The Heaven of Animals

by David James Poissant

  Jason, on the other hand, loved boobs. Sweater cows, he called them, as in: Gimme them sweater cows! His favorite pictures were of women with heaving bosoms and nipples the size of silver dollars, boobs so big they scared me.

  Sometimes, a magazine in his lap, I’d catch Jason with his eyes closed, hands outstretched and fondling air.

  “If you concentrate really hard, Kevin,” he said, “I swear you can feel them.”

  Soon, the summer was all about bodies—women’s bodies, my body, Jason’s body. We’d pull our shorts down to see who had more hair, who was bigger. Then we’d look at the magazines and pull our shorts down again to see who was bigger now. Sometimes, after looking, Jason went upstairs to use the bathroom. Sometimes he was gone a long time.

  . . .

  My mom asked about Jason’s mom a lot.

  “How is Tanya doing?” she’d ask.

  “Fine,” I’d say.

  “Still smoking?”

  “Yes.”

  “House a mess?”

  Jason’s mom and my mom weren’t like Jason and me. They barely spoke to each other. Jason had no brothers or sisters, no father, and neither did I. Jason’s dad was in prison in Salt Lake City. I never found out what for. I asked Jason once. I didn’t ask again.

  I have no memory of the father who left before I learned to crawl. He and my mother had been happy once, or so she said. I don’t know what drives people apart, or how a good man goes bad. I have two things from my father. One is the medal he gave my mother when he got back from Vietnam. The other’s a love letter he wrote while he was over there, before he and Mom married.

  I didn’t find these until much later, as a young man helping his mother move in with her new husband. I liked that she’d kept them, liked the idea that there’d been love there once, that whatever force had brought me into the world had not been fueled by lust alone.

  Except, rereading the letter, I saw why she’d kept it. A confession of love, the letter was also a confession of the documents my father falsified to get a medal he’d never earned. The letter, the medal—she hadn’t kept them to remind herself of what she’d had. She’d kept them to remind herself of what she’d escaped.

  . . .

  The day it happened, the thing in the house that changed everything, was a Wednesday. Wednesdays were War Days because they both started with W. That was the rule Jason had made, and it made a kind of alphabetical sense, so I obeyed. There were no other gangs to fight, so we’d declared war on the construction workers in orange vests building River Run Heights, the fancy, new development rising from the tree-cleaved swath of mud down the street.

  Suburban sprawl, my mom called it.

  “A fucking amusement park,” Jason’s mom said.

  Bastard Heights was Jason’s name for the neighborhood. A week earlier, Jason’s mom had bent to pick up a newspaper from the driveway, and a man in a hardhat had whistled and hollered something unspeakable.

  “Cocksucking roof jockeys,” Jason said.

  “Damnable asses,” I said.

  Our headquarters was the tree fort in Jason’s backyard. The fort was a rope ladder and two boards nailed to a branch. We met there Wednesdays and hatched our battle plans, plans yet to be carried out. That morning, though, would be different. That morning we were determined to get things done.

  Since I was the fast one, I ran short reconnaissance missions, hiding behind the house nearest the neighborhood entrance, watching the workers, then reporting back to Jason whatever I’d seen. Jason waited in the fort and practiced being invisible.

  “They’re taking another break,” I said, back from my last run.

  “What are they doing?” Jason said.

  “Eating donuts,” I said. “And coffee. Some of them are drinking coffee.”

  “Excellent,” Jason said.

  We drew up what Jason called a schematic. The new neighborhood was not large, not yet. The woods had been cleared, the land divided into lots, but the subdivision’s main road had only been paved for a few blocks. At one end, the road met our street. At the other, it turned to gravel and wound past houses in various stages of completion. That day, the workers were pouring sidewalks to run alongside the roads and circle the cul-de-sacs. Here, the children of parents far better off than ours would skateboard and ride their bikes without having to worry about cars.

  Jason’s plan was this: We would carve every vulgar word we knew into the soft concrete, ruining the men’s work. They’d be forced to repave, or, better yet, they’d leave the sidewalk scarred by our handiwork. Already we imagined it, the shock of the rich kids who slowed their silver ten-speeds to read . . . could it be . . . PENIS?

  Jason pulled a triangle of glass from his pocket, the curve of a broken beer bottle. Jason lifted the glass. It caught the sun like caramel.

  “Vengeance,” he said like a true superhero, “will be ours.”

  . . .

  By noon, the sun blazed and the workers had retreated to the shade of the bulldozers for lunch. One house at a time, we skirted our way down the road to the freshest sections of sidewalk, out of sight of the big men too busy eating and smoking to notice.

  Jason knelt on the curb, pulled the glass from his pocket, and bowed his head. There was something ceremonial in this, though, at the time, I thought only of being caught, imagined those enormous arms holding us down, the men kicking us, battering us with their hardhats.

  “Hurry,” I said.

  Jason was up to his knuckles in concrete. He slashed at the surface, and a trinity of genital slang took shape: COCK, CUNT, BALLS.

  Jason moved to a new square, and, here, he carved words I’d never seen before, words I only knew must represent things terrible and profound and obscene: CLITORIS, LABIA, VULVA.

  “Your turn,” Jason said.

  I took the shard from his hand and heard shouts, cries, cursing. The men were a long way off but coming fast.

  “Fuckers!” one yelled. “You little fuckers!”

  I dropped the glass. I turned to Jason.

  “Go!” he said.

  Oh, how we ran.

  . . .

  I’d never seen Jason move like that. Me, I’d always been the fast one, but Jason stayed with me the first thirty, forty yards. Then, he slowed.

  “Secret hideout,” he gasped.

  “You little fuckers better run!”

  I ran, looked back. A few of the men had stopped. They stood by the sidewalk reading Jason’s scribbles. The rest kept on, closing in. I cut between two houses, and the house with the magazines came into view, the basement door open like an invitation. I’d lost Jason. Then he turned the corner, moving as though in slow motion.

  He crossed the threshold in time for me to shut the door and pull him away from the windows. In the shadows, shaking, his hand on my arm, we watched the men run past.

  “One more,” Jason whispered. “There were five.”

  In a moment, a single worker stopped before us. He pressed his face to the window. His skin was dark, face unshaven, lips chapped. His bottom lip was divided by a vertical band of dried blood. But his eyes, when he smiled, were kind. He saw us. He winked. He would not tell.

  Once the worker was out of sight, Jason dropped to the floor. He didn’t say a word, didn’t shout or moan. He simply lifted his foot, and I saw the nail protruding from the sole of his shoe.

  . . .

  “I think I’m going to throw up,” Jason said.

  He sat cross-legged, his back to the wall. Every few minutes, he doubled over, forehead touching the basement floor.

  “Kevin, this really hurts,” he said.

  “How deep?” I asked.

  “Can’t tell.”

  “Take off your shoe. Let’s see.”

  “I can’t, dumbass. The nail’s through the shoe. I can’t do anything until
the nail comes out.”

  I thought back to health class, to my mother’s warnings and a lone year of Cub Scouts, but I couldn’t remember what to do for a puncture wound.

  “I have to get this thing out of my foot,” Jason said. “I can’t walk home this way.”

  “Let me get your mom,” I say.

  “You step outside, they’ll kill you.”

  “I’m Quicksilver, remember? I’ll run the whole way.”

  “And leave me here to get my ass kicked?”

  “You’re the Disappearing Boy,” I said. “Be invisible.”

  “Kevin!” Jason said. “What the fuck is wrong with you? This isn’t a game anymore. There is a nail in my foot. There are men who want to kick our asses. Grow the fuck up!”

  His voice rose, high-pitched and hysterical. His face was white, eyes wide. Watching him rock back and forth on the floor, foot cradled in his hands, I suddenly didn’t like him very much.

  “My mom can’t find out,” he said. “I’m not supposed to be here. I’m not allowed to play at the construction site. This is exactly what she said would happen, that I’d step on a nail.”

  “You can’t just not tell anybody,” I said.

  “Oh, yes I can. I cut myself last year. I got the shot. I’ll be all right once it’s out.”

  It was crazy, not going for help. I knew that, but what choice did I have? A sidekick’s never in charge, and boys don’t tell on each other to their mothers, even when it’s what ought to be done.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I have to pee,” Jason said.

  “Okay,” I said again and helped him up the stairs.

  . . .

  I’d never seen men kiss before. We came up the stairs, opened the door to the main floor, hobbled down a hall, and there they were in the living room, seated on the new carpet before the empty fireplace, faces pressed together, one’s hands down the other’s shorts.

  They were high schoolers, maybe older, pale and thin. Their hair was dark, heads curdled with hairspray, spiky and horned. Their shirts were off, and I was surprised by their armpits, how hairy they were. The room smelled stale and sweet.

  Seeing us, they pulled away, but they took their time about it. They faced us, and they might have been brothers, they looked so much alike. One wore sunglasses. The other had a tattoo on his stomach, blue stars around the belly button in a ring.

  Jason, balancing on one foot, hopped back.

  “Well,” the one in the sunglasses said.

  “Hello,” said the other. A choked laugh shivered the abdominal stars.

  Jason hopped and winced. “We won’t tell!” he blurted. “Come on, Kevin. Let’s go.”

  “Whoa,” Sunglasses said. He stood, trailing a black T-shirt from the fireplace hearth. “What’s the hurry?”

  “My friend’s got a nail in his foot,” I said.

  “Do what, now?” Sunglasses said. He pulled the shirt over his head.

  “He stepped on a nail,” I said. “Out there.” I gestured toward the window, as though that explained everything.

  “Jesus,” Stars said. “Let’s see!” He got to his feet and stumbled forward, leaving his own shirt on the floor.

  Jason met my eyes. He was ready to run. But it felt like the wrong time, like we might not make it to the door.

  “Show them,” I said. I hoped they were harmless, that they’d see the foot, get their kicks, then let us go.

  We made a circle on the floor, and Jason lifted his sneaker.

  “No way!” Stars said. He looked away. “Sickness.”

  The nail stuck out an inch or two, bent in the middle. It was orange, the head caked with dirt.

  “Bad place to keep your nails,” Sunglasses said. He smacked Stars’s arm, and Stars leaned too far to one side. He righted himself, then ran a hand through his hair.

  “Give me your knife, retard,” Sunglasses said. Stars’s hand disappeared into his front pocket, for what seemed like forever, and emerged a claw with a black handle in it. His thumb stroked the handle’s side, and a blade sprung from his fist. He stared at the blade a few seconds, as though confused by how it had gotten there, then handed the knife to Sunglasses.

  Sunglasses turned to Jason. “First,” he said, “the shoe must come off.”

  Jason didn’t move as Sunglasses perched over his foot. I put my hand on Jason’s shoulder. I’d seen people do this. It was supposed to bring comfort to a person in distress. Mostly, though, I was holding Jason down.

  Sunglasses worked at the sole methodically, trimming away the rubber, carving a hole through which the head of the nail could slip when we pulled away the shoe. He hummed as he worked. Stars watched, entranced. Jason took lots of short breaths, not quite hyperventilating.

  Sunglasses was careful, and the sneaker released. It was the sock that caught the nail and made Jason cry.

  “Faggot,” Sunglasses said. Stars laughed, falling all the way over this time and rolling onto his side. The sock off, Sunglasses retracted the knife. “Your turn,” he said.

  Jason shook his head. “I can’t.” He coughed and cried harder. “I have to pee. I’m gonna throw up.” The brave boy from the morning was gone. The superhero with the battle plan and schematic was nowhere to be seen.

  We sat a few minutes, waiting for Jason to settle down. Stars smoked a cigarette. Sunglasses twirled the switchblade. The house yawned around us.

  “Well,” Sunglasses said, “someone’s gotta pull it out.”

  Stars put his cigarette out on the carpet, then flicked the butt into the fireplace. The spot was black, the fibers charred where he’d pressed the ash to the floor, and I thought it was a shame that he’d gone and ruined a perfectly good thing like that for no reason. Right then, I wanted to be out of the house, to get away as fast as I could. I couldn’t leave Jason, but I could hurry things up.

  “Let me,” I said.

  Jason nodded. He settled his bare foot on my lap. The nail flowered from his heel. There was no way to tell how far it went in. I grabbed the end like a syringe, my thumb against the head and two fingers beneath.

  I pulled, up and out, fast. The foot rose, then crashed to the floor. Jason screamed. Sunglasses jumped. Stars cursed. A line on the nail revealed the inch that had nested in the flesh. It came out clean. The hole was not wide and there was no blood. Still, I stretched Jason’s sock tight around the heel and tied it in a knot at the ankle like a tourniquet. I pulled the shoe on but left the laces loose.

  Jason nodded and stood. He didn’t make a face when his foot touched the floor. He was himself again. Instantly, I was demoted. He was in charge.

  “I’m ready,” he said.

  I didn’t see it coming, the hand that knocked Jason down. Stunned, Jason stood again, and again he was pushed to the floor. He stayed down. He drew his knees to his chest. Sunglasses drew the knife.

  “That’s it?” Sunglasses said. “After all we done for you? You’re out the door without so much as thank you?”

  “Thank you,” Jason said.

  “We did your ass a favor,” Stars said.

  “Thank you,” Jason said, his voice grown shaky.

  “Favors, favors,” Stars said. He undid the button at his waist, pulled on the zipper, and let his shorts fall to the floor. He wore no underwear. The stars didn’t end at his navel but followed a trail to a tangle of hair and something unfamiliar. What was between his legs was nothing like my own. It hung, swollen, distended, the end purple as a plum.

  Jason began to cry softly.

  One of the men laughed, and his laughter echoed in the open house. I’m not sure which of them it was, the man laughing, because I was already down the hall. I ran out the front door, down the steps, the driveway, the gravel road. Where were the workers? It was dark out, which didn’t seem possible. It had just been noon. I ran, and I swear
the moon rose overhead. The birds turned to crickets. Stars streaked overhead like confetti. The earth turned.

  . . .

  Jason didn’t come to school in August, and by Labor Day he was gone. They packed up and deserted their house, which, I learned later, Jason’s mother had never owned but had been renting for years. What they couldn’t fit in the moving van, they left on the front lawn. All of it vanished overnight: chairs, lamps, a card table, my friend. I heard they went to Seattle, but that was just rumor. They might have gone back to Salt Lake, might have gone anywhere.

  “I think Tanya wanted a fresh start,” my mother said. “I tried to tell her, a new city isn’t a new life, but whatever. Some people you can’t protect from themselves.”

  Sometimes, when it was the two of us, over dinner or during a television commercial, my mother would ask, “What happened that summer, to you boys? You were so close, then it was like you weren’t friends at all.”

  I’d shrug my shoulders.

  “Was there a fight?” she’d ask. “A falling-out?”

  “Not that I can remember,” I’d say, and this would satisfy her, for a while anyway. She’d sigh and shake her head, saying, “Boys.”

  . . .

  I saw Jason once before he moved away. Summer vacation was almost over. A few weeks had passed since I’d run from the house. I’d spent the weeks worrying about what had happened, wondering whether I should tell my mother and whether Jason had told anybody. I wasn’t sure what was done to Jason or what they’d made him do. That secret, I was afraid to keep it, and I was afraid to let it go.

  In the end, I did nothing, save this: One morning, I went to his house. I rang the doorbell, but no one answered. I moved to the side of the house. Jason’s bedroom was on the first floor, and, standing on tiptoes, I could see in through his window. He was lying in bed, propped up on a pillow. The TV had been moved to his room and balanced on a plastic milk crate in one corner.