Chapter Twenty-One

You think Satan isn’t at work here? Right here, right now? You think all this rock and roll music, with its roots in voodoo Africa, this free love, which is anything but free, these drugs the kids are using, isn’t the work of Beelzebub himself? These kids are going on trips, all right, trips straight to hell. Well, you tell Satan he isn’t welcome here. In Jesus’ name, say it. It may not be fashionable, it may not be groovy, like the hippies are saying, but I’ll tell you one thing: Heaven’s always cool. And evil’s always hot as hell. Tell Satan to go back from where he came. We know where he’s welcome, don’t we? We know the Devil’s high roost. You see those witches’ lights up high, some nights, don’t you? Hear those foul songs coming down from the mountain. Oh, Satan’s here, all right, and we know who’s giving him succour.

—Reverend Daniel Hickland,
Church of Christ Returning, 1967

Bobby and albert lay stretched out on the sun-heated slab of rock near the old stone bridge deep in the woods where they’d first met. The air was soft on their bare chests, warm as a hand and aromatic with the sharp incense of moss and algae. The breeze whispered in the leaves, chickadees and finches twittered and a woodpecker occasionally rat-a-tat-tatted. Water burbled over stones and dragonflies hovered while in a nearby black locust tree a bright-eyed kingfisher watched a deep pool by the riverbank for silver fish-flash. Now and then he dove, breaking the water’s surface with his lethal beak.

Albert blew smoke toward the clouds and looked at Bobby. Like Albert, he had balled up his shirt to form a pillow under his head. The boy’s chest was narrow, the ribs clearly visible, and hairless. One hand was stretched out on the warm stone, the other rested on his stomach. His nipples were the colour of almonds and his belly was concave. A faint shadow of fuzz ran in a thin line to somewhere below the band of the underwear showing a couple of inches above his jeans. His expression was self-satisfied and content: his lips curled slightly, his eyes closed, his brow unlined. It was not an expression he wore often.

“Pretty good out here, huh?” Albert said, and Bobby murmured his agreement, half-asleep. The boy’s pale skin was turning pink. It would hurt later, be sensitive even to touch. “You’re getting burnt.You should put your shirt back on.”

“Albert,” Bobby said, sleepily, “why don’t you ever let me come up by you?”

“I told you. It’s not the place for you.”

“Seems like no place is.”

“Come on.”

“I mean it,” Bobby said, his eyes open now. “Give me a cigarette, will you? This town’s sure not for me, not after everything that’s happened.”

Albert handed the boy a smoke and held the Bic lighter for him, cupping his hand around the flame. Although he might have tried to argue with Bobby a month or two ago, there wasn’t much he could say these days. The kid wasn’t going to be able to live down the talk and, being Bobby, he wasn’t likely to fight through it either.

“So, you’ll get out, leave town one day,” Albert said.

“We could both get out.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Bobby leaned on one elbow, his face earnest. “I’m serious.”

Albert ground his cigarette out and flicked the butt into the river. He watched the current carry it away. “So, you’re serious.”

“What’s keeping you here?”

“I got responsibilities.”

“Your brothers and sisters?”

“And the rest.” Jill, and Jack, and Little Joe, Kenny, Toots and Ruby, Griff and Frank, the baby—Cathy, and little clubfoot Brenda. The whole sorry pack of them. Ever since Jill had had the last, botched, abortion she’d been sickly and even more withdrawn than usual. She dragged her hair in front of her eyes, hiding no matter how close she stood to anybody. She said she was glad there’d never be any more babies, said it over and over again, until he snapped at her, said he believed her, for fuck sake. Little Ruby had come running at him last week, saying Jack had taken a switch to her, and she had the welts on the back of her skinny little legs to prove it.

As though reading his mind, Bobby said, “If it’s so bad, like I said before, I don’t know why you don’t go to somebody—child welfare department or something.”

“And I told you before. Don’t work like that. Social workers? Not on the mountain.”

“So how does it work?”

“We take care of our shit.” What he didn’t tell Bobby was that if he contacted Family Services he’d be signing his own death warrant. Plenty of accidents happened on the mountain. Trees fell. Axes slipped. Footing was treacherous. Fires started. People disappeared and graves were dug deep enough to return the slopes to silence. There had been these two women walkers years back. Come from off in New York State somewhere, hikers with fancy boots and packs and topographical maps. They got lost at nightfall and stumbled out of the woods near his grandmother Sybil’s cabin, where Albert lived with his mother, Gloria, and his uncles Ray and Lloyd. Both women hikers with their hair cut like men and no makeup and it was clear what they were. They asked stupid questions nobody ever asked, like how were they all related, with their noses so high up in the air you’d think they were hound dogs, and everything about them leaking disapproval and righteousness. Sybil was so pissed off at the questions Albert thought for a minute she was actually going to answer them. Albert, who was only nine, was fascinated to hear what the answer might be, which must have showed on his face, because Lloyd smacked him so hard he fell off the stoop. He took off running then, into the woods. He knew where to hide so he could still watch. He was too far to hear what Lloyd and Ray said to the women, but whatever it was, they said it close up, with the women backed into the wall. Not even the tall one with the mole on her cheek looked so self-righteous then. Lloyd piled them into the truck and drove off down the mountain and came back a while later. Said he left them on the highway and they could fucking get a lift to town from there, old dykes, and they wouldn’t be saying shit to anybody about anything. Which Albert guessed must have been about right, since nobody ever showed up, although he had waited for a couple of weeks after, thinking now, surely now, somebody would come.

Bobby was saying something. Begging again.

“Come on, Albert. I won’t get in the way. Maybe I could help out, you know?”

“How are you going to help? And help what?” Albert stared up at the endless sky. He liked the vertigo it gave him, liked the idea he could fall up, just keep on falling and drift off into the blue, smaller and smaller until he was nothing, nothing at all. He didn’t want to look at Bobby. It bothered Albert, the sort of conclusions the kid drew. You’d think Albert had been spilling his guts, and he hadn’t been. Maybe just a hint or two, here and there, just to see how the boy would react, but nothing else. He kept the code. He kept his mouth shut. Erskines don’t talk.

Bobby sat up and crossed his legs Indian-style. He was close to Albert, one of his knees touching Albert’s thigh. “You’ve helped me a lot, you know. Don’t know what I would have done without you. I just feel . . . shit, I don’t know. Kind of left out, you know? Like you know everything about my life and I don’t know anything at all, not really, about yours.”

“Nothing to know.”

“Yeah, right.”

“What are you going to do? Pout? Jesus Christ, does that work on your old man?”

“I’m not pouting.” But he was.

“What the hell’s so important about being on the mountain? Why don’t you want to stay in your own tidy little bed, home with Daddy and the nice big television and fridge full of food and little sister in the next room and even a fucking dog? You’ve got it made, kid. Jesus, sometimes I could fucking knock your teeth out.”

Then Bobby was crying. Tears drifted slow and thick down his cheeks.

“Cut that out,” said Albert. Astonished and horrified at what he was feeling, Albert wanted to reach out and wipe away those tears. He wanted to put his arms around the kid, hold him to his chest. It made him clench his fists, made him strain against the two tethers of rage and . . . what? He refused to name it. “I’m warning you,” he said. If Bobby didn’t stop crying, he wouldn’t be held responsible. “Stop it! You are not coming up to the mountain, is that clear?”

“Okay, Albert. It’s clear.”

“Fine. So what are you snivelling about?”

He wiped his eyes. “I don’t belong anywhere. Nobody wants me.”

If he had said it with self-pity, if he had said it with even the slightest hint of a whine in his voice, Albert might have blacked his eye, might have picked up a rock and concussed him with it. However, there was no self-pity, nothing maudlin in his voice—only a flat, accepting resignation. He was stating a simple truth, an immutable fact.

“Sorry,” Bobby said. “Sorry.”

Albert saw the younger boy as if from a long way off. As though Bobby was as alone as Albert felt: an isolated, skinny, sad boy, sitting on a rock in the middle of a swirling river. It was as though he was a younger version of Albert himself, and Albert realized perhaps this was what he had seen in Bobby all along. Not really himself, maybe, but a variant. Not as tough, sure, and not as smart, but a boy at a turning point, little boy lost, and maybe, just maybe, with a slim hope of being found. Albert would always be sitting on the rock in the middle of the river. He knew that, sure as he knew water was wet and rock was hard. Nobody was going to find him. He had no one but himself to depend on. But, fucked up as Bobby’s family was, his father was still there. Bobby didn’t have any idea how good he had it. Maybe the only way to teach him was to show him how bad it could be. His gut tweaked. If he showed Bobby the truth of life on the mountain, he’d probably never see the kid again, and Albert was surprised to find out how much that possibility disturbed him, but maybe it was time for some self-sacrifice here. Some nobility. Yes, that was it.

“All right, you win,” said Albert. “I’ve reconsidered. I’ll take you.”

“Where?” said Bobby, his face still blank.

“Up to the old homestead, young Bobby. I’ll take you up to the fucking mountain.”

“You will? You’re not fooling?”

“I’m not fooling. But you better take me up on it quick before I change my mind.”

“Really?” Bobby said. “Tonight?”

“No, Saturday.” There would be lots of people around on Saturday night, lots of cars coming and going. It would be easier to slip the kid in unnoticed. “All right? All right then.” Albert looked at the flush of pleasure spreading on the boy’s skin, on his cheeks, his chest, mixing with the first tinges of sunburn. He looked away.

“Really? Wow. That’s fucking fantastic, Albert. I really appreciate it, man. I won’t be no trouble at all. And I’ll get a bottle of something from my old man’s cabinet. I’m not coming empty-handed, you know?” He grinned from ear to ear. “That’s really great!” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. He kept nodding his head, saying, “All right, then. All right.”

“Listen, Bobby, what would you tell your old man? You can’t exactly tell him you’re hanging out with me up on the mountain.”

“No problem, I’ve thought all this out, right? I can, like, say you’re a friend not from here but from Pemberton,” he said, naming a nearby town, “somebody from school he doesn’t know, and then you can call and pretend to be the father, right? And say it’s all right and I’ll be fine and all that shit. He won’t give a shit. He’s a fucking zombie these days.”

“I’m not sure. It sounds complicated.”

“No, no it’s not. It’s simple. Isn’t that what you’re always saying? Simple plans are the best, right? No complications. Like the houses—nobody home, no dogs, no alarms, all that, right?”

“It’s rough on the mountain. I live rough, Bobby. It’s not like your comfortable little suburban life.”

“Hey, I don’t mind. What, you think I can’t handle rough? I can. I can handle rough.”

“I’m not talking about no indoor plumbing, although there ain’t no goddamn hot tub. I’m talking about other stuff.” He felt exposed and it made him squirmy.

“Albert? You wouldn’t change your mind now, would you?”

“Look, kid. You just don’t know.” Albert sat up and grabbed his shirt, jerking his arms into the sleeves so violently he tore a seam. “Fuck! There’s a lot of drinking and drugs, all right? Sometimes things get out of hand. It can be dangerous.”

“Like fights?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Fights.”

“You got your own place, though, right? We’d be in there, right?”

“It’s a fucking cabin, Bobby, it ain’t a hotel!”

Bobby considered for a moment and then said, “You don’t have to worry about me, Albert. I can take care of myself.” He cracked his knuckles, popping them one after another. He nodded his head quickly, in little bounces. “And we’ll be together, right? I mean it would be the two of us if anything happens, and, well,” he hesitated, looked at Albert and then looked away again, “I’d have your back, you know, if anything happened.”

Maybe it was the dumb defiance, the pride in the jut of the kid’s chin, maybe it was his unbelievable ignorance, or maybe all three, but part of Albert wanted to laugh out loud. Part of him wanted to slap the kid upside the head for his idiocy; part of him was kind of proud of the sentiment, even if the kid wouldn’t last thirty seconds in a fight with his knife-happy mother, let alone with The Uncles. Then there was that other part of Albert who found the back of his eyelids prickly with something revoltingly like tears. It was laughable, the kid having his back. A joke.

But all right then, let him come, let him come. Let him see what it was like at the bottom of the well. “I’ll call your old man. If it goes without a hitch, all right then. It’s your ass.”