Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys

Bwana Tim

e rode past the Highway 80 Drive-In. Its glowing marquee announced Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and Super Fly T.N.T., but several of the letters had been subtracted and rearranged below to spell TITTY. The drive-in was so decadent that it allowed this to stand, lit up like Christmas, on its busiest night. Rolling on through Thunderbolt, a subdivision on the Worthington River, we kept our conversation equal to the dark and quiet, but dogs began a barking relay, and in many houses a curtain swept back to reveal a concerned resident framed in light. A police car was approaching from down the road, moving slower than we were.We turned into one of the marinas, watched some swaying fishermen hang a barracuda on the scales at the dock, then slipped out the other gate, behind the cruiser now. Most of the driveways we passed contained trailered boats, usually beside a Mercedes or Cadillac. "Tryand look rich,"Rusty advised. We pedaled up two bridges and coasted down them, then swung onto the small road to Marshland Island and followed Tim into the trees. We traded snacks and ate them, more for ceremony than 164 BlAJ^lV\<7\ TllM W from hunger. All spicy, the mixture grumbled in your belly.We watched by flashlight asJoey nibbled the meat off a pig's foot. It had intact toenails. I wasn't tempted to sample it. Still munching, we opened the shoe polish applicators and painted one another's faces, daubing leafy smudges with the wet foam tips, exchanging earth colors. The smell made me dizzy, watery-eyed, like breathing gasoline fumes. Rusty held a flashlight on us, watching. Tim said, "Shew!" and shined his light in each of our faces. "We look pretty good. But you guys stand out because of your arms and necks." "I don't want this stuff on my arms,"Wademoaned."It stinks." "I volunteer," I said, feeling so soiled alreadyI figured it might as well be complete. After painting our arms we went all the way and ruined our T-shirts too, except for Wade, who was wearing a camouflage tank top, and Tim, who had borrowed his dad's fatigue shirt. It hung on him like a smock. His long blond hair was a giveaway, but I didn't mention it. "All right," Rusty said finally, as if we'd worn him down with pestering. "I guess you better camouflage me too." I marked him up like foliage, one color at a time, quick and spotty. "This is our last night of gangsterism,"said Tim, digging into his pack. "Now is a good time to eat those Eucharists." He divided them up and we ate them, crisp first, then mushy, bland but magical. I'd never had more than four in a week. Then crackling gravel and the whir of an engine stopped us. We killed our lights, swallowed our mouthfuls, touched one another in the dark. Headlights burned past, white beams containing insects and engine smoke, leading the silhouette of a truck. Music thumped and sloshed from its open windows. Out of sight, the truck paused at the entrance to the compound , music slightly louder as a door clunked open. Chains 165 tinkled, hinges shrieked.We guessed the gate was being opened. The truck revved, stopped again, and after more sounds of metal on metal, zoomed out of earshot. We stayed quiet for a minute. Small wild animals began to stir in the undergrowth around us. Claws scritched on pine bark. A hand clamped my elbow, activating the funny bone, and Joey said, "What the hell was that?" Everyone shushed him. Tim whispered, "It'sjust a raccoon or a possum or something." "What are we going to do?" I asked. "That truck's inside now." "Doesn't make a shitlick of difference," Rusty said aloud. "They ain't gonna be near the animals this time of night." "That's true," Tim said, flipping his flashlight on and scanning the area. "Okay, let's finish getting ready. We'll leave the bikes here." I held a light on Tim while he assembled his blowgun and hung it by its strap across his back. We threaded the machete scabbards onto our belts. I felt altogether safe and powerful, because of our collective cunning, strength, and weaponry. From the chattering, laughing, and cursing of the others, I knew they felt it too. "We're ready," Tim said. "Anybody want to say anything?" "Yeah," said Rusty. "This wasn't my idea." He laughed. "Hold on a second," Joey said. "I need to use the bathroom. Did anybody bring toilet paper?" "Tim's usually got a pocketful of snot rags," Rusty said. "I need them for my allergies," said Tim. "You ought to plan ahead, Joey. Here." He unfurled a wadded banner of tissue from his pocket and tore some off forJoey. Wade said, "I need to take a leak." We all turned around and took a fewsteps and began to empty ourselves. "Hey,"said Tim over a pattering palmetto, "does anybody else's urine come out in two separate streams when you first start, then join together?" 166 "Nuh," said Rusty. "You got a disease." I said mine did occasionally. We made zipping noises, and Rusty called, "Youabout finished,Joey?" From behind an oak, Joey snapped, "Don't rush me! I feel bad!" followed by a vile noise that you felt awful laughing at, but couldn't help. We skirted the fence through the woods around to where the marsh began. There was a half-circle inlet on our right that ended in a wooden footbridge joining the woods trail to a loop of trail through the marsh. Across the river a few yellow porch lights shone. Our camouflage worked surprisingly well in the gloom. I could barely make out my friends' shapes against the trees, except for Tim's albino hair. Rusty turned his flashlight on the marsh. "Now, we can slop through the marsh all the way around this little bay, or we can wade right across to that footbridge. That'll save time and mess." Joey said, "Let's go back to the road and climb the fence." "Sure," Tim said. "Joey, I'd pay money to see you clamber over that barbed wire." He pulled a trail map out and directed a circle of light over our route. "This dock-bridge leads right onto a trail." "This water isn't going to hurt us any more than that damn shoe polish did," said Wade. "What's the big deal?" "Yeah, you go first," said Tim. The intervening marsh grass crackled like a roll of caps afire, so we went slowly to lessen the noise. River mud slurped at our shoes, the sound of flushed toilets. A pattering like rain beside us prompted my flashlight on, revealing a side-stepping square yard of fiddler crabs ticking towards their muddy holes. A fewof the big ones challenged us, raising their single oversized claws. 167 We slogged to the end of the reeds, the mud deepening, getting slicker. Water ran into our shoes, provoked cursing. Joey fell and sank backward in a bed of muck. He turned over, trying to get up, smearing his belly with mud too.We had to help him. Tim took the lead into the water, lighting the way. We waded towards the bridge. I took off my backpack, in case the water got too deep, so it wouldn't get wet. "This water's cold," Tim said. "It hurts." "It ain't that bad," said Rusty. "You're taller. All of you. The water's right on a level with my privates. They're all drawn up from the coldness." "I could carry you piggyback,"Wade volunteered. "No, I can handle it. I just want you all to know I'm suffering more than anyone else here." A fewsteps from the footbridge, something smashed the water like a tossed log. We squealed curses, Tim screaming, "Don't move! Don't move!" and we froze there and Joey halted across from us where he was trying to scramble up into the marsh. I smelled boy-sweat, shoe polish, river mud. "What is it?" we said. "Shh." I remembered my machete, got it into my hand. Tim heard my blade sliding out of canvas and unsheathed his too. Rusty and Wade produced knives. Joey climbed another grass-crackling step onto land. Tim's flashlight ignited a pair of eyes floating on the water just ahead of him. His light began to jiggle. "Oh . . . my God!" He sounded like someone was pounding his back. "It's a ... huge . . . alligator." "You sure?" asked Rusty quietly. The gator's mouth opened, top jaw breaking water with a hiss like a flattening tire, the pale pink mouth wide, dripping water from ripsaw teeth.Joey groaned from the sidelines. Rusty wheezed. Wade, retreating, bumped into me. The mouth closed gradually, eyes vigilant, the same style of movement as a snake. 168 Tim, in a pained insect voice, said, "Take out your flashlights, slowly, and shine them right in his eyes . . . hurry,Jesus Christ." Wade, Rusty, and I turned our beams on and the gator sank to eyeballs and nostrils again. Then, from the bank beside us, Joey's tardy light illuminated us all for the reptile to see. "Turn it off, Joey!" I whispered. "You're too far!" My knees were thudding each other underwater. Tim passed his flashlight to Rusty, the beam still aimed at the eyes, and Rusty took it alongside his own light. Tim eased the blowgun from his shoulder and held it towards the gator, machete poised in the other hand. "I'm going to try to ... nudge him away," Tim quavered."If he comes at me—" he released a tortured breath, "—you all please . . . don't let him kill me." He lowered the tip of the blowgun towards the gator's submerged shoulder. Wade pressed back against me. The camouflaged tube entered the water. A membrane slid over the gatoreyes . Tim thrust the blowgun. The creek exploded. The great armored tail raised a geyser. Tim slashed, screaming, and we clustered, shouted, floundered towards the bridge. Wade's flashlight plunked, lit the grayish murk, winked out. I flung a water-heavyleg onto the bridge and pulled myself up, sawTim struggling to climb with his blowgun and machete in hand, and I dragged him up too, at great cost to my hernia. Wade thumped down beside us. Rusty hurried over from the near bank where he'd fled, shoes packed infivepounds each of mud. Blundering towards us through the grass like a wounded hippo, Joey gasped, "Where is it? Where'd it go?" A panther's roar rumbled from across the island. I felt besieged by man-eating animals, a pioneer in the Georgia jungles. "Oh my God," Tim groaned, lying on his back. He repeated this over and over. Nobodywas hurt. 169 We convalesced on the footbridge for ten minutes, rising from the waist in giddy terror at every natural sound. "Well," Rusty said, "we ain't coming out the way we came in, that's for damn sure." "He was more scared of us than we were of him," Tim said. "Then he's probably dead of a heart attack,"Joey sneered. I studied the heavens. The deeper I looked, the more stars revealed themselves, until the sky seemed composed of a grayish wash of smaller and smaller lights. A shooting star sparkled across the sky and everybody's finger went up at once. Then I said, "Do y'all reckon that gator escaped from its pen, or was it wild?" "Wild," Tim said. "But I wouldn't feel any safer in the water with a tame one. Man-oh-man!" "You can easily hold their mouths shut," said Wade. "They bite down with hundreds of pounds of pressure, but they've only got about five pounds worth of opening pressure." "Well why didn't you subdue him then?" Rustysaid. From his tone, I knew he had his skeptical eyebrows raised. "I didn't think of it at the time," said Wade. "I saw a guy do it at an alligator farm in Florida, though." "I can't take all this in one night,"Joey said. "How about if 1 stay here on the bridge and keep a lookout for trouble." Tim said, "Joey, I want you to act like a tough guy, now. Just think, the next time some kid calls you a fatass you can remember that you confronted an eight-foot-long alligator in its element. That'll give you the courage to smear him." Rusty insisted the gator was no more than five feet long. "Maybe less. Everything looks big to you because you're so small," he said. 170 "Listen, I've gotten straight A's in Math for eight years and I say it was eight feet long. Can you prove it wasn't?" "I'm too tired to go on,"Joey whined. Secretly, I empathized. I felt slightly homesick and miserable myself. I missed my bed, but saying it would only make it worse. I didn't dare think of Margie. Tim said, "Everybody who thinks we should throw Joey to the river creatures, say 'Aye.'" It was unanimous. But we agreed to spare him if he stopped complaining. 171 ...