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Authors: Marc Laidlaw

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The Orchid Eater (31 page)

BOOK: The Orchid Eater
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Mike started
to thumb quickly through the pages, nodding and making approving noises to calm
Lupe. But when he realized what he was seeing, the urge to lie went out of
him. There was no need.

The
sketches, gritty with dirt from the cave, smeared by grimy hands, were very
fine. Lupe had worked deftly in pencil, pen and ink, with only slight shadings
of tint. He couldn’t help thinking of the sketches in Da Vinci’s notebooks,
quick strokes that captured an essence of nature. The grubby, aged condition of
the paper added to his sense that he was gazing at the works of an ancient
master, idle scribblings in a genius’s notebook.

On every
page Lupe had drawn a different boy. Mike wanted simultaneously to linger on
each image, and to rush through seeing them all.

One was so
thin as to be crippled; sunken-faced, skeletal, with teeth that looked broken
and jagged; lank greasy hair. In one glance, Mike felt that he knew everything
about the boy—could see his entire miserable (and probably brutally short)
existence clinging to him like a coat of grime. Abuse, addiction, unending
despair and waste. He had one hand out, palm up, begging for something.
Anything. Begging for the world.

Another, a
black kid, wore a guitar on a strap over his shoulder, staring out from the
page with a resentful, brooding look. Here was a musician who had never played
a note, never sung a tune. The guitar was unstrung. The set of the boy’s mouth
told him he was mute. The anguish of the boy’s unsung, unwritten songs was
overwhelming. He felt as if the boy were standing there before him.

A small
brown-skinned boy—his bitter expression mixed with spiteful humor—glowered at
Mike, or at the artist. Though young, he was no innocent. To judge from his
eyes, he had already seen far more than most adults, and dreadful sights had
warped him into something most adults could only fear. Uncivilized, a wild boy
held in chains, caged by the lines of Lupe’s sketch, his ferocious power
strained to break free.

And then a
boy masquerading as a man, with closely-shaved hair, dressed in military
fatigues. Fear haunted his face, and he had a whipped look. But there was
brutality there, too, as if he were more than ready to take out his fear and
frustration on anyone who crossed his path, eager to pass down the line his
share of the suffering life had handed him.

Next an
Indian youth with long black hair, black eyes, endless loss and hopelessness
carved in the bones of his face. In one sketch Mike read the story of an entire
culture destroyed, its remnants torn and scattered. The anonymous agony of
extinction was invested in this lone boy, who had no one to speak for him but
Lupe, in strokes of violent skill.

And then
came someone familiar. It took Mike a moment to recognize the boy, because he
had never seen Craig Frost so simply and directly. Never really
seen
him, while he was alive. As
a boy, nasty and stupid, vicious and vindictive: yes—a
boy.
In one glance, Mike knew him
better than he had after years of studied avoidance. But with recognition, the
pages began to tremble unbearably in his hands.

He glanced
up sharply.

The candle
lit only Lupe’s eyes, specks of glare that hypnotized him. Here they were
again, on the wall of his room. He could hear the thud of disco music from next
door, tomtoms booming in his ears.

“Well?”

Lupe’s
hesitance was horribly at odds with the power he commanded.

“They’re
really good,” Mike whispered.

“They are?
You think so?”

“I’ve never
seen anything like them.”

Lupe stepped
closer in swirls of dust. As he did, the hazy echoing cave seemed to fill with
people. The dust was on the verge of solidifying into columns of misty flesh.
He tasted acid in the back of his throat, and felt an LSD twinge. For a moment,
cast upon the dust, taking form within it, he clearly saw the faces of boys
—these
boys.

One stepped
toward him, stirred up by the suction of Lupe’s movements. A dim, familiar
face.

Edgar. His
friend’s eyes flashed and were gone.

“No,” he
said.

“What’s
that?”

He
stammered, looking down at the next page, to which he had turned with hardly a
glance.

And there
was Edgar.

Edgar, sketched
in perfect detail, convincing Mike that all the others had been taken from life
and were equally true to their models. His wide thin mouth, his unmistakable
nose. And in the eyes, his sad hollow eyes, Lupe had in a few simple strokes
captured Edgar’s desperate need to find something beyond the mundane, to
penetrate and partake of all mysteries, to merge with the shadows, transgress
all boundaries, and take hold of the truth—even steal it, if that was the only
way.

Mike,
however, could hold on no longer. The sketches floated from his hands. He
looked for another glimpse of his friend, but the dust motes were swirling and
Edgar was gone. Only his image remained, fluttering facedown on the floor.

“Hey, are
you crazy?” Lupe said. “What’s the matter with you? Didn’t I respect your art?
Didn’t I?”

He came
angrily forward, slashing the air with his knife. Mike backed toward the niches
at the rear of the cave. Avoiding a silver flash, he tripped at the threshold
of one alcove and tumbled backward, striking his head on the stone wall. He
landed on something soft.

Someone.
There was
someone
under him. Cold skin. Hands and arms and a face. All sticky and
wet with a cloying scent he finally recognized, the smell that made his eyes
and nose itch and water. Patchouli. Whimpering, he thrashed around trying to
regain his balance and free himself, even if it meant rushing back into Lupe’s
arms. Lupe had him by the ankle anyway, and was dragging him back into the
candlelight. But he became tangled with the other, and they both tumbled out
together. Not exactly face to face, but close enough.

At his third
vision of Edgar, Mike wept.

Lupe pulled
him back, but not before he saw the red gash gaping in Edgar’s throat, the many
other wounds caked with blackish-red mud, slathered like paint upon the pale
skin. Worst of all, his eyes went irresistibly to the slashed rags of Edgar’s
sex. He should not stare; he should not possess the cold, clinical part of his
mind that observed how the scrotum had been opened and emptied of its contents,
like a cut purse.

The stench
of patchouli was everywhere. An empty vial lay in the dust at the mouth of the
niche. Lupe must have poured it over Edgar’s corpse to mask the smell of decay.
Instead it had created a new, charnel fragrance—one he felt he would remember
even in death.

In death . .
.

Lupe rolled
Mike onto his back and straddled him, knife drawn. His full-moon face shone
down. The candle danced above his head, sending sparks through his wild black
hair. Lupe put his free hand on the waist of Mike’s bluejeans and fumbled at
the silver buttons.

“Get his
pants,” Lupe said, as if he were talking to someone else. “Come on, boys. Come
help.”

Mike gasped
as Lupe’s knees dug into his thighs. He gazed up at the high roof of the cave,
wishing he could believe it was only the ceiling of his room, but knowing that
no one would hear him if he screamed.

Frustrated
with the tight fly buttons, Lupe started hacking at them, nicking Mike’s flesh
through the denim. Mike pissed his pants at the cold pain, as if that were some
defense.

Now, Mike
thought. I’m actually going to die!

Lupe
hesitated, looking down toward the cave’s mouth. Mike heard faint noises
advancing in the sudden silence. He twisted his head sideways, daring to look.

In the
moonlight at the opening stood a crowd of shadows.

When he saw
them, Lupe smiled. “Come on,” he said, nodding frantically. “Come on up. I got
another for you. An artist!”

Mike watched
in growing horror as they stepped into the cave, moving soundlessly in the
dust, gliding up the slope and merging with the blackness of the tunnel.

“Oh, they’re
bright tonight,” Lupe said gleefully, sharing his excitement with Mike—as if
only another artist could appreciate or understand it. “I think drawing them,
really concentrating, made them stronger.” He looked back at them. “Come and
help!”

“Lupe . . .”

Hearing his
name whispered caused Lupe’s smile to die. He jumped to his feet, leaving Mike
as he rushed to the top of the slope.

“You can’t
talk,” he said.

“No? Why
not?”

The boy who
spoke stepped into sight. Mike knew him only slightly from around town. What he
was doing here, Mike couldn’t imagine.

Randy was
his name. Randy something.

Behind him
was another kid with bleached blond hair, his mouth a smudge of lipstick, his
eyes a smeared mess from weeping. Behind them, still more boys were on the
slope. Sal’s boys, he realized. The same who had chased him that first night.

Lupe didn’t
seem to know what to do. His fingers tightened on the switchblade’s handle.

Mike crawled
slowly toward the back of the cave, out of the way, as quietly as possible.

“You killed
Sal,” Randy said.

“Get away!”
Lupe said.

“You killed
your own brother. And my lover.”

Lupe raised
his knife, then lowered it, remembering all the power behind him. He rounded on
his heel and saw Mike, only inches from the trunk and the grenade that lay atop
it.

Mike
screamed and grabbed the grenade first, but Lupe’s hands closed around his own.
They were strong hands, strong enough to make him feel as if his fingers would
be ironed permanently into the metal. But no sooner had Lupe grabbed him, than
they were both engulfed in a rush of bodies.

Mike sucked
in a lungful of dust and started choking. Lupe’s switchblade swept down at his
hand, but someone deflected it. The blade clashed against sandstone, throwing
sparks, and snapped clean off.

Lupe howled
and buried his teeth in Mike’s fist.

The pain was
unbearable, but the crushing weight of bodies was easing. Since the boys could
not manage to pull Lupe off Mike, they were pulling Mike away from Lupe. A
united surge of strength left him feeling torn in two. They all flew backward.
Some of Sal’s gang went tumbling down the slope.

Lupe
sprawled against the wall, panting. Crouched at the edge of the high chamber,
Mike looked down at his hand, covered with blood and purple tooth-marks,
throbbing. He turned it over slowly, reassuring himself and the others that he
still had the grenade. There was a communal sigh.

Lupe
chuckled and raised his own hand. The trigger pin glinted in the weak yellow
light.

Then he
turned slowly, still grinning, and began to unsnap the latches on the trunk.

While Lupe
looked down, Mike’s eyes flew up to the owl’s roost near the ceiling of the
cave. He felt no fear. He didn’t quite believe in the legendary power of
grenades. He had carried them twice now, and nothing had happened. Even so,
without a second thought, he gave this one an underhand toss.

It sailed
straight into the bird’s hole, as if he had practiced the shot every day.

Lupe glanced
up at the clattering sound. “There’s my bird.”

And that was
all Mike saw, because Randy grabbed him from behind, hauling them both backward
down the slope. He never had time to find his footing; it was faster to fall.
The other boys had already hurled themselves outside.

Seconds
later, the moon blinked at him; but it came from the wrong place, shining
between his feet. He went tumbling through bushes, down the hillside, into the
canyon and a dry stream bed.

He was still
falling when the hillside exploded.

The moon
went out. The sky turned black. Dust and rock blasted from the cave, as if from
a cannon. A cannon around whose barrel he had wrapped himself.

The
explosion echoed over the hills, demolishing the Greenbelt’s peace, rocketing
out through the night and back again. Dogs began to bark by the dozens, a whole
pack baying in pursuit of the thunder.

BOOK: The Orchid Eater
9.55Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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