The Troop (7 page)

Suffused with this sense of righteousness his father had instilled, Kent held his hand out to max. “Give me the walkie-talkie, man. You know that’s the way it should be.”

When max handed it over, Kent clapped him on the back. “Attaboy, max.” He swept his arm forward. “Tallyho!”

sTuNg, max
loafed back to his customary position. newton tugged on his sleeve.
“You didn’t have to give it to him, you know.”
“I don’t care. I don’t need it.”
“Yeah, but Scoutmaster Tim gave it to
you.
”
“oh, shut up, newt.”
max regretted speaking so harshly, but there was something so . . .
exasperating
about newt. His hidebound determination to stick to “the rules.” like this thing with the walkie-talkie. Who gave a shit? It didn’t
matter
if Scoutmaster Tim had given it to max—they were away from the adults now. Different rules applied. Boys’ rules, which clearly stated: the big and strong take from the small and weak, period.
There was just something about newt that made max want to snap at him. A soft, obliging quality. A whiff of piteousness wafted right out of newt’s pores. It was like catnip to the average boy.
max felt a deeper, more inherent need to treat newt shabbily this morning. It had something to do with the strange man on the chesterfield and the tight unease that had collected in max’s chest when he’d gazed at him. Something about the unnatural angularity of his face, as if his features had been etched with cruel mathematical precision using a ruler and compass.
max’s mind inflated the details, nursing the image into a freakish horror show: now the man’s face was actually
melting,
skin running like warm wax down a candle’s stem to soak into the chesterfield, disclosing the bleached bone of his skull. max’s brain probed the tiny details, fussing with them the same way his tongue flicked at a chancre sore: the smashed radio (why had the man wrecked it?), the crumpled box of soda crackers in the trash (had the Scoutmaster eaten them?), and the itchy smile plastered to the Scoutmaster’s face, as if fishhooks were teasing his mouth into a grin.
max pushed these thoughts away. Scoutmaster Tim had made the right call by sending them off. It was easier out here: the dry rustle of leaves tenaciously clinging to the trees, the slap of waves on the rock face. He glanced at newt—his wide ass hogging the trail, each cheek flexing inside tight dungarees. He reminded max of a Weeble, those old kiddie toys.
Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down
 . . .
newt never
did
fall down. He withstood the boy’s torments with stoic determination, which made it easier—newt could take it, right? Picking on newt uncoiled the tension in max’s chest. It was awfully selfish, yet awfully true.

9

“WHaT WOuld
you rather,” ephraim said, “eat a steaming cowflop or let a hobo fart in your face?”

It was one of their favorite games, a great way to pass the time on long hikes. Had Scoutmaster Tim been leading, the game would’ve been far more vanilla—
What would you rather: get bit by a rabid dog or swallow a wasp in your Coke can?
—but now, no adults around, it took on a saltier tone.

“What kind of hobo?” max asked. It was common to mull these choices from several angles in order to make an informed selection.
“How many types of hobos are there?” said ephraim. “Your run-ofthe-mill smelly old hobo, I guess, the ones who hang out at the train yard.”
“How big a cowflop are we talking about?” Kent called back.
“Standard size,” ephraim called back. The boys nodded as if that was all he’d needed to say—he’d perfectly set the size of this hypothetical cowflop in their minds.
“Is this hobo diseased or anything?” max asked. “like, his ass rotting out?”
“His morals are diseased,” ephraim said, after a pause to think. “But he’s been given a clean bill of health.”
“I’d eat the cowflop,” said newton.
“What a fucking surprise,” ephraim said.
eventually they all agreed that, of both scenarios, scarfing a cowflop was marginally superior to a strange, smelly man’s hairy ass cheeks ripping a wet grunter in their faces.
“It’d singe your eyebrows off,” Kent said to appreciative laughter. “It’d put a center part right down your hair!”
“What would you rather,” newton said, “give a speech in front of the whole school or get your bathing suit sucked down the filter at the public pool?”
ephraim groaned. “oh, for fuck’s sake, newt, that’s so
laaaaaaame.
”
“Yeah, but,” newton mumbled, “you’d be naked, right? Your bum hanging out.”
“Your
bum
?” ephraim scoffed. “Your
bum,
really? Your pink little tushie?”
ephraim pulled a cigarette out of his pack, along with a brass Zippo. He fixed the smoke between his lips and lit it with an elaborate flourish: drawing the Zippo up his thigh, popping off the lid, then swiftly running it down again, sparking the flywheel on his trousers. He touched the flame to the tobacco, inhaled, and said:
“nothing like a smoke when you’re stuck out in nature.”
ephraim was the only boy in their grade who smoked. A recent affectation. He bought them in singles—four, five cigarettes at a time— from a high schooler named ernie Smegg, whose doughy carbuncled face looked like a basket of complimentary dinner rolls.
“You smoke the wrong way,” Kent said. “You’re holding it all wrong.”
“What?” ephraim said. He pinched the cigarette between his thumb and pointer finger, the way you’d hold a pipe. “What’s the matter?”
“my dad says only Frenchmen smoke like that,” said Kent. “And
fags.
”
ephraim’s jaw went stiff. “Shut your big fucking mouth, K.”
“You shouldn’t smoke,” newton said fussily. “my mom says it turns your lungs black as charcoal briquettes.”
ephraim’s chin jutted. “Yeah? Your mother’s so dumb she stares at an orange juice carton all day because it says:
concentrate.
”
“Hey!” Kent barked, bristling. “Don’t rag on his mom, man.”
ephraim snorted but eventually said, “Sorry, newt. So what would you rather: jerk off a donkey or fingerbang Kathy rhinebeck?”
Kathy rhinebeck was a sweet girl who’d been branded the class slut due to the rumor—unsubstantiated by anyone aside from Dougie Fezz— that she’d masturbated Dougie Fezz “to climax” in the back row of the north Point Cinema.
Christ on a bike, she didn’t know what the hell she was doing,
Fezz told a gaggle of pop-eyed boys in the school yard, his tone one of withering scorn.
What, was she yanking weeds out of a garden?
“What’s a fingerbang?” newton asked, predictably.
“I’d jerk off the donkey,” Shelley suddenly said. “Who wants sloppy seconds?”
This, the boys silently acknowledged, was precisely the sort of response you could expect from Shelley longpre—he had this way of sucking the air out of the game; out of
any
game really.
They hiked in silence around the eastern hub of the island. The trail deteriorated until it was nothing but a strip of loose shale edged by chickweed and stinging thistles. It led around a rocky outcropping facing out over the gunmetal sea.
“This the way?” newton asked.
“Where else?” Kent said challengingly. “Tim didn’t send us on a granny walk.”
They worked their way up. The shale sat upon a base of solid granite holding the same pink hue of the outcropping. loose stones kept pebbling away under their boots. The path—which had seemed quite solid at the outset—soon became a series of treacherous collapsing footfalls.
And it soon narrowed at the midpoint of their ascent. They could barely crowd both their feet together on it. Below them lay a steep slope carpeted with the same soft shale. It was not so sheer that they risked free falling, but steep enough that they would slide painfully down, boots pumping and hands clawing for purchase. If they couldn’t stop in time, they’d hit the cold, gray sea.
ephraim said: “Whose smart idea was this again?” When nobody answered—they lacked the energy or inclination, focused entirely on their task, which had abruptly turned very grim—his gaze zeroed in on Kent, clumsily edging his bulk around the rock face.
You big dumbfuck
, ephraim thought.
You stupid shit, you
.
The boys turned their faces into the outcrop, edging along the rock face with hesitant stutter-steps. newton cried out, his nose scraping on a pitted extrusion of granite, peeling off a layer of skin. Straggly weeds grew off the bare rock, the tips of their withered leaves frosted with sea salt. How could anything survive in such a place, tilted crazily over the water?
The boy’s fingertips hummed over the rock like bugs, searching desperately for handholds. “Grab here,” ephraim told Shelley, pulling the boy’s hand to the right spot. “That
seam
there. Feel it?
There.
“
next ephraim pivoted his hips and kicked one leg out, making an X with his body: one hand gripping the rock while the other was outflung in space; one leg safely moored, the other kicked out over the waves crashing a hundred feet below.
“Top o’ the world, ma!”
“Stop it!” newton shrieked, sagging jelly-kneed against the rock face.
“Come on, eef,” said max, his fingers hooked like talons into the stone.
ephraim’s eyes narrowed, a look indicative of future devilry, but he only swung himself back against the cliff. “Keep your skin on, newt. Don’t give yourself a heart attack.”
ephraim became aware of the sound of his breathing as it whistled madly against the stone. The waves crashed rhythmically into the cliffs below, the water sucking back out to sea with a foamy gurgle. His arms trembled. The long tendons running down the backs of his calves jumped.
We could die
—this thought cleaved ephraim’s mind like a guillotine blade.
One of us could start to fall, and someone will try to help—Scout Law number two: a Scout is ever loyal to his fellows; he must stick to them through thick and thin—and another and another until everyone gets pulled down like a string of paper dolls.
From his vantage at the head of the pack, Kent now realized this couldn’t be the right route. But whose fault was that?
Tim’s,
for sending them out alone. Dull metallic anger throbbed at Kent’s temples. It was stupid Tim’s fault that Kent’s mind was now paralyzed by fear. Stupid stupid stupid . . .
The trail widened on the other side of a tricky ledgeway. Kent held out his hand to help ephraim across, then Shelley, then newt and max. They walked silently along a shallow upswell, sweating and breathing heavily. The trail emptied onto a flat rocky expanse overlooking the ocean.
ephraim set both hands into Kent’s chest and pushed. The bigger boy staggered back.
“Great idea, brainiac.”
“It wasn’t—I didn’t do it on purpose,” Kent said, his neck bright red.
“nobody better give you the keys to an airplane, man.” ephraim’s chin was angled up, nearly butting into Kent’s. “With your sense of direction, you’d fly everybody into the sun.”
ephraim’s hands curled into fists. Kent knew ephraim wasn’t shy about throwing them. eef had been in fights. Kent, not so much. Sure, he’d shoved other boys down and put them in headlocks—but he’d never squared off with another boy and thrown real punches. He’d never
had
to. Being bigger had acted as both threat and deterrent.
But here stood ephraim, a creature of coiled muscle and quick rage, challenging him. Kent’s hair was plastered to his forehead with clammy sweat. His blood beat a high-hat tempo inside his skull. He pictured ephraim’s fist clocking him on the chin, saw himself falling with one leg twisted painfully beneath him. The image caused bitter saliva to squirt into his mouth.
ephraim gave him a dismissive shove. “A fucking granny walk, eh? Bozo.”
Kent hated the sudden shameful fear that rose in his throat, choking him—hated himself for feeling it. The sheepdog had behaved weakly— he himself had become a sheep.
Baaaah.
His father’s mocking voice kicked up inside his skull.
Baaaah, baaaah, Kenty-sheep, have you any wool? Yes sir, yes sir! Three bags full . . .
Kent bit down on his tongue. His father’s voice switched off like a radio as his mouth filled with the metallic taste of blood.
They stood on a stony promontory. The salt-heavy wind riffled and snapped at the boy’s clothing. At their backs lay the darkness of the forest. Kent screwed his eyes against the shivering water. Perhaps a mile away the white surf crested on the rusted bones of a sunken freighter. The sky met the sea at the horizon. Kent found it impossible to separate one from the other: sea and sky welded together without a joint.
Sudden thunder arose. A helicopter breasted the latticework of trees. Black and muscular looking: not a traffic or sightseeing helicopter.
The boys’ faces broke into delighted grins. They waved. The chopper climbed into the sky and rotated around with its nose tilted down, then dropped abruptly. The pulse of its blades burred painfully inside the boys’ skulls. Kent could smell the frictionless grease the mechanics used to lubricate its rotors: a little like cherry Certs.
The helicopter lifted up with predatory grace, swung round, and fled into the open sea. Squinting, Kent could just make out a series of squat dark shapes strung across its flight path.
“Ships out there,” newton said. “looks like they’re anchored. The military does maneuvers out here sometimes . . . but I mean, that’s an
awful
lot of ships.”
“maybe they’re whaling ships,” said Kent. “You better watch out, newt—they’re coming to harpoon your fat ass.”
As the boys’ riotous laughter washed over him, newt’s eyes returned to the water. Kent felt better; the equilibrium reestablished and he was in control again—newt was always good for that—but still, a bitter alkaline taste slimed his tongue, as if he were sucking on an old battery.

EVIDENCE LOG, CASE 518C
PIECE T-09 (Personal Effects)
Counseling Diary of Ephraim Elliot
Recovered from SITE T (5 Elm Street, North Point, Prince

Edward Island) by Officer Brian Skelly, badge #908
Okay so Mr. Harley here it is. One page like you asked. Who knew a psychologist would give me homework!!!

So you wanted me to tell a story. Just a story of why sometimes, out of nowhere, I get real angry. Like really REALLY angry and get in fights. Why I want to punch my fist in a wall or in some stupid jerks face. At first I got angry at you for asking WHY I was angry. FUUUUUNY! But then I think, okay, your just doing your job (sorry for my spelling and all that). So here goes.