The Tricky Part

by Martin Moran

  “What’s the nearest town?”

  “Allenspark.”

  “So you can get whatever you might need there.”

  “Yes. And there’s Estes Park too. There are stores and two churches nearby, so we’ve got all bases covered.” He smiles. Mom nods.

  I glance out the window. Paul Newcomb and his little brother Eric, and Bobby and Michael Foster, have pulled up on their bikes. Stopped at the end of our driveway. They’re pointing at the bails of hay piled in the open bed of the truck; the wooden-handled tools leaning against the yellow tailgate. There’s rope and boxes and machinery and all sorts of ranch stuff and it’s all in a rig in my yard and they’re wondering, I know, what’s up. What they’re missing. And I feel the rush of it. An adventure has pulled right up to my door. He’s come for me. I hope they hang around long enough to watch us drive away. I move to the hall and pick up my pack.

  “Where is the place, exactly?”

  “Up the Saint Vrain, about three quarters of an hour. Not far from Meeker Lodge. You know that area?” Bob’s hand brushes, scratches quickly, near the buttons of his fly, where his jeans are most full and faded.

  “Not so much. When will you have him back? I think he’s got homework.”

  “Mom . . .”

  “Around sundown Sunday. Is that good?”

  The word sundown sings through my head as we walk out front and I give a slight nod to my silent neighbors. Sundown . . . that’s ranch talk, I think.

  Mom stands in the doorway, nail file motionless at her side.

  Bob ignites the huge engine, fights with the stick shift, and the truck moves backward. The boys on their bikes scatter like minnows. The tires curve out over the grass. He doesn’t seem to notice. I hope the marks don’t go too deep, that they’ll disappear before Dad gets home.

  “Let’s get George,” he says.

  I turn to see the boys frozen on their bikes as Virginia Vale trembles under the weight of what Bob owns. I watch how they gawk as he takes the left turn, swinging us wide around the corner.

  7

  I WAS RIDING on a cloud, five feet off the ground in the cab of his six-wheeled International Harvester. Already, I couldn’t wait to tell the guys at school about this. Me in a big yellow truck. Me, on my way to do a job. I could feel the hum of engine rise through the soles of my boots and up my legs. I was in the middle, George at the open window, and Bob, counselor Bob in his red flannel and Levis, was at the wheel. The wind, smelling of brushwood, swept through the cab. A chance thrill, I was thinking. This is a chance thrill! Or, as Sister Christine would say, Nil Sine Numine.

  Everything, at the very last second, just fell into place. Jay Jones said he’d cover my route and Father Elser got someone else to serve Sunday Mass and Mom said yes and it was Friday and I was free, free to go. We passed the Coors plant, its stacks sending up beer-colored smoke, and climbed west, up into the rocky arms of Clear Creek Canyon. James Taylor was on the radio.

  Lord knows when the cold wind blows . . .

  “Have you ever driven a tractor?” Bob asked. “Or milked a cow?”

  “Nope.” I shook my head and his teeth flashed white.

  “Well, I’ll teach you. I’ll bet you’re a quick learner.”

  I shrugged and felt pride or something leak through the heat of my cheeks. The luck of being included.

  We were up far and high now, near timberline, with snowcapped peaks rising up on all sides. The road was barely a road, more like two tracks of mud through a meadow. The sun had disappeared, but the light of day still lingered.

  “Watch your knee, kiddo,” he said.

  I closed my legs and watched his forearm, these marbled blue veins, shift the stick rising from the center of the floor. The truck lurched through the slippery ditches. We moved past a three-way fork in the road and clattered over a cattle guard. There was a wooden sign with a white arrow:

  “That’s the way to Bright Raven,” Bob said.

  “Who came up with that? That’s no name for a ranch,” George said.

  “Why not?” asked Bob.

  “Ravens are black. And they’re scavengers.”

  “Not white ones.”

  “No such thing.”

  “Keep your eyes peeled. If you spot one, it’s good luck.” Bob winked at me.

  “Bull,” said George.

  We rounded a clump of blue spruce and suddenly he hit the brakes, cut the engine.

  “What’s wrong?” George asked.

  Bob put a finger to his lips. “Shhhhhh . . .”

  He was staring at the clearing ahead. Something was out there—a mob of brown. Then my eye caught a clue—antlers. A ton of them, not eighty or ninety yards away.

  “Deer,” I whispered.

  “Wapiti,” Bob said. “Wild elk.”

  Their long necks were bent to the ground; they were eating. A little one with crooked legs kept pushing its head into the belly of its mother, searching for the place to suck.

  “See the bull at the far end?” Bob said. “Look at that rack. He’s the king. Bet he’s mounted every doe in the crowd.”

  I looked at Bob looking at the elk. He belongs here, I thought. He knows about the wilderness. At St. Malo he used to camp out in a real tepee; he used to lead the hard hikes up Long’s Peak. I didn’t know him then, he was too important. I just couldn’t believe I was sitting next to him now.

  George nudged me. “Look, two are fighting.”

  We watched two of them butt heads, their hooves kicking up clumps of soil.

  “Nah, they’re just playing,” said Bob and, reaching his arm up with a sigh, he let his right hand fall to my nape. His fingers began to brush up and down over the fuzz there, sort of inadvertently, but his hand was talking some story, direct from my neck down into the middle of things. Warmth was rising at the center of me and the elk were grazing and the sky going lavender and I let my head fall back, press into the curve of his palm. Something was in there, a bottomless mystery, a long way to tumble. Maybe a friend.

  And suddenly his hand split to start the engine and we roared ahead as a hundred black and terrified eyes snapped around to see a yellow truck with three humans—or who knows what they saw or thought—and in that instant they ran for their lives, a stampede of fur leaping across the meadow until all the elk disappeared.

  Sorry, I wanted to say. Sorry we made you go.

  Bob shifted and the stick smacked my knee.

  “Sorry,” we both said.

  When we got to the ranch, we did real chores. We milked the two cows by hand and fed hay to the horses. Bob made spaghetti for dinner and then he led the way down a trail that ran alongside the brook and ended up at the A-frame cabin across the meadow. That’s where we’d sleep best, he said, in the loft there.

  “Turn on the flashlight,” George snapped. “It’s pitch black.”

  “Your eyes will adjust,” said Bob.

  The sky was amazing, packed with stars. I looked up and saw the upside-down W. My favorite constellation. I’d learned it in Scouts. “Look, Cassiopeia. I’ve never seen it so bright!”

  “Where?” George asked.

  I pointed.

  Bob said, “Good eye, kid. Caseeoh-pay-ee-ah.” Then he explained. “She was the ancient queen of Ethiopia, you know. She made the mistake of looking at Medusa’s head and was turned to stone. But then the gods forgave her, split her into pieces, and hung her in the sky.”

  “Fuck. They call that forgiveness?” George said.

  Bob laughed. “Well, you gotta pay for breaking the rules.” He put down his pack and stepped to the side of the path to pee. He undid the buttons of his fly and looked up. “There’s a million stories up there, you know. The stars can guide you. Save your life.” His piss hit the ground. “Before we went to Nam, my brother and me, we learned to read the sky like a map.” He turned and I could see his eyes on me through the dark. Then his teeth as he smiled and said, “Hey, I’ll give you a book on celestial navigation.”

  I no
dded.

  “A shooting star!” George cried.

  I looked up and just caught it, and blinked, wondering if it really happened.

  “That star died a thousand, maybe a million years ago,” said Bob.

  “That’s bull, Bob,” George said.

  “No, it’s true. It takes years for light to travel. It’s all . . . already happened.”

  When we got to the cabin, Bob stayed downstairs to build a fire and George and I grabbed our sleeping bags and crawled up the ladder to the loft to get ready for bed. It was cold and dimly lit up there and George said, “Ah, Marsh, you don’t need those dumb pj’s, man. The more naked you are, the warmer. That’s how blood and feathers work, like the Indians did it. Didn’t they teach you that in pansy scouts?”

  I looked down at George’s pink moon of a face poking out of his sleeping bag. “How do you know what the Indians did?”

  “Everyone knows, dummy.”

  I dropped my pajamas and slithered into my down sack. The nylon smelled like campfire, icy against my skin. “Brrrr.” I tightened the drawstring to my neck. “Hey George? What’s Bob do? Was he ever a seminarian?”

  “Dunno. He quit, I guess. Does construction. Carpentry.”

  Wind shook the slatted ceiling.

  “He’s cool, isn’t he? I never knew there were so many constellations. You know what? He’s gonna give me a book about it. George? Did you really see Pegasus when he pointed to it? George?”

  He was conked.

  I was wide-awake. A truck, driving a tractor, milking a cow. I mean, what a day. I’ll wear my boots to school on Monday, I thought. All muddy. See if Sister Christine or any of the guys notice. I’m a rancher now.

  The rungs of the ladder creaked. It was Bob, climbing. He burped as his head popped up over the floor.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey,” I whispered. I thought the noise would wake George. It didn’t. He was snoring.

  Bob set down a can of Coke and a lantern that had been hooked around his wrist, and then he pulled himself the rest of the way up into the loft. He stood, stooped, really, because he was too big for the place, then picked up the lantern and hooked it to a nail. It swung gently, hissing. A moth was tangled in a cobweb near the nail, its little shadow shifting in the light.

  He hunched over me.

  “George is down for the count, eh?”

  I nodded, amazed at how warm my bag had become, how fast my blood was doing its work. George was right about the Indians.

  I watched as Bob finished off his Coke and started taking things out of his pocket. The ring of keys. Loose change. A leather wallet. He placed everything just so on top of a battered dresser. He tugged his T-shirt over his belly. I looked out the one small window—a box of sparks.

  Bob’s belt buckle hit the floor.

  His chest was filled with brown hair growing right down to the stripes of his Fruit of the Looms hanging there from bony hips. Like the loincloth carved on the Saint Sebastian outside Sister Joan’s office. He took off his glasses and placed them on the dresser. There were dark smudges under his eyes. I hadn’t noticed them until now. They made him look sad, the same look Sister Christine had when she talked of paradise. A look that made you want to help.

  I sat up and whispered, “My teeth, I forgot to brush. My mom’s really strict about it. I better go down.”

  “One night off won’t ruin you,” he said, arranging his sleeping bag so that our zippers touched. “You got to break the routine now and again.”

  I could smell the sweat of him. His calves were right next to me. White and huge, they made me think of a Sunday roast. He reached up and with a sudden flick of his arm the lantern was out. Then he rummaged through a drawer. I lay back down and watched him move like a ghost in the million-year-old light. His briefs glowed in the dark and the whole floor bounced when he walked. He unsnapped his Breitling—the watch he told me his grandfather had given him, the one he wore in Vietnam. It sparkled as he laid it next to his bed.

  “Here’s an extra pillow. Lift up.”

  “OK.”

  He slithered into his bag.

  We listened for a time to George’s steady snore, to the wind and the branches outside.

  “Tomorrow’s supposed to be good weather. We’ll get an early start.”

  His fingers found my neck and started their talking. I held absolutely still but there was the one little muscle that dared to insist. Like a current running through me I didn’t even own, it rose, willful, curious. And my heart was going crazy, like it wanted out. I was still as a mountain but full of motion.

  He fumbled around the edge of my bag, looking for the zipper. He tugged it quickly downward. A stream of cold air ran from my shoulder to my hip, right past a thousand years of what I knew was taboo. He reached over and with large hands, scooped me into his bag. I remained limp. My body seemed to know, to want whatever this was but I didn’t want to help. Not one bit. I needed to save some part of me for looking Sister Christine in the eye. I couldn’t hear for all the blood pounding in my head but I knew that someone, somewhere, was saying: Stop.

  He turned me on my side so that my back was to him, then wrapped his arms around me, tenderly, tightly. My head fit right under his chin, the hair on his chest tickled my shoulder blades and I simply could not believe the size of him, all the surface of him—endless skin on skin, like I was being swallowed into another planet.

  He reached down to slip off my underwear. I let him. As my shorts slid past my knees, suddenly into my mind came a picture that hung from the chalkboard in Father Elser’s science class: a color-coded chart of all the layers of the earth from crust to core, and it was the liquid core I was thinking of—the orange ball of fire hidden under a million layers because it’s too much, too dangerous. The secret urge buried at the center of everything, the force that pushes up the trees and the mountains too and I wondered, How did I slip here so fast? To the secret at the center of bodies. The center of him.

  God, oh God, is this you?

  He pressed against me as though he’d found all he ever wanted. I was it and I was terrified, amazed to be the one, as if I was a magnet and he stuck on me. My whole body humming with . . . touch, a force mightier than family or church or anything I’d ever found in a book. This must be it, I thought, the grown-up world, the way it is. With a swift move of his hand, he placed himself, just so, between my legs. A part of my mind, the part asking: What in the world is he doing? was looking on now, as though observing us from overhead, as if observing a collision that I was in and I knew there’d be damage. Real trouble. Come on now! I thought. One word, one scream, one virtuous move and you could change the course of everything. Couldn’t you? Choose to wake George, startle Bob. Stop the accident. But I didn’t. I allowed. It was as though he was touching me into being and I was dying to find out who I was.

  One of his arms circled my chest as with his other hand he cupped himself between the very top of my thighs. The smell of Johnson’s Baby Lotion filled the room as he slid himself, back and forth, along my legs. I heard a tiny cry, a flutter through his throat as he squeezed the air out of my lungs. This must be what a man does with a woman and what does that make me? He squished me again, gave another soft cry, and suddenly there was warm liquid on my legs. My God, I thought. What is it? It smelled like swimming at the JCC. Oh, wait . . . no, it must be . . . thousands of souls searching for an egg. What has he done? This guy is a murderer. What a mess, a massacre. I wanted to call down to the drowning Catholics, I know this isn’t what you expected. Sorry. I’m sorry.

  His hands were fast all over, plucking and playing with me, and there was a wave at the center of me, rising. A motion that threatened to burst, to split me open, and I panicked, thinking I might spill piss everywhere.

  “No!” I whispered, trying to move his hand away, but he insisted, and then nothing in heaven or on earth could stop it now, up from the core of me coming. My first, my very own seed splitting up and out and swimming a
way down my belly. What happened? Did it really happen? Over in a second, like the shooting star. I tried to steady my breath, to lie as still as I could.

  After a while he moved his hand away and shifted so we were both on our backs. I turned my face away into the scratchy pillow and right there next to my nose, his precious Breitling was glowing. Hands ticking past the numbers: 11:49, and the date, 7 April 72, burned into my brain. Every second hereafter I’d be different. I was twelve years, three months, and fourteen days old. This was the end of? . . . the beginning of? . . . over in a second. Nothing like the scout book, page 273—Nocturnal Emission —said it would be. In a dream all my own. A dream with a girl.

  I tucked myself back into my bag. He was silent; George snored. I brushed my fingers across my stomach, over the evidence, wondering at the blame stuck there, at how fast you can fall. I looked toward the window, to the stars and space beyond, and tried to strike a deal.

  God, please . . . this has to be just ours. Top Secret.

  8

  “YOU’LL BLOW UP the house . . .!”

  Mom is screaming, her teeth yellow and decayed, her face and hair all white. Dad’s on his knees wearing his dark suit with a red tie. He slides a long, lit match into a hidden hole under the furnace. Mom roars, “Stop!”

  Dad doesn’t listen.

  “It’s the pile-up light,” he says quietly. Always quiet. “The pilot light for heaven’s . . .”

  BOOM!

  Everything explodes orange and then I’m alone in my dream watching myself sleep on the cement floor in the basement. I’m curled next to the big, silver furnace. No pajamas, only my underwear, a loincloth. Jesus-style.

  The furnace has a mouth—slits for air—like teeth. If I sit up I can see through, down to its stomach, to the blue gas fire inside.

  Mom’s slippers scratch overhead, like rats scattering across the kitchen floor. She’ll never guess that I’m not in my bed, that I’m way down here. . . .