Beau, Lee, The Bomb

by Mary McKinley

  “Why are you doing this?”

  I’m shaken. He is so calm.

  And of course, the monkeys went bananas! They were so happy to have something else to take their minds off the freaking tragedy of being themselves! They howl and grunt, and I’m sure if they knew how to dress themselves, they would have flung their own poo, but thank gawd for buttons, right?

  So goes the entire bus ride. Beau turns back around and ignores them, and I’m feeling amazed that we were almost to my stop without one comment about me from the douche bag patrol. I’m actually a little verklempt that someone else has taken the heat, but, while grateful, I’m not about to make one peep to save him in case the attention of the pack is diverted back to me again. If they could just tag team one of us every other day, it would be such a blessed relief.

  When it’s Beau’s stop, I watch with great interest. If the hyena pack gets off the bus with him, someone should call the cops.

  Beau gets off, and they look after him with great interest. It was grunt-discussed whether they should “effin’ follow him,” but they wanted to get over to one of the suck-up middle hyena’s house before his spawners arrived home and drink up the beer laid in for Skidmark Fest, or whatever these grubby little dorks do. They saw me looking, however, and thus was Beau forgotten.

  See, I would have thought that Beau’s handsome face and skinniness would have protected him.

  But no! Apparently even the perception of gayness outweighs good looks. At least it does at Baboon High, my alma mater. Even with the girls. I watch him getting “bumped” in the halls. I watch him being “accidentally” smashed into the lockers. He was too smart, I noticed, to ever drink at a water fountain.

  I respected that.

  I don’t have much info about gay people. I’d never thought about it except on Will & Grace reruns and Project Runway. . . . Oh, wait—there’s also South Park and the gay cable station that has hilarious stand-up, but I’m not sure any of that is real helpful. I never really cared one way or the other. I don’t know any gay people.

  I see news stories though. I realize it’s one of the things people are still prejudiced about.

  I know my mom thinks it’s a sin, but even though she’s very Catholic—whoops, I mean, we’re Catholic—she’s very kind. She says, “If people didn’t have those feelings deep, deep down, they couldn’t possibly want to do ‘those things,’ so it wasn’t a choice, and so other people shouldn’t be mean.” And she likes Pope Francis a lot; he is chiller about just about everything.

  But she also insists that “they shouldn’t ever act on their feelings.” Ever.

  Just pray it away. Forever.

  We had that conversation after watching that English comedian, Eddie Izzard, on TV.

  But first: I’ve always gone to Mass with my mom. When I was little, I always took the whole Adam and Eve, and Noah, and Cain and Abel, and the sacraments, and “Esau was a hairy man” as the unquestioned truth.

  Till last year when I got confirmed.

  It was when I read about the early church, as instructed, that I grew somewhat agitated and continued investigating. I felt like I was being conned. There were no good answers for any of my questions. And believe me, with all the reflection I do on death, I have a lot of questions.

  This, and time, is creating in me an irritated skepticism instead of unblinking acceptance.

  So I guess I’ve made my own creed. I say: Love Is The Answer . . . We Can Work It Out.

  My mom rolls her eyes. She says it’s just my “teenage rebellion.”

  Then I parrot back something she tells me a lot:

  We shall see. . . .

  A couple of weeks into the school year it’s time for homecoming.

  I’m a junior finally, so homecoming is a big deal apparently. Just kidding. I know it is. I’ve watched the hype for two years now, and “my, oh my!” is all I got to say. Hope their team wins. Whatever. At least it comes in autumn, my favorite time of year. In spite of the fact that’s when school starts.

  I like the valor of autumn. I compare the leaves to the “noble six hundred” in the poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade”—beautiful and doomed.

  I know . . . I’m so emo. But look it up anyway, you guys; it’s freaking powerful.

  The classes have all become texting central. Thirty-eight kids to a classroom enables them to get away with a lot. All the girls at my table are studying this week is fashion.

  The pictures of little dresses they send each other on their phones are cute. I can see them on their screens out of the corner of my eye.

  They all look like Teeny Skeeze!

  That’s my new line of fashion, btw: “Teeny Skeeze.” Kind of a reverse take on that “kinder-whore” fashion look (where big girls dress up like oddly skanky little girls), this is where actual little girls learn it’s their job to be judged on their butts, not brains, and looks alone are the most important.

  Where our motto is:

  “You’re Never Too Young to Feel Fat!”

  Potty-training thongs and diaper-compatible skinny jeans starting in toddler size eighteen months. Wonderbra onesies. Sledgehammer teething toys.

  What do you think?

  I think I’ll be rich!

  When I get home, my mom is on the computer. Which she always is now. It’s a pain. Now that Mom is hogging the computer more and more, I would love to get a smartphone.

  But I don’t need the extra expense, which Mom said I have to pay for if I want one.

  Also, I keep thinking if I wait a little longer, smartphones will be made by people with a safe workplace! I got totally freaked out when I saw all that stuff about workers jumping off buildings because it’s so horrible making smartphones. Why does it have to be like that? I want a smartphone so much! But one made by people in proper conditions! I know it will cost more. I don’t care if it costs more! It’s worth it! Why is it so impossible?!

  Whenever I say this I have been shot down in flames on Facebook with people screaming at me in all caps, telling me everything I own comes with suicide nets attached, but I say you gotta say it! If you don’t speak up, it won’t be heard! If you don’t strive, it won’t exist! Right?

  You know I’m right!

  Think about it! What if Thomas Jefferson and C-Note Franklin had just sat on the couch, dipping snuff and playing Grand Theft Horse Buggy VII and telling each other “Nah, screw it, sounds way too complicated . . . never gonna happen”?

  What then, I ask you?

  Anyway, Mom went back to school for a refresher course so she can return to being a registered nurse now that Paul is in high school, just like she planned. The upside is she looks happy. The downside is now she takes over the computer and I don’t.

  I go see what Paul is watching on TV.

  “Whatcha watching?” I sit down on the couch beside him.

  He answers without moving his eyes from the screen, in a hypnotic trance.

  “This old lady. She, um . . . like goes and watches monkeys in Africa and then names them and knows what people do.”

  I crack up.

  “Dude! You are so funny! Don’t you know who that is? That is Jane Goodall, and she is a huge scientist and totally famous and those aren’t monkeys! They’re chimps, one of our closest living relatives! In fact, I think we go to school with some of them!”

  Paul is awesome, but he is so not into knowing about things like anthropology. He is into Bruce Lee movies. He recently started a karate class, which is somewhat similar. He likes it a lot.

  We sit and watch the “monkeys,” which are actually quite troubling. Right off the bat, Dr. Jane says the big chimps are mean so we leave them strictly alone. But the little chimps that are orphans! Their mothers were poached for “bush meat,” which I’d never heard of. But they frequently don’t kill the babies. They sell them and the Jane Goodall Institute goes and buys them in the market and puts them on, like, a training reserve and teaches them to be righteous chimps and then go live on this chimp
island.

  As I listen, the caretakers of the baby chimps are teaching them things like how to be afraid of snakes. You’d think they would know that by instinct, but no. So the caregivers learn the panic yell from tapes of real chimps and then they put the baby chimps by a rubber snake, all coiled up like it’s real, and yell the panic yell—more and more panicky as the babies get closer, till the baby chimps are freaked out by association and run off when they see a snake.

  Their mothers would be so proud.

  When it goes to commercial, Paul turns and looks at me.

  “Do you think that’s true?”

  “What?”

  “That we came from apes.”

  “Dude, yes! We’re primates. We’re all hominoids. One happy family. We’re apes now.”

  “Dude, seriously. You know what I mean.”

  “I am serious, but I won’t belabor the point. Here’s what I think: Could you understand the warning in that yell? When the teachers amped it up, when the chimp babies got closer to the snake—didn’t it freak you out too? That the danger was getting closer? It freaked me out totally. I think we used to speak that language; we just forgot all that stuff when we didn’t need it anymore.”

  “Mom doesn’t.”

  “What—speak chimp language?”

  “Har. No, you know what I mean. Come from apes.”

  “I know. It’s weird; she’s a nurse, which is essentially a scientist.”

  “She says, ‘I didn’t come from any old slime!’ ”

  “Dude, I know.” I shake my head.

  “Well, so what do you think?” Paul’s face is troubled.

  “Paul, I just said what I think. At least what I think I think. For now. I reserve the right to rethink this for pretty much my entire life. I think the question we’re asking is: What do you think?” I look at him when I ask. I’m kind of wondering why we are talking about this; it’s not really like Paul.

  I remember I started to worry a lot about the big things when I started feeling depressed, when I got so lonely I echoed with emptiness. Hopefully Paul is not starting to feel low too.

  “I don’t know. I want to go to heaven.” He sounds so young, like a little kid.

  “Oh, dude, you too? I know, same here. That is the worst thing about thinking a lot. Having to continue when you start asking questions . . . Scary.”

  “Because then, where do you go? Like, do you even believe in God anymore, Ry?” He looks at me like he used to, like when I was older and wiser, instead of older and without a clue, like now. Since I don’t know the answers anymore, I try to divert him.

  “Paul, is everything okay? Are you cool? Is school okay?” His tone is so bleak and familiar it makes me anxious. But he nods.

  “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m not bummed, if that’s what you’re asking. I just think about stuff more than I used to . . . and mostly what I think about is ‘Where do you go when you die?’ ”

  Whew. Well, in that case, join the crowd. I shrug. Limbo, where it’s like Christmas every day? That was the company line for the unbaptized. At least it used to be. I always thought limbo sounded way better than heaven did, actually. I vaguely dreaded the whole heaven deal, what with the “saints and angels, on high, singing one unending hymn of praise” thing. Unending praise sounds lame. And now I’m also apprehensive that there’s nothing. . . .

  “Dude, I know. Listen, you may as well believe in heaven if it makes you feel bad not to,” I say helplessly. That sounds random, even to me. Sadly, I got nothin’.

  “I wish I just could. I think about this twenty-four-seven.” He looks a little hollow-eyed.

  “Same. Why though? Are you going to do confirmation in spring?” He also could put it off a year.

  Paul eyes me slowly.

  “I don’t even think I want to.” He looks at me guiltily. “If it’s not real.”

  I look back with a wide, surprised face.

  Now, this is not going to sit well with our beloved mother. Not one little bit. The only thing she really gets excited about is getting to Mass. On time. It’s what makes her tick.

  I shrug and grimace. Whatever. It’s real to Mom.

  “Dunno, bro. You are gonna get a ‘talkin’ to’!” I make an uh-oh face.

  “I know . . . I even feel guilty saying it to you. I feel like if I’m wrong I’m going to get struck by lightning.”

  “Omg, dude! That is exactly what the ‘powers that be’ always want people to think. It helps control the population. The population controls itself and allows the leaders to treat them like sh—”

  “Don’t start! This isn’t about politics! This is about eternity!”

  “By Calvin Klein?” I’m goofing, just trying to cheer him up. It hurts to see him all deflated and depressed. I bop him softly with a pillow. Right on the head.

  “Whatever . . . be serious. It sucks when you get like this.”

  I dial it down. He’s right. It sucks when I get like this.

  “Okay . . . I’m sorry. Listen, I was all freaked out about it last year. I still am, so I joke. But if you do get confirmed, I researched a bunch of stuff last year—and I think there has been a cover-up! And a smear campaign! There were women priests in the early church. Lots! And Mary Magdalene was never a prostitute! Also, the Council of Nicaea was a freaking loony bin; omg, Paul—they were fistfighting! Santa Claus got his nose broken! And do not get me started on the priest scandals!” Even though I am starting.

  “Rusty! Stop!” Paul moans. I stop and then continue more calmly.

  “Okay, okay, I’m not . . . but I guess you have to examine things for yourself when you start growing up. It’s just part of the process. It’s no fun. In fact, it totally sucks . . . and you will aggravate your ma.” I shake my head. “Seriously. No upside till you decide.”

  Jane Goodall comes back on, and Paul returns his attention to the show. He blows out his cheeks in a huge sigh. The screen shows these huge chimps grooming each other. We hear that the young males who don’t usually hang out together start to groom each other before they go looking to randomly find and kill another chimp. Great. Even the chimps are douche bags.

  I can’t take any more tragedy, either chimp or human, so I bail.

  The next morning the air is crisp and the sun is low in the southeast. You can see your breath. I love the first two weeks of October: Indian summer. Then it descends into awful and remains awful for about six months. Then pretty crappy for another three. Yay Seattle!

  I stand at the bus stop. I always get there first; it’s less noticeable. That way I am like part of the scenery, just reading my book, when the others arrive.

  The new kid is next to show up.

  Which makes no sense. Yesterday he’d gotten off two stops before me.

  He’s early too.

  I watch him from the corner of my eye. I am not going to say anything, but I feel benevolent toward him because of the chin thing in the hall.

  I fake read.

  He just sits on this low fence and looks around. He looks at me.

  I ignore him with all my concentration.

  “What are you reading?”

  I really am unsure how to react at this point. He seems like he is asking me a question, and since there are no other people around I think, Well, maybe . . . But I am very careful—in fact, quite suspicious. I take my time before I look up.

  When I do, I carefully mark my place in the book before I deliberately close it and look at him. I’m waiting for the crap to start flipping, but he just looks at me quizzically.

  “What?” I look at him belligerently, with my game face.

  “I said: ‘What are you reading?’ ”

  “Life of Pi,” I say grudgingly.

  His face lights up.

  “I read that! It’s gross about the tiger.”

  “What’s gross?” I am only in the beginning. I haven’t seen the movie.

  “Well, they run low on—wait, I don’t want to spoil anything for you.”

  Whic
h is so totally nice, I am disarmed. People usually go out of their way to spoil things for me. I can feel myself turning red.

  “Oh. Okay. Um . . . thanks . . . duh duh duh . . . I’m a moron!!” (Okay; I did not really say the last part, but seriously, I got no skills when someone is kind to me. I practically tear up.)

  My face is now a tomato, both in color and contour, and I can feel my forehead starting to sweat. He’s okay though and starts to pull his own paperback out of his backpack.

  “Have you read this?” He holds it up. I look to see what

  he has.

  It’s Heavier Than Heaven by Charles R. Cross. There is a picture of Kurt Cobain on the cover. Yes! Nirvana!

  “Oh! I have read that! In Alaska when I went to see my dad! I—” Stop abruptly. TMI.

  But New Dude Beau merely looks encouraging.

  “Sweet. Where in Alaska?”

  “Uh, well, Anchorage. Then to Kodiak.”

  “Seriously? Kodiak Island? I’ve heard of it. Have you ever seen one of those bears? The big ones?”

  “Yes, but only on a scope a mile away. Also this taxidermy one, which was gigantic.”

  “A scope? A scope like a telescope?”

  “A scope like a rifle scope.”

  “You have a rifle?” He looks a little askance. I try to explain.

  “No. Yes. Well, in Alaska. But not a rifle . . . I mean, I can’t own it till I’m twenty-one, but I have a handgun. My dad does though; he has a gun collection, like tons of guns. He hunts and fishes and such. He got me one when I was born, a ‘.38 special.’ I’ve shot it a bunch—up there, when I went to visit once. But he’s given my brother about ten guns and rifles . . . at least.”

  For some reason this totally annoys me. I don’t even like guns. I do, however, want nine random other things from my dad—so it’s fair.

  “Whoa. That’s like my dad. Only in Kansas.”

  “Where in Kansas?”

  “Near Salina?”

  “Far from the crazy hippies and liberals?”