Blue Boy Page 17

  I now enter a residential neighborhood adjacent to my own. Even though I am relatively close to my house, this area feels strange and new. The only time I ever come here is to visit our town’s biggest public park, and the moment I think of the park, I know that it is my destination. Despite the relative lack of natural charm in my hometown, this patch of land, Gerber Park, is quite impressive, two square miles of hilly lawns, tiny, open-air wooden lodges for holding barbecues and birthday parties, swing sets, and hiking trails. It is situated at the end of the road that I’m now traversing, and the closer its entrance becomes, the faster I walk. Two cream-colored butterflies flutter across my line of sight, and I liken them to the way my stomach feels. There is something springlike about them, which puzzles me on this autumn day, but I imagine that they stayed in the cold for the sole purpose of making this beautiful sight for me.

  The Parks and Recreation Department has not done a particularly good job of tending to the grounds, and a thick carpet of crinkled brown leaves covers the grass. This is paradise for me, and I stomp through the leaves, sending puffs of leaf and earth dust into the air. The wind blows, pricking my skin through my sweatpants, and the carpet shifts in turn. I scan the panorama of the park and don’t see a soul. This is, then, my new playground. Let the other kids infest the school blacktop, let them banish me to the edge of The Clearing; I now have a playground that puts theirs to shame, and for the next fifteen minutes, I roll around in the leaves, play “America the Beautiful” on my recorder and sing to myself. I come to a small birch tree, one branch of which has grown out parallel to the ground. I grab the penitent branch and treat it like a barre, practicing ronds de jambe that rake through leaves. At one point, a robin bobs in front of me, inquisitive as the drivers on the road, and another shudder passes through me as I imagine Mrs. Nevins walking to Principal Taylor’s office to tell her I’m missing; Mrs. Goldberg hearing the news in passing and looking up and down the hallways for me; Mrs. Buchanan cackling and pouring herself a large brandy from a snifter she hides in her kiln. And then, zap, I am back here in the park, and it’s so quiet, except for the wind and the leaves and the chirp the robin gives before flying off and leaving me to my own devices.

  Speaking of devices, I hear the faint grumble of a car, and then the grumble gets louder. I hide behind the tree, which, being a birch, is too thin to fully conceal me, and I curse the fact that I didn’t find a maple tree to hang around. The car emerges, and it’s a blue pickup truck, its grille slightly askew and its tires wobbly. Despite its delicate frame, it charges ahead with purpose. It drives down the main park road, which weaves around trees and lodges, and because the park is a pretty open space, I can see it drive to the summit of the park, a roundabout where another huge American flag towers over a small stone wall. From there, you can see the entire city of Crestview, and most kids’ favorite thing to do is to pick out their own house from this lookout point. Mine always looks sorely out of place, bigger and newer than the other houses around it.

  My parents.

  What on Earth will they do when they find out I’ve done this?

  I begin to walk back to the entrance of the park, terrified. I can’t believe how foolish I’ve been. My dad will lose his mind when he finds out that this has happened, and my mother will end up giving me a huge speech in which she likens my absence from school to the first cigarette that someone smokes: “Just as one puff leads to cancer, so one missed assignment leads to not becoming a doctor, beta.” Even though I am petrified to endure these reactions, I know that the longer I stay out here, the more intense the anger will be, so now I start running back.

  And it’s Wednesday! I have ballet class on Wednesdays! Now I am sprinting back as fast as I can.

  Then something stops me. Maybe it’s the wind heaving extra hard for one second, but something turns my head in the direction of the pickup truck. Instantly, I must know who is in that truck. It’s the middle of the day on a Wednesday, now around one o’clock. Mothers are watching soap operas in the dim daytime comfort of their homes, but what is happening in the park?

  Just as I have walked the perimeter of The Clearing, I now walk the perimeter of the park, along a wall of interwoven maples and pines and birches. Whereas the leaves on the ground were a thing of enjoyment before, they are now a hindrance, the crinkling under my feet a way for the occupant of that truck to find me out. Of course, only if that person had sonic hearing would they hear me, but I am extra paranoid because I am extra intrigued.

  I get to a good vantage point at one of the lodges, where I can crouch behind a large green trash can and see straight to the truck. It is about thirty yards away. From here, I can make out the silhouettes of three people piled into the two seats of the truck. There is a flurry of movement, as if they are laughing hard, and then the front doors open and three high school–age people file out. There are two guys and a girl. One guy has his hair cropped short and dyed platinum blond. He is wearing a Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls jersey over a white T-shirt and long jeans, and despite his baggy clothing, I can make out the strong heft of his body. Even from where I am, I can see the shiny rings of gold piercing his ears. The other guy is skinnier, shorter, with spiked brown hair and gold rings in his ears, too. He is wearing a bright blue hooded sweatshirt and equally baggy, but black, jeans.

  The girl looks out of place with these guys. Whereas the guys are joking wholeheartedly and look very sure of themselves, the girl laughs almost like an afterthought. She is wearing a puffy, black Pittsburgh Steelers Starter jacket. Her hair is dyed platinum blond, as well, and is long and curly. Her eyes are very pronounced, encased in mascara (it is most surely not kajol; I don’t think mascara can be called kajol when there is a Starter jacket involved), and her mouth is a bright red oval of lipstick. Her skin, like theirs, is very pale, and when she laughs her teeth look yellowed in comparison.

  They are all smoking in different rhythms and resemble, at one point, as they file away from the truck, a human calliope. They kick through the leaves as if they have done this many times before, and I recognize that they are “those kids” that my parents warn me about—the ones who “play hooky.” It’s not just some joke that my parents make; there really are people who blow off their studies and do nothing all day. Another twinge of fear pierces me (Mrs. Moehlman is being berated now by Principal Taylor for not keeping better charge of the students; Mrs. Goldberg is walking around the playground wondering if I’m at the swings; Mrs. Buchanan is drunk off her ass), but I follow behind these kids all the same, too obsessed with them to pay much heed to my fear.

  They head toward one of the hiking trails, a snakelike stripe of dirt that disappears into a canopy of tall, colorful trees. The boy in the jersey leads, with the other boy following behind and the girl last. Once they disappear, I contemplate how to go about following them without their knowing I’m there. I decide that I’m just going to have to make my way through the trees and bushes without taking the trail. I start, then, through the bushes, which are not as tangled as I might have feared. I slip through them quite easily, in fact, and although the occasional twig scratches me through my sweatpants, I am able to use my recorder as a machete to whack through the underbrush. “When the Saints Go Marching In” pops into my head with a pang of irony.

  After about five minutes, I come to a big tree whose thick trunk hides me completely from view. The trio has stopped at a tiny brook littered with small white stones. It is at the bottom of a dusty halfpipe of earth, tree roots, and weeds. My tree overlooks this and thankfully puts me out of the line of sight of these people. The spiky-haired boy and the girl flick their cigarettes away, but the blond boy keeps puffing on his.

  “Give me a hit of that shit,” says the spiky-haired boy, who sweeps his hand in a mock move of stealing the blond boy’s cigarette. The blond boy ejects a quick chuckle and says, “Fuck you, dude.” He sucks on the cigarette very deeply, then exhales a blue, almost purple cloud of smoke. The spiky-haired boy leans forward and pretend
s to chomp at the smoke. The girl laughs a deep laugh, and says, “You’re fucking crazy, dude.” Hearing her curse instantly transforms her for me into a femme fatale, albeit an ungraceful one. She is, I think, even more masculine than these boys, her clothes more male than androgynous, her bearing and laugh more adult. I can’t tell, however, if she is more or less wizened than the boys.

  “Shut up,” the spiky-haired boy says, this time successfully taking the cigarette from his friend and puffing deeply on it.

  “Whyn’t you make me?” the girl says. It is not so much a threat as a weak rejoinder.

  “I’ll make you,” the blond boy says. He moves toward the girl, who stuffs her hands deeply into her back jean pockets, juts her chin into the air, and grins. Then the blond boy leans in and kisses her. As they kiss, the girl keeps her hands in her back pockets, simply receiving more than giving back. It’s not the way I’ve ever seen people kiss in the movies. I always envision kissing to be a passionate embrace in which two people clutch each other tightly and work together to create a balance of tongues and lips. But this type of kissing seems perfunctory. All the same, I begin to rise in my sweatpants, and my heart beats so hard that I can barely hear the wind anymore.

  I know what is about to happen but cannot quite believe that I am here to witness it. The blond boy and the girl sprawl themselves out on one of the large rocks and pull each other’s pants down. Their private parts look so different from the ones I’ve seen in my magazine. Whereas in the magazine, private parts are groomed and compact, statuesque to some degree, the parts I see now are a blur of pink and hair. The girl leans over and gives the boy a blow job. He holds her head like it’s a cleaning machine buffing his penis. Meanwhile, the spiky-haired boy has thrown the cigarette into the water and taken himself out. He plays with himself and watches with a stare that is so intense it seems murderous. Then, he proceeds to walk to the girl and enters her.

  The boys take turns with her, and she acquiesces to whatever their bodies suggest. Sometimes the boys direct each other in such a utilitarian manner that it’s as if they are working on some project together. I notice more than anything how these guys are careful not to touch each other. Their eyes never meet, nor do they ever meet the girl’s gaze. She seems to expect this, and her eyes are either closed or downcast for the goings-on. She is eerily silent most of the time, but there is the occasional squeal from her, and then, gradually, a pant tinged with laughter. The boys, meanwhile, grunt toughly and continually. They are now completely naked, as is the girl, the tips of her hair partially wet and darkened brown with water. The blond boy’s body is strong and toned, and I am fascinated by how he is muscled like the men I’ve seen in movies and in Penthouse but also real, normal. The leaner boy’s body is crude but intriguing at the same time; although he does not possess the physical sculpture of the other boy, his sexual urge is even greater, and he savors the entire process, handling the girl’s body as if it’s a pet. The girl’s body acts as a vessel for its lovers; her breasts, though large, seems superfluous, despite how many cursory caresses the boys may give them.

  They finish with the blond boy on top of her, the spiky-haired boy in her mouth. When the boys come, they do it all over her, and my stomach does not know what to with itself. It turns and swells at the same time; it is as if the butterflies from before are engaging in a furious wrestle. I do not know if I am disgusted or impressed. What I do know is that what I have just witnessed has rendered Penthouse entirely futile. Seeing this up close, seeing the actual performance of these acts, has become such an entirely different sexual activity that I feel my obsession augmented from a visual experience to a pressing need to feel these bodies, to know what those hands and parts would feel like on me.

  Before I can have another thought, I feel a hand on my back. I jump and turn, almost falling off the lip of the embankment, and the recorder slips from my hands and falls with a clunk on the pebbles below. There in front of me stands a park ranger, his eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses so black that I can’t tell if he’s looking at me or at the kids, whose excited squeals die as they scramble away.

  The ranger, who, according to his gold name tag is named Rodney, takes me to the jeep he has parked at the trail’s entrance. He makes me walk in front of him, and I feel his eyes all over me. I still haven’t seen those eyes, but from his heavy steps on the ground, crushing the leaves, I can tell that he is both angry and confused about what to make of me. I can’t believe that he has just let those kids go and has targeted me, but I guess a tiny and stunned kid is a much easier target than three sexual deviants.

  His car is a white Cherokee with CRESTVIEW PARKS AND RECREATION decal’d on the side. He doesn’t open the door for me but stands beside the car, arms akimbo, until I reluctantly pull the handle and get inside. There is a plush squirrel hanging from the rearview mirror, and a bit of tension drains out of me at the sight of it. Rodney walks to his side of the car, cracks open his door, and plops himself onto the front seat. He is wearing a white dress shirt, black slacks, a black tie, and Timberland boots. He is just a little overweight and is flushed from our trip. He breathes heavily onto the dashboard, and it ricochets back into my face. His breath is pleasant, minty. I see the reason why when I look below the stereo and see a bunch of red and white peppermint candies, the kind you get at restaurants, stuffed into the open glove compartment. At my feet, five or six discarded wrappers lie on the black floor mat.

  He starts the engine and pulls away. A wedding ring so big that it looks like the spoils of some jousting tournament lights up his left hand. The ring immediately conjures up a family life, and I imagine that he has two or three children, maybe classmates of mine, and a warm, pretty wife who takes care of them. Maybe she’s at home watching Stefano plot the deaths of several swanlike prima donnas.

  We drive in silence through the park. It is still empty. I spot the birch tree where I did my ballet exercises and think about how distant that moment seems now. The sideways branch makes me think of something else, too, and I shake my head to get rid of the memory of those two boys’ bodies. Rodney notices my twitch and looks over at me. I look down at my feet, afraid to meet his gaze.

  “What were ya doin’ out there, boy?” he says. His voice is very deep.

  I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything at all. I just keep staring at my feet.

  “I guess that’s a pretty stupid question,” he says. “Look, boy, I don’t know whatcha were doin’ out here and don’ really care. Thing is, I know, well, um, whatcha might have seen might make ya wonder about some stuff, but—”

  He stops himself. It dawns on me that he finds this situation as difficult to process as I do. He grips the steering wheel tightly, and I can see his palms sliding as he does so, a thin film of sweat coating the leather. Suddenly, his right arm reaches out, and I wince, thinking he’s going to hit me. Instead, he reaches into the glove compartment and extracts a mint, which he pops out of its wrapper with just his right hand. He puts it into his mouth and crunches on it, crinkles the wrapper nervously in his hand, then tosses the wrapper lightly at my feet.

  “Where am I takin’ ya, boy?” he says. I look over and see tiny shards of candy stuck to his bottom lip.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “You don’t know?”

  “Well, I don’t know where I should go. I was at school.”

  “Which school—Van Buren?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” he says, flicking his left wrist and revealing a thick black watch with about twenty buttons on it. The time is displayed in bright green numbers: 1:47. “It’s ten till, now. You’ve still got another two or so hours of school left, boy.”

  He drives me back to the school, which looks exactly the way I left it. Rodney parks the car in the lot—a couple of rows of teachers’ cars, mainly tiny compact ones with Jesus fish attached to their rear bumpers. Then says, “Alrighty, let’s go.”

  We get out of the car, and again, he waits
for me to walk ahead. I feel naked, as I normally walk into this entrance with a backpack strapped on. Rodney escorts me into the main lobby, which is as empty as the park.

  “Well, boy, here ya go,” he says. He is still red, still nervous. He looks like a frightened child compared to the sex-crazed boys—no, men—from earlier. But there is something endearing about Rodney. Somewhere deep down, he understands the awkwardness of my situation and doesn’t seem to pass all that much judgment on me. It’s maybe the nicest a stranger has ever been to me. Then he is gone.

  I walk down the hallway toward Mrs. Nevins’s room. I pass the art display where Mrs. Goldberg wanted to hang my drawings. A collection of jungles made from multicolored construction paper are in the center spot right now. One child has made palm trees out of blue and orange construction paper. Although I guess I take the same freewheeling approach to color in my drawings, I still recognize a higher level of inspiration and execution in my work. The choice of color here seems arbitrary, as if the so-called “artist” merely ran out of the “right” colors of green and brown.

  Our school is so unpatrolled. I’ve heard of hall monitors before, but it’s not until now that I realize our school doesn’t have them. Therefore, I reach Mrs. Nevins’s door without being spotted by anyone important, save the students who are gazing, dreamlike, out the doors of their classrooms. I can hear Mrs. Nevins talking to the class about the latest reading comprehension section we were assigned—an abridged version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Right now she is at the blackboard, which faces the door, and she will see me enter. But if I wait until she finishes speaking and goes to her desk, which is on the opposite side of the room, she may not see me but will probably hear me enter anyway. I decide that I have a better chance with the second option; at least in that case, there is a possibility she won’t hear, or see, me. I wait until I hear her high heels click over to her desk. Then I take a deep breath and enter.