He didn’t quite mask the reaction, a closing in of his face as if he’d swallowed something strange and unpleasant. His cheeks flushed as he let out a short, gasping breath.
“It’s still pretty warm but it…” He coughed once. “It hits the spot. Now you.”
He passed the can to Fox. With a shrug, Fox took the can, mirrored Gage’s move. Everyone knew if there was anything close to a dare, Fox would jump at it. “Ugh. It tastes like piss.”
“You been drinking piss lately?”
Fox snorted at Gage’s question and passed the can to Cal. “Your turn.”
Cal studied the can. It wasn’t like a sip of beer would kill him or anything. So he sucked in a breath and swallowed some down.
It made his stomach curl and his eyes water. He shoved the can back at Gage. “It does taste like piss.”
“I guess people don’t drink it for how it tastes. It’s how it makes you feel.” Gage took another sip, because he wanted to know how it made him feel.
They sat cross-legged in the circular clearing, knees bumping, passing the can from hand to hand.
Cal ’s stomach pitched, but it didn’t feel sick, not exactly. His head pitched, too, but it felt sort of goofy and fun. And the beer made his bladder full. When he stood, the whole world pitched and made him laugh helplessly as he staggered toward a tree.
He unzipped, aimed toward the tree but the tree kept moving.
Fox was struggling to light one of the cigarettes when Cal stumbled back. They passed that around the circle as well until Cal ’s almost ten-year-old stomach revolted. He crawled off to sick it all up, crawled back, and just lay flat, closing his eyes and willing the world to go still again.
He felt as if he were once again swimming in the pond, and being slowly pulled under.
When he surfaced again it was nearly dusk.
He eased up, hoping he wouldn’t be sick again. He felt a little hollow inside-belly and head-but not like he was going to puke. He saw Fox curled against the stone, sleeping. He crawled over on all fours for the thermos and as he washed the sick and beer out of his throat, he was never so grateful for his mother and her lemonade.
Steadier, he rubbed his fingers on his eyes under his glasses, then spotted Gage sitting, staring at the tented wood of the campfire they’d yet to light.
“’Morning, Sally.”
With a wan smile, Cal scooted over.
“I don’t know how to light this thing. I figured it was about time to, but I needed a Boy Scout.”
Cal took the book of matches Gage handed him, and set fire to several spots on the pile of dried leaves he’d arranged under the wood. “That should do it. Wind’s pretty still, and there’s nothing to catch in the clearing. We can keep feeding it when we need to, and just make sure we bury it before we go tomorrow.”
“Smokey the Bear. You all right?”
“Yeah. I guess I threw most everything up.”
“I shouldn’t have brought the beer.”
Cal lifted a shoulder, glanced toward Fox. “We’re okay, and now we won’t have to wonder what it tastes like. We know it tastes like piss.”
Gage laughed a little. “It didn’t make me feel mean.” He picked up a stick, poked at the little flames. “I wanted to know if it would, and I figured I could try it with you and Fox. You’re my best friends, so I could try it with you and see if it made me feel mean.”
“How did it make you feel?”
“It made my head hurt. It still does a little. I didn’t get sick like you, but I sorta wanted to. I went and got one of the Cokes and drank that. It felt better then. Why does he drink so goddamn much if it makes him feel like that?”
“I don’t know.”
Gage dropped his head on his knees. “He was crying when he went after me last night. Blubbering and crying the whole time he used the belt on me. Why would anybody want to feel like that?”
Careful to avoid the welts on Gage’s back, Cal draped an arm over his shoulders. He wished he knew what to say.
“Soon as I’m old enough I’m getting out. Join the army maybe, or get a job on a freighter, maybe an oil rig.”
Gage’s eyes gleamed when he lifted his head, and Cal looked away because he knew the shine was tears. “You can come stay with us when you need to.”
“It’d just be worse when I went back. But I’m going to be ten in a few hours. And in a few years I’ll be as big as he is. Bigger maybe. I won’t let him come after me then. I won’t let him hit me. Screw it.” Gage rubbed his face. “Let’s wake Fox up. Nobody sleeps tonight.”
Fox moaned and grumbled, and he got himself up to pee and fetch a cool Coke from the stream. They shared it with another round of Little Debbies. And, at last, the copy of Penthouse.
Cal had seen naked breasts before. You could see them in the National Geographic in the library, if you knew where to look.
But these were different.
“Hey guys, did you ever think about doing it?” Cal asked.
“Who doesn’t?” they both replied.
“Whoever does it first has to tell the other two everything. All about how it feels,” Cal continued. “And how you did it, and what she does. Everything. I call for an oath.”
A call for an oath was sacred. Gage spat on the back of his hand, held it out. Fox slapped his palm on, spat on the back of his hand, and Cal completed the contact.
“And so we swear,” they said together.
They sat around the fire as the stars came out, and deep in the woods an owl hooted its night call.
The long, sweaty hike, ghostly apparitions, and beer puke were forgotten.
“We should do this every year on our birthday,” Cal decided. “Even when we’re old. Like thirty or something. The three of us should come here.”
“Drink beer and look at pictures of naked girls,” Fox added. “I call for-”
“Don’t.” Gage spoke sharply. “I can’t swear. I don’t know where I’m going to go, but it’ll be somewhere else. I don’t know if I’ll ever come back.”
“Then we’ll go where you are, when we can. We’re always going to be best friends.” Nothing would change that, Cal thought, and took his own, personal oath on it. Nothing ever could. He looked at his watch. “It’s going to be midnight soon. I have an idea.”
He took out his Boy Scout knife and, opening the blade, held it in the fire.
“What’s up?” Fox demanded.
“I’m sterilizing it. Like, ah, purifying it.” It got so hot he had to pull back, blow on his fingers. “It’s like Gage said about ritual and stuff. Ten years is a decade. We’ve known each other almost the whole time. We were born on the same day. It makes us…different,” he said, searching for words he wasn’t quite sure of. “Like special, I guess. We’re best friends. We’re like brothers.”
Gage looked at the knife, then into Cal ’s face. “Blood brothers.”
“Yeah.”
“Cool.” Already committed, Fox held out his hand.
“At midnight,” Cal said. “We should do it at midnight, and we should have some words to say.”
“We’ll swear an oath,” Gage said. “That we mix our blood, um, three into one? Something like that. In loyalty.”
“That’s good. Write it down, Cal.”
Cal dug pencil and paper out of his pack. “We’ll write words down, and say them together. Then we’ll do the cut and put our wrists together. I’ve got Band-Aids for after if we need them.”
Cal wrote the words with his Number Two pencil on the blue lined paper, crossing out when they changed their minds.
Fox added more wood to the fire so that the flames crackled as they stood by the Pagan Stone.
At moments to midnight, they stood, three young boys with faces lit by fire and starlight. At Gage’s nod, they spoke together in voices solemn and achingly young.
“We were born ten years ago, on the same night, at the same time, in the same year. We are brothers. At the Pagan Stone we swear an oath of loyalty and truth and brotherhood. We mix our blood.”
Cal sucked in a breath and geared up the courage to run the knife across his wrist first. “Ouch.”