Like A Charm [anthology]

I turned around. 'Hey, Lamar.' It was a Sunday morning, I remember, and I was surprised to see him because Lamar's family was usually in church on Sunday mornings.

He came up beside me and sniffed. 'My father said you shouldn't play with dead animals, that you can get diphtheria.'

I pushed the stick under the rat and flicked it towards him. 'He's right.' It grazed his bare leg.

'Stop it.' He rubbed his hands over the piece of skin the dead rat had touched. Then he said, 'You want to play something?'

'Like what?'

'I don't know. Make-believe?'

Make-believe was a game I was trying to leave behind. I had just turned thirteen. 'You mean like Star Trek?' I said. 'Or war?'

'That would be cool.' Lamar nodded. 'Or what about religion?'

'What do you mean, religion?'

'We could have our own religion,' he said, 'and we could be gods.' He jumped up on a rock and pointed down at me. 'We could pretend this rock is a mountain, and that there's an entire civilization down there in the trash. You know, countries and cities. And sometimes we can be nice gods and give them good weather, and other times, for no reason whatsoever, we can smash everything in sight.' Lamar was smiling his maniac smile.

'And they have to worship us?' I said. 'They have to get down on their knees and pray to us, like, three times a day?' I climbed up on the rock next to him. 'Because if they don't-'

'Yeah,' Lamar said, 'if every single person doesn't worship the heck out of us three times a day' – he jumped down from the rock and started smashing imaginary cities – 'we'll kill everyone.' I was feeling like a regular Mahatma Gandhi for not punching Lamar, and was also a little surprised by the vividness of his imagination. 'Except for this little family,' he went on. He picked up an empty box of kitchen matches and placed it gently on top of the rock. 'A devout family of four, who always worships us every day. They get to live and to be the founders of a new, futuristic civilization.'

'Nah.' I stepped on the matchbox, grinding it beneath the ball of my foot. 'Fuck them.'

I looked at Lamar's face. He was biting his lip and for once his smile had disappeared.

Over the course of my childhood Benjamin and I had broken, mangled or destroyed pretty much every toy this kid ever had. We took away his baseballs, snapped the arms off his GI Joes, slipped his Tonka Toys into our pockets and told him we didn't know where they went. I had never felt bad about it. Not once. But now, for some reason, after stepping on an empty matchbox… 'I'm sorry about that, Lamar.' I reached down and reconstructed it.

Lamar released his lower lip and smiled. 'So this family that worships us can be the beginning of an entirely new civilization.' He placed the now-smashed-but-pathetically-reconstructed matchbox on a flat part of the rock, then went to the trash glacier to find other items. 'The first thing they build,' he said, 'is a temple in our honour.' He found an empty orange juice carton and placed it next to the matchbox.

'Oh, man,' I said, suddenly excited. 'Check out this temple.' I selected an empty bottle of Sprite and placed it on the rock.

'OK,' Lamar said, smiling full out, 'OK. So maybe that temple can be in your honour, and this one' – he grabbed another soda bottle, placing it at the end of our imaginary civilization – 'can be for me.'

'And they become rivals,' I said, 'and one part of the world starts to worship me and the other half starts to worship you, and they start to have wars and crap.'

'An excellent idea, Mr Watson.'

We played silently for a while, going back and forth from the trash glacier to the large flat rock and placing imaginary houses, schools and temples in a grid pattern. The cities grew, side by side, and I couldn't help but notice that Lamar's civilization was somehow more clever than mine, that the way he placed his bits and pieces of trash actually resembled a metropolis as though seen from an aeroplane. We completely covered the rock, and then I felt it was time. I flicked a white plastic bottle cap towards Lamar's city. It struck and toppled a milk carton.

'What are you doing?'

'My people have been secretly amassing weapons,' I said, 'and now they're ready for battle.'

'All right.' I saw Lamar's smile, wide and white. He grabbed an old pen and flung it towards my biggest temple. I laughed and picked up a flattened Coke can, skimming it off Lamar's city. We went back and forth a few times this way until Lamar said, 'And now the gods themselves are called upon to fight.' We started walking over our cities, smashing everything with our feet, kicking down the schools and auditoriums, the city halls and restaurants. We shattered and scattered all our work until the entire civilization was reduced to rubble. 'And now,' he said, fully absorbed in the game, 'it is time for me to send my only son to live among the people.' Lamar knelt down on the rock and placed a red twisty-tie that he had fashioned into the shape of a cross in the middle of all the rubble.

For some reason I felt my face turn hot. I said, 'That is ridiculous bullcrap.'

'What do you mean?'

'You're just repeating some crap they told you in church.' I was repeating my father, actually, who hated everything about religion and went into a tirade whenever it came up.

'OK,' he said, 'forget it.'

'I've already forgotten,' I informed Lamar, walking away.

'We could play Star Trek.' Lamar got up and came after me. 'Or war. You could be Spock.'

I turned round. 'I don't feel like playing Star Trek.'

'Do you want to watch TV?' he said. 'You could come to my house.'

I punched him. He rubbed the patch of skin I had punched and kept walking beside me. 'We could build up the civilization and smash it down again.'

'I don't think so.'

'We could-'

'You never know when to shut up, Lamar,' I said, 'do you?'

We walked back across the pedestrian overpass, crossed the turnpike, me angry for no real reason and Lamar with his head down, and continued that way until we came to our houses.

Then, right before I walked into my yard, I punched him in the arm so hard he fell on the ground.

I was in the driveway, listening to music on an old transistor radio I had found in my dad's closet, when two police cars drove up next door, one black and white, the other a plain sedan. The policemen got out, went to Lamar's house, and knocked. Lamar's mom answered. She wore a beige pant suit. I turned the radio off and went to stand by the fence to hear what was happening. I remember her saying, 'What?' I remember Lamar's sister, Estelle, coming to the door. She'd had her hair done. I turned round from the fence and saw my mother standing at the door of our house. She had a package of Kraft macaroni and cheese in her hands. I heard one of the policemen ask for Lamar. Then the two policemen in suits went inside and the other two waited for a while on the front lawn.

One of them turned his face towards the sun.

A couple of minutes later I saw Lamar come out. His mother was right behind him. They went to the police car and one of the officers opened the door to the back seat. They got in, and the plainclothes policemen got in the front. They started the car up again and drove away, leaving me standing in the yard holding the transistor radio, Estelle in the door of Lamar's house, and my mother behind me. When I turned to look at my mother's face I saw something in it, some delicate movement along the jaw.

'I want you to tell me what happened.' She sat me down at the kitchen table.

'What happened to what?'

'What did Lamar do?'

'Lamar didn't do anything.'

'Why did the police come for him?'

I remember this: I was crying. I didn't know why. I felt like an idiot. Thirteen years old, and I was crying.