The Pricker Boy Read online

  Pete responded, “That’s ’cause you’re queer.”

  A few minutes later Robin asked what time it was, and Ronnie said, “I think it’s about three.”

  And Pete said, “That’s ’cause you’re queer.” Every time Pete said it, he laughed at Ronnie. It was like those nights in the tent. I couldn’t tell if Pete was trying to scare Ronnie, or if he thought it would make us all laugh. No one was laughing.

  Finally Ronnie had had enough. He tried to kick Pete out of his grandparents’ yard. He didn’t want to look like a little kid saying, “You can’t be in my yard anymore,” but that’s exactly the way it came out. “Why don’t you just go home? I don’t want you here anymore,” Ronnie said. But Pete just laughed.

  “What are you going to do about it, queer?” Pete asked.

  Vivek jumped in. “Pete, when you say queer, do you mean that Ronnie’s weird? Because let’s be honest, we’re all pretty weird, and I’m the weirdest. Or do you mean that he’s happy? Because in that case we’re all gay, and I’m … the absolute gayest!” Vivek leapt into the air like Peter Pan. As he landed he twirled, grabbing the rope swing and swooping out over the water, shouting with joy until he slapped the water in a full belly flop.

  “What I mean,” Pete said, smirking at the rest of us, “is that he’s a fag.” He sat down on the ground and started pulling up tufts of grass from Mr. Milkes’s perfect lawn. “So why don’t you kick me out of here? Run me out of town, Sheriff!”

  “Pete, what’s the matter with you?” Robin asked.

  “Pete, what’s the matter with you? Pete, what’s the matter with you?” he mimicked right back at her.

  “Pete, stop. Come back over to our house with me,” Robin told him.

  “No,” he said stubbornly, sticking out his lower lip like a four-year-old.

  “Pete, please,” she pleaded.

  Vivek climbed back up out of the water, and I could tell by the look on his face that he was annoyed that his antics hadn’t put a stop to what was going on. All he had to show for his silliness was a red, bruised stomach.

  Emily stared curiously at Pete. “Do you know where the word ‘fag’ comes from?”

  “Don’t care.”

  “I’ll tell you anyway. ‘Faggots’ are bundles of sticks used to start fires. More specifically, the fires used during the Middle Ages to burn people at the stake for supposed crimes like witchcraft or homosexuality. Of course, in the Middle Ages people also burned polydactyl cats because they thought they were evil spirits.”

  “Poly-what?” Pete asked.

  “Polydactyl. Hemingway cats. Boston thumb cats. Double-pawed cats. Let me make it simpler: cats that have extra toes. Would you call a cat a ‘fag,’ Pete?”

  “Emily,” Vivek said, “you’re acting kinda queer.”

  “I suppose so,” she said.

  Pete just shook his head at her. He stood up. “So you think I’m gonna light Ronnie on fire because he’s queer? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I’m saying that I don’t like words that suggest that people—or cats for that matter—should be burned alive.”

  “I don’t care what words you don’t like.” He laughed. Then he looked at me. I think he expected me to be laughing with him. But the cold look on my face must have been the final straw. He started to walk off.

  Ronnie should have left it at that, should have kept his mouth shut. Maybe seeing us take his side had bolstered his courage. “Not that it’s any of your business,” he said, “but I’m not gay.”

  Pete swung around. “Wanna prove it?” he asked eagerly, and he walked right up to Ronnie. I saw Ronnie take a step back, but Pete just grinned wider.

  “Don’t worry—I’m not gonna light you on fire.” Pete smiled and a little of his trademark charm came back into his voice. That charm always worked on all of us, kept us all loving Pete even when he got into one of his moods. “Just hold your hand out, like this.” Pete dangled his hand out, letting it go limp at the wrist.

  “Cut it out, Pete,” I said, but Pete ignored me.

  Ronnie held out his hand, keeping his wrist rigid. Pete’s arm flashed out, and he grabbed Ronnie by the hand from underneath. He didn’t twist the arm, but he held the wrist tight so Ronnie couldn’t pull away.

  “Okay,” Pete said. “First one to give in is queer? All right?”

  Ronnie’s brow creased. “Give in to what?”

  Pete extended his index finger. It hung right over Ronnie’s wrist, right over the spot where all the veins run near the surface. His finger darted out and scratched at Ronnie’s skin with his nail. “See, you scratch at me. I scratch at you. We keep going until one gives in. Whoever gives in first is queer. It’s called a fag burn. Didn’t you ever do this as a kid?”

  Ronnie’s face looked like a sheet of ice had gathered across it. “No,” he said.

  “That’s ’cause you’re queer.” Pete smiled.

  “Come on, Ronnie,” Emily said. She grabbed Ronnie by the elbows and tugged him away from Pete.

  “No!” Ronnie pulled away from her, walked back to Pete, and grabbed him by the wrist.

  I’m not proud of it, and I doubt that Vivek is either, but he and I both took a single step away from Pete and Ronnie, signaling to them that we weren’t going to do anything to interfere.

  Robin started crying. “Pete, don’t do this! This is stupid! Ronnie, you don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes, he does,” Pete answered drily.

  Robin shook her head and walked away.

  “I’m not interested in watching this,” Emily said, and followed after her.

  “Well?” Pete asked. “First one to stop has to say, ‘I’m queer.’”

  Ronnie looked down at his hand. He looked back up at Pete. His finger shot forward and dug into Pete’s wrist.

  The two of them attacked each other. Pete dug into Ronnie’s arm, and Ronnie just tried to keep up, digging as fast with his nail as he possibly could. Ronnie kept looking down at their arms locked together, focusing all his energy on doing as much damage to Pete as quickly as he could. In less than a minute, their skin got raw and shiny.

  “Look at me, queer!” Pete shouted at him, and Ronnie pulled his eyes up to meet Pete’s. It became a staring contest as well. Ronnie’s eyes started to tear as the layers of skin fell away. Pete just kept smiling, that darkness growing on his face with every strike of his finger. I could tell that Ronnie was scared, but he wouldn’t give Pete the satisfaction of giving in so easily.

  Their arms were shaking, their grips so tight I thought one or both of their wrists would snap from the pressure. It wasn’t long before the blood started. First it was tiny droplets, but it instantly smeared underneath their fingernails, making it hard to scrape at the skin. Ronnie started to sweat, the tendons of his upper body standing out under the pale skin. Pete gritted his teeth and continued to stare at Ronnie, all the while trying to dig in harder. “I did better than you when I was in the second grade,” he taunted.

  Ronnie wasn’t ever going to win, and he knew it. By the time he finally pulled away, their wrists were pretty raw. Ronnie gasped for breath, clutching at his wounded wrist. He looked right into Pete’s eyes and said, “Fine. I’m queer. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  Pete turned and walked away through the woods. He got into the trees, turned around, and called back, “You’re a faggot, Milkes!” Then he strutted off. I turned to say something to Ronnie, but Ronnie was already walking away. He was going to have to come up with some story to tell his grandmother, who would surely fuss and fret over him like a mother cat fretting over a muddy kitten.

  Ronnie is still wearing that scar today. Since the start of the summer, he’s tried to tuck it away whenever someone notices it. I guess to him it’s a reminder of having to say those words. But not to me. It reminds me of the day that Ronnie finally stood up to Pete, stood stronger against him than I ever have. I should tell Ronnie that, but I probably won’t.

  I don’t know why I’m
lying in bed and thinking about this again, but tonight it’s probably better than sleep.

  I drop my feet over the side of the bed, grab my book from the dresser, and lift the latch on the door to my room, being especially gentle so as not to wake anyone else. I’ll read until dawn. I like a good sunrise.

  I head down the hall and cross through the family room and am startled by the black figure seated in the front room.

  The figure is looking out the picture window. For a moment I think I’m asleep, and that this is a dream and that whatever it is can stand up and do anything it wants to me. For a moment, my heart doesn’t beat and I don’t breathe. The figure turns toward me. “Stucks?” it calls.

  “Nana? Nana, you scared the life out of me!”

  She points a listless finger up at the ceiling. “There’s spiders up there, Stucks,” she says. “Get a broom and get them down for me, will you?”

  I retrieve the broom. In her four-fingered hand, she’s clutching her glasses, holding them tight to her lap. “Where are they, Nana?” I ask her.

  “Up there.” She points to the crossbeams that span the ceiling. “They’re dirty. I don’t mind spiders, but they leave webs and traces, and the dirt gets in them. Like charcoal. They spin charcoal.”

  I follow her finger and pass the broom over the spots she points to. “Is that better?” I ask.

  “No. I guess …” Her voice trails off. “I know they’re there, Stucks. But you tried. Thank you.”

  There are no spiders on the ceiling. There never are. The natural wood of the beams has knots and rings in it, and Nana sees figures in the patterns of the wood. Most often it’s spiders, but sometimes it’s other creatures. As a kid I saw them too, the way you would see shapes in clouds. I could see birds sometimes, and bats with huge wings. In one corner I had always seen a man screaming furiously at an invisible tormentor. I saw other faces too, and bees, and hooves. They were simply there, and even as a kid I never let them disturb my imagination too much.

  I place the broom by her chair and sit on the floor next to her. “What are you doing up, Nana?”

  “I couldn’t sleep because of the crow. He wants my glasses.”

  “A crow?”

  “He was in the ceiling before, but now he’s out in the trees. He wants my glasses. I can’t see without my glasses.”

  The things Nana sometimes sees make my father nervous. Once she saw an old woman in the backyard and went outside to invite her in for dinner, but there was no one there. Other times, she sees children playing. Dad points out that there’s nothing there, that nothing could be there. With the best of intentions he tries to organize a mind that is slowly losing all sense of order, but it only reminds her of just how old and frail she’s become, and she curls up inside when he does it. In younger days, she traveled the world alone by ship, car, plane, and foot, and she raised my father and my uncle on her own while working full time when Grandpa was in Korea. She will never come to terms with her withering faculties. So when she sees things, I let her see them. I never argue.

  I reach up and take her hand. “Do you see the crow, Stucks?” she asks me.

  “He’s in the tree?” I ask.

  She nods, pointing to the branches of the pines shifting with the night wind. For a second I do see something, a raven with harsh angry eyes and wide wings, looking straight down at the both of us. Then it vanishes, and there are only pine branches before me.

  “I can’t see him from here,” I say. “But he won’t get at your glasses. I’ll make sure of that.”

  “Oh, he’s a bad one.” She shakes her head and clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “He’s looking at me with bad eyes. He wants my glasses. But he’s scared of you, Stucks. He won’t fly down as long as you’re here. He’s afraid. Oh, see him! See him! He just hopped over … over …” Her arthritic hand waves in the air, loses its focus, then falls to the arm of the chair. “I can’t see without my glasses,” she whispers.

  “Nana, don’t you want to go back to bed? I don’t think he can get inside.”

  She considers it, then shakes her head. “I need my glasses. It’s too much of a risk with him up there.”

  “What if I hold your glasses? I’ll put them in my pocket, and then he won’t be able to get them. He’ll never come near me.”

  Nana’s eyes brighten up. “You’d do that? Oh, Stucks, you’re such a good boy. Thank you.” She quickly presses her glasses in my hand, and I place them in my pajama pocket.

  “I’ll give them back to you in the morning.”

  “Oh thank you. I can’t see without my glasses,” she repeats.

  I take her hand and help her get to her feet. We shuffle through the darkness to her room, and I help her get back into bed. I tell her where I’ll be if she needs me, and then I return to the chair by the window. Her glasses safe in my pocket, I pick up my book and start to read, all the while waiting for the dawn.

  A couple of years ago Pete and I found an old Atari 2600 in his parents’ basement. At first we had no idea what the thing was. Then Pete spotted the cartridges and the joysticks, and we realized that it was an old video-game system. Luckily, his parents had an old TV in the basement as well, or we wouldn’t have been able to figure out how to hook up the connectors. Even then we couldn’t get an image. Frustrated, Pete grabbed the Space Invaders game cartridge, yanked it out, and then slammed it back in again. The screen flashed, and suddenly these chunky things that looked slightly like bugs started jerking their way across the screen. I pressed the button on the joystick and zapped one of them. I couldn’t believe that anyone used to play those games. It was like playing with blocks, except that it was on television. One of the games was exactly that. You threw a ball against blocks. That was it. That was the entire game. Throwing balls against blocks.

  Finding that game system was like discovering the sticks and hammers left behind by cavemen. We actually enjoyed ourselves, even though the TV was black-and-white and we had to whack it if the picture went out. Our favorite game was called Berserk. You were dropped into a maze and had to kill a bunch of robots. The robots shuffled like the monsters in old science-fiction movies where the actors were afraid they’d trip over their rubber suits. It was easy. The real fun of that game was laughing at ourselves when one of us accidentally got shot.

  Pete’s parents weren’t home. I know because he started giving the video characters profane names and shouting at them when they got zapped. He never would have done that within earshot of his mom, but between us it just made it all the more funny. And my family couldn’t have been around either. I know because of what happened next.

  We were playing our bazillionth game of Berserk when Pete turned down the volume on the TV. He paused and listened, holding up his hand to quiet me when I asked him what was wrong. Then I heard it too. The whine of an engine fighting against its driver. Wheels spinning. The rise and fall of the RPMs as the gas pedal was rocked up and down.

  Pete and I grabbed our coats and left through the basement door. It was one of those dry winter nights when the air slaps your cheeks as soon as you walk out. We hadn’t even bothered to put on our caps or gloves, but we weren’t about to run back inside to grab them. Somewhere down the edge of the pond someone was trying to drive a car out onto the ice.

  Pete and I ran across the frozen ground toward the car. As we got close, the car’s wheels must have caught hold of something, because the headlights bobbed and started moving across the ice. The car fishtailed out over the deeper water.

  Dad had told me earlier that day that the ice was probably safe. He emphasized the word “probably” by saying it very slowly and then repeating it again in that annoying way that parents have of explaining why they’re about to tell you not to do something. It’s as if they think we’re from a foreign country and that we’re struggling with this troubling new thing called the English language. “So I think it would be better to wait for a few more days of cold weather before you go out there,” he’d said.<
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  That afternoon Pete and I had tested my father’s theory by going down to the cove, out of sight of the house, and hacking through the ice with a hatchet. We stayed over the shallow water. We’re not that stupid. But we also decided that the ice was a good six inches thick, which was plenty safe, so we did some runnin’-and-slidin’ for a few hours. That’s what Pete and I always called it. Runnin’-and-slidin’, a name that avoided any unnecessary confusion.

  Just in case, we’d stayed over the water that was five or so feet deep. Okay, maybe seven feet. Okay, maybe ten.

  The car started heading out toward the center. Luckily for the driver, the wheels lost traction again, and even though he gave it all the gas that he could, the car didn’t budge.

  Runnin’-and-slidin’ over the shallows is one thing, but that car was maybe a hundred yards out in the darkness, and it wasn’t smart to head out that far until the ice fishermen had been out there for at least two or three days. The ice fishermen are good indicators of how thick the ice is. If they’re out drinking beer in the center of the pond while boring through the ice with a giant drill and they don’t fall in, then it’s probably safe. Even then I’d give the ice a good stomp every now and again to make sure that it didn’t crack even slightly under the blow.

  “Is this safe?” I asked Pete. My ears were beginning to sting, really sting, and I knew already that when I got back to the house and finally started to warm up, I’d get an earache like you wouldn’t believe.

  “Probably not,” Pete said. “Not for us, and not for him.”

  I’ve never understood why ice breaking in movies sounds so lame compared to the real thing. In movies, cracking ice sounds like the crackling of dry leaves, just magnified. You hear a crack crack crack, and then one big crack, and then the water swallows a person or a car or whatever is stupid enough to be out on ice that even drunken fishermen would be afraid to walk on.

  In real life, ice rumbles. It squeals in wobbling spasms that start at one end of the pond and ripple all the way across. Usually the spasms are harmless, just the ice shifting and expanding like miniature tectonic plates. But when the ice made those sounds that night, underneath the body of a car that was spinning its wheels, that was another situation altogether.