft sent everyone inside and assured the firemen that everything was okay while the rest of the chapter gathered in the kitchen to recount what had happened. Turbo told his version of the story again and again, which involved him dropping a match into the gas canister and hurling it onto the court, which didn’t even make fucking sense. I watched through the window as the firemen reboarded their trucks and an enraged Ashcroft stormed back inside.
“Turbo!” he yelled, red-faced. “You’re being fined $100 by the chapter, and if you don’t have a new net up by tomorrow afternoon it will double. Don’t ever fucking do something like this again.”
As Ashcroft stomped up the stairs Turbo turned toward the group, smiling.
“Fuck the fine,” he said. “It was worth it.”
Volleyball was no longer an option, but everyone was fired up to be back on campus and living together at the house, so we decided some beer pong was in order. There were two rows of six solid wood tables that the ’05 pledge class had constructed for times like these (and meals) in the dining room, so we grabbed a case from the fridge and headed in to rain some Ping-Pong balls. Monte and I were in the middle of a game against Parsells and Nate when Atwater strolled in.
“Those fucking Deltas next door are playing badminton in their front yard,” he said with conviction. “Fucking badminton? Can you believe that?”
Our entire fraternity invariably loathed anything that the Deltas did. They were our biggest rivals on Greek Row, stemming from a feud in 1984 when they unsuccessfully attempted to steal our cannon from the backyard, resulting in a never-ending war of pranks, theft, and vandalism. It’s impossible for hundreds of frat guys living on the same street to get along when they’re trying to bang the same girls and sway the same rushees, but the Deltas’ douchebaggery made the hatred exponentially worse. They were a bunch of try-hards who couldn’t get into Alpha and spent the rest of their lives trying to convince themselves they were as cool as us.
“I’m so sick of their shit,” said Nate.
“I bet it was them that called the fire department,” Monte chimed in.
“Well, now we have to fuck with them,” said Atwater, “and you have to explain why the hell the fire department was here.”
“Wait a minute,” said Nate. “I’ve got a bag of water balloons and a launcher in my room.”
We dropped the Ping-Pong balls and headed straight for his room, which shared a bathroom with Monte’s. Nate strapped the first balloon onto the sink to fill it up while Turbo, Atwater, Parsells, Monte, and I passed around a handle of whiskey and watched TV on his couch. I took a swig and had a sudden epiphany.
“Fuck shooting water at these guys. What are we, six-year-olds at a birthday party? Let’s fill these things with piss.”
The house had already begun to fill my head with destructive thoughts. It does things to a man’s brain, like the hotel in The Shining. But no one questioned my idea, and thirty seconds later Nate had a balloon strapped to the tip of his dick as he leaned over his toilet and filled it with fluid.
“Damn, this thing is tight,” he said. “It’s cutting off the circulation.”
“Don’t lie, needle dick,” said Monte. “You slide in there with room to spare.”
Nate had to pull the balloon off before he was done relieving himself and splattered urine all over the floor as he tied it off. Then he went back to filling balloons with water in his sink while the rest of us took turns making piss balloons. One by one we all did the same thing, laughing as our morals streamed out of us.
When we were finished, Monte put the twenty water balloons and five urine balloons into a trash bag and we made our way up to the crow’s nest, racing to get there first and snickering mischievously.
The top floor of the house was one giant empty room scattered with boxes of old textbooks and trash. The air was stale from lack of air-conditioning and cleaning. Some old composite photos from the 1970s were stacked in a corner with a file cabinet that served as the fraternity test bank, and wooden paddles etched with the names of generations of pledges were hung along the back wall. There were two doors; one was a closet filled with rotting old potatoes that we occasionally locked a pledge in, and the other led out onto the crow’s nest.
I followed Monte to the crow’s nest entrance and Turbo pushed me through with the five-foot rubber slingshot over his shoulder. We stumbled outside and took in a view of the entire campus.
As luck would have it, four Deltas were still playing badminton in their front yard while others watched in lawn chairs like the fucking posers that they were.
“Looks like they’re having a nice little Saturday,” said Monte as he loaded up the first regular water balloon.
Nate pulled his end of the slingshot tight, leaning himself up against the railing, while Turbo stretched the other end and leaned hard through the open door. Atwater, Parsells, and I ducked down and watched through the railing as Monte squatted and yanked the rubber back as far as he could. He quoted the movie Gladiator before releasing.
“At my signal, unleash hell.”
Then he let the launcher loose and sent a balloon soaring into the evening air. It wobbled awkwardly down and slapped up against the fence between our yard and theirs. None of the Deltas even noticed.
“That was fucking pathetic,” I said. “I could’ve thrown it that far.”
I rustled around the trash bag, feeling for a cold balloon. It would be stupid to use a nice warm piss-filled one before we found our range. I placed it into the holster and took a three-second gulp of whiskey while I picked my target. Four of them were sitting around a table playing cards on the porch, so I took aim and pulled the rubber strap back as far as I could, dropping my weight down toward the ground to get a good angle.
“Whatever you do, don’t be like Monte,” said Atwater.
I rele
ased the cloth handle and the balloon launched out toward their yard, giving me an immediate appreciation for physics. I watched it cut through the air and could tell the trajectory was on point. A grin crept across my face as I squinted and tried to will it directly onto my target. It splattered in the middle of the table, sending cards flying everywhere.
Two of the Deltas jumped to their feet while the others wiped water from their brows, and they stared at their now empty table as cards fluttered down around them, trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
They peered around the yard, suspecting their own brothers as the attackers. Turbo tapped me on the shoulder and quickly loaded up another balloon. I pulled the launcher tight opposite Monte, and Turbo loosed his balloon in the direction of the badminton players. It nailed one of them in the back, causing him to jolt forward and drop his racket. He turned and looked up toward us.
“What the fuck is your problem?” he yelled.
“Go back to playing Indian tennis,” Turbo yelled back. “You don’t want to get hurt.”
“I think it’s time to send them a housewarming present,” said Nate.
While Atwater and Turbo exchanged words with the Deltas, Monte and I readied the launcher and Nate loaded up a piss balloon. He launched it far and high into the air, and two of the Deltas skipped out of the way as it splattered on the porch pavement.
“Son of a bitch!” one of them yelled. “It’s fucking piss!”
We all died laughing, and one of them hurled a full beer up at us, hitting the roof fifteen feet short.
“Nice throw, you fucking bitch!” yelled Turbo.
I loaded another piss balloon and sent it airborne. It landed flush on the left thigh of one of the card players.
“Motherfucker!” he yelled. “Get down here and I’ll shove that slingshot up your fucking ass!”
He started walking toward our yard and six of his friends followed.
“You want to go?” Monte yelled. “Let’s fucking go!”
I grabbed the bag of balloons and the five of us hauled ass down to the first floor as fast as we could, jumping down the staircases. When we got to the front door and opened it the Deltas were standing in the yard yelling obscenities and throwing beer cans. I quickly handed everyone a balloon from the bag and we ran into the yard, pelting them while they tried to dodge our assault.
I nailed a stumpy kid with brown hair in the face as hard as I could, and he ran toward me, diving for a tackle. I stiff-armed him on the top of the head, pushing his face into the grass, and grabbed another balloon to peg him in the back. Monte spear-tackled the biggest guy in the yard, and Turbo danced around one of them with a balloon in hand yelling, “This one is filled with warm piss! Do you want it? Do you want it?”
I noticed a group of four sorority girls stopped in the street, watching in awe, and that’s when a Delta named Steve threw the first punch.
Nate took it square in the jaw and reeled backward. I tackled Steve to the ground and started throwing haymakers into his stomach.
“Fuck you, Townes!” he yelled.
“Suck my dick, Steve, you pouty bitch!” I reared back and hit him square in the right cheek.
The next thing I knew Rogers and Ashcroft were pulling me off Steve as a police siren sounded in the street. We scattered like cockroaches. The Deltas sprinted back onto their property and we retreated into the house.
Atwater, Rogers, Turbo, and I regrouped in Monte’s room and made fun of Nate for getting cold-cocked.
“I can’t believe you let that ass pirate hit you in the face,” said Atwater, panting to catch his breath. “I have political science with that kid and he’s a fucking joke.”
“I didn’t let him hit me, dickhead. It just happened.”
“I returned the favor,” I said, cracking the aching knuckles on my right hand.
A few minutes later Ashcroft walked in rubbing his temples, and we all stopped talking and looked innocently up at him.
“Look,” he said. “The cops just told me if there’s one more incident tonight they have to give us a ticket for something. Please, please try and keep it under control. I don’t want to get a phone call from nationals asking why five of our guys got arrested on move-in day. You know we’re having a party in a couple hours, right? We don’t need any more heat! Just! Stop!”
Nate tried to explain.
“Ashcroft, the fucker hit me in—”
“JUST! STOP!” Ashcroft rolled his eyes and stormed out of the room.
“All right, all right, Jesus,” said Nate. “I miss when Harvey was president. He would’ve been in there throwing punches with us.”
“Speaking of tonight’s party,” Turbo chimed in. “It’s time to pregame. Who’s down to finish up that beer pong?”
Ashcroft could yell all he wanted, but there was nothing he could do to stop our momentum. The first night of the fall semester was always one of the wildest. Everyone had been either been cooped up back home with their families, taking summer school, or working, and they needed to let the bad out, so the five of us headed back to the dining room to continue doing just that.
Monte and I got in a couple games against Nate and Rogers, and I was watching Atwater and Turbo set up for a mega-sized game with forty cups when I felt a deep rumble in my stomach. It was my blackout radar reminding me that I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast on the way into town. If I was going to make it through the imminent party I needed some fuel to keep me going.
I convinced Monte to drive to Jack in the Box, and we ordered enough food for a family of five. I inhaled four 99-cent tacos, two hamburgers, and a box of cheese sticks in five minutes, much to the delight of two teenagers watching in awe from the table next to us. On the ride home I felt like a man renewed, saved again by the power of the blackout radar I had finely tuned through years of drinking experience starting back in high school.
We arrived back at the frat castle to a packed parking lot, with several guys unloading the last boxes of liquor from the bed of Scott McCandles’s truck. McCandles was the current social chair, and when the social chair showed up with the beer and liquor it meant it was time for the fun to start. Girls were already roaming the street to see which parties were getting under way, and I sent a mass text to every worthy female in my phone to make absolutely sure they knew we were ready to rumble: PARTY AT ALPHA NOW.
The way I figured it, now that we’d eaten a meal and taken a break from drinking, Monte and I were behind, so we headed to my room and I filled a beer bong three-fourths with beer and one-fourth with whiskey and handed it to him.
“You first, big fella.”
He sucked it down and gagged, but managed to finish it off. I was up next and he made the same mixture for me. I took it down in three gulps, coughing as I pulled it away from my lips.
I was washing the taste out with the last of my Sprite from our fast-food trip when Nate busted through the door with a look of excitement on his face.
“Some GDI just crashed his longboard into the telephone pole in the front yard! He’s cut up pretty bad!”
As my stomach grumbled the three of us ran out to the front yard, and I immediately spotted the injured geed sitting on the curb being tended to by Atwater and Turbo. If there was a combination of two people I wanted taking care of me during a time of injury, they were not it. The geed’s left cheek was scraped with road rash, and blood was trickling down his neck as he held his knee and panicked.
“I caught too much speed coming down that fucking hill,” said the geed. His eyes filled with tears.
Atwater played doctor and wiped the blood away from a three-inch gash on his shin.
“It’s pretty fucking deep, buddy. Can you stand?”
“I can barely bend it,” he said.
“Well, me and Turbo here will carry you up to the house so you can wait inside for an ambulance,” said Atwater.
I grabbed the injured kid’s backpack and we headed back up toward the house. Nate and I took a seat on t
he porch bench while Atwater and Turbo went to wash the geed up, and as the whiskey-beer bong started to sink in I noticed Nate unzipping the backpack.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.
Nate ignored me, dropped his shorts, sat on the porch railing, and held the backpack behind him underneath his bare ass.
“Nate, what the fuck?”
“Sometimes you’ve got to pay the piper, Townes,” he said.
I turned away as he dropped a steaming log into the poor bastard’s backpack.
“Dude, you can’t give that guy a fucking backpack filled with your shit,” I yelled at him. “Obviously he’s going to know it was us.”
“You’re right, Townes,” he said. “This is fucked up and we have to get rid of it.”
He picked up the backpack and hurled it over the porch into the Deltas’ yard, smirking at me.
“There. Problem solved.”
I stared at him in shock as he walked inside the house, totally indifferent to the situation he had just created. The ambulance rolled up while I sat with my mouth agape in complete disbelief, and I decided I didn’t want to be there when the poor guy started asking what happened to his bag, so I quickly headed around the back of the house to join the party.
McCandles and his party committee had set up two shot blocks on the basketball court, which are 240-pound blocks of ice with grooves carved from the top to the bottom. They rest at an angle on wooden platforms so that liquor can be poured down the grooves. The ice makes the liquor so cold that you barely taste it as it slides down your throat. There was already a group of girls in line as Rogers and Trendall dumped Jäger down the slides and into their mouths.
I made my way through the growing crowd and ran into a group of Omega girls. One of them, named Lacey, had gone on Spring Break with us to Puerto Vallarta and we had made out a few times, but I never closed the deal. Seeing the dark direction that the night was already headed in, I decided I no longer needed to be a part of the party and there was no better time than now to finish what I’d started on Spring Break.
“Lacey, how was your summer?” I asked.
