Glass Boys (21 page)

She softened, he could see it in her eyebrows. The slightest lift. He could do that, soften her, especially when he played the Jesus card. And he was careful not to use that trick too often. “I suppose it won't do no harm,” she replied. “Been cluttering up the room long enough.” Cleaning her hands on her apron, she hauled the box out from its corner, blew dust and flour off the top, found the scissors in a drawer, severed the ribbon.

“What is it?” he breathed as she carefully removed the paper.

“Pfft.” She frowned. “A camera. Packets of film. Bloody waste-of-a-dollar gadget, if you asks me.” She shoved it back into the box, coiled the ribbon, the folded wrap, and poked that in too. “Like I needs a camera. All kinds of family snapshots to be taking. Wants a hole in my head more than I wants that.” “Maybe she was trying to be friends.”

“I allows. Slapping me in the face is more like it. That's just her way, it is. Giving herself something to say. ‘Oh, I sent my sister a camera for Christmas. Lovely little contraption. And do you know what she sent me? Not even a card. Poor thing. Hard times.'” Mocking tone. “Well, 'tis always hard times, Garrett. Always. Day in and day out. Some people won't never have it easy no matter what they does.”

“Are you going to heave it out?”

“Just as well.”

Garrett chewed his bottom lip. “That's waste, Mom.”

“Waste, you says? Waste was sending it to me in the first place.” But she clipped in her slippers out into the hallway, creaked open the closet door, tossed it up into a dark mass of forgotten junk. “Rot up there, for all I cares,” she said to the box. Turning back to Garrett, “And that's the final word on that.”

Garrett went to his bedroom and closed the door. The air inside the tiny space was frosty, and he crouched near the single narrow window, picked away the ice that grew up over the glass. He had to have that camera. It was his birthday soon, and he had not pissed in his bed in four months. Did he not deserve some sort of present?

He crept to the top of the stairs, spied on his mother through the painted spindles. She gathered the dough in a tight ball, plopped it into a bowl. Slapped it hard, then drew her hand back, and slapped it again. Every time he saw her make bread, she did the same thing, and he wondered if there was some purpose to it. A sound like skin striking skin, and if the dough had been living, it surely would sting. She bundled the bowl in a towel, then a blanket, and she balanced the works on the edge of his stepfather's chair near the stove. Then she left the kitchen, down the hallway, past that closet, into another room, and quietly closed the door.

Garrett did not breathe as he descended the stairs, placing his feet on boards that did not creak. Into the kitchen now, he drew a deep lungful of the yeasty air, and then lifted a chair over the wooden floor, tiptoed out into the hallway. Inch by inch he edged the closet door open, and then slid the chair in amongst the worn shoes. Standing on the chair, he reached, stretched, leaned forward, until he could just touch the box. Scratched at it with his nails. It shifted, and he managed to grip it with the fleshy pads on his fingertips, haul it down from its intended grave.

Door quietly closed, chair returned, and he slunk up to his bedroom, placed the gray shoe-box-sized package on his floor. White writing inside an orange rectangle. Polaroid Land Camera. With a flash. “Sixty seconds from snap to print,” he whispered. Lifted the lid on the box, removed the body, black and silver, weighty. Studied the pamphlet, finger with a ragged nail moving underneath every single word. His first photo was an attempt at a self portrait, and he laid the black square of film on the floor, turned around, peeked, turned around, peeked. Nothing but a black hole, spray of light. Second attempt. Something emerging. Nostrils, oversized teeth, smear of hair the color of yolk. Next effort, a picture. Clear and recognizable. He plucked it up off his floor, ran his fingers over his own image, then placed his fingers on his chest, felt the vibration of his pumping heart.

He would only waste one packet of film on himself, he decided. Photographed his hand, his foot, the side of his knee with his leg bent. When he squinted at that last one, it very much resembled a flattened corduroy backside, and before he could contain it, an unholy idea spewed out of a dark corner, flooded his mind. Jack-in-the-box. He tried to shake the thought away, but it would not be contained no matter how hard he stuffed it down, the clasp on this mental lid was broken. He pressed his ear against his door, held his breath, and listened. No sound, only the barely audible clink of hard snow tapping his window.
What would his stepfather say? He'll never find
out. But what if he do? He won't never know. Promise me that.
I promise, me, now stop bugging, and just do it.
He unbuttoned his trousers, let them fall to the floor. Placed the camera on the family Bible, stepped as far away as possible. Reached, one snap of the back. Waited until the film slid out. Zzzz. Turning. One snap of the front. Quickly dressed, and there they were. Blurry, but he knew what was captured. Those parts of himself that were meant to be covered, only to be handled with a washcloth coated in lye soap. Touching led to blindness and betraying hair sprouting from obvious places. Worse than that, the whole works was apt to fall off in his hand.

Garrett moved closer to the window, to study his handiwork in the natural light, and noticed a flash of deep red moving across the snow. Swiping vapor from the glass, he could see his stepfather with an armload of wood, edging ever closer to the house. Even though he was still a good distance away, panic squeezed Garrett's airways, and he hauled on his trousers, tore all the photos to tiny shreds, poked the evidence down into the cracks between his floorboards. Willed the mice to make off with them. Camera stuffed into the box, torn packaging, remaining film, slid to the farthest corner underneath his bed. Hurried down to the front door, hauled on coat, woolen hat and mitts, ran to meet his stepfather before the old man came to meet him.

FOR WHAT SEEMED like eons, he managed to ignore the temptation that slept in a shoebox underneath his bed. But when he awoke to the sound of dripping, snow rotting and trickling away, and he saw a bird clinging to a still-dormant twig, he knew spring had come. He also knew spring sometimes carried fever as warm fought with cold, and he could already identify the flush rising up in certain parts of his body. Fever worked its way into his muscles, and he did not choose to remove the camera from its hiding spot. He was simply unable to resist as his knees bent, his arms reached, and his fingers clasped. After tucking the camera inside a cloth satchel, he stuffed his coat pocket with stolen pieces of molasses taffy, all wrapped in waxy paper. On his walk, he organized the words of an enticing invitation, left the phrase waiting patiently inside his voice box. Up on the old road, the new sun shone down upon him, and he turned towards the wooded area where youngsters played on Saturdays. Hoping to find the one.

Within a short time, Garrett met an eight-year-old named Cecil Taylor. He was a pudgy and placid boy, whose mouth always hung open just a crack. And even though the days were getting warmer, he still wore a steel gray coat with a ring of matted fur around the hood. Cecil had no mother or father, and would soon be moving to the city, to a home for unwanted boys. A place where someone would love him properly, they said, help him grow into a man. But Cecil didn't care about love, he told Garrett. Love didn't fill a youngster up. Food was what he was after, and plenty of it.

The boys met on Saturday afternoons in an abandoned ice-fishing hut that someone had hauled up onto the side of Stark Pond. Garrett brought whatever he could find, leftover heels of bread, slices of cold pork, a half-eaten cherry square. Sometimes he'd even manage a thermos of hot tea. One day, Garrett told Cecil his secret. That he liked taking pictures, and he opened his satchel, showed off the stolen camera. Let Cecil touch it. Click the red button several times. “Whoa, whoa. Careful, buddy.” In hushed tones, Garrett confided to Cecil that he was working on a project. Something significant. “Huh?” Something momentous. “Huh?” Some big thing. “Oh.” A map of the entire body. “Oh, yeah. Maps is good.”

School finished, and Cecil was leaving Knife's Point the next morning. When they met in the fishing shack, Garrett asked, “You got any money?”

“Nope.”

“Young man can't be going on a trip without a few cents in his pocket.”

“What?”

“Should always have a dollar in your wallet.”

Cecil shook his head as plowed through a two-inch slab of still-warm oatmeal bread. “I don got no wallet.”

“You can earn a bit. I got ninety-five cents, and you can have that.”

“For free?”

“No.”

“For what?”

“Helping me with my project. With the mapping.” Garrett did his best to sound mature, use the three-year age gap to his advantage.

“Huh?”

Garrett gave Cecil a handful of sweaty coins, and even though he was near the point of fainting with curiosity, he kept his voice calm when he asked the boy to undress. Cecil was hesitant, and Garrett said sternly, “This is science. This is art. And you already got paid for almost nothing. That's like giving your word. And if you don't do it,” growling, now, “I can tell those men who's taking you tomorrow that you lied. Ripped me off. That you belongs in jail, and not some cushy house for stupid boys.” “Uh. Oh.” Cecil unzipped his grimy coat with the matted fur hood, and let it fall to the floor.

“I didn't mean that,” Garrett whispered. “I didn't. I just wants help with my job. And we're pals, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You likes me, right?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You wants me to make a map?”

Cecil nodded. “You won't show no one?”

Fingers ticking his chest, Garrett said firmly. “Cross my heart. I swears to God on my very own life. Sure, you can't swear on nothing bigger, right?”

At first he was shy, but Garrett coaxed him. “How else do you think research is done, Cec?” “Huh?” “This is serious business.” “Yeah.” And soon Cecil relaxed, at some points even laughed hysterically as though Garrett was tickling him. Moving his limbs this way and that, taking flash photo after flash photo of all of his parts. “Show me, show me,” Cecil cried, nearly choked on the molasses candies filling his cheeks. “Hey, take one now,” Cecil hollered, as he bent his knees slightly, gripped himself, pissed into the dark hole where trout once emerged. Garrett hunched down, camera pressed to his face, and took the photo.

Garrett carefully documented the curve of the boy's knee, the place where chin became neck, the ear lobe, open mouth, the dip of the last rib above a goose-pimpled stomach. Two bare feet and ten, no, eleven toes standing on the weathered wood. White lower back, dimples above a clenched but chubby backside, turning, bending, lifting. Garrett captured everything. Every single fold of flesh and ripple of blubber. Every inch of skin that covered Cecil Taylor's body. Piece after piece, a human puzzle. Many photos were blurry, of course, but Garrett knew what they were. Besides, the most important ones were crystal. Crystal clear.

“You're beautiful,” Garrett whispered when he ran out of supplies.

“Huh?” said Cecil.

“Nothing,” Garrett replied. “Nothing.”

HE FOUND an old pickle jar in the barn filled with nails. He tossed the nails near the foundation of the barn, covered them with rocks. In the kitchen, he rinsed the jar with sudsy water, and when it was clean, he carried it to the stream. After he dried the inside of the jar with his T-shirt, he gently placed his photos inside. He put a weighty rock in with the photos to keep the jar from floating away, sealed the lid, and then lowered it into the water, among a tangle of roots and pale mud. Presence disguised by a healthy current, gurgling unwittingly over shimmering blue stones.

Garrett went to the creek every day, extracted the jar, wiped it with a scrap of towel before opening it. For as long as he could spare, he stayed there, handling those images of purity and love with the utmost of care. He would never see Cecil Taylor again, he knew that, but he had him here. Every single piece of him.

THE CROSSBAR OF the swing set groaned, and Garrett opened his eyes. He sighed, looked down at gangly legs, his dirty feet, and the tufts of hair growing just behind his thickened toenails. Even now, sometimes the sight of his adult body surprised him. And disappointed him. When he was a child, his skin was so much cleaner, neater.

Though years had passed since his collection had been destroyed, Garrett still missed it. He was certain those images would soothe him. Satisfy him. If he still possessed his human map, he wouldn't need anything else. But he had made a mistake. He was just a boy, after all. A whiff of laziness. A few lost hours. Everything was gone.

Garrett left the swing, walked across the grass, then along the gravel driveway, ignoring the pricks of sharp stones on his soles. Reaching the end of the drive, he looked up and down at the ditches and the potholes and the emptiness. He raised his arms, twisted and stretched until the bones between his shoulder blades cracked. But none of the tension receded.

21

EARLY IN THE day, a sharp wind awoke Toby from his slumber. Melvin stood near the end of the bed, a fistful of sheets in one hand, pair of black binoculars in the other. Wet wide smirk on his mouth.

“C'mon,” Toby whined, reaching for the covers. He had been swimming inside his head, without need of oxygen, and he was about to glide around a bend of coral, swaying plants, sensed he might find something female. “You trying to torture me on my birthday?”

“Shut up, Toad.” Melvin balled the sheet, tossed it in the corner. “Wake father and it'll be done.”

“What
it?
” Sticking his head back into his pillow, guinea pig hair, his words were muffled. “I don't want to watch no birds.”