"Come on now, music man," said McCrae. "Let"s not start acting like a drill sergeant."
"What"s that supposed to mean?" I said, growing angry.
"It means we all know you were a.s.signed to this job. It"s no secret. Cadet Granz over there thinks they sent you here because you"re one of those special r.e.t.a.r.ds who, you know, can do some things real good, like count or play a instrument. No offense. But I"m of the mind that you did something wrong to end up here, just like us. So what"s the story?"
"My story is I"m here to serve my community, McCrae. And as an official drill sergeant I"m ordering you to turn around! Right now!"
McCrae laughed. "Okay, okay. Don"t get all riled up."
"McCrae!" shouted the other drill sergeant. "Shut up and turn around!" He grabbed McCrae and spun him around.
McCrae let something flap up out of his hands. It rushed at me, beating its wings against my chest and neck. I grabbed it, and saw that it was a baby loon. How McCrae had managed to catch the bird, I don"t know. Attached to its leg was a luggage tag, one of the slips we tied to the cadets" duffels when we shipped them in or out. c.u.n.t, it read in McCrae"s lefty handwriting.
"Empty your pockets, McCrae," said the drill sergeant.
McCrae pulled his pockets inside out and a dozen little pieces of paper fluttered to the ground. a.s.s rape, said one. Big diseased c.o.c.k, said another.
"That"s the end of lunch, then," said the drill sergeant. Then he addressed the other cadets. "Drop what you"re eating and get back to work." The boys sighed and swore under their breath, then got to their feet and started working again. As the other drill sergeant pushed him past me, McCrae shot me a sad look, a look that said he was disappointed in me, as though I"d let him down somehow. I looked at the loon, the tag still attached to its leg. I pictured it landing on the other side of the lake, on the beach where the children from the other camp were playing; I pictured it landing right in some little girl"s hands.
"Nunce" is short for enunciate, which is what people used to say I did best on horn: stepping hard and clear on each note in a commanding, declarative way. But this is a style no one wants to play alongside. It"s the style of someone who learned to play alone, not in a band like most people. I"m no good at call-and-response. How I play is like someone talking loudly to himself, yelling at himself.
Each morning at five fifty I took my place beneath the flagpole, dew still beading the gra.s.s, the occasional low fog stewing around my ankles, and waited there until it was time to play reveille. I listened to the rope gently bell against the flagpole. I watched a golden outline materialize around the distant treetops. And then, right at six o"clock, I emptied myself into that horn. Sometimes I rang loud enough to knock the birds from the trees. At night, I returned to the spot and played taps the same way.
When Brill didn"t need me to do much, I practiced down by the lake. He"d given me permission to use his locker because it was larger than the standard lockers, which wouldn"t fit my horn. He was one of the only sergeants with keys to the back gate, so I was always careful when I borrowed them to go practice.
I thought someone might complain about my playing, maybe someone who lived on the lake, or even someone from that other camp across the water, but no one ever did. Even when I played at night, imagining that I was playing just for Lex, no one got upset. In the evenings I tried to play softly, hoa.r.s.ely. I crooned out songs like "In the Still of the Night" and "Blue Hawaii," songs of romance and longing, coaxing songs, while the lake spun slowly around, black and sparkling as a new record.
Every few days I drove Lex back and forth to the hospital. Rich northeastern forest hemmed the road nearly all the way, and as time pa.s.sed, I got to watch the onset of the frost, the first snow. Williams stopped tagging along after the second week, so the rides were just me and Lex. She always sat in the last row, the farthest away from me. The first few weeks I tried to make conversation, but she kept cutting me short, answering with a nod or a shake of the head. There was no blaming her. By the time we were off to the hospital, her system was clogged with nearly three days" worth of urea, so much that even from the driver"s seat I could see how egg-pale her skin was. It itched her, too. She kept a housepainter"s brush in her purse that she often took out and used to scratch herself. I"d watch in the mirror as she feathered the brush up and down her neck and arms and thighs. Occasionally her skin pained her so much that she cried, quietly though, with her head leaned against the window. As winter deepened, the trip grew much longer. Deer appeared in the road more often and slipped and spun on patches of ice while trying to get out of the way. The sky became a gray faucet of snow. I had to drive with caution.
One snowy day in December the drive took an especially long time. Usually the trip took about forty minutes, but that afternoon an hour into the ride we were hardly more than two-thirds of the way there. Lex had given up scratching with her brush and now rubbed her arms and legs with her open hands. Then, without warning, she came up and sat next to me in the pa.s.senger seat.
"How much farther?" she said, her eyes desperate.
"At least half an hour," I said. She began to cry.
"I"m sorry," she said. "It just hurts. It won"t stop itching. It"s like the itch is too deep to get to."
"What can I do to help?" I said, trying not to sound too eager. The windshield wipers creaked as they swatted at the gathering snow.
"Can you pull over for a minute?" she said.
I pulled over to the side of the road and put the hazards on.
"Here," she said, and gave me the brush. "It helps if someone else uses this while I concentrate on blocking the itch out. My dad usually does it for me. Do you mind?"
I told her I didn"t mind.
She closed her eyes and rested her head against the seat.
I started stroking her arms with the brush, and tiny flakes of skin, like dandruff, fell to the floor. The hazard lights ticked on and off.
"That feels good," she said, her voice shaky from crying. Her face appeared puffy from the betamethasone, but with the soft winter light falling on her skin, she looked eerily beautiful, like a statue from atop a gravestone.
After a while I laid the brush in her lap and used my hand. I rubbed hard on her jeaned knees, her shoulders. Soon she was able to breathe through her nose and then her breathing evened out, calmed. She kept her eyes closed; her expression was one of resolve. I told her I wouldn"t let anything happen to her. I rubbed her neck and told her it would be all right.
When we finally reached the hospital, she asked me to come in with her. A male nurse led us to the fourth floor, where he eventually hooked Lex up to a device that resembled a large beige sewing machine. Two thick tubes ran into her arm. Dirty blood ran out of her through one tube and into the humming chamber of the machine and then out of the machine through the other tube and finally back into her arm. The dirty blood looked no different from the clean; both were a dark, syrupy red. I couldn"t tell one from the other.
We didn"t say much during that first time. Pop music crackled in from a radio shaped like a cartoon cat perched on the sill. Snow fell past the window, then turned to rain. At one point Lex said, "I heard you practicing your trumpet the other day. You played "Embraceable You." That was my grandparents" song."
"That"s one of my favorite songs. I love that song," I said. "I learned it the first year I started playing, back when I was thirteen. I was in this YMCA program where coaches taught you a skill or a hobby-you know, to socialize easier? They even had a woman there who could teach you how to ride a unicycle-which still seems ridiculous to me. What popular kid did you know who ever rode around school on a unicycle? Am I talking too much?"
Lex laughed. "A little."
I nodded and was silent for a while. The dialysis machine whirred. I watched her blood slide through the tubes.
"My father told me what you did, you know, to wind up working at the camp."
I felt my face grow flushed. What I"d done to wind up at About Face was try to help someone. I"d been driving along one night, just coasting through the streets, when I spied a man stabbing an old woman in the ear right on her own porch. I watched him take a knife from his pocket and start digging its point into her eardrum. So I did what anyone else would have done. I got out of my car and yanked him off. Then I knocked him to the sidewalk. As the man hit the curb, his arm made a sound like dry pasta breaking over a pot of boiling water. But he hadn"t been robbing the old woman. In fact, she was his mother and he"d been testing her hearing aid with a sonic wand.
"It was dark," I said.
"No, I think it"s funny. It"s romantic, kind of. Chivalrous," she said. "I see you lingering by groups of cadets sometimes. Standing on the sidelines. You really want to help out."
"Yes," I said.
She peeked beneath her bandage. "Sometimes I wonder how well the camp works," she said. "We get letters pretty often from kids who"ve made something of their lives after being sent to us. Dad puts them up in the barracks. But we also get kids who come back again and again." She nodded at the arm with the tubes in it. "They"re like me. You can clean them up, but it"s only a matter of time before they go sour again."
"That"s not how I see you," I said.
She smiled. Ringlets of dark brown hair hung around her face. "Good. That"s not how I see you either," she said.
She slept on the way back. I drove a full ten miles per hour below the limit, my eyes on the road. I felt like everything important was in my hands, which I kept planted at ten and two the entire way.
After that things were different during our trips. We still didn"t talk much-on the way to Albany Lex was uncomfortable, on the way back, drained-but the feeling inside the van, the feeling between us, changed. She always sat up next to me, and I often ma.s.saged her limbs with her brush. She was like every girlfriend I"d never had when I was younger: fun, playful, patient. I wanted her, and wanted to protect her at the same time. We started listening to country music on the radio together and soon enough we both learned all the popular songs and artists. There was one song we both enjoyed about a man and a woman who were kept apart by their trucking jobs but who talked on the CB all the time. The song was called "It"s Not Over Till It"s Over, Over," and there was a part in it when the man"s truck and the woman"s truck pa.s.s going opposite directions in the night and they honk their horns at each other. At that part I"d lay on the horn, or Lex would take my trumpet and blow into it, making a terrible squawk. We found other songs to like, too, but that one was my favorite. I bet they still play it on the radio. I bet if you get up and turn the dial to country right now, you might hear it this very moment. It"s that good.
I always stayed with Lex while her blood was being cleaned. I would read her magazines, or if the TV was free in the next room, I"d roll it in and we"d watch a movie on the VCR. They only had a few movies that weren"t for children, but I didn"t mind. One day, I rolled in the TV and pressed play and a dirty movie came on. Lex laughed and clapped her hands over her mouth, but when I turned it off, which I did right away, she asked me through her hands if I could put it back on, so I did. In the movie a naked man was running back and forth between two women lying on their stomachs. One wore sungla.s.ses and high boots and was demanding, a boss; the other was just a girl, coy and playful, biting her lip and smiling at him over her shoulder. They were both beautiful, though, with their bottoms raised on pillows and rocking back and forth for him. The man"s body was shiny with sweat and he kept wiping his brow and sitting down on the floor and panting in an exaggerated, comical way. But then one of the women would beckon to him and he"d struggle to his feet and climb on top of her.
"Oh my G.o.d. He only has one thingy. One ball," Lex said, giggling.
"It happens," I said.
We watched for a while, me hesitantly, embarra.s.sed, with a painful erection, and Lex with her eyes glued to the screen. She looked more interested than aroused, though, fascinated in a clinical way. I wondered if she"d ever slept with a man before. Eventually the movie flickered to static.
"Do you have a girlfriend?" Lex asked quite suddenly, just as I was turning off the TV.
I felt my throat tighten. "No," I said, sitting down next to her.
She began to say something, then stopped. She smiled and scrunched up her nose. "There"s a guy I like. I have a crush on someone," she said. "n.o.body thinks much of him, but I don"t know, he makes me laugh. This is between you and me, promise?" She put her hand on top of mine. Her fingers were hot and clammy.
"I promise," I said, and squeezed her hand.
"It"s a guy I"ve been hanging out with pretty regularly. Do you know what I mean?"
"I think so," I said. Patches of my skin kept giving off shocks of excitement, now at the base of my back, now along my scalp.
Suddenly Lex put her other hand to her head. Her cheeks were red. "G.o.d, I"m terrible at this stuff. Let"s just forget about it."
"No, go on," I said.
"It"s silly. I feel like a teenager." She pressed the b.u.t.ton that called the nurse. "I think I"m all done here," she said.
"Wait. You can say it," I said. I could hear the nurse approaching. "Lex. Please say the words."
"Fine. All right," she said. "I have a crush on Haden McCrae. We"ve been hanging out down by the lake. You can"t tell anyone. I"ll kill you if you tell."
Haden McCrae. A nauseous feeling descended on me. A week ago I"d found a luggage tag by the lake with t.i.tty-humper written on it. I wanted to tell her how I felt about McCrae, and how I felt about her, but I could see how much she liked him there in her expression. Just then the nurse came in to unhook her. She asked me if I"d mind waiting outside.
"Whatever. Sure. You bet," I said, and went out into the hall.
Through the door I heard the nurse ask Lexington, "Is that your boyfriend?"
"Miles?" said Lex. "No, he just drives me here."
"Miles," said the nurse. "I had a toad named Miles when I was a girl. My mom made me throw him out because she said he"d give me warts on my hands. Hmmm."
"Ugh. Warts," said Lex.
I wanted to kick in the door and clap their f.u.c.king faces together like blackboard erasers.
A few days later I played sick when it was time to drive Lex to the hospital. I had no desire to talk to her; the thought of hearing about her and McCrae made me sick. I spent the day in the gymnasium mopping up leaks. Snow had piled on the roof and caused some damage. Every now and then a trickle of icy gray water would fall from the vaulted ceiling to the floor. I stood in the corner, leaning against the padded wall with a mop in my hand. Some cadets were engaged in backbreaking running drills on the basketball courts. Others trained with weights over by the rope climb. Watching them sprint and heft and pant, I wondered how many would go home and do well, make people proud, and how many would continue sailing toward ruin. Just as I was thinking about this, McCrae pa.s.sed into my line of vision. He was inside a grid of cadets jogging across the basketball courts, but when he glanced at me, it was as though he were the only one in the room; everyone else rushed by, but for me McCrae was frozen in place, suspended midstride, his sneakers inches off the ground. He had a look of furious anguish on his face, his cheeks flushed and nearly as red as his stubbled head. Staring back into his eyes, which seemed to radiate hatred for me, I felt I could see his true nature, his black, hidden center. It was like when you put a diving mask to the surface of the ocean and can suddenly peer right into the murky depths with piercing clarity. I could hear him talking to me, saying, "I"m headed toward her, music man. I"m plunging down from the clouds and I"m going to knock her on her a.s.s so hard that she"ll never find her feet again. Here I come, music man. Here I come."
All at once I remembered Sergeant Brill"s words to me on that first day, about fear being the way to expose a person"s true colors, the way to penetrate his facade, and a plan took shape. I knew what I had to do.
I found Lex on the way out of the mess hall that evening. The sunset was gorgeous behind her head, a fiery parachute settling on the pine trees. "How are you feeling? I missed you today," she said. She was shivering a bit; it was the end of February but still hard winter.
"I"m fine," I said. "I"ll be up for it next time."
"I haven"t heard you play down at the lake the last few nights." She pulled her coat more tightly around her. "I thought maybe you were mad about Haden."
"Mad?" I said. "Not at all."
"He"s not the easiest person to like, I know, but he"s different around me. He-"
"Really. Haden seems like a stand-up guy."
Lex looked at me for a moment. I tried to give my most convincing smile. Then, thank G.o.d, she laughed. "I was all ready to defend him to you. I thought you were going to tell me what a punk he is. He"d never hurt me, you know."
"I don"t go down to the lake because I don"t want to run into you guys," I said. "Tell me when you head down there, so I can avoid you."
"We only sneak down on Tuesdays and every other Sunday. Those are the nights Fender is off and I can use his keys. Tonight he"s here, so we"re not going down until Tuesday."
The muscles of my face began to ache from smiling. "I think that"s great, Lex. I"m happy for you." Tuesday, I thought. Two days until Tuesday.
"Really?"
"I"ve got to get back to my bunk. I"ll see you soon." I gave her a quick pat on the arm and hurried off just as the last good light fled the sky.
In the couple of days leading up to Tuesday, I avoided Lex as best I could. She didn"t have to go to the hospital until Wednesday, so our paths didn"t cross. I saw McCrae once, climbing the chain web with some other cadets, but he didn"t notice me.
Tuesday finally arrived. I took it as my day off. I spent the day with Ronald: we ate breakfast together, and then we pa.s.sed the rest of the afternoon at the golf resort. It was too cold for outdoor golf, of course, but the lodge was open, as were the driving cages beneath it. I preferred the lodge this way, with the course closed, as I sometimes felt my old nervousness act up out on the holes with all the golf b.a.l.l.s whizzing by high overhead.
Ronald dressed casually, in a college sweatshirt and patched jeans-to look at him you"d think he worked in the kitchen-but as always, almost everyone we pa.s.sed came up and congratulated me on having Ronald for a cousin. When we sat down for lunch, people wouldn"t stop buying us things. Every ten minutes a pair of drinks or a plate of hors d"oeuvres found its way to our table and some couple or other across the room would wave or nod or give us a thumbs-up. Sometimes when this happened I pretended that it was me, and not Ronald, that they were applauding; I imagined that they all knew what I was about to do at the camp, what I was going to do for Lex, and admired me for this.
By the time we got home it was past nine, and I encouraged Ronald to go to bed soon. We were both a little drunk and had early days tomorrow. We should try to get more rest in general, I said, clapping him on the back. Captain Marvel knew something was happening. He kept pacing back and forth in the yard, snorting and pawing up big patties of frozen earth. I was afraid that Ronald might grow worried about him, but he didn"t seem to notice. He agreed with me that it had been a long day, and so we said good night and then he headed upstairs to bed. I lay down on the couch and waited. All the while Captain Marvel was trotting back and forth, giving off excited whimpers.
When I was sure Ronald was asleep, I got up and slipped out of the house and into the yard. Captain Marvel reared up a bit on his hind legs when he saw me and then stamped back down.
"Captain Marvel. Stop," I commanded, and he stood firmly on the gra.s.s. I went around to the garage, hitched the trailer to Ronald"s truck, and drove it around in front of the yard. Ronald had left a cup of coffee in the drink holder and the coffee"s surface was skimmed with ice. When I opened the gate, Captain Marvel walked right up the ramp without my having to say a word.
The ride toward About Face was smooth. I drove with the windows down. Deer lined the road like an audience. One appeared every few seconds, standing there with its front hooves on the shoulder. The night air was studded with frost particles that made the skin on my face tingle. A great trill spun out of the cavern of my nose and filled the cab with a high but masculine sound, like the whistle issued from the deck of a warship launching out to sea.
Just before the long driveway up to the camp, I pulled off the road and killed the engine. I got out and opened the trailer gate and down came Captain Marvel, his neck steaming in the cold. I threw the knitted mat that Ronald used as a saddle over Captain Marvel"s back and then I climbed on. Through all this, Captain Marvel stood still as an oak, the breath huffing out of his nostrils in spirals of vapor. How tall he was! My feet seemed to dangle two stories off the ground. I patted him on the neck and down we went into the woods.
We wound our way through the pines, surefooted, stepping easily over exposed roots and stones. The night sky was clear, the moon bright. I didn"t yet know what, exactly, I was going to do with Captain Marvel when I found Lex and McCrae, only that n.o.body could experience this horse under me charging straight at him and not be struck with terror. And I knew that, once terrified, McCrae would reveal his true, repulsive self.
When we reached Lake Deed, I steered Captain Marvel out of the woods and rode him along the pebbled sh.o.r.e. The moon cast an eerie light across the lake, and as we moved toward the camp I imagined myself a knight traveling through a barren landscape of ice and stone.
Just as we neared the beach directly beneath About Face, I spotted figures moving down by the water. I sneaked Captain Marvel uphill into the trees.
"Say that again, in my ear, though," I heard someone say.
Then something too low for me to hear.
Next the first voice again. "Keep that up. Keep talking like that."
I peered around the tree. My stomach seized. Lex and McCrae sat on a blanket, facing each other, her legs draped over his. I could see his hands underneath her sweater, mangling her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She had her mouth to his neck. A strange red light coated them both. At first I thought the light was actually emanating from them, from their bodies, but then I noticed two small propane heaters sitting on either side of them, the grilles glowing hot.
McCrae laughed and pulled Lex toward him. "Come here, Lexy," he said. Lexy!
I heard her giggle, the exact same laugh she made when I kidded her in the van, and then she began to rub his thighs. His legs were impossibly long, like tongs. Lex seemed enveloped by them. I wanted to rush in and pull her out of those pincers. I knew that all I had to do was give Captain Marvel the slightest kick, just a brush of the heels, and he"d burst from the woods with me on his back. I could see it happening already, see us charging toward them both, tearing down the beach, Captain Marvel"s hooves hammering the sh.o.r.e, causing the ice fixed between the pebbles to shatter and spray up behind us. We"d run at the two of them so fast, the wind would blow my hair straight back.
I pictured us barreling toward Lex and McCrae until they were right in front of us, until Captain Marvel"s crushing hooves were bearing down on them. Then, in my mind, we ground to a stop, Captain Marvel"s chest heaving, and when I pulled on his mane, up he went, rearing high into the air on his hind legs. As he rose, his hoof struck one of the heaters, and its grille exploded in a burst of sparks. Captain Marvel called out, his voice a sound that in years to come I would try to imitate on my trumpet again and again. And when I looked down from the summit of his back I saw-somewhere far, far beneath us-Lex and McCrae crouching in the sand. She was huddled against him, her face buried in his chest, the little knuckles of her spine flashing in and out of view as sparks shot from the busted heater. McCrae was looking up at me with a face split wide open by fear-his eyes wild, his mouth twisted up in a grimace. Then, before he could help it, he did exactly what I"d known he"d do: he pushed Lex away from him, toward Captain Marvel, and scrambled backward, out of the way.
I could see Lex"s terror as Captain Marvel"s hooves came plunging toward her, her shock, and then relief, as they crashed down on either side of her thin shoulders. When she finally looked over at McCrae, I could see the shame on his face, and the rage at being exposed.
"Lexy, he made me do it. He tricked me," he"d say, reaching out for her.
But it would be too late already. Because Lex would be climbing up behind me, sliding her hands around my waist. I could practically feel the warm pressure of her cheek against my back, hear her saying, "Thank you, thank you," into my jacket. I could see myself carrying her away from him.