The Children and the Wolves (7 page)

Wally Nerf lives in a Winnebago over by the minor league baseball stadium. He fixes electric guitars and sells stuffed cats to old widows. The old widows bring him their dead cats and he stuffs them with fiberglass insulation and mounts them in a action pose. No one knows how old Wally Nerf is. He might be thirty and he might be sixty. He has a face like a rubber shark. Bounce says he poisons the cats to keep his business going.

Total genius, she says.

He sells fireworks and crystal meth, too.

Wiggins said, And after we get the Glock — then what?
Bounce said, Then we de-poet the Poet.
Wilbur Logg, the man with the dog, I rhymed.

Bounce nodded with hot do-me eyes.

Wiggins was like, What does de-poet mean?
I went, What does it sound like it means?
Bounce said, The chucklehead’s had it coming.
And after that? Wiggins asked.
After that we do whatever we want, Bounce answered.
Whatever’s clever, I added.
Then Wiggins said, What about pep school?
Bounce said,
Prep
school.
I was like, Yeah, prep school.

As usual, the Oxycotton was making him dipshitty.

Then Bounce went, Let’s watch some Ultimate and turned on her fifty-four-inch plasma TV and we watched a cage match. This West Indian giant with tiger stripes tattooed on his neck was pulling some roided out Tasmanian’s face off. There was blood gushing from where the Tasmanian’s left eye was.

Wiggins said, After we make enough money for the Glock, and we de-poet the Poet, what do we do with the Frog?

I was like, We de-Frog her, right?
De-Frog the fucking Frog! Bounce laughed. How amazing would that be!
Poetic! I cried. Ribbit-ribbit!

Later we ate a Tombstone pizza and two more Cinnabons each.

Wiggins looked confused about stuff.

I was like, What’s wrong with you?
Nothing, he said.
You look confused, I told him.
He said, You look like a ass-fuck.

I just laughed cause even though Wiggins finally took a shower he still looked funny with his tooth missing.

The Kent School Admissions Essay Question (250–300 words): With regard to being an individual, what do you feel most distinguishes you from your peers?

Say a girl sees a bird. A small blackbird. Say it appears to be dead. Like it flew into a large bay window, mistakenly thinking it was flying into a new vector of sky, fooled by the reflection. Or maybe its heart broke because it saw something shift in nature. Like its mother being mauled by a fox. Or maybe it was shot out of a tree by a boy with a pellet gun. Say this girl encounters the fallen bird, still alive, and wants to know more about its internal systems. So she takes a tool to it — a hammer or a screwdriver — and pries it open. Not out of cruelty or hatred, but out of a pure curiosity as to how it’s made. As to how it’s different from other animals she has come to know. Its various connective tissues and the makings of its heart.

This girl pushes nature to an uncomfortable limit because she is not satisfied with what she is shown in school, on TV, on the Internet. Cheerleaders bore her. Varsity-letter winners are an absurd menagerie of cardboard joke people. She wants to know the shapes and odors of the world. She wants to get down in the dirt with the worms and the beetles. She wants to know the way meat moves through the packaging house. The way the animal body contains liquids and solids. The way muscle attaches to tendon. Ligaments. She wants to know these things from the smells she acquires on her hands.

She is not afraid of seismic discomfort.

She is not afraid of malice or beauty.

She is not afraid of sex or the holes in her body.

She is not awed by parents or priests or coaches.

She is not afraid to die.

Say this girl is me.

Carla “Bounce” Reuschel
Dumas, Illinois

the white wolfs got blueberry eyes and a long banana tongue
her song is like crying and its like laughing and its like a sky scream

I fell out of the tree but dingdong helped me back up before the wolf with the bubble on his tongue came
dingdong had to pull me by my hair and some fell out and turned into grass in his hand

the wolf with the bubble on his tongue is scarier than the other ones cause his teeth are more yellower with silver tips

we ate eggs today

eggs from blackbirds and we ate some leaves and some bark too
dingdong said the bark had chocolate in it but he was just saying that cause hes sad for the world

then shane fell after we ate and the wolves ate his face and hands
shane wanted to ride horses and make a family and a farm

me and dingdong and this girl named brighty watched the wolves pick at his body they ate him up greedy

eventually his bones turned into a cloud and rained

brightys pretty but she forgets to hold on sometimes and shes got a peppermint leg and the wolves can smell her good so there are three of them waiting for her under her tree

youll fall I keep telling her
youll fall unless you hug the tree better

my head itches where my hair was but its okay
dingdongs hand is blue cause its weak from where he pulled me

oh dingdong I say
poor dingdong

my hand was blue too from where I fell on it but now its strong again cause I ate

I dont cry and I dont get cold

Last night we took the Future Pill. It was pink and shaped like a little egg. Bounce put one on my tongue and put one on Orange’s tongue and then she put one on hers.

What’s it called? Orange asked.
The Future Pill, Bounce said.

On the bottle it said Ergot 7.

Bounce was like, Get ready, chuckleheads. Get ready to absorb some knowledge.

We drank it down with a Strawberry Quik.

To the future, Bounce said.
Me and Orange were like, To the future.

We were behind Orange’s house, near the woods.

Nothing happened for a while so I just stared into the trees. They were glowing from the fires. At first I thought there was just one fire, but after a while I think I counted three different fires, then a fourth.

How many men do you think are out there? I asked.
At least a hundred, Orange said.
Twenty at most, Bounce said. Fucking weirdos.
I said, What do you think they’re doing?
Orange went, Being warlocks.
Bounce was like, I’ll bet all they do is drink hard liquor and fight each other.
I was like, In the winter they’re gonna freeze.
Orange said, All the buttsex’ll keep em warm.
Bounce went, You would know, Firebox.

It looked like shapes was moving around the glow parts. Maybe there wasn’t just men out there? Maybe there were some monsters, too? Like a half-man half-goat or a Bigfoot with a sword, in charge of everything.

After a minute Bounce said, They’re trying to stop time.
How? Orange asked.
By living away from things, she answered. No alarm clocks. No cell phones. No responsibilities.

I thought about stopping time.

I imagined this huge grandfather clock on top of a mountain. I walked up to it with a sledgehammer. There was a ladder leaning against it. Just before I started climbing the ladder the clock’s face turnt into Denzel Washington and he started laughing at me. His big white movie teeth were blinding.

Then I was suddenly walking into the woods.

It was the fall and my feet were swishing through leaves.

And then I was walking up a tree.

And then it was the winter and snow was freezing my eyelashes.

I walked sideways up the trunk of the tree, my body bitch-slapping science and nature. It was like being in a cartoon without the drawings.

I had gumdrops for eyes and balloon skin.

I walked on top of all the trees, looking down at the fires. The snow was falling right on the flames but it wasn’t melting. It turnt the fire white.

Then it turnt it into water.

Then into a woman’s hair.

I counted seven hundred and forty-one fires.

And then just like that I was back in the grass with Bounce and Orange. We were lying head-to-head-to-head.

I ain’t feeling shit yet, Orange said.
You will, Bounce said, I promise.
He said, You feeling anything, Wiggins?
Not yet, I lied.

I didn’t trust Orange no more. There was a coldishness between us. Like when you find a penny in the freezer. I had a thought that I could kill him. I could stab him hard in the heart or cut his throat or drop a machine on his head when he was sleeping.

Then I started dreaming with my eyes open and I saw my soul. It was a crystal egg and it could fly. It hovered over my head. I kept trying to see if it had a face on it but it wouldn’t stop moving. Like Denzel Washington. Or like the face of a president or a face that you find on some money or the face of a famous rap star. I tried to catch it but it kept scooting away, just out of reach.

Come here, I said to it. Come here, Soul.

At one point I remember seeing Orange standing naked over a coffee can. He was peeing and picking at his pubes.

My piss is ancient fire! he screamed. My stomach is a volcano and my piss is ancient fire!

His skin looked like it was glowing from the inside. Like he swallowed a star.

And Bounce turning circles with her arms spread wide.

Then all of our clothes were off and then they were back on and then they were off again.

I only touched my Soul once and it burnt my hand.

I woke up squeezing my fingers.

I don’t know how I got home.

When I came out to the kitchen Dirty Diana was about to leave for work. Her nurse’s uniform was so white. So so so so white. Whiter than Denzel Washington’s teeth on that clockface. My head was pounding. Somehow I was wearing Orange’s shirt. It said Wrigley Field Sucks! and had the Cardinals’ logo on the back.

Dirty Diana said, I’m taking the weekend off.

She’d gotten a haircut. She’d gotten a haircut and she looked like a girl.

I just nodded.

It felt like there was troll hair in my mouth.

She said, Cortina’s taking me to Niagara Falls.

I was like, Where’s that?
In New York, she said.
I said, New York City?
New York State, she said. It’s a voluminous waterfall. It’s sposed to be really beautiful.
For how long? I asked.
Just a few days, she answered.
You comin back? I asked.
Of course, she said. I’ll be gone a few days tops.

I noticed that her skin looked clearer too.

She’d never used a word like voluminous before and for a second I thought the old Dirty Diana got traded in the way you trade in a car.

She touched my hair and was like, You’ll be okay holding down the fort?

I nodded. I wanted her to ask me about my tooth but she still hadn’t noticed.

Here, she said, and handed me forty dollars. Don’t forget to eat.

I took the money.

She said, If Charlie Chinco comes by tell him the garbage disposal is making weird noises again.

She went over and turnt on the garbage disposal. It made a grinding noise. I looked at the refrigerator.

I could tell that it knew something.

*  *  *

The next day Dirty Diana left with Cortina. He came and picked her up in his purple Hyundai. I had to help her take her suitcase down. Cortina’s windshield’s got a crack in it.