Boys of Blur Page 2

  At the boy’s feet, embedded in the mound, was a chalky stone the size of a manhole cover but not quite circular. It was more egg-shaped. Cotton was scraping moss off the edges.

  Charlie didn’t care about the edges. Right in the middle of the stone, there was a dead snake, gray and speckled and twisted halfway onto its back. Beside it was a small dead rabbit.

  “You killed them?” Charlie asked.

  Cotton shook his head. “I didn’t. I don’t know who does. Sometimes I just think they come here by themselves when they’re ready to die. Or someone collects them and leaves them here. There’s always something, usually pretty small. Rats. Birds. Squirrels or skunks. Once they’re here, nothing touches them. Nothing eats them.” He looked at Charlie and lowered his voice. “When I found this stone, it was under moss and a whole pile of little bones.”

  He pointed into the trees at a short row of broken-down shacks. Only one still held up its own roof.

  “I put all the bodies and bones in there,” Cotton said. He looked at Charlie. “Wanna see?”

  Charlie did want to see. And he didn’t. The black water beside him and the looming trees and the chalk stone and the bones all felt very different from the cane fields with the white church on the hill beneath the blue sky and the sun.

  “Well?” Cotton asked. Charlie nodded, staring at the collapsed and rotten shacks. And then something moved in the shadows.

  Cotton picked up the snake by the tail and stood, grinning. “Wanna hold it?”

  “Cotton,” Charlie said, and he took a step back.

  Cotton laughed and jiggled the snake. “Dead. See?”

  A tall man stepped out from under the trees and into the light.

  “Cotton!” Charlie grabbed his cousin and scrambled backward, smacking into a young tree.

  Cotton dropped the snake and spun around. The man was walking toward them. He stepped onto the mound.

  He was wearing a helmet.

  He was holding a sword.

  Charlie winced and pulled away from his mother. The motel hand towel was rough and scalding on his face. Their room was small, but clean. Two beds were separated by a small antique table and a lamp.

  “He’s fine,” Mack said. He’d taken off his jacket and tie, and his collar splayed wide around his thick neck. “Believe me, I’ve had enough of those cane leaf cuts to know. They sting, but they’re just scratches.”

  Natalie Mack sat down on the motel bed next to her husband. She sighed. “You look like a cat attacked you, Charlie.”

  “Kitty cat!” Molly shouted. She climbed onto the bed behind Charlie and began to jump. Charlie shook with each impact.

  “I’m fine,” Charlie said. “They don’t feel worse than paper cuts.”

  His mother winced with sympathetic pain.

  “Be glad you had long sleeves,” Mack said. He dragged a big hand down his face. He had worn a huge ring to the funeral—a state championship ring from long ago. It was golden rubbed down to nickel in places, with red colored glass pretending to be ruby. It was a dingy thing compared to the other rings Mack kept locked in a case at home, but it was the ring he’d won under Coach Wiz.

  “A sword and helmet,” Mack said. “You’re sure the guy had a sword?” He’d already asked half a dozen times.

  “I’m sure,” Charlie said. “All rusty and jagged. The helmet was beat-up, too, but not as bad.”

  Mack’s phone began to buzz in his pocket. He stood up and walked toward the door to answer it.

  Charlie was left with his mother, her worried eyes, and her worried hands still fiddling with the wet towel. Molly climbed around her brother and dropped into his lap. She was talking to herself. Or her hands were talking to each other.

  “You don’t like it here,” Charlie said to his mom.

  She glanced around the simple motel room. “I’d rather be in Palm Beach, by the airport.”

  “I don’t mean the room,” Charlie said. “You don’t like it here.”

  Molly put her small hand up over Charlie’s mouth.

  “Shhh,” she said. “Monster coming! Hide!”

  Charlie kissed his sister on the head, then she dropped to the floor and raced toward the window to hide in the long curtains.

  His mom smiled. “Coach Wiz meant a lot to Mack. I was happy to come. I’ll be happy to go. No one ever threatened my son with a sword in Buffalo.”

  “He didn’t threaten me,” Charlie said. “He was just there.”

  Mack finished his call. He leaned against the wall with his big arms crossed. “I think Charlie and I are going to grab a Coke,” he said. “Come on, Char.”

  As he turned toward the door, Molly exploded out from behind the curtains.

  She wanted a Coke, too. She needed a Coke. She had to have a Coke.

  Molly’s muffled sadness followed her brother down the hall even after the door had closed behind them.

  Then a television turned on, and sadness became joy.

  Charlie trailed his big stepfather as they descended the stairs, passing a gargling vending machine on a landing. Two stories down, Mack led Charlie around a pair of plastic plants and through the lobby. No one was behind the front desk, but someone had propped a handwritten card against an old bell.

  Five minutes later, Charlie and his stepfather were leaning against a propane tank in a gas station parking lot. The sun was down. Evening sky blues were turning to black. Charlie held a cold can between his hands, but Mack’s drink was in a brown bag. Neither of them had said a word since they’d left the room. Charlie didn’t mind. Their best times together rarely involved words.

  Charlie took a swallow and listened to the liquid squelch down his throat. The town of Taper was still. The air was still. The cane one hundred yards behind them wasn’t even rustling. A laugh, blocks distant, trickled to them over the broken asphalt. A dog bark chased it away.

  “Cotton made it home fine,” Mack said. “That was his mama called me at the motel.”

  Charlie stared at his can. He hadn’t even worried about Cotton. Out in the cane, Cotton had seemed faster than a rabbit.

  “Funny thing,” Mack added, studying the brown bag in his hand. “He didn’t say anything to her about a man with a sword. Said he just told you some stories and messed with a snake and then you spooked.”

  “What?” Charlie blinked. Confusion bubbled into outrage. His stepfather was looking down at him with eyebrows up. “Why would he say that? I wouldn’t run from a snake.”

  Mack looked up at the dark sky.

  “I didn’t make it up,” Charlie said.

  Mack set his drink on the propane tank behind him. “A lot of people see things in the fields, Charlie. You know why?”

  “I wasn’t seeing things!” Charlie shouted. “I—I … Cotton’s lying.”

  “Do you know why people see things?” Mack asked again. Charlie shut his mouth and waited for the answer, certain he wasn’t going to like it. “Because,” Mack said, “out in the fields, there are a lot of things to see.”

  He tapped his old ring against the propane tank, then turned toward the dim wall of cane behind the gas station. Above the field, one vertical stripe of sky was darker than the rest. Another column of smoke. Another field burning.

  “I ever tell you about my brother?” Mack asked, glancing at Charlie. “Herman Mack. Boy was fast. A lot faster than I ever was. Scrawn Lightning, Wiz called him.”

  Mack twisted the ring on his finger, old rhythms creeping into his voice, rhythms that had dropped away years ago. “We were running rabbits in a burn, took some rich white college boys out who had heard stories and wanted to see it. Herman could churn, and never faster than when a crowd was watching. So this big cottontail lights out like it has wings, quicker than any little muck fluff, and Herm’s right on it, zigging and zagging, muck flying. They jump a canal to the next burn over, where the harvesters are already rolling. In the water, out of the water, and then over again. Finally, this thing shoots back into its home cane with the lea
ves still blazing. Herman smashes in after it.”

  Mack inhaled slowly, collecting himself. Charlie waited.

  “No wind that day and the smoke was sittin’ low. I could barely see him, but I’m sure people heard that scream all the way in Belle Glade.” Mack looked at Charlie. “It’s not just rabbits that bolt the burns. Fire pushes every breathing creature out that doesn’t wanna get dead. Even the snakes. Herman got his hands on the rabbit, but his chest landed on a big old diamondback.”

  Mack reached out and tapped Charlie’s right cheekbone with two thick fingers. “Big snake. More than six feet even after the head was off him. Hit my brother right in the face. Fang in his cheek, fang in his eye.”

  The night was cool and quiet, but Charlie’s heart was pounding. He couldn’t breathe.

  “He should have died right then and there with that rabbit quiet in his hands.” Mack looked at Charlie. “But he didn’t. The white boys were screaming. I went for the snake. Then this old man comes out of nowhere, parting the smoke like a ghost. He tosses me away like I’m nothing, and he has that snake’s head off quicker than I can see. Before I could even start to think, he’d sent those white boys running for the harvesters, and he had Herman’s face split wide open and was sucking out blood and snake juice.

  “The dude had skin like midnight, a big beard, and a string of rabbits hanging down his back.” Mack looked at Charlie. “Strangest part was that he was wearing an old Spanish helmet with points turned up at both ends and an old rusty sword tucked into a gator skin belt that still had the legs on.

  “After a time he stood up, took the cottontail out of Herman’s hands, let it hop off, then walked on past me without a glance. A big work truck bounced through the smoke right after he was gone.” Mack smiled slightly. “That was more than twenty years ago, Charlie, but that’s how I know you aren’t making things up.”

  Charlie set his can down next to Mack’s brown bag.

  “What happened to your brother?”

  Mack massaged his jaw. “Herman lost the eye, but something else was gone, too. He had fear he’d never had before, and his mind was always somewhere else. Dropped out of school, and a few years later, when your father and I were off knocking helmets in college, Lake O took Herman out of a little fishing boat with a storm.”

  Mack grabbed Charlie’s can and his own brown bag and started across the rough asphalt toward two old gas pumps and the trash can in between.

  Charlie heard tires hum, and then he saw headlights. A beat-up red truck bounced into the parking lot between Mack and Charlie and stopped outside the gas station door. Throbbing music shook the truck’s mirrors as boys in red and white jackets tumbled out of the bed. The last to hop the tailgate was a tall white kid with slicked-back hair and huge fake diamonds in his ears.

  The name on his jacket said SUGAR.

  “Yo!” Sugar said. “Prester Mack!”

  Every boy stopped. Every head turned to the man by the trash can.

  Mack smiled, and the pack of boys parted as he walked back to Charlie.

  “It true?” Sugar called after him. “Principal Laffy was talking you up after the funeral. We gonna be calling you Coach?”

  Mack stopped beside Charlie and turned back around. He slapped one hand on Charlie’s shoulder and pointed the other at the boys.

  “Stay right with your brothers,” Mack said. “Stay right with the Lord. Hit like thunder, and run …?”

  “Run like the devil’s nightmare!” the boys all shouted.

  Sugar grinned. “You already sound like Coach Wiz.”

  “Storm on, Taper,” Mack said.

  “Storm on!” the boys bellowed, and they bounced and laughed their way into the gas station, clattering a little silver bell against the door with every passing body. But Sugar didn’t move. He stood alone beside the truck and stared at Charlie, his smile fading, his eyes hard and curious. And then Charlie felt Mack’s hand on his shoulder, and his stepfather turned him around.

  Charlie and Mack headed back toward the motel in silence. After a block, Charlie heard the truck tires squeal away behind them.

  Mack cleared his throat. His face was lit faintly blue by the motel sign. “That was something Coach Wisdom used to say.”

  Charlie didn’t answer.

  “He had a lot of things like that. Didn’t matter if it was practice or just dinner or homework or curfew, he had sayings for everything.”

  Charlie nodded.

  Mack sniffed at the air. “I haven’t committed to anything yet,” he said. “I was going to talk to your mom tonight.”

  “Mom doesn’t like it here,” Charlie said. “At all.”

  “She doesn’t like what came from here. That’s in the past now. Mostly.”

  “It’s my dad, isn’t it?” Charlie asked. “He’s here?” He knew the answer already. He’d seen his mother’s eyes at the funeral. He’d seen the old worry.

  Mack nodded. “Not in Taper, but he’s around. Working the sugar.” He looked down at Charlie. “Would you be okay? Being here for a couple months? They only asked me to coach out the season. After that, if you hated it … well, we could talk.”

  “It’s flat,” Charlie said. “And you can’t see the lake. It’s weird being right beside a huge lake and not being able to see it.”

  “More snakes, too,” Mack said. “But better football if I decide to start coaching. Much better football.”

  “And crazy people with swords.” Charlie kicked a rock and watched it skitter off into the darkness.

  Mack laughed and kicked a rock after Charlie’s. “Don’t you lose any sleep over him, Charlie Boy. You could find plenty of things here not to like, but he ain’t one of them.”

  Molly was fighting sleep on a pile of blankets at the end of her bed. Cartoons were on, the sound low. Charlie was lying on his back on top of his bed, staring at the uneven plaster on the ceiling. He could hear Mack’s voice through the door that linked the two rooms.

  Mack had grown up in Taper. He belonged here. What Charlie wasn’t sure of, had never been sure of, really, was where he belonged. Where would he say that he had grown up? When he’d been much younger, back when his mother had still been with his father, they had moved around a lot, chasing every chance his father had at a football career. Charlie could remember different houses at Christmas, with lights up and his mother laughing. He remembered different streets with the same falling golden leaves, and the rustle and crackle as he kicked those leaves around his knees. Charlie had belonged in those moments—that’s why he’d saved them. But he hadn’t belonged in any of those places. Not for long.

  The last few years, Charlie had lived with Mack and his mother and sister in a big new house in Buffalo, New York, with thin brick glued to the front like a disguise, and too many rooms all painted the same color of cream. It was on a big new street lined with big new houses just like it, where the neighbors took turns putting FOR SALE signs in their yards.

  He didn’t hate it. But it wasn’t him.

  Charlie sat up on the motel bed. He could hear his mother’s voice now, loud and quick. He grabbed the remote off the bed and turned up the cartoons. Molly stirred.

  Something tapped on his door.

  Charlie stared. Someone had the wrong room.

  Three more taps. Charlie slid off his bed and tiptoed to the door. Holding his breath, he looked through the peephole.

  Cotton Mack stood in the hall. He was wearing shorts and a denim jacket with patches over a white T-shirt. His eyes darted up and down the hall, then he tapped on the door one more time.

  Charlie opened it.

  “Hey,” Cotton said. “I want to show you something.”

  “You lied,” Charlie said. “You said I made up the guy with the sword.”

  Cotton grinned. “I didn’t exactly lie and I didn’t exactly tell the truth. If I told my moms about that dude, I wouldn’t be here right now. Coz, if she knew half the things I see, I wouldn’t just be homeschooled, I’d be locked-up-in-my-r
oom-schooled.”

  Charlie was confused. “What did you tell her?”

  “I said we didn’t see nothing,” said Cotton. “And she told me to speak proper English, and I said I was.…”

  Cotton raised his eyebrows at Charlie. When Charlie didn’t respond, Cotton just shook his head and sighed. “Double negative, coz. We didn’t see nothing. Means we did see something. Now come on, let’s go.”

  Charlie looked back into his room. Molly was snoring. His eyes settled on a pad of paper beside the phone.

  “Hold on a sec.”

  Charlie traded his suit pants for an old pair of pocketed shorts and dug his hoodie out of his bag. Then he kissed Molly, adjusted her blanket nest, and hurried toward the door.

  He left a note on the floor.

  In the motel parking lot, Cotton climbed onto a rusty BMX bike. Fat pegs stuck out of either side of the rear wheel. Cotton pointed at them. Holding on to his cousin’s bony shoulders, Charlie stepped up and on.

  Cotton pushed forward, wobbled with Charlie’s extra weight behind him, and then pumped them out of the parking lot and into the darkness.

  “Where are we going?” Charlie asked. It seemed like something he should probably have asked sooner.

  “Back to the graveyard,” Cotton said. “He’s there. And we’re gonna get a better look.”

  He? Cotton could only mean the man with the sword. In the graveyard? At night? Charlie could have hopped right off the bike and walked back to the motel. He could have objected or argued or acted scared. He probably should have been scared.

  But he wasn’t.

  The bicycle pegs swayed beneath Charlie’s feet. He felt strange moving so quickly while standing so still, like a man in a chariot. Gravel crunched beneath the tires and Cotton’s shoulders rocked under his hands. Moonglow loomed on the horizon. Or maybe it was the sky-kiss of distant city lights. Charlie’s skin prickled as night air parted around him. Every bit of him was hungry to feel and to remember.

  Florida darkness washed over him, and Charlie Reynolds filled his lungs with it. Maybe he didn’t belong in this place, but he belonged in this moment. It smelled like rich earth and hidden water. It smelled like fire.