“You can earn a bit. I got ninety-five cents, and you can have that.”
“For free?”
“No.”
“For what?”
“Helping me with my project. With the mapping.” Garrett did his best to sound mature, use the three-year age gap to his advantage.
“Huh?”
Garrett gave Cecil a handful of sweaty coins, and even though he was near the point of fainting with curiosity, he kept his voice calm when he asked the boy to undress. Cecil was hesitant, and Garrett said sternly, “This is science. This is art. And you already got paid for almost nothing. That’s like giving your word. And if you don’t do it,” growling, now, “I can tell those men who’s taking you tomorrow that you lied. Ripped me off. That you belongs in jail, and not some cushy house for stupid boys.” “Uh. Oh.” Cecil unzipped his grimy coat with the matted fur hood, and let it fall to the floor.
“I didn’t mean that,” Garrett whispered. “I didn’t. I just wants help with my job. And we’re pals, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You likes me, right?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“You wants me to make a map?”
Cecil nodded. “You won’t show no one?”
Fingers ticking his chest, Garrett said firmly. “Cross my heart. I swears to God on my very own life. Sure, you can’t swear on nothing bigger, right?”
At first he was shy, but Garrett coaxed him. “How else do you think research is done, Cec?” “Huh?” “This is serious business.” “Yeah.” And soon Cecil relaxed, at some points even laughed hysterically as though Garrett was tickling him. Moving his limbs this way and that, taking flash photo after flash photo of all of his parts. “Show me, show me,” Cecil cried, nearly choked on the molasses candies filling his cheeks. “Hey, take one now,” Cecil hollered, as he bent his knees slightly, gripped himself, pissed into the dark hole where trout once emerged. Garrett hunched down, camera pressed to his face, and took the photo.
Garrett carefully documented the curve of the boy’s knee, the place where chin became neck, the ear lobe, open mouth, the dip of the last rib above a goose-pimpled stomach. Two bare feet and ten, no, eleven toes standing on the weathered wood. White lower back, dimples above a clenched but chubby backside, turning, bending, lifting. Garrett captured everything. Every single fold of flesh and ripple of blubber. Every inch of skin that covered Cecil Taylor’s body. Piece after piece, a human puzzle. Many photos were blurry, of course, but Garrett knew what they were. Besides, the most important ones were crystal. Crystal clear.
“You’re beautiful,” Garrett whispered when he ran out of supplies.
“Huh?” said Cecil.
“Nothing,” Garrett replied. “Nothing.”
HE FOUND an old pickle jar in the barn filled with nails. He tossed the nails near the foundation of the barn, covered them with rocks. In the kitchen, he rinsed the jar with sudsy water, and when it was clean, he carried it to the stream. After he dried the inside of the jar with his T-shirt, he gently placed his photos inside. He put a weighty rock in with the photos to keep the jar from floating away, sealed the lid, and then lowered it into the water, among a tangle of roots and pale mud. Presence disguised by a healthy current, gurgling unwittingly over shimmering blue stones.
Garrett went to the creek every day, extracted the jar, wiped it with a scrap of towel before opening it. For as long as he could spare, he stayed there, handling those images of purity and love with the utmost of care. He would never see Cecil Taylor again, he knew that, but he had him here. Every single piece of him.
THE CROSSBAR OF the swing set groaned, and Garrett opened his eyes. He sighed, looked down at gangly legs, his dirty feet, and the tufts of hair growing just behind his thickened toenails. Even now, sometimes the sight of his adult body surprised him. And disappointed him. When he was a child, his skin was so much cleaner, neater.
Though years had passed since his collection had been destroyed, Garrett still missed it. He was certain those images would soothe him. Satisfy him. If he still possessed his human map, he wouldn’t need anything else. But he had made a mistake. He was just a boy, after all. A whiff of laziness. A few lost hours. Everything was gone.
Garrett left the swing, walked across the grass, then along the gravel driveway, ignoring the pricks of sharp stones on his soles. Reaching the end of the drive, he looked up and down at the ditches and the potholes and the emptiness. He raised his arms, twisted and stretched until the bones between his shoulder blades cracked. But none of the tension receded.
21
EARLY IN THE day, a sharp wind awoke Toby from his slumber. Melvin stood near the end of the bed, a fistful of sheets in one hand, pair of black binoculars in the other. Wet wide smirk on his mouth.
“C’mon,” Toby whined, reaching for the covers. He had been swimming inside his head, without need of oxygen, and he was about to glide around a bend of coral, swaying plants, sensed he might find something female. “You trying to torture me on my birthday?”
“Shut up, Toad.” Melvin balled the sheet, tossed it in the corner. “Wake father and it’ll be done.”
“What it?” Sticking his head back into his pillow, guinea pig hair, his words were muffled. “I don’t want to watch no birds.”
“Do you think I’d be up at this hour for bloody birds?” Right into Toby’s ear, hot breath.
Melvin’s voice, with its controlled anticipation, sent a shot of adrenaline through Toby’s body, and he rolled out of bed, hauled on crumpled shorts and T-shirt. In the kitchen he jammed dry cereal into his pockets, then followed his brother out into the uncertain darkness of a warm summer morning. They headed north through the woods, and over an orderly field filled with still-headless cabbages and stunted turnip tops, across a dirt road and down into another forest. Moving through the sweet air, Toby held out his palms, clutched the soft fir branches and let them slide slowly through his hands.
“Get the lead out of your arse, Toad.”
But Toby wanted to linger, wanted to enjoy this moment alone with his brother, just the two of them, wrapped up inside a place filled with bright new growth, world beyond peeled away. As each year passed, these instants were fewer and further between. Their trout poles hadn’t left the porch since spring, and they had not pilfered a single worm from Mrs. Verge’s vegetable garden. They hadn’t either played a single game of softball in Edgar’s field, Toby always a shirt, his brother a skin. And even at eleven years old, Toby would not venture down to the mud hole for a swim. Not without Melvin. He knew no matter how tightly he tied the string on his trunks, someone would manage to tug them down.
Toby crouched, stuck two wiggling fingers inside a perfectly formed cavity in a tree, considered what kind of creature might reside there. Then he stood, yawned, flicked sleep from his eyes, wondered if Melvin and their father would give him eleven bumps for his birthday. Feet and wrists clutched, backside hitting the floor one moment, belly grazing dust from the stucco ceiling the next. Maybe the swings. Side to side. That was a bit easier.
“Geez, Toad!” A hiss. “Should have brought the frigging baby buggy.”
“Alright, alright,” and he picked up the pace. Trotted through the dense undergrowth, kept his elbow cocked against the spruce branches whipping back towards his face. Even though he wanted to, he never slowed to bounce on the wonky wire fence with the rotting posts.
They came to a fat tree on the edge of someone’s property, and under the instruction of Melvin, Toby shimmied upwards, sneakers slipping on the knobby outgrowths, tearing wet bark, turpentine pockets bursting. He reached a thick branch, slung one leg over, hoisted his body into the groin of two major branches, his backside pinched. Melvin followed suit, perched on the opposite side of the trunk, legs straddling the spruce. Before them was a backyard of patchy grass, a rusting barrel beside a great mound of wood junks. Glistening silver, a junk car lay silent, door hanging off, wheels sunk into muck. Other than a faint glow of light from a wind
ow on the main floor, the house was bathed in shadows.
THREE NIGHTS of unusual warmth, and a sticky heat had settled in the crook of Knife’s Point, refused to lift. His leg tangled in the sheets, body damp, Garrett tossed and turned, mind sleeping, dreaming, but flesh awake. Inside his bedroom, the air was stale and still, and he leaned his head back, tried to fill his lungs. No relief, oxygen depleted, and his body was exhausted, thinning out. A haze, hovering on the horizon. He spread his arms out, opened his mouth, felt his tongue playing with the scar on his upper lip. Garrett followed his whims, didn’t resist as his dream unfolded, as he slid through this sweaty trance.
Floating up, now, he swung his legs over the side of the bed, skin pale in the waning moonlight. He curled his toes, but barely registered the cheap navy carpet he’d purchased from Mr. Clarey. Carpet that was supposed to remind him every morning that he was now a working man. But he didn’t want to introduce Mr. Clarey into his dream. Not now. Not ever.
His legs jerked up and down, and he scratched his thighs, twisted the hairs and tugged. Squeezing his eyes closed, he drifted to thoughts of a young boy who had come into the store. Ahh. Skimming his truck along the aisles, one foot tucked underneath his bottom, sliding his backside over the floor. Metal on the truck shimmering as the boy cruised through a shaft of dusty light. If only he could own the child for just a moment. If only he were allowed to love him.
TOBY SHOVED a handful of cereal in his mouth, felt the hard bits pull in his saliva. Spitting flecks of sticky corn, he murmured, “Idn’t this the Dawe’s?” He glanced at the pick-up trunk near the back stoop, its blackened lights facing them, watching them.
“No, it idn’t the Dawes’.”
“The Newmans’?”
No response.
“Not the Fagans’, Mel,” Toby shot out. “Tell me that’s not whose house that is.”
“Shut it.” Melvin tugged up the sleeve of his shirt, looked at his watch. “Any second, now.”
“But, Mr. Fagan. Bread us and fry us if we gets caught on his land. Let alone up in his frigging tree.”
“Shut your trap.”
“And Garrett. That shotgun.” Toby could picture Garrett Glass with his gun. He often sat at the end of their driveway, just inside their property line, perched on a rusted metal chair, ripped vinyl seat. He sat there, watching the kids walk home from school, while slowly rubbing the burnished metal barrel with a scrap of towel. Up and down. Up and down.
“Shotgun. Not much good that’ll do him. He got to haul it out of his ass first.”
Toby shifted on his perch, scraped his front teeth over the top of his thumbnail. “But—”
“Geez, Toad. Do you want to go home?” Irritated. “Go on, then. Get.”
Toby stared across the backyard, scanning the walls, the steep roof, the chimney with its broken lip. “I don’t want—,” he started, and then a light popped on, upper floor, middle window. A bright light, fully illuminating the inside of a room. And then there was a girl, a woman, maybe, stretching, arms up, shirt lifting, skin all over. “Oh,” he said. “Oh.” Toby stole a glimpse at his brother, saw Melvin, binoculars pressed to his face, mouth open.
“Here,” Melvin said through his smirk. He handed the binoculars around the trunk. “You go.”
They slipped, and Toby caught the leather strap, gripped now with all fingers, eased the strap over his head in case his hands failed him once again. Slowly he lifted them to his face, squinted, adjusted the slippery wheel for focus. There she was, standing in the brightness, scratching her head with colored nails, moving about the room, her underwear a triangle of mint green covering her backside. Toby held his breath. He had never seen a girl arise from bed before. Surely, he had seen his mother wandering about wrapped in a bathrobe, slightly dingy and thick like a winter pelt, but it was not the same as this. Not nearly the same. Toby peered through the lenses again. He caught her, just as she was closing the bedroom door.
“She’s gone,” Toby breathed, and he recognized that part of him was thankful, relieved it was over. That she had retreated into her private world, and Toby could now return to his.
“Just wait,” Melvin said, shaking his hand. “It gets better.
Waaay better.”
“Was that Angie’s sister?”
“Yeah.”
“DeeDee?”
“Fucking A.”
“How’d you get here?”
“Through the woods. Like you saw.”
“I means, how did you find out about this?”
“Wandering ’round.”
“At six in the morning?”
“I was a bit fucked up, if you wants to know.”
“I’d say.”
“She got to be up on the highway every morning. Selling vegetables and shit from the back of her father’s truck. Crap time to get out of bed, but I idn’t complaining. Now give the fucking things back.”
But Toby didn’t relinquish the binoculars, peered through again. Then another light, another room bursting into existence. A bathroom, beige toilet, tub, and the girl appeared there, yanking down her underwear, plunking herself down on the toilet. Toby’s stomach tilted as she leaned to one side, wiped, and he swallowed hard as she stood, crossed her arms, pinched her shirt near the waist, peeled it upwards. Pushing the binoculars so hard into his face, he soon saw double, four arms, four mounds of backside, turning, turning, yes, four swollen cups, like white bowls hanging from her chest. Bases painted dirty brown.
He watched her test the water for her shower, and lift one hefty limb over, then the other, behind a plastic curtain now, distorted pink flesh, moving, bending. Toby thought he could hear low humming from behind him, and he started, only to realize the sound was coming from deep within his own throat. Within a few moments, she yanked back the thin sheet that separated them, and she stood there, wet and naked before the mirror, hair in a towel turban. He could see the varying colors of her flesh, arms, knees, and calves fawn brown, belly and backside like shortening with a mild flush.
At once, he was acutely aware of his hands, damp, wrapped snuggly around the textured body of the binoculars. He imagined his palms skipping over her dips and grooves, hitching her skin with sweaty nervousness, hugging her, laying his head on those two white balloons that would surely feel like enormous marshmallows. He wondered if there was milk there. Perfect human temperature. If only he squeezed. Uh.
He gripped the binoculars tightly, felt light-headed as he followed her movements as she dressed, fiddling with fabric, twisting a pink bra, tugging on underwear and shorts, an oversized T-shirt. Then, just as Toby realized he needed to breathe, she stepped towards the wide open window, and stared out though the screen, smiling. She was scanning the woods, and her eyes seemed to settle directly on Toby. He was certain she could see his white sneakers in the rising light, and he twisted both feet, tucked them behind the trunk as far as possible. Teetered on the branch.
“Awww, maaan!” Melvin groaned, shifting his weight numerous times, legs wrapped firmly around the lumpy trunk of the massive spruce tree. “Can’t barely see her, and I’m right gone. Feels like I ate a frigging pound of cheese for breakfast. I’m that riled up.” He placed the base of his palm near the zipper of his jean shorts, pressed. “Happy birthday, bro. Happy fucking birthday.”
“I think she sees me.” Words like goose down.
“No, she don’t.”
“What if she do?”
“Just be quiet. Don’t budge.”
Toby sat there, heart thumping in his throat, squeezing his air passage, and he leaned his cheek against the cool bark. Watched silently as streaks of sunlight moved across the horizon, rose up over the old, blue clapboard house, above the front door, first story, gliding upwards, protectively, curtaining DeeDee Fagan’s bathroom window with natural reflection. Game over. There was nothing left to see, and Toby felt a sigh glide out of his chest.
Just as they began to wiggle from the crooks in the tree, the back door of the house ba
nged open, and Mrs. Fagan emerged, threw two pairs of boots out onto the stoop. Then Mr. Fagan, in trousers and stretched shirt, suspenders dangling by his knees, brushed past her, jammed his feet into one of those pairs, and stomped off the stoop. He surveyed his grounds, then took several purposeful steps in their direction. Unzipped his pants, reached in, released, held himself loosely as he watered his lawn with a never-ending stream of morning urine.
“Shit, man,” Melvin yelped. “Shit. The dog’s out of his house.”
Even from his distant perch, Toby could hear piss turning dirt into spattering muck. “That’s gross.”
“Who cares. Let’s get the hell.”
They slid down the trunk, burning thighs and hands, tore through the woods, leaping over roots and shrubs, flying, muddy sneakers barely touching the ground. The binoculars struck Toby’s chest each time he landed, bruising the bottom of his rib cage. But he felt nothing, other than the hot need to escape. Panting, inner alarm ringing in their ears, they darted this way and that, burst into the unknown as branches smacked their faces, blinded them. Only when they reached the safety of the other side did they stop in a ditch beside the road. Bending hard at the waist, trying to catch their breath, they laughed between jagged gasps.
GARRETT PUT HIS hand on his crotch, pressed what was rising up. He stood, hauled on a pair of cut-off gym pants and a T-shirt. Crept down the stairs to the front door and jammed his bare feet into a pair of work boots. He could hear water over his head, trickling through the pipes. He could hear his stepfather’s mouth, somewhere in the darkness, slurping coffee.
Garrett said nothing, opened the door, walked through wet grass, slipped into his car. Slowly, he eased around the back of the property, and up onto the old road. In the queer light coming out of the gloom, nothing was real. He rolled his window down, stuck his head out, like a drunken dog, swallowed the air drifting across his mouth. Beneath his tires, stones crushed and popped a sultry music. He smelled dewdrops dangling from bent blades of grass. Heard a grasshopper rubbing his young legs together. Yes. He was rubbing his young legs together. Garrett nodded, moved forward, stumbling through his delicious delusion, not caring where he was going or what his hands might do.
Glass Boys Page 17
