Original Sins (8 page)

The first night they sat around the table drinking Bud and playing stud poker and discussing who had done what to which of their female classmates.

“Sure Betty will blow you,” Jed assured Hank. “She loves it. Just give her a call.”

“She loves to blow you maybe. That don't mean she'd blow me.”

“Betty don't love to blow me. She loves to blow, period. You call her and see if that ain't so.”

Once they were drunk, they rolled outside with their pistols and conducted target practice by the full moon, howling with laughter as bullets ricocheted through the forest

When they stumbled back in, Raymond was feigning sleep in his bunk. After more beer and more poker, Hank took off his belt, and they used it to measure their erections.

“Christ,” Bobby muttered, “you could use that damn thing for a crutch, Tatro.” They collapsed on the table with laughter.

“Jesus, you're a goddam homo, Bobby!” Hank yelled.

Raymond fell authentically asleep. Sometime later he woke up and saw the three still at the table. Hank and Bobby were smoking Pall Malls, holding them between thumb and forefinger. They were looking at each other, smiling and nodding, as they slowly lowered the cigarettes, burning tips first, toward their forearms. Repeatedly they glanced back and forth from the burning tips to each other's eyes. Raymond watched, fascinated, as the tips got closer and closer to flesh, each waiting for the other to back out

Hairs on each forearm flared and shriveled. Raymond felt his stomach turn as both tips burned into both forearms. Neither Hank nor Bobby made a sound or ceased to smile as he ground out his cigarette in his arm. The odor of seared flesh filled the cabin. Hank and Bobby laughed and shook hands.

Raymond had been here before—out at the lake once with some boys from school. They dove from a cliff into an impossibly small pool with submerged boulders around its edges. As more and more beer was consumed, they climbed higher and higher up the cliff. Raymond squatted to one side, watching as one boy after another made his dive and surfaced in one piece. He couldn't remember what had finally stopped them.

Throughout junior high and high school he was witness to dozens of fights in response to real or fabricated insults, which were preceded by an elaborate round of challenge and rebuttal, conducted by friends of the combatants, culminating in the setting of a time and a place for the fight Once he himself had been swept into this ritual. He'd been standing outside the junior high doorway chatting with friends. Louanne Little slunk by in a full skirt with many crinolines, a cinch belt, and a tight short-sleeved angora sweater that revealed massive tits at a time when most girls still wore slips. Raymond had been impressed, and a little bit awed; also somewhat frightened. A friend muttered something about how “trashy” she was. Her boyfriend Clyde stalked up in his black leather motorcycle cap and jacket and stomping boots and asked, “Hey, you guys seen Louanne?”

They pointed in the direction of her departure. As Clyde stomped off, Raymond opened the lid to the trash can, peered into it, and called, “Louanne honey, you down there?” His friends killed themselves laughing. But Clyde heard too. He turned around glaring. Raymond released the lid and gave him a sickly smile. All day he received messages via Clyde's minions that he was to meet him at the bus stop after school. All day he sent messages back that he had a dentist appointment, was sorry about the misunderstanding, etc. As he sneaked out the side door after school, Clyde was waiting for him. A circle of heckling bystanders rapidly closed around them.

“Look, Clyde, I'm sorry. I was just trying to be funny. But I can see it wasn't funny. It was just mean. And untrue.” Clyde had his fists up and was circling him. “Let's shake,” Raymond suggested with a weak smile, holding out his hand. “Get your hands up, fairy punk.”

Raymond felt as though he were in a madhouse. A switch had been thrown, and the charge of electricity had to complete its circuit. There was no way out. The crowd was howling words of encouragement, taunts, and jeers. He lifted his fists.

“Oh come on, Clyde, let's forget it,” he pleaded, as Clyde's fist buried itself in his stomach. He doubled over.

As he straightened up and tried to catch his breath, he gasped. “OK, I give up. You win, Clyde.” A blow to the side of his head felled him. But it also made him really angry. He leaped up and hurled himself at Clyde, his fists flailing, David confronting Goliath.

A couple of minutes later someone yelled that the principal was on his way. The crowd fled in all directions. Clyde and Raymond snarled, then shook hands hastily. Raymond dragged himself home with bloodied mouth, swelling eyes, and aching knuckles.

Jed, Bobby, Hank, and Raymond stalked through the autumn leaves. Raymond toted his camera and attachments. He shot pictures while the others shot birds and rabbits and looked for deer. They emerged into a field, tromped across it, and came to a small house. Nearby was a pen. A man in overalls sat on the fence looking down into the pen. It contained two huge pigs. They were grunting furiously and circling each other.

“Howdy,” Jed said.

“Howdy,” the farmer replied. They leaned on the fence, watching the boar trying to mount the sow.

After a while Jed said with a grin, “Hell, I'd a been on her and off again three times by now.” Everyone but the farmer chuckled.

He looked Jed up and down and drawled, “I reckon I oughta hire you to breed her instead.”

They hit a dirt road and followed it, leaving the forest behind. At a crossroads was a general store. Out front, on scales, hung a deer carcass. Blood dripped onto the dirt, languid flies buzzed. Half a dozen pickup trucks were parked nearby, a couple with does tied to their roofs. A dozen unshaven men in overalls and undershirts and work shoes stood by the scales drinking clear liquid from Mason jars. A poster on the side of the store was entitled Doe Pool, and underneath were names and numbers. In a cage next to the scale was a moth-eaten black bear. One man kept poking his rifle barrel through the wire mesh. The bear swatted at it and shrank up against the far side. The man would move around to the bear's new location and poke her again, grinning and looking to the others for approval.

Jed, Hank, and Bobby were soon passing the jars back and forth, talking and laughing. Raymond stood to one side, trying to be unobtrusive about snapping pictures. He was aware he was using his camera as an excuse not to join in. Because he couldn't. He got drunk on one beer. He always lost at poker. He choked when he tried to smoke. He hadn't shot a gun since he used to go mistletoe shooting at Christmas. Once his father had taken him and Jed hunting. They very carefully flushed a big buck in his direction. He raised his rifle, trained it on the buck. He was a pretty good shot from years of target practice on beer cans in the fields behind the Princes' house. There was no way he could miss. But when the moment came to squeeze the trigger, he didn't.

“What's the point?” he asked as his father and Jed came yelling toward him. “If we were starving, I could see it, but we're not.” They stared.

“I tell you the truth,” Jed was saying, “when I get a buck in my sights and am getting ready to pull that trigger, I just love that animal. I really do. It's like I'm a part of it, and it's a part of me.” What is wrong with me? Raymond wondered as he glanced at the rifle barrels glinting in the sun, and at the patches of gore drying in the dust.

As Raymond and Emily stood up to dance, the music stopped. The president of the Girls' Union, which was sponsoring the dance, appeared before the microphone. “Well, I guess this is the moment we've all been waiting for!” she shouted. “Now, I want all the boys over on my right, and all the girls on my left” Chaos, as the room rearranged itself. She shrieked over the din, “Now, the boys will get them a thirty-second head start … and the last boy to get caught and brought back here wins a prize! So put on your track shoes, boys. And get set. And—go!” Boys raced into the halls, up into the bleachers, into the dressing rooms, searching for hiding places like ants under an overturned stone.

“See you,” Emily called to Raymond as he sauntered away, torn between wanting to participate for Emily's sake and thinking it was dumb.

“All right, girls!” screamed the president. “Go get 'em!”

The gym floor erupted into squeals and giggles as girls charged off in all directions. Sally flew up the bleacher steps two at a time, grabbed a post with one hand and swung around it, raced down the aisle, jumped and grabbed Jed around the neck and shoulders from behind. He staggered and fell, and they lay on the floor giggling and panting.

Emily spotted Raymond in the hall, standing with one hand on his hip, looking into the trophy case. Short and skinny and acned, the only boy not in overalls. She sauntered over, tapped him on the shoulder, and said, “Gotcha.” They gazed into the trophy case at the dozens of gold-plated men bearing aloft balls of different sizes, bats, javelins. There were real balls, autographed and dated. Photos of championship teams.

After the dance they sat in his father's car in Emily's driveway, positioned so that a magnolia tree shielded them from the house, though this precaution was hardly necessary since they sat on opposite sides of the seat. Raymond knew what was expected of him: He should slide across, wrap Emily in his arms, cover her face with wet kisses, rummage around with his hands until she called him off. It was insulting not to at least try. But he wasn't interested. Emily was like a sister. Maybe it was the incest taboo? The ritual of courtship. He just couldn't see it. All the maneuvering, knowing that in the end you'd still have to jerk yourself off when you got home. The girl would be scared of wrecking her reputation, or of getting pregnant. Wayne had maybe ruined him for this game. That had been so straightforward. Each had needs the other could fulfill—for talk, tenderness, and ejaculation, in approximately that order. The idea of backseat struggles with some confused girl left him cold.

Emily regarded him from the corner of her eye, hoping he wasn't about to pounce, as he did every now and then. They'd spent some time in the past kissing, without fervor. What was the point? They were friends. Why not leave it at that? But boys seemed to feel they had to prove something or other. Emily pretended to respond so as not to hurt their feelings.

Raymond drew a deep breath and scooted dutifully across the seat. Gingerly he took Emily in his arms. He pressed his mouth to hers.

Emily trembled all over trying to conceal revulsion. Probably she was frigid. Poor Raymond. She remembered their first kiss—during Spin the Bottle in seventh grade, behind the furnace in someone's basement. She had been a wreck trying to decide whether to moisten her lips with her tongue as they walked back there. Where did the noses go? Where did people put their hands? Should she close her eyes? Now she knew none of this made much difference—it was still awkward and pointless.

Raymond felt Emily trembling. He felt terrible. She was all worked up, and he was about to throw up. He surfaced for air, stroking her hair, and trying to figure out how to put an end to this without hurting her feelings.

“I have to go in,” she announced. Her mother was flashing the front porch light, to break up their clinch, as she imagined. Emily was startled when her mother did this because it indicated she was aware of and concerned about Emily's activities. Emily found this notion difficult to accept because her mother was so unobtrusive a presence, running the household and working in her gardens with no interest in dispensing advice, as other girls' mothers did so insistently. On her good days Emily was flattered. Her mother credited her with enough sense to run her own life. But on her bad days she wished there were some adult guidance, if only so that she could reject it. The atmosphere in her house seemed to be that of restrained uncertainty. And the message emanating from her parents was that since this world was too much for them, she was on her own.

“So soon?” asked Raymond, scooting across to his door.

At her doorstep he kissed her forehead. They exchanged smiles and thank-yous. As she shut the door, Emily wondered if she should make more effort to date other boys. People thought of Raymond and her as a couple, though, so that no one else asked her out. On the rare occasions when someone had, it had been awful. She would think up topics for discussion as she bathed, then memorize a word incorporating the first letter of each topic. Most recently her word for the evening had been “scab.” S was for snow: What did he think of those four inches they had had? Didn't the winters seem to be getting colder? C was for cheerleader: Which of the sophomores did he think would make it next year? How did he like the new cheer at the last pep rally, in which the cheerleaders linked themselves to form a train and chugged around the gym? A was for Athlete-of-the-Year award: Doug Bennett or Hank Osborne? B was for basketball: the upcoming game—did they have a chance against the Snake Hollow Rattlers? How did this year's team compare to last year's? Would they make it to the championship play-offs in Nashville? Did he plan to go?

Raymond, though, didn't need to be coaxed; and when he talked, it was about things no one else even thought about, like tonight he had been telling her about famous men in Czechoslovak history, based on a set of stamps he had just received from New York. But the fact remained that she didn't enjoy kissing him. Whereas the others she didn't enjoy talking to, but could sometimes manage to kiss without revulsion.

As he walked across the damp lawn toward his house, Raymond decided he should date other girls. He liked Emily better than anyone else, but he didn't love her, if loving her meant wanting to kiss her and all. Maybe he was a fairy. He looked up and saw his house—a squat white box that needed painting. Open porch across the front with a sloping roof and lounge chairs. He contrasted it to the house he had just come from, Emily's three-storey yellow wood thing with pointy roofs and fancy woodwork. It came to him that her family was rich, and his was poor—not hungry or anything, but there were no extras. He and Jed had always worked for their clothes and spending money. Emily and Sally never had. But of course they were girls. Yet they lived in the same town, shared ancestors, their fathers worked at the same mill….