Choir Boy (30 page)

Half a dozen boys stood near the sinks and mirrors, including Randy and Marc. When Berry came out of the stall they all moved into combat stances. A few kids blocked the door, and Marc stuck his thumb into his jeans front pocket.

“Girls’ choir don’t rehearse tonight,” Marc said.

“And this ain’t the girls room, yo,” Randy said.

“I’m back,” Berry said. “Mr. Allen said I could sing.”

“Can you still sing? Treble, I mean?” Marc asked.

Berry nodded. More boys wandered in, sensing a spectacle. Randy moved closer to Berry, head down. “Your mom’s not here to protect you now,” he said. “Neither is your lesbo girlfriend.”

“I don’t need them,” Berry said.

“Don’t hit the delicate little girl,” Marc said in a mewling parody of concern.

“I’m not delicate,” Berry said.

“Good.” Randy lunged.

Berry hugged himself to protect his injured breasts from the impact. That meant nothing kept him from smacking onto the bathroom floor. His butt near broke. Randy landed on top of Berry, pinning Berry’s arms with his knees. Someone pulled off Berry’s shoes and socks.

Randy smacked Berry’s mouth. “Cocksucker.” He smacked again and again, in rhythm. Dotted quarter note, eighth note, dotted quarter note, eighth note.

“Let’s put him on the altar and sacrifice him,” one of the smaller choirboys said.

“Let’s cut him into chunks and put him in the organ pipes,” Jackie said.

“String him from the balcony by his legs!”

Choirboys clustered around Berry’s half corpse. He looked up at the staring faces and fists. Then he giggled with relief. It was okay. They were hazing him.

“I know,” Berry said. “Grind me up into teeny little pieces and sprinkle a little on each communion wafer on Sunday.”

“Who asked you?” Randy said. Another tattoo beat on the face.

“Pig pile!” one of the smaller kids yelled. The others took up the chant. Berry closed his eyes just as a knee landed between them. Someone’s elbow crushed his pancreas.

“Pig pile in the boys’ room!” The yells echoed in the hall outside. The weight on Berry’s sore chest and legs mounted. He couldn’t breathe. Bodies squirmed all over him. He felt kicks and jabs in his ribs and neck, even his crotch. He yelped when a sneaker jabbed his balls. Someone tried to give him a wedgie, but couldn’t reach under him with all those other bodies on top.

Randy couldn’t slap Berry with so many other boys climbing on them. Berry closed his eyes and tried to drift away, ignore the pain and helplessness of being at the bottom of so much frenzy. He couldn’t have explained how he knew this was different from the tampon box earlier that day, he just knew. When you were hazed, it ended with you being one of the group.

Berry nearly passed out before someone yelled that it was rehearsal time. Boys tumbled off him one by one, until only Randy remained, laying flat against Berry’s torso.

“Hope you sing as pretty as you look,” Randy said, face a few inches from Berry’s. Then he lifted himself off Berry, straightened his clothes, and left.

Berry sat up slowly and looked around the empty bathroom. His chest felt cut up all over again. He took slow breaths and thought about music. This would all pay off.

“I found your shoes in the trash.” Wilson held them delicately between finger and thumb. “Your socks are a lost cause.”

“That went pretty well, I guess.” Berry wiped his shoes with a paper towel.

“Randy still has it in for you,” Wilson said. “He’d put you in the ground if he could. But damn, we need your voice. Come on, we’re late for rehearsal.”

They got to the choir room in time to warm up. Berry took his place in the middle of the right row of boys, facing the piano where Mr. Allen ran through easy vocal exercises. Mr. Allen’s hair and beard still looked neater than usual.

Berry felt like he’d starved so long that food could kill him, and here was food.

“So Berry—hope you enjoyed your little vacation,” Mr. Allen said with just enough sarcasm to tell everyone Berry was still one of the boys as far as he was concerned. “The rest of us have worked hard while you’ve been at the beach—think you can catch up?”

Berry nodded.

They worked. By now the choir drilled a lot of Christmas music, plus some stuff they still planned to record in the postponed session. Carols. That “Unto Us Shall Come a Son” bit from Handel’s
Messiah.
Some slushy John Rutter stuff. The transition from somber Pentecost to Advent always caught Berry off guard—it was like tuning from an indie-folk-goth station to an easy listening one.

Berry’s pipes sounded just like they had before he’d hit the beach, which was more than he could say for the other boys his age. He caught strange glances from some of the other boys. The choir obviously flexed way bigger muscles with Berry than without him. It was weird not having Teddy there. Enough of the music was stuff Berry had covered in previous years or in that abandoned building site with Wilson that he caught up pretty quickly.

For dinner, the cathedral served the choir a defeated stew and stale fish sticks. Berry asked Wilson about Lisa. “She’s been quiet at school. There’s all sorts of rumors about her. Her dad’s a gangster or she’s becoming a nun or she fucks doggies. But she still has a clique, and they closed ranks.”

“I hope she’s okay.”

The other choirboys seemed less weird toward Berry now they’d pig-piled him. They had lots of questions. “So what’s the deal, are you going to, like, kiss boys and stuff? Isn’t it weird to like wear perfume and eat salad?”

Berry said he’d never kissed a boy (slight lie), eaten salad, or worn perfume. He’d never watched a chick flick. “I don’t know what I’m going to turn into. For now, I just want to sing.” Teddy showed up again with the other men for the evening rehearsal. It was way strange hearing unsteady tremors from his throat. It went up and down, but Teddy’s voice seemed to settle. Wilson, Marc, and Randy limped as trebles, but they found rips in their voices when they relaxed into them.

This wasn’t the same choir Berry had sung with for the fall concert. Even though the boys had stopped whaling on him, things felt less comfortable. The choir had changed, but so had Berry and he didn’t quite fit his old space. He hadn’t expected a best friend’s welcome from the whole choir, but he had expected it to feel right to sing again. Instead, it fit him weirdly like a sweater that’s been stretched on a hanger and then shrunk in the dryer. Berry’s unease only grew as the stained glass on the outer w
^r
all grayed. When rehearsal ended Mr. Allen smiled at Berry, but Berry left without talking to the choirmaster.

“Buy Wilson and me milkshakes,” Berry ordered Judy when she showed up. “We owe Wilson. Marco tried to kidnap him along with me.”

“I’m not sure I can afford to buy Wilson a milkshake,” Judy said, chewing a knuckle. “I just lost my job.”

“Oh,” Berry said. “I’m sorry. Shit.” He stared at his dirty shoes. Nobody spoke for a while.

“I’ve got some leads on jobs. I’ve got enough school under my belt that I may be good for a paralegal gig,” Judy said without taking the back of her hand out of her mouth.

“Hey, I’ll get the shakes,” Wilson said. “I just got my choir paycheck.”

They went to the Metro K and ordered vanilla shakes. Judy explained. “A woman my age is dispensable to the people in power. Unless you work like ten zillion hours and have no life, you’re a gimpy working mom. I started taking sick leave and word got around I was a single mom. All of a sudden they were overstaffed. At least I get two weeks to look around, plus maybe some kind of severance package the HR department is working out.”

“I’ll ask my dad if there are any jobs in advertising,” Wilson said.

“Thanks, but my whole background is in coincidences and free-associations.”

“I hear the Internet is still big in spite of everything,” Berry said helplessly. Wilson slurped.

The next morning, Judy’s Toyota turned up on the sidewalk a block from their apartment building. It had a note on the windshield: GONE TO SHAMBALLA OR PITTSBURGH, WHICHEVER 1 FIND FIRST. SORRY I BORROWED CAR. MARCO.

“We could have walked around for weeks without knowing the car was here.” Judy crunched Marco’s note.

“Can I spend the day with Anna Conventional?” Berry asked. He explained who that was.

Judy sighed. “Whatever.”

Anna Conventional drove Berry out to the countryside and bought him a big straw hat and floral skirt. He reclined the passenger seat all the way and pulled the skirt on while she drove. She surveyed the results with relish. “You look totally countrified.”

They drove until the one-lane roads twisted and looped indecisively. Pastures and cornfields flanked the roads.

Finally, Anna found a cemetery she liked and pulled the car over. She spread a picnic blanket over the bumpy grass of a couple of graves, then laid out plates and Tupperware.

Berry munched a cookie while Anna Conventional explained how homophobia caused hangnails. “These youths think long nails make them gay, so they trim cruelly. They chew and bite and pick and clip as if their nails might go limp if they grew. Underdeveloped bonsai hacked by the world’s craziest gardeners—I think that’s an actual Fox TV show, world’s craziest gardeners. Anyway, you can always tell how a man views his masculinity by looking at his nails.”

A scream broke Anna Conventional’s lecture. Berry’s first thought was that a gay-basher was pulling off someone’s fingernails. He heard it again, a throat-rending roar, like a zombie from
28 Days Later.
It got closer. Berry heard stalks being trampled as the source of the noise charged through the wall of cornfield next to the graveyard.

“It’s an animal,” Berry said. He squared himself against a headstone. Violence seemed as inevitable as lunch. Berry felt like screaming, running, or tearing at his own cheeks. But he didn’t do any of those things, his panic fell into a bag of cotton balls. People were going to attack, like waves on a shore, and the best you could do was let them pass over you.

The screams seemed near now. “I think it’s between us and the car,” Anna Conventional said. “Maybe we can lose it in the woods behind that church.”

“Too late!” Berry yelled.

A large man staggered out of the woods. He had shaggy black hair over his eyes and a wild unshaven face. Dirt covered his clothes and skin in whorls and stripes. His Universal

Pride T-shirt and sweat pants gaped with a million rips. He made the animal noise again.

Anna Conventional recognized him first. “It’s Bishop Bacchus!”

The filthy thing stared at Anna Conventional. Berry saw a sagging mustache that once had been plumed with wax. Dirt ringed the soft mouth and wide green eyes that had looked so placid days earlier. There was no mistaking the shredded sneakers and single hoop earring. Bishop Bacchus shrieked again, then threw himself on the ground at their feet. He breathed hard.

“I can’t believe it’s really you,” he said. “I’ve wandered here for days,” he told Berry. “Since your dad drove us to the middle of nowhere.”

“Oh,” Berry said. “I’m so sorry. We didn’t mean to. I mean, my dad had to find Shambolica or wherever, and—”

“Don’t be sorry,” Bishop Bacchus said. Anna Conventional pushed a Dixie cup of sangria at him. He guzzled, then held out the cup for a refill. “Is that brie? Anyway, don’t be sorry at all. I’ve wandered through darkness and grime. After I lost you guys, I fell into a great hole in the ground, which I believe to be an entrance to Hell. I heard strange chanting while I was down there, as if to curse me forever. But I climbed. I climbed until I reached level ground. I found a forest and walked a long time. I slept in an abandoned dumpster. Or rather, I thought it abandoned, but then they scooped me and deposited me at the county dump, a few miles from here. Oh God, that isn’t hummus, is it? I’ve been living off mushrooms and nuts, plus that squirrel I caught yesterday. Anyway, this has been the greatest experience. After wandering a couple days with no money and no way home, I felt this amazing clarity. I could feel someone reaching out to me and comforting me, letting me know I wasn’t really lost. I heard Jesus call my name.”

“Jesus?” Berry said. “Like Dejesus?”

“I thought you were a Pagan,” Anna Conventional exclaimed. She poured sangria down Bishop Bacchus’s throat. “Do you need drugs? I can get drugs. If you’re in withdrawal—”

“I had a fevered delusion of Paganism,” Bishop Bacchus insisted. “I was raised Baptist and strayed. But the Good Shepherd brought me here to redeem me.”

“My dad’s a shepherd now?” Berry said. “I thought he was going to be a goatherd.”

“Snap out of it!” Anna Conventional snapped her fingers in front of Bishop Bacchus’s nose.

“I have snapped,” Bishop Bacchus insisted. “Out of it, I mean. I sleepwalked and now Pm awake on my feet.”

“He needs to talk to someone. Maybe Canon Moosehead can help,” Berry said.

“Good idea. Hanging with a real live Christian minister could scare anyone away from religion.” Anna Conventional grabbed her cell phone. “Maur. We need your boyfriend to meet a new convert. Actually, someone you know. You’ll see. Don’t worry, it’ll be fun. One hour, at Carlo’s.” She hung up and tossed the cellphone in her bag. “Come on, let’s get John the Baptist here a shower and some Clinitron skin saver.”

They carried the picnic basket back to the car and put the Bishop in the back seat on top of their blanket. “So something I don’t get,” Berry said. “You were a bishop with the church of insufficient plumbing or whatever. You had those cool robes and got to party with the strange kids. Now you’re going to become Christian and get demoted to layperson.”

Bishop Bacchus just showed palms. “Will of the Lord.” “Don’t worry,” Anna Conventional said, swerving onto the freeway. “We’ll save him. Organized religion would make Jesus a Satanist. You’re just lucky you missed Maura’s Sacred Prostitute phase a couple years back. She got so busy with rituals and speeches she had no time for partying or actual johns.”

An hour later, they sat at a window table at Carlo’s. On the outside, the tinted glass greened the grays of sidewalks, suits and sixties office buildings. On the inside, all was walnut and overhead vines mixed with ceiling-mounted conical lights. They sipped lattes—Berry’s was decaf—and watched the gray battalions pass. “Do you like your job?” Berry asked Anna Conventional.