Paul Cowley stood on the bottom stair. “There's more whisky in the cupboard,” he said loudly. He came to sit beside Uncle Joseph who hung one arm around his neck and shoulders like a scarf on a scarecrow.
“I'm going up to check on Maryanne. I told Paul to give her something,” Doris said, heaving herself up. “We'll talk later. Just don't you listen to Shel, okay?”
Why did people tell him that all the time? Did they sit around thinking that he was hanging off Shel's every word,
following him around the schoolyard and just hoping to get slaughtered? Luke wasn't stupid, one fat lip was enough. But he couldn't keep avoiding Shel forever, not when there was only one way across the pond to school and that was right in his territory, from the bottom of the hill near the culvert to the chain link fence around the back field.
Shel had parked himself there in the middle of the bridge on the first day back after the holidays, jumping on the steps to splinter the wood while Cynthia stood around in a too-small ski parka that showed her wrists and her belly.
“Hey, Luke,” Shel had shouted between jumps. “You hear about Sam Purdin's dog?”
“What about him?”
“Her,” Cynthia said. She sat down on the middle step and hugged her ankles. She put her chin on her knees and looked back across the field, chapping her lips with her tongue.
“What?”
“Her. It's a girl. The dog.”
“A bitch,” Shel said.
Luke crossed his arms. His father said he needed to stand up for himself. Shel was nothing more than a bag of hot air who needed a haircut.
“She found Martin Cowley,” Shel said as he hacked at the step with the heel of his boot.
Luke knew that Martin drove around town in an old Honda, one elbow hanging out the window even in the dead of winter, but that was about it. Martin had played Joseph in the Christmas pageant the year that Luke was a talking sheep, back when Luke's mother still insisted they all go to church, at least around Christmas. His parents sat with the Cowleys, close enough for Luke to see Maryanne Cowley
mouth Martin's lines along with him. The only thing Luke had ever said to him was, “Behold the Christmas star.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She found him. Dog yapped her bloody face off and wouldn't come back from the woods,” Shel said. He hurled a piece of wood into the water. “When Sam went to get her, there was Martin, stretching his neck, if you follow.” Shel mimed wrapping a rope around his neck, putting one arm in the air and pretending to dangle from it, his tongue out and waggling at Cynthia who gave him the finger.
Luke shrugged. “I'm going to be late for school,” he said. Shel made stuff up all the time.
“You an idiot? Don't you get it?”
He didn't. That was the kind of thing you saw in R-rated movies about people living in New York or Los Angeles. People didn't do it in real life. Besides, Martin had had a solo in the pageant, the line in “Away in a Manger” about loving Jesus forever and staying by his side. Shel was the idiot.
“You're lying.”
“The fuck I am.”
“I'm going to be late,” Luke said again. All he had to do was go to class and ask Mrs. Solomon about it. He knew what she was going to say: No, Luke, and you can't believe everything you see on TV, either. When his mom found out she might have half a mind to go over and tell Jeanette just what kind of foul things came out of her boy's dirt mouth, but his dad would say, C'mon Ferne, and put an end to that. It was all fine. This was just Shel being Shel. A bad egg, his mother said.
“You piss yourself when you get strangled, you know.” Shel wiped a hand over his mouth. “Your tongue turns purple
and your eyes break all their blood vessels while you struggle, but there's nothing you can do about it once you jump.” He put his hands around his own throat and made choking noises, and Luke remembered the time he'd cut himself with his mother's very sharp kitchen knife. The damage done before the quick blossoming of blood. The second before the pain.
“Dog got a hold of his foot and wouldn't let go, taste a death and all that,” Shel went on. “Paul Cowley eventually had to beat the bitch off with a broom handle and she wound up losing her puppies. Sam Purdin should sue for loss a property.”
“You don't know shit.” Cynthia stood and hiked up her jeans, hugging herself against the cold.
“I know that Martin's going to get buried at the crossroads way back the road so his soul can never find its way,” Shel said. “They'll bury him standing upside-down and they'll put a stake in his heart on account of his being a suicide.”
Cynthia rolled her eyes and brushed the bangs off her face.
“And I heard that he did it because he's a faggot.” Shel kicked the posts of the bridge. “Was a faggot, I mean. Fucking disgusting.”
“Not everyone's a fag, you know,” Cynthia said as she pulled at the cuffs of her jacket.
“Take Luko, over there. A faggot if I ever saw one.”
Luke stood there feeling small and stupid as Shel and Cynthia both looked him over.
“Did your mommy make you wear that hat, Luke?” Shel said. “Do you suck your daddy's dick?”
“Grow up, Shel,” Cynthia said, picking up her backpack. “I'm going to school.”
“Bitch.” Shel turned back to Luke as Cynthia started over the bridge. “Hey faggot, you checking me out?”
All Luke had to do was run. What was Shel going to do, belt him in the face as he ran by? Shel was just going to laugh and call Luke a pussy and throw an ice ball at his head, and Cynthia was still there, not that far ahead.
“You gonna stand there and whack off to me?”
Luke was fast. And small. These were good things. He just had to do it. Stand up for himself.
Shel grabbed his crotch. “I got something you want, faggot?”
Luke's forehead caught Shel in the chest. There was no sound except for the hollow thud of body hitting body, the salty wool of Shel's jacket crashing into Luke's open mouth. Shel with one heel dug into the bridge, then Shel floating over the water, a magic boy, a look on his face like he wanted to say something, that he was sorry, maybe, before the water filled his lungs and bathed his eyes, still open, turning him into something cold and new, a picture on a piece of newsprint on the fridge door, curling and fading from the heat of the stove.
It hadn't mattered that Luke heard Shel clawing his way out of the pond, slapping his sopping jacket on the ground and yelling that Luke was going to fucking die when he got his fucking hands on him, fucking die. Luke had run, the weight of his own soul slowing him down in the deep, wet snow. He knew what had happened, the thought repeating in his mind: You killed Shel, you killed Shel. The taste of the unsaid words a lot like blood.
After that it had been a relief to go to the cemetery and see the hole, the tracks from the backhoe in the newly softened ground. Luke thanked his lucky stars he hadn't asked anyone, not even Doris, about burying Martin upside-down at the crossroads, even though he still almost wished he had seen the body in the coffin, just so he could be sure of things before he threw his own handful of earth on the empty-sounding lid. Wharton's funeral home had kept the casket closed the whole time. They put a giant picture of Martin on an easel, which his mother said was a small mercy, although Luke wasn't sure why. Father Richard had prayed over the coffin before it was lowered into the ground, but that didn't mean that the thing about Martin's soul couldn't still be true. Shel lied, but not about everything. Luke had sat between his parents during the service, conscious of the fact that he had no brothers and sisters. If Shel killed him, his parents were going to be alone in the world. If his parents died, the same was true for him.
Martin had a brother. John worked for a gas company and was exploring somewhere near Baffin Island. Although they hadn't been able to reach him yet, the company planned on doing everything they could for the Cowley family during this trying time, including transferring John back home for a month or two, if need be. It was hard to guess how Mr. and Mrs. Cowley felt about thatâif it was more of a comfort to have a son not there, not in a box, a son who spent his time scaling mountains and drilling into the ground and being alive, or if it was a strange torture to have their only other boy out in God knows where with nothing between him and Martin but miles and time and luck and a length of sturdy, splintered rope. Luke sipped his Coke and understood a bit
better why his own mother had insisted on holding his hand while Father Richard talked about ashes to ashes, her fingernails digging into his skin.
Luke walked over to the window, keeping an eye out for Shel. Luke's father was smoking on the porch with Uncle Joseph and Paul Cowley. They stood in a silent triangle and Luke watched the air float out of their mouths and fill the dark between them with gauzy, hot smoke. His father looked tall and strong, his space in the night brightened by a single glowing spark, fuelled by his own hazy breath.
If Luke got his mother her coat, maybe she would take him home; he wasn't allowed to walk alone at night, which was fine by Luke. The dark made him nervous. She was more than likely fixing coffee with Doris in the kitchen, trying to get the pot off before people started searching for their jackets and jingling their keys, slurring things about it being late and needing to get back. There was always the chance his father might come too if he was finished with his cigarette, or if his mother kissed him on the cheek and said, It's getting on, Jim. His parents loved each other like that. He had seen the photo his mother hid in the kitchen cupboard, the one where her hair was long and wavy as she looked over her shoulder and the small strap of her nightgown slid down her arm, his father taking the picture.
The coats were heaped on a bed upstairs. John's old bedroom, not Martin's, Luke hoped as he came up to the door with the hand-lettered sign that said, Keep Out, That Means You Mom. Luke couldn't find the light switch but it didn't matter. He knew the feel of his mother's jacket, the collar a gift from Uncle Maurice, the smell of her in the fur now. But there was another smell in the room. Something punky, like an apple left on a radiator.
“Shut the door.”
Luke's heart beat in his ears and eyes and brain, and the thought of running downstairs and calling for his mother, his father, Doris, even, was stopped by the hammering of blood. There was nothing to be done. He had been stupid and now he was going to pay for it.
“Come over here.” Shel was sitting on the floor at the end of the bed, his head on his knees. The triangle of yellow light from the bulb in the hallway showed Luke the back of Shel's neck, pale and shiny. “You got cigarettes?” Shel asked.
“No,” Luke said.
“Course you don't.” Shel slugged a nearly empty wine bottle to his lips.
Luke saw the piles of sick on the floor. There was some on the edge of the ruffled bed skirt and some in a puddle between Shel's knees where he sat horking, his spit making a thwacking noise when it hit the mess.
“You sick or something?” Luke breathed through his mouth as he came closer. “Shel?”
“I told her I would pay for it,” Shel said into the floor. “I can get the money. You think I can't get the money? Bitch.” He spat again. “Fucking bitch.”
Luke jumped as Shel gave a spastic hiccup. Shel wretched between his legs and then sipped from the bottle, choking down the wine until he heaved again, his fist pounding the carpet with each rush of his insides. Luke didn't know what to think, only that he wished Shel would just snap out of it and tell him that he was going to punch his lights out. Instead he swayed back and forth on the carpet like a Boy Scout at a make-believe campfire.
“She said I'm going to hell because a this. Her too.” Shel's tongue sounded fat in his mouth.
“We should go.” Luke's eyes were adjusting to the dark and he saw that Shel's lips were stained and chewed up, his teeth working at a small flap of skin in the corner that was starting to bleed. He could imagine what Mrs. Cowley was going to say about blood on the carpet and the piles of puke. “This might be Martin's room.”
Shel wiped a hand over his mouth, smearing some blood onto his cheek. He crawled onto his knees, grinding the vomit into the floor as he steadied himself. “Are you disrespecting the dead?” Shel dragged out the d-sounds, running his free hand over the lump of jackets on the bed, then stamping the bottle on his palm as he wobbled closer. He breathed heavily and squinted at Luke until his eyes were nothing more than sticky slivers.
There was music playing downstairs and people laughing as Shel stared at Luke and thumped the bottle in his hand.
“I'm sorry about the bridge, Shel,” Luke said. He didn't know why, only that he meant it.
“You don't fucking know from sorry.” Shel's eyes were nearly swollen shut. “They're not even going to bury it, you know.” He pawed the bottle at Luke. “She told me they're just going to scrape it out and put it in a bag and then burn it like garbage, like it didn't even have a soul.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Fucking garbage.”
Shel swung the bottle in a wild and lazy arc that caught the corner post of Martin's bed. He fell hard onto his knees like they weren't his anymore, like he had deflated from the inside out and was now just the skin and bone outline of a dead boy. It was over, whatever had happened, and Luke was safe, absolved, only a witness to the strange and secret ritual
that had Shel hunched over and curled around the bottle, begging for forgiveness. This was suffering, Luke knew. This was grace. Then the room flared up. Paul Cowley. He was in the doorway, hand on the light switch. Luke stood there, blinking, his elbows locked and his fists sweaty.