37

Rufus could pinpoint four pivotal moments in his life. Each of them was filled with equal parts dread and exhilaration. As if the only moments in life that could truly be transcendent had to strike a balance between despair and hope. There was the moment he had walked away from the church, when he had flung the snake at the stained glass, cracking it open. That moment had cracked him open too. He’d been a solid, hard-shelled egg before that. But when the shell cracked, light was able to come inside, but other things slipped in too, including other influences. Influences like Harden. Friends like Harriet. A dream like Savanna.

Moment number two came after he’d been working at the Harden School for half a year. It had happened during what Harden called “free physical time.” Harden had a lot of goofy names for things at the school. “Free physical time” was just recess with more violence.

This particular incident happened on a cold, slightly damp day in February, and Rufus was the only adult riding herd on the thirteen boys and Harriet. Lately, Harden and Deloach had insisted she join the boys for free physical time. Rufus was pretty sure the idea was that if Harriet wanted to like girls, she should be forced to play with the boys. Harden and Deloach encouraged fighting, wrestling, showdowns between the boys who held grudges, even group punishment for boys who got out of line. Rufus’s only real job was to make sure no one was seriously hurt (bloodied noses, black eyes, and painful kicks to the groin didn’t qualify) and that the boys were active. Any of them who were caught sitting around were to be sent directly to Harden. Rufus never had to take any to Harden. One thing was clear in the school: no matter how badass one of the boys thought he was (or really was), none of them wanted to cross Harden.

On this particular day, the boys had brought out the football, and instead of picking teams, they began to play something called “Smear the queer.” The game was one Harden would have loved. One boy took the ball and spiked it on the ground. As soon as it hit the ground, it was live. The boys would scramble madly to pick it up, and whoever snagged it first became the “queer.” The ball carrier attempted to stay on his feet as long as possible before eventually being “smeared” by the other boys. There was no scoring, no winning, no point really that Rufus could see other than being an outlet for the boys to take out their aggression. And maybe that wasn’t so bad. These boys certainly had enough aggression pent up, and despite the violent and seemingly pointless nature of the game, he could tell the boys were having fun. Not only that, there seemed to be an odd camaraderie that arose out of the game. After a ball carrier would get absolutely rocked by three or four tacklers at once, it wasn’t unusual to see the tacklers helping the ball carrier up and patting him on the back.

Harriet stood by and watched, as was her custom since she’d been forced to join the boys in free time a few days earlier. So far, the boys had accepted her presence without too much rancor. Occasionally one of them might shoot her a stern glare and mutter something, but for the most part, they quickly became engaged in pummeling each other and forgot she was there. But that all changed when the ball popped loose from Andrew Shanck’s hands and rolled over to her feet.

“Shank,” as the other boys called him, was the first to make it to the ball, but instead of picking it up, he stopped, holding his arms out like guardrails to keep the other boys back. All thirteen boys stopped behind his arms and watched.

“Hey,” he said. “Why doesn’t the dyke play?”

“We’re not going to call her that,” Rufus said. It was a mantra he repeated over and over again, but none of the boys listened. Why should they listen to Rufus when they’d heard both Deloach and Harden call her the same thing?

“If she can eat pussy, she can play football,” another voice said. Rufus wasn’t sure who.

“Enough,” he said sharply. It was the voice he saved for the most urgent situations, the ones when he knew violence was close at hand. Usually, the voice worked. Rufus had a kind of gravity, even then, that was tough to ignore. It was the kind of gravity that pulled you into his orbit and made you compliant with his will. But not this time. This time, the boys had created their own kind of force, a centrifugal counter to his will. It was a wild thing, formed out of the primeval past, the kind of charging of the atmosphere that could only occur when hormones and angst bounced off each other and dispersed into the very air.

The impending violence was so thick, Rufus could smell it.

Shank picked up the football and handed it to Harriet. She held it for a moment, and the chant began from some unknown place, a mouthless voice that soon formed a chorus of real voices.

Smear.

Smear.

Smear.

The.

Queer.

Smear.

The.

Queer.

Smear. Smear. Smear.

The.

Queer. Queer. Queer.

The boys had formed a circle around Harriet, who stood awkwardly holding the football, like it might be filled with poison and if she gripped it too tightly it would spill. The boys continued the chant as they closed ranks on her.

“Hey!” Rufus shouted.

But his voice was drowned out by the chants. The first boy had reached Harriet now, and instead of tackling her, he swung at her, a wild haymaker that landed with a devastating crack. Rufus froze. It was like watching an explosion happen from a safe distance. It was instantaneous, and dreadful. All of the boys began to strike her, to push her, to beat on her. Somehow—and this is something Rufus would think about later—Harriet held onto the ball, squirming free of the initial assault, keeping her feet, breaking out of the circle, scampering and bouncing from body to body like a pinball. The chant subsided as the circle turned inward, stretching itself like a rubber band in her wake.

Two of the boys spread out wide, flanking her on either side, while Shank—one of the fastest boys—ran her down from behind. Shank caught her first and jumped on her back, dragging her down. The other two boys piled on, one kicking her in the face and the other grabbing a handful of her hair and yanking it up as hard as he could.

Somehow, Harriet still held onto the ball, and Rufus understood it was her way of fighting back. She’d never beat all the boys, never outrun them, but she wasn’t going to drop the ball. Dropping the ball was quitting; dropping the ball was giving up, saying no, I am not a queer. Holding it was saying yes, I am, and you will not smear nor erase me no matter how hard you might try.

Rufus finally reached the fray. He didn’t bother to speak or yell or do anything except grab boys by the shoulders, arms, the neck, and pull them off, slinging them like discarded clothes. His strength amazed him. He dug through to the last boy—Shank—still on top of her.

Rufus grabbed him and ripped him away, tossing him across the grass. Shank landed, scrambled to his feet, glared at him.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m stopping you from killing her,” Rufus said.

“I’ll kill you!” Shank shouted. That was Shank. He was the kid with the loudest mouth, but he also had the biggest muscles, hands like boulders, knuckles for inflicting punishment on faces. He spoke without thinking, but sometimes he acted without thinking too. He kept the other boys on edge. Rufus swore sometimes even Harden treated him with a kind of respectful deference.

“Bring it on,” Rufus heard himself say. And that was how it was too. He didn’t so much as actually consciously say it. His body was reacting, working through this situation without him.

Shank swung at him and Rufus took the full brunt of the punch on his left jaw. It felt like a damn rocket had exploded in his head, but Rufus clenched his jaw hard, regained his balance, and sent a return shot back at Shank’s right eye. The boy fell to the ground.

Everyone was silent now, except Harriet, who lay on the ground still clutching the football, whimpering.

“Every one of you will do morning time with Deloach,” he announced.

“For what?” one of the boys said, his voice rife with the kind of smartass challenging tone most of these boys had mastered instinctually.

“For bullying,” Rufus said. “For attacking her.”

He turned to face the boy who’d spoken, a weasel-faced kid named Jake Sanderson. If Shank was the physical bully of the group, Jake was the mental one. He was a little kid, not just short, but so slight Rufus often wondered if there was some deficiency that kept him from putting on weight. His face was all bone and skin, the fleshy underneath stuff just wasn’t there, and when the light hit him right, he was more ghoul than boy. Rufus tried not to hold his unfortunate countenance against him. Rufus was keenly aware (even if he’d been so unaware of other things at that time) that his own appearance often put people on edge. He suffered none of the same physical deficiencies as Jake, but he did have pale skin and hair so unnaturally dark that sometimes people assumed it had been dyed for effect. He was rangy and moved with uncanny lumbering motions he could quickly convert to more economical blasts of pure power when the urge took hold of him, as it had just done.

“We were just playing the game,” Jake continued. He was smiling slightly, pleased with the way things had gone, the way they were continuing to go. It was all a show to him, Rufus thought. Goddamn entertainment.

He went on, his voice continuing to ease into a treacly innocence. “She was the queer, Mr. Gribble. We were just smearing her.” A couple of the other boys laughed. Shank sat up, his eye already shiny and swollen. Rufus touched his jaw. Not broken, but definitely bruised. Chewing wouldn’t come easy for a few days.

“Game’s over,” he said.

“So, what are we supposed to do?” Jake whined.

“You’re supposed to step away from Harriet so I can check on her.” The boys parted, letting Rufus through. He knelt beside Harriet.

She smiled at him. It was one of the saddest things Rufus had ever seen. “I should have done it,” she said. “I should have already done it.”

“What are you talking about?” he said, but Rufus already knew. She should have already made the leap. Whether or not she landed safely on the other side hardly mattered, did it? Either way she wouldn’t be here, clinging to her identity like she clung to that damned football.

“Are you okay?” Rufus said, and put a hand on her back.

There was a laugh behind him. He was sure it was Jake. “Looks like Rufus has a thing for the dyke,” Jake said. “Maybe he likes boys and she’s the closest thing to a boy he can go for without admitting he’s gay.”

“Maybe they’re both queer,” a voice said.

“Who’s the queer?” a deeper voice said.

Rufus turned and saw Harden approaching. He was grinning like it was all some big joke.

“Harry and Rufus,” Jake said.

“Well, I knew about Harry, the dyke, but what’s this about Rufus?” Harden said.

Rufus stood up, shaking his head.

Harden drew closer, getting a better look at the injured girl. “What the hell is happening here?”

“They were playing a game that singled out Harry, I mean Harriet,” Rufus said. “They were going to kill her.”

Harden spat on the ground, and then nodded. He stepped on the place he’d spit with his boot heel and drove it into the ground. “So, what’s this about you being a queer, Rufus? You like assholes? Dicks?”

Rufus turned red as the boys laughed.

“No, sir.”

Harden studied him for a moment. His eyes narrowed and his cheeks tightened around his jaw. Finally, he nodded slowly, as if he’d just arrived at some decision.

“Free time is over. Go back to your rooms.”

Rufus tried to help Harriet up, but Harden said, “Leave her.”

“I’m just helping her up,” Rufus said.

“And I said, leave her there. You been spending too much time with her. Her queerness might be rubbing off on you.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Rufus said.

“The fuck it doesn’t.” Harden had turned suddenly aggressive. It frightened Rufus a little. It was one thing to stand up to the boys, another to stand up to Harden.

“Just leave her,” he said. “Me and my niece need to figure some stuff out.”

And there it was. The moment he should have acted. Rufus implicitly understood he should have stayed with her, should have defended her against Harden just as much as he had defended her against the boys, but he didn’t. Goddamn, why didn’t he? He’d known, goddamn it, he’d known. But knowing hadn’t been enough, had it?

He’d nodded and walked away.

Looking back on it now, tied to the chair inside the cabin where Savanna had brought him, he realized the shadow girl had started that same night.