At the End of the Road (6 page)

And he knew they were all back in the dark place where anything could happen.

Patrick then stood directly in front of Kyle and shoved his pants all the way down to his ankles, his penis twitching and growing.

“Touch it. Last chance, then I really will pop out your eye.”

Kyle saw no way out of this. He was trapped. There was no choice. He reached out, hand open, hesitant at first. “Lookit, the fag’s going after my pecker. Look, Scotty. Lookit ’im. Really is a faggot.”

“A real live faggot.”

Kyle’s hand inched forward.
What choice did he have?
He had no choice. He closed his eyes and did it. He grabbed hold of Patrick Sewell’s sad little balls and squeezed them hard enough to pulverize stone.

Kyle was on his feet and running before Patrick Sewell even hit the ground.

Joel and take off into the woods. But Joel reached out—almost like a reflex—and hooked Kyle by the collar. Before Kyle could comprehend that he had not in fact escaped, Joel had him back in a full nelson, locked down tight.

Patrick was on the ground curled up into a ball, pants around his ankles. Joel maintained his hold on Kyle, and Scotty was waiting for instruction of what to do next. They all watched Patrick rock his body back and forth to soothe the pain, until finally he uncurled himself and pulled up his underwear and pants. Still on the ground, Patrick crawled for the machete. And when he looked up at Kyle, there was no question as to what was going to happen next. He saw murder in Patrick’s eyes. They all saw it. And then Kyle felt Joel Sewell relax his arms. Nobody else could tell, but Joel was letting him go. Joel must have seen that thing in his brother’s eyes that he knew could only be extinguished with blood. Kyle slipped out of the loose full nelson and took off.

Scotty was reaching down to help Patrick up, and that gave Kyle a little bit of a head start.

Kyle ran for all he was worth, speeding through the woods, just praying that he was heading in the right direction. He must have been, because quicker than he thought, he could see bright sunlight ahead where the woods gave way to Sweetwater Creek. Kyle rocketed himself up and over the bank. He landed hard. Then a quick scramble right into the cave.

Jason and Wade were back in there. Jason was poking the fire, and Wade was back in the shadows, digging, with candles flickering around him. “How’d you find this place?” Jason asked. There was anger in his voice. “Did you follow us? I told you what spying would get you.”

Kyle thought about how he could explain everything that had happened, but he saw Jason look up when he heard running feet vibrating the ground overhead. Jason looked past him, over his shoulder. Kyle turned around and saw Scotty, and then Joel dropping past the mouth of the cave like poisonous spiders. Patrick followed behind, and the three of them climbed into the cave like they owned it. Patrick was grimacing, still in pain, but his anger was driving him now. He held his machete in one hand. Patrick walked up to Kyle and struck Kyle’s mouth with his fist. Kyle’s bottom lip split open and he could taste the blood. For some reason, it didn’t hurt much at all. The pain wouldn’t set in until the next day.

“What’s going on here?” Jason asked.

Patrick grabbed Kyle by the neck of his shirt and pulled him close. “This is between me and him,” Patrick said. “He knows what he done.”

Jason was calm, his tone reasonable. “What did he do, Patrick?”

“He knows.”

“Knows what?”

“Spying. He was spying on us.”

“Spying? Spying?” Jason contemplated this. “Spies have to be taught a lesson.” Kyle’s world grew dark. His brothers were going to help Patrick punish him. “You know what they did to spies in the War?”

“You’re goddamn right I know. And we’re going to teach him a lesson.”

“I reckon he earned it,” Jason said and turned his back on them. Patrick had started dragging Kyle out of the cave when Jason turned back around. “How’d he track you?”

Patrick stopped. “What do you mean?”

“How did Kyle track you through the woods?”

“How’m I supposed to know that?”

“Well, it’s just that he ain’t but ten. How’d you let some little kid track you through the woods? If I was you, I’d be a little embarrassed about that. It don’t reflect well on you.”

“Shut up, Edwards.” Patrick raised the machete to Kyle’s throat. “I know how you are with words. Tricking people. You can’t trick me.”

“Ain’t trying to trick nobody, Patrick. Just saying, he ain’t but a little kid. You don’t need that long knife to hold no little kid. I ain’t trying to stop you. You can take him.”

“You’re goddamn right I—”

The popping sound, the little mini-explosion, came from the back of the cave. They all looked and Wade was standing there with a candle in one hand and a spoke gun in the other. Then Patrick was screaming. There was a tiny hole punched in his right cheek. No blood, just a little black hole from the BB or pebble or whatever Wade had packed into the spoke gun. Patrick let go of Kyle and dropped the machete, both of his hands going to his face, covering it. Then they saw that the blood did begin to flow, trickling from under his palms. Patrick made a chewing motion with his mouth, then spit something onto the ground. It was a BB.

Jason had already grabbed an armload of the bloodweed javelins. He broke one in half and rubbed the milky crimson sap under his eye like Indian war paint. Then he started throwing them, sending them out like fighter planes. One pierced Scotty’s chest, a bloom of blood unfurling on his Judas Priest T-shirt. Joel was already gone. Patrick was right behind him, running, hand covering his cheek. Scotty paused long enough to break the bloodweed across his knee and shoot them the bird, then turned and kept running.

Kyle was dazed. Not because of what had happened, but because his brothers had defended him.

ing no trace of the injured woman or her overturned car, Kyle pedaled back to the house, still careful of his Sunday clothes.

Nobody liked going to church. It was Mama mostly who made them do it, and she seemed to like it least of all. It was hard on her to get all of the kids up and cleaned and dressed and fed. And on top of that, get a pork roast in the oven so it could cook slow and be ready when they got back home. Daddy never helped her; he just stayed down in the basement a lot, working on projects Kyle never saw the fruits of.

All the boys hated the clothes they had to wear. The shiny black shoes were stiff and pinched your feet. The button-down shirts were scratchy against their skin, and the polyester suit jackets smothered them. And the knotted ties (Kyle’s was a clip-on) choked them so that it seemed like drawing a breath was a struggle and their heads felt hot and puffy from the circulation being slowed down. It was awful.

They would all line up and file into Daddy’s car, Mama standing there like an attendant, wetting her thumb with spit to rub off any grease or dirt they had managed to get on their faces since getting dressed. Nobody ever spoke in the car on the ride to church. Kyle guessed they were all too busy trying to draw a breath and unpinch their toes.

Sunday School was first—even for Mama and Daddy. The kids were split up based on their age and there was a men’s group and a women’s group for the parents. Sunday School wasn’t too bad. The teacher would let them cut up some, and she told them some of the more interesting stories from the Bible—like Noah and the great flood, how Jesus rose zombie-like from the dead, and stuff about lepers whose noses and arms would just rot off and people killing each other with rocks. Just the good stuff.

The church service was another matter. It never lasted less than two hours. Two hours was two weeks in kid-time. The congregation would sort of wander in like dazed disaster victims while an old lady played spooky music on the organ. The organ lady had white hair done up in a perm and a henna rinse that made it look white and purple at the same time. The Edwardses would all sit together on one of the long wooden pews. The pews seemed to have been built of the hardest wood available, and constructed so that no matter how you fidgeted, you couldn’t find a comfortable spot. And fidget Kyle did, because there was nothing else he could do. He had to sit there for two hours in clothes that poked and grabbed and scratched him, perched on a bench that tormented his backside, and listen to Preacher Seevers yell and scream and sometimes even speak in tongues.

It was funny, because Preacher Seevers always started his sermons in the most reasonable and calm tone of voice. He would talk to them like they were all sitting down to supper and he was just telling them a story to pass the time. The story always seemed to be about a man who had gotten off on the wrong path. Sometimes he was a man who struggled to do good, but made a bad decision. Usually, it was TEMPTATION that had caused the man to take a drink, or lay out from church. Or steal money, or lust after his friend’s wife. TEMPTATION could cause a man to do any number of vile and evil things. And God always—always—punished those who gave in to TEMPTATION.

By the time Preacher Seevers got to whatever it was that was tempting the man, that was when his voice took on a tone of urgency. That was when a light sheen of sweat would gloss his forehead and his gestures at the podium would become broader and more animated. By the time the man in the story was wallowing in whatever sin TEMPTATION had led him into, Preacher Seevers would be screaming at them, the calm friendly man who had started the sermon was long gone, and in a voice of full-fledged rage, Preacher Seevers told them just exactly how hot the fires of hell would be, how that fire would first blister and then char their flesh, and how it would burn for an eternity.

The sweat would pour down his face and he would try to stem the flow with his white handkerchief, but it was a losing battle. Engorged veins coursed along his temples, pulsating and standing out in purplish stark contrast to his red, apoplectic face. And spittle would fly from his mouth as he screamed his warnings of damnation at them. Kyle remembered one time when a long cord of saliva flew from the man’s mouth, caught on his pointy chin, and then hung from his chin to the tight knot of his tie, and wavered there for a good thirty minutes, just swaying and dangling with his bobbing head, and Kyle just wished like hell that he would wipe it off, but he never did. Finally, it detached from his chin and tumbled down his tie like a Slinky.

About once every month or so, Preacher Seevers would speak in tongues. This was pretty scary. It completely unnerved Kyle, so God only knew how it must have affected a little kid like Grace. The sermon would follow the usual pattern: friendly banter, gradually growing sterner, the appearance of TEMPTATION, leading into yelling and bulging veins and flying slobber. Kyle could usually tell when the man was going to take it all the way and speak in tongues. It had something to do with the slobber. There was less of it.

Instead of flying around in great long ropes, the slobber would gather at the corners of Preacher Seevers mouth in tight, hard, little white pellets. That was the telltale sign. Then all the red in his face would sort of drain to a spot high up on his forehead, and his eyes would roll up in his head. His words would get real quiet, and Kyle could tell he had gone into a kind of trance, and Preacher Seevers wasn’t really there anymore. He would start talking in a kind of mumble, but real fast. Kyle couldn’t understand it. And the way the man’s eyes were set back in his head, all you could see was an opaque milky white. It didn’t last but about thirty seconds, then he would fall down to his knees and come back to himself. That usually ended the sermon, because Kyle could tell he was real tired after all that. It took something out of him.

Sometimes the sermon would end with witnessing. Preacher Seevers would whip everybody into a frenzy and he would call for witnesses. If you felt the Holy Spirit in you, if the Holy Spirit had entered you and taken you over, you were supposed to walk to the front of the church and Preacher Seevers would anoint your head with oil. The preacher would call to the congregation, “Come on up, if you feel it. If you feel The Lord in your heart! Do you feel Him? Has He entered you? Then rejoice! I feel Him. He’s here with us right now. Is He in you? If He’s in you, then come forward. Witness for The Lord. Witness for The Lord!”

And folks would start drifting up. To Kyle, they looked like they were in some kind of trance, like they had been charmed. They kind of lumbered real slow to the front, like they were wading through waist-high water. They held their arms and legs stiff, and looked off into the distance, their eyes out of focus like robots or zombies. He reckoned The Lord really had entered them and taken them over. When they got to the front, Preacher Seevers would dunk his thumb in a little metal pot of oil, and smear their foreheads, vicious like. And when he did that, they would fall to their knees, and after a minute they would get back up and walk back to their seats, like they were normal people again.

Neither Mama nor Daddy ever got up and witnessed. Kyle wanted to know what those people were feeling that would make them act like that. It was like they were not themselves, but that another force had taken over their bodies and made them walk to the front. It looked to him like they had no choice in the matter. Even though he was scared, sometimes Kyle wished The Lord would enter him and make his body walk to the front and get anointed, but He never did. Sometimes Kyle thought about just pretending like he had been taken over, but he never got up enough nerve to do that either.

His favorite part of church, the only part that he truly enjoyed, was the baptism ceremonies. There was a baptism chamber built into the wall up behind the pulpit, and it was hidden behind long curtains. It would be real quiet in the church except for the purple-haired lady playing that spook-show organ music real low. Kyle guessed someone signaled her somehow, and right after the low organ chords stopped, the curtains hiding the baptism chamber would sweep open, and there Preacher Seevers would be, wearing a purple robe and standing waist-deep in clear water. The bottom half of the retaining wall was plate glass, so you could see him standing in the water. It was just like looking at an aquarium built into a wall. After a minute, the organ music would start back up real low and the first person would step down the tile steps and wade over to Preacher Seevers. They would always be wearing a purple robe too.