by Paul Russell
But nothing happened. I just sat there and strained to hear the farthest-away sounds I could, and nothing happened. I took another swig of Carlos’s whisky, and another, and I waited, and nothing.
Instead my brain was burning up with things I remembered from the day. That pickup truck going round in circles, and the field where Netta and I dug up weeds, and Sammy’s blackberries in a bowl, and of course that long shooting flame coming out of Verbena’s big behind like a flamethrower. I looked down and realized I had the fingers of my two hands laced together.
I’d finished off the bottle, though it wasn’t the whisky I was drunk on. It was all those pictures coming one after another in my brain, like in one of those action comics I’d always be reading in back of the classroom instead of paying attention. Pow! Crash! Zam! Piling up one after another in each new frame till you couldn’t tell who was beating up on who anymore. I’d hide the comic book down under my desk and take peeks at it all through class, and get a hard-on that I’d rub my arm against so nobody could tell what I was doing.
I stood up and tossed that empty whisky bottle as far as I could. It didn’t shatter like I wanted it to, it just fell with a thud. If anything was happening in those woods, it was me.
Back at the trailer, my mom’s car was gone. No surprise for a Saturday night. Inside, everything was quiet. I guessed the two girls were asleep, but Ted should still be up. It was always good to be with Ted—just to talk to him, because even though he was only fourteen he was sharp for a kid that age. He could put his finger on things. Not that I’d ever in a million years tell him about Carlos.
I started back toward the bedroom but then stopped. I guess my ears were still tuned to all that quiet outside, because with the bedroom door closed the sound was so faint I’d probably just have barged in on it otherwise.
From the sound of it, Ted was dry humping the mattress. He must’ve been lying on his stomach rubbing his dick against the sheets, because he was really plowing away. The more I listened, the more I could hear. It made me want to laugh, but it also depressed the hell out of me. I stood there in the kitchen and listened to the noise my little brother was making, and now that I was paying attention I could feel the trailer shaking ever so little on its rickety foundations.
My little brother getting his rocks off. It was an odd thing. The bed just creaked away, a regular motion that sounded like plain hard work, and then I heard him groan, this really loud groan like he was totally cutting loose when he came, and that was it. I couldn’t stand it anymore, couldn’t stand the thought of all those days jerking off in Owen, days stretching out as far as I could see, one after the other and each one jerking off and jerking off. I bolted without letting Ted even know I was ever in that trailer.
I was totally calm, like I was watching everything from a distance—which is maybe a dumb thing to say but it’s true. I remember thinking—it was very clear in my head—I’m not going to see any of this again: my mom’s ashtray piled high with ashes, Ted’s sneakers on the floor by the door, those stupid little colored-glass elephants my mom kept on a shelf and that were always getting knocked off and broken so most of them were missing a leg or a trunk. A door opening, and I walked through it and then it closed shut behind me.
THERE’RE THESE TWO WASPS FLOATING AROUND the ceiling in big lazy loops, back and forth, trying to find their way out. I lie on my back and watch. It’s amazing. They steer clear of the fluorescent light, which is probably some kind of death to them. They drift down the walls a ways, then boost themselves back up to the ceiling. Drowsy is what they are, which means that outside there’s been a frost and that’s stunned them—they don’t have much time left. Something in their bodies tells them they should come in here where it’s warm, maybe try and stay alive a little longer than they’re meant to. I wonder if it works, if they really do stay alive longer this way, or if they die just the same? Probably just the same—but I like the way they try to keep on living.
I don’t have any idea how those wasps got in here, since I’m in what you call an inside wet cell, which means no windows. At least I’ve got my own toilet head. This so-called protective isolation is getting to be a real drag, though. Not having anybody to talk to except Earl, who goes a long way in little doses.
It’s why I like those wasps up there on the ceiling—they’re some kind of message from the outside world. There was this one day last week when Earl and another guard were taking me down to the infirmary for a checkup, and we passed by a window. Not one of the windows that looks out on the workout yard, but one where you could see hills and trees and the river in the distance. The trees had turned these dull reds and golds, and suddenly I realized it was fall out there in the real world. I hadn’t known that before—I could be in some spaceship or an underground cavern for all I know about what goes on outside.
About a month ago there was a thunderstorm. I could hear the thunder, but of course I couldn’t see any lightning. It must’ve been a pretty violent episode, because the thunder was sharp and exploding right out of nowhere, not those low rolls from a distance but breaking out right on top of you. Then afterward everything got quiet and the place filled up with that clean, clear smell you get after lightning. Ozone, they say it is. It was just barely there, but it was definite—I couldn’t get enough of it. And then a little later the smell of rain, again faint and hardly there—but after a while you live off little changes like that. I think I lived off that storm for days.
Seeing those trees was even better, though. It wasn’t just the trees I was seeing, it was a whole memory opening up, and I’m still thinking about it even now: how when I was six years old and first went to school, I hated it. I hated the ugly green walls, and the green-and-white tile floor, and the ammonia smell—sort of the way I came to hate the Nu-Way Laundromat when I was a little older.
Every morning at recess I wouldn’t play games with the other kids—I’d hightail it straight for the swingsets. They were these big sturdy playground kind with long heavy chains and plastic seat bottoms that curved around your butt—all except for the middle swing, which still had a wooden seat from the old days. That was the one I always took. I’d concentrate on making that swing go as high as it’d go, till if I got high enough, almost level with the top bar, I could just barely see Barton’s Ridge, a few miles away. It made my heart feel sick to think how far the distance was between me and it. I’d swing higher and higher, trying to imagine I was over there on the other side of that ridge—till one of the teachers would call for me to stop and get off and let somebody else have a turn.
But I never would. I’d keep swinging higher and think if I concentrated hard enough I could wish myself out of that playground and over the ridge into the distance where I’d be safe, where nobody could find me. By that time I’d be swinging so fast and furious none of the teachers could stop me, and they’d just have to let me go on for the half hour of recess. I’d catch hell when I got down, but even though they’d tell me when I came down I couldn’t swing on the swings anymore, that didn’t stop me. The only thing that was important to me during the whole day at school was seeing Barton’s Ridge in the distance. I liked to think nobody else even knew it was there. Next day I’d be back on that swing, and let them try to stop me if they could. Which they finally gave up trying to do.
The last time I ever saw that playground with those swingsets and the sooty brick school building I’d always hated so much was from the window of Carlos’s VW bus the morning we left. I’d gotten out to where they were camped as early as I could—I didn’t want to miss them. The sun wasn’t even up, and there was this cold mist. They weren’t exactly raring to go, it turned out—they’d all gone and gotten drunk after I left, and it was the kind of hangover you could just see in their faces. Carlos especially. He was looking about ten years older than usual, and in addition he was wearing this black headband.
“What’s that?” I touched his forehead. “Playing Indian chief?”
But he pulled back.
“Don’t touch,” he said in this sharp voice.
“Oh, excuse me,” I said, chalking it up to his hangover.
“Just don’t ever touch the headband, okay?”
“Does it keep your head from falling apart?” I asked him.
“Something like that,” he sort of mumbled.
It was one of those things that, after you’ve made up your mind to do something, sort of gives you a warning signal like maybe you shouldn’t do it after all. But I decided Carlos and I were both just jumpy that morning, for obvious reasons, so I let it go.
Like I said, we drove past the school, and then out along the road where I lived, and pretty soon we were driving past the trailer. I could see my mom’s car parked in front, and I wondered what they were all doing in there. Probably still sleeping—but even if they weren’t, it was too early for anybody to miss me.
Carlos didn’t say anything when we drove by the trailer, though he must’ve noticed me staring at it out the window as we passed. Maybe he didn’t remember it from being there just once, but I think he probably did. Carlos didn’t forget things.
I think what it was: Carlos was scared to death. Of course, he never let on to that, not even years later when I’d ask him. He’d shrug and say he wasn’t particularly worried that morning, because the first instant he ever saw me in that laundromat, he knew it was fate. And if it brought him down, if it got him in trouble—well, that was part of the fate too. He wasn’t going to turn aside from any of it.
Which strangely enough I always took to be some kind of compliment to me, though I don’t really know why.
“So where’re we going?” I asked, because it occurred to me that that was one big question I’d totally forgotten to ask the night before.
But now that we were passing Barton’s Ridge, it seemed like maybe the time to find out.
“Ever been to New York City?”
He must have known I hadn’t.
“Do you live in a skyscraper?” I asked. You’ll laugh, but I really did think everybody in New York lived in skyscrapers because there wasn’t anything else.
“I live in a slum,” he said. He let that sink in, and then he said, “Which you’ll love, I guarantee.”
“A slum,” I said. “Is it dangerous?”
“No more dangerous than you are,” he told me.
“So—pretty dangerous,” I joked.
“Pretty fucking dangerous,” he agreed.
There’s really only one other thing I need to tell about that first day. After we finally stopped for the night—we’d driven about two hundred miles away from Owen to somewhere in Pennsylvania—Carlos and I took a blanket and a bottle of scotch and walked about a mile from camp, up along a ridge to where some high voltage power lines cut across. There was this mowed space underneath, and there on that mowed space under the power lines was where I had the first real sex of my life.
It came as a total shock to me, because I really had no idea. Carlos spread out the blanket and we drank down about half that bottle of scotch in no time, me because I was dying for a drink and also excited as hell at the blow job I knew Carlos was going to give me, and Carlos because that blow job wasn’t all he wanted to do to me and he must’ve been nervous to see what would happen if he tried everything he wanted to.
Those power lines were humming, this eerie sound that sort of came and went the way cicadas do in summer.
I got drunk in no time. Carlos lay there on that blanket, propped up on one arm looking at me. For some reason I jumped up and started singing this Bruce Springsteen song from off the radio, “Thunder Road,” I guess to let off nervous energy from being cooped up in the van all day. I pretended I was playing guitar, and I stomped around some and then pretended I had a mike in my hand and I was pumping out the words to the song. “Oh, oh, oh, oh Thunder Road,” I sang. Carlos lay there watching me with this faraway dreamy look. I took another deep swig of scotch, and then I was really into it.
All of a sudden, Carlos must’ve decided something: he stood up and put his arms around me and held me so tight I thought he was going to crush me. He kissed me and kept holding me with his arms around me so the kiss went on and on—I couldn’t get my breath even if I’d wanted to. But after a while even Carlos had to breathe, so he pulled back and looked me straight in the eye and started to unbutton my shirt one button at a time.
It made me dizzy to look at him like that, though it was also probably the scotch. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have moved because of the way his hand was reaching inside my shirt and rubbing my skin just barely with his fingertips and touching my nipples—which was something nobody’d ever done to me before. It got me excited like crazy. My dick was so hard in my pants it hurt.
I thought for sure once he had my shirt off me he was going to open up my jeans and go down on me. But he didn’t. He kissed me again, this time really slow and romantic the way you see guys kiss girls, and all the time he kept running his hands over my bare back and slipping them down my pants along my butt.
Then finally he did go down on me, but only after crouching in front of me and rubbing his face against the front of my jeans where my dick was pressing up hard against them; unzipping my jeans really slow, teasing me with it so I was going totally wild; then when he had my dick out in the open just barely touching it with his tongue. Which made me even wilder. When he went down on me completely it was almost a relief from all that excitement.
I remember reaching my hands down to feel his lips and the base of my dick where it disappeared into his mouth. I was suddenly feeling totally peaceful. I had the weirdest feeling I was traveling somewhere, even though I knew I was standing completely still there in that stretch of field. But I felt like I was going somewhere, all this was taking me someplace I didn’t know—I’d never seen it before, but that was okay, that was just fine. And the hum of those power lines up above our heads with all that electricity zinging along for miles and miles to who knew where, and here we were right in the middle of it.
In the meantime Carlos was untying my sneakers, then he was sliding my jeans off me, and there I was butt-naked—which is a pretty amazing thing, to be butt-naked like that outdoors. Even for somebody like me, who used to traipse deep in the woods sometimes and strip down totally except for my sneakers—then I’d run around for a while like some wild Indian until I got so excited being like that I’d jerk off.
Carlos pulled me down on my back on the blanket. He bent over me on his hands and knees and kept his mouth going on my dick, but also on my balls and my belly button and my nipples and meantime his hands were everywhere, light as feathers that just as soon as I’d feel them somewhere they’d be gone and cropping up somewhere else to give me goosebumps. Then before I knew what was happening he grabbed both my ankles and pushed my legs up in the air over my head and went right to my asshole with his tongue.
If you’d hooked one of those power lines to me right then, it wouldn’t have been any more of a shock. I’d never dreamed in a million years of one person doing something like that to somebody else, but the feeling was so incredible I came right there, groaning like some wild animal and shooting all over my chest. But Carlos just kept going, pushing farther up with his tongue, then sliding a finger up me, at first just a little ways till I tensed up around it, but then all the way in.
It hurt like fire and I grabbed his wrist to make him stop, but the way he was moving it around in there was like electricity. I started to get hard all over again, even though it still hurt, and I could feel my asshole clenching and unclenching like a fist. Somehow he’d gotten his pants down around his knees, because the next thing I knew he was pushing his dick up me. It hurt ten times more than his finger, and I remember thinking, No way, he can’t be going to do this to me—but there it was. I thought I was going to pass out it hurt so much, but he just kept pushing it in farther and farther even though I didn’t think it could go any farther in and I thought I was going to explode there was so much up there inside me alread
y—like when you have to shit really bad and you don’t think you can hold it in another second, but then all of a sudden something just gave way and I remember letting out this huge yell and banging my head back against the ground five or six times and bellowing like I was a million miles away from everything and he was all the way inside me. He kept it there for a minute with my asshole spasming around his dick, and he bent over and kissed me, which must have been the best kiss of my life because I kept concentrating on that kiss so I wouldn’t have to think about that thing stuck up my butt and how scared I was that what with everything it took for him to get it up me, he’d kill me if he tried to pull it out again. It’d be like pulling out a plug and my guts would just go whooshing out.
When he must’ve figured I was ready, he pulled out a little way and then pushed back in. I just kind of melted. It was like that warm feeling when a swallow of whisky spreads through your stomach, only now it was my whole body and not just my stomach that warm feeling was spreading through, and when he moved inside me again it was another warm wave and then another and they just kept on coming the way water comes bursting up from a spring in the ground and spills over on top of itself with no end in sight.
We never spoke through the whole thing, which from start to finish must’ve lasted more than an hour.
I WROTE THAT LAST PART YESTERDAY BEFORE LIGHTS out. I have to admit, writing it gave me a hard-on. I stripped into my shorts, and crawled into my bunk, and I jerked off. I jerked off to remember Carlos way up inside me, somewhere near my heart and filling me up like I never knew anybody could be filled up. It was great to remember that—it sent these shivers starting in my balls and running all through me, even now when ten years’ve gone by—and then suddenly I was so upset about everything, I couldn’t stand it. I started crying, sobbing like some crazy drunk to think how that’s all gone, nothing like that’s ever going to happen again and the only thing I can do is try and remember it.
