Salvation City

by Sigrid Nunez

  “Then they cut off its head.”

  A female. From the look of her—the thick skull and boxy jaw—Cole thought at least part pit bull. He’d been surprised there wasn’t more blood.

  “They stuck the head on a broomstick.”

  “Like with the pig in Lord of the Flies?”

  “Yeah.”

  He had never read Lord of the Flies, though his father had kept pushing it on him. When it was assigned in class, he had SparkNoted it, even though this was against the honor code (which, of course, no one took a molecule seriously), so he knew the story. His father kept saying it was the kind of book boys Cole’s age really liked, and Cole did know kids who said it was off the hook, but the notes made it sound boring. In any case, why would he want to read a whole book about bullies?

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know. They kinda marched around with it. They took turns holding the broomstick and chasing other kids with it.”

  After a day or so the lips had shrunk away from the teeth, giving the head a vicious mad-dog grin, like it was going to bite you and laugh about it at the same time. Another day or so and it didn’t even look like a dog anymore but more like some kind of wild beast or mutant.

  “They propped it up in this closet, and they played this game where they’d catch kids and lock them up alone in the dark with it.”

  Little kids. They would scream and pound on the inside of the door. Some of them pissed or shit themselves, or threw up. A boy named Arnie, who’d lost most of his hearing after having the flu, did all three before passing out.

  “I understand one time it was you who got locked in with the monster?”

  However fond he was of Boots, at that moment Cole wanted to punch him. Monster! If only he’d never told anyone that stupid story.

  “Yeah, but it was nothing. It’s not like I was scared.” (Like he really thought a dead dog could hurt him.) “They were just trying to show me because of something I said. They said I dissed them.”

  “Why? What did you say?”

  “That I didn’t believe they killed the dog.”

  It still bothered him. The only person to whom he could remember saying he didn’t believe Kid Hammer and Dude Snake had killed the dog was Mama Ho. But she wouldn’t have gone and repeated it, would she? He couldn’t believe she’d be that clueless. On the other hand, he could think of plenty of instances of an adult getting a kid in trouble just by being uncool. Like the girl in his class who wrote a poem about touching her girlfriend between the legs (well, more than just touching), and whose teacher showed it to both girls’ parents. Even Cole’s mother said that was wrong.

  It was possible someone else had overheard him. He remembered a kid named Kelvin hanging around that day, weak little nerd, no shoulders, no chin, chief bully target and one of the first to be locked in with Jaw Head. Possibly really pissed at Cole for not lifting a finger to help him.

  They treated Cole the same as they treated Kelvin or Arnie or any other little kid, shoving and bitch-slapping him as they pushed him inside, barking and snarling like dogs themselves as they trapped him by sitting with their backs against the door. They knew he wasn’t scared, but they weren’t trying to scare him; they were trying to do to him what they did to other kids when they stripped them and forced them to march around naked.

  You would have sworn Jaw Head was singing to itself, but it was the flies. A black velvet mask of flies. Maggots frothing in the eye sockets. Every inhale torture. Cole breathed through his mouth, cupping his hand over it so he wouldn’t inhale a fly. That was the worst of it, the flies landing on him, the same flies that had touched the putrid head settling on his skin, his face, even on his lips before he covered them. He’d been in a rage then, a rage that had stayed with him for days, maybe longer, but that rage was gone now. He was less angry at what those boys had done to him than at being reminded again how far he was from being a hero.

  By the time the reporter came, Jaw Head had long since been seized and tossed into the trash like a worm-eaten cabbage, but no one had forgotten it. Not the worst Here Be Hope story by far, but one a lot of kids would rather tell than any other. The reporter heard it many times, and though it wasn’t the only story she wrote about in her article, it was the one that got into the headline.

  Not that Cole was going to go into all this on the radio. According to a large clock on a wall outside the booth, fifteen minutes were almost over. Which would have been a vast relief if it hadn’t meant that now Boots was going to invite people to call in. Always when Pastor Wyatt was on the show there were plenty of callers. Cole was thinking he’d never make it to the end when he saw Boots lean sharply toward him, a worried look further warping his crooked features.

  Boots was dressed as usual: Western shirt, bolo tie, Wrangler jeans, rodeo belt buckle, ostrich boots. Cole had often seen him dressed like this, had seen him in this very outfit before. But at this particular moment he looked different. He looked very strange. Cole knew, of course, it was Boots, “Grandpa” Boots, sitting there. But somehow at the same time sitting there was a person Cole didn’t know at all, and suddenly he was afraid. Who was this weird old dude? What did he want? What were they doing there in that tiny room, into which some kind of gas was now being released?

  Cole’s heart bulged as if he were trying to lift something too heavy for him. Then a dark, smothering cloud pressed down on him. The headphones hurt like a vise. Tiny bright lights flashed at the corners of his eyes, and a force like an undertow dragged him by the ankles off his chair.

  When he opened his eyes again he was outside the booth. He was on his back on the cold floor. Someone was singing. A chorus; a hymn. I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free. Cole smelled vomit, but fought the idea that it could be his.

  PW and Tracy were there. They knelt on either side of him. Their faces were all tender care, but they might as well have been holding daggers at his throat. For an instant Cole saw nothing except a pulsing black rectangle with a fiery border.

  “Let me go, get the fuck away from me!” Swinging fists, thrashing feet. Grazing PW’s chin, accidentally kneeing Tracy’s chest. He watched her face turn white before crumpling. Then she was gone, though not far—he could hear her trying to catch her breath as Boots took her place, helping PW to restrain him.

  “Where’s my mother? What did you do to my parents? I want to see them. You can’t keep me here!”

  Moments later, he lay still. He lay curled on his side, his face hidden in the crook of his arm. His hair and his shirt were wet with perspiration. He felt like a rag someone had wrung out and flung down. His stomach felt wrung out, too. He had no idea what could have happened to him. He knew only that he had disgraced himself.

  Tracy was there, gently massaging his back. He might as well have kicked her on purpose for all the guilt he was feeling. And he doubted anyone had ever said fuck to her face before. But when he turned he saw no trace of anger in her expression, and later, when he tried to apologize, she hugged him and said, “It’d take a lot more than that to rattle this lady’s cage.” But as PW and Beanie were helping him to the car, Cole caught the parting look she shot Boots, a look that hissed I told you so!

  Warm bed, warm milk, the doctor’s deep warm voice. No, Cole wasn’t losing his mind again. Overexcitement. Nerves. Stress caused by traumatic memories. All that—a lot!—but nothing a day’s rest wouldn’t cure. And, of course, prayer. “Still the best medicine.”

  (Instantly Cole’s thoughts flew to pretty, cat-faced Dr. Ming, his pediatrician in Chicago, who finished every exam by tickling his ribs and reminding him that laughter was the best medicine.)

  Left alone, Cole lay in bed feeling very tired but not at all sleepy. It was the middle of the afternoon, and though the blinds were closed, bright sunlight leaked around them. He felt stifled under his covers, but as soon as he threw them off he was freezing. He turned round and round, like a rotisserie chicken, unable to get comfortable. His mind was racing. He thou
ght back to a day when Pastor Wyatt had come to see him at the orphanage. Not the first time—not the rainy gray Saturday on which they had first met—but a later visit. They were sitting and talking in one of the common areas when PW dropped the word adoption—and even though Cole was already fond of PW and felt perfectly safe with him, a rush of fear had made him jump up and run away. It was the same kind of fear he had experienced years earlier, when he was around five or six and obsessed with the idea that if his mother let go of his hand when they were out in public, someone might try to snatch him.

  Afterward he had been embarrassed, and he had felt bad for PW, whose feelings Cole was sure he’d hurt and whom he guessed he’d never see again. But in fact PW came again the very next day, and the first thing he said to Cole was, “We’ve got to get one thing straight. There can’t ever be any adoption without your consent.”

  “What a place,” said PW, shaking his head.

  It was three weeks later, and this time PW had come to Here Be Hope to take Cole away with him.

  “Looks like they can’t find your stuff.”

  He was referring to Cole’s few clothes and other belongings, which had been packed into a large cardboard box by one of the staff. That morning at Here Be Hope had been particularly chaotic; several children besides Cole were leaving for new homes the same day. PW thought maybe Cole’s box had been taken by someone else by mistake.

  “In which case, they should return it. Anyway, we’re not going to sit around all day while they try to find it.”

  There were some papers in the box, including Cole’s birth certificate and his medical records, but Cole barely gave those a thought. He was far too upset about his drawings, and about another item, one he never mentioned to PW or to anyone else and which he tried to forget once it appeared that the box was probably missing for good. Something he’d managed to bring with him from the house in Little Leap and hold on to throughout his long illness. It had gone with him, washed and folded and tucked into a pocket, when it was time for him to leave the hospital and move to Here Be Hope. He had promised himself he would never lose it, but now it was gone: his mother’s blue bandanna.

  COLE WAS EMBARRASSED by all the get-well calls and messages. He was embarrassed by all the prayers. He became flustered when Mason dropped by the house and greeted him with a high five. “You did good, bruh.”

  Mason shrugged off Cole’s fear of having ruined the program. “What? We heard a little commotion, then silence for a bit, then ‘His Eye Is on the Sparrow.’ No biggie! Nothing for you to feel bad about. Besides, dude, it was yesterday.”

  An echo of what both Boots and PW had already assured Cole, who nevertheless remained doubtful. You make a public spectacle of yourself, life can’t just go on like before, can it? True, no one laughed openly at him. But he didn’t think he was imagining it when, the next time he was at church, a few people avoided looking him in the eye.

  Fortunately, there was something new for everyone to focus on: Starlyn’s birthday party. Actually, there were going to be two parties. One was the Saturday afternoon surprise party her aunt would be throwing in Salvation City. The other would take place in Louisville the Friday evening of the week before, a much bigger and more grown-up affair in the banquet room of a hotel: a dance party. Cole wished he could be at that party, too, mostly because he wanted to see Starlyn in the fancy new dress he’d heard her tell Tracy all about—specifically, to see how any dress that was both strapless and backless could stay on. And he was curious to see her date, her boyfriend, about whom there’d been talk as well.

  It took his mind off his fresh humiliation to be working on Starlyn’s gift: a charcoal portrait based on one of Tracy’s many photographs of her niece. Tracy had also helped him pick out a frame for the drawing, one with real pressed flowers under the Plexiglas, which made Cole happy every time he looked at it.

  Cole was fairly satisfied with how his drawing finally came out, but when he imagined Starlyn unwrapping it in front of everyone else he felt almost sick, and so he was more relieved than disappointed that there were so many presents for her to open, she couldn’t spend time fussing over any one of them. He could tell she liked the drawing from the way her eyes lit up when she peeled the paper away. In the photo she was smiling, but Cole had drawn her with her lips closed and slightly pursed. Tracy said it made her look like she was praying, but that wasn’t what Cole had been thinking about.

  Starlyn scanned the crowded living room to find him, half hiding in a corner, and blew him a kiss. It was enough.

  No, it was not enough. Not if he was honest. Maybe it was all those hours he’d spent poring over her photos, making sketches, working so hard to get her features right (and the nose, he’d despaired, would never ever be right). Now, from the safety of his corner, he could not take his eyes off her. Once, he happened to catch PW watching him watch her, and there was something in his look—not disapproval, exactly, but something that made Cole feel chastened nevertheless.

  Maybe it was the lacy white slip she was wearing. Not that he hadn’t seen her and plenty of other girls dressed like that before. It was one more thing Boots could get worked up about: Gals coming to church half naked. But Starlyn, who was thin, and whose breasts were smaller than most girls’ her age, didn’t look as exposed as some other girls—or as Tracy—did. Cole had been surprised to learn that girls and women in the Church of Salvation City didn’t have to cover up, and that they were allowed to wear makeup. He was surprised, too, that smoking wasn’t forbidden and that although heavy drinking was considered a major sin, alcohol wasn’t strictly forbidden, either.

  “We ain’t the Taliban,” PW had told him, grinning. “We love music and laughter and a pretty dress, and we know that sometimes a man needs a drink and sometimes he’s just got to cuss.”

  Starlyn had long arms and legs but tiny bones. She was perfectly healthy, had survived the pandemic without becoming infected, but she looked delicate.

  “I always feel like a big oafess next to her,” said Tracy, who, except for her breasts, which were about the size of roast chickens, was quite small herself.

  But Cole didn’t see how Starlyn could be warm enough dressed like that. The urge to cover her kept rising in him—and not with, say, the flannel shirt he was wearing over his T-shirt today, but with his whole body. And with this urge each time he grew too warm himself and dreamed of cooling his face in the marble curve of her neck.

  Her cooling him, him warming her—Cole had to wonder sometimes where ideas like that came from. This one would not leave him alone. All day he would veer between guilt and excitement.

  It was like having a fever again. All that great food, including meat loaf and three kinds of birthday cake, and no appetite. A houseful of people, including Mason and Clem from Bible class and a few other kids Cole was normally glad to see, but he kept ending up in some corner, alone, too listless to do more than look on. Starlyn herself kept getting swallowed up by one gaggle of guests or another—Cole seemed to be the only one lacking the nerve to go up and chat with the birthday girl. When her mother came up to tell him she thought his was the most special of all the gifts Starlyn had received, he froze with self-consciousness, unable to move his lips to say thanks.

  As usual at such gatherings, PW, too, was always surrounded. There were times (and today was one of them) when Cole couldn’t help being annoyed at how people—how women, especially—demanded PW’s attention. Even Tracy had had enough, complaining that some women used the excuse that he was their pastor to ignore the fact that he was also her husband. But anyone could see that PW was enjoying himself, all smiles and big hugs—the same way he always was when he mingled with parishoners after a service.

  Cole was feeling more and more restless and downcast. The memory of the radio broadcast returned to gnaw at him. He thought of slipping away, going on a long bike ride, something that always managed to soothe him, but he knew it would be rude for him to leave in the middle of the party, and his disappearance
would probably only make people worry about him.

  He was relieved when Clem found him collecting dirty paper plates and cups on the back porch and asked if he wanted to play a video game. It gave him something to do without having to talk much, and when the game was over they played a few more, and then Clem’s mother appeared, saying it was time to go home.

  Women were putting away leftovers, men were carrying presents out to Starlyn’s mother’s car. PW had retreated to his home office in the den. Cole looked for Starlyn, and when he didn’t see her he decided to go up to his room.

  The party was over, but no one had turned down the music that had played all afternoon (and had driven some of the older guests home early), and so they didn’t hear him. They didn’t see him, either, because instead of continuing down the hall to his room, Cole turned and hurried back downstairs. But if Mason’s face hadn’t been buried in her hair, his 20/10 eye could not have missed Cole.

  He was standing with his back to the wall, leaning against it as she leaned into him. Her arms around his neck, his face in her hair, and his hands—looking almost black against the bright white fabric—kneading her flesh so hard that her short skirt was scrunched up, uncovering the backs of her thighs and a smile of white underpants.

  “You okay, Cole?” said Tracy. “You look mad or something.”

  Tracy and Starlyn’s mother, Taffy, were drinking coffee at the kitchen counter.

  “Just thirsty,” said Cole. (Half true, at least.) He took a can of root beer from the fridge and slid into a chair at the table.

  Taffy, who was older than Tracy and looked like an overfed, overtired version of her, swiveled in Cole’s direction. “I was just saying how much I can’t wait to get home and hang your picture.” And as the two women launched into a duet of his praises, agreeing how lucky Starlyn was to have such a great artist for a friend, Cole felt a prickly sensation behind his nose that was only partly from drinking soda.