Not much school for Enzo after that run-in: not many calls of freak either. No calls at all. Enzo spent a lot of time alone. He spent most of it in the park, because it was better than being at home. Back there, Ma stayed in the kitchen, Dad on the living room sofa, the Virgin beaming down at everyone from the picture above the TV, Jesus wherever you wanted to go looking for him. That was life back in the flat. But sometimes Ma and Dad didn’t stay in separate rooms, and for whatever reason, it was a bit more violent. That was home.
The park was a mess this afternoon. During the week, London had suffered under record storms, blowing the TV aerials and skylight covers from the roof of Enzo’s estate, and shredding the heads of the trees. The grass all around was covered with small branches and twigs, as well as rubbish from the bins. Those storms had made Enzo feel crazy; he’d been able to feel them in his prick, like a pulse. He’d come three times that night the winds had shrieked at his window, telling himself no, no, no, have to save it for the park, have to look out for the lady jogger with the black hair. He’d been unable to hold himself back. And all he saw when he was touching himself were the fangs of a wolf piercing raw red meat, blood on white fur, on teeth.
It didn’t take him long to walk around to the deer enclosure, but when he reached it, he found a father and son standing by the rails. A deer stood close by on the other side. The little boy was offering the deer a handful of grass, the father bent low over him, the shape of him spooned around the little boy. Enzo gave the father a look that said, Yeah, and don’t think I don’t know what you’ll be doing when you get the chance. The man must have seen the way Enzo was staring, and he must have known that Enzo knew, because, you know, Enzo had that power too, he had all kinds of power. Eventually, the man got the message and gathered the little boy up in his arms. “Come on, let’s go,” he said. “Let’s go and find Mum.”
When he heard there were animals in the park, Enzo had been disappointed to find only deer and goats. He wanted wolves. When he was a kid, Ma and Dad had taken him to the zoo. This was not long — a few months — after that day. Enzo had seen the wolves at feeding time. He’d watched as they gnawed on raw meat, the blood flicking over the white fur and teeth, and suddenly it all made sense to him. Enzo understood. That night, Enzo pulled himself raw thinking about the wolves. He pulled himself raw, even before anything could happen, thinking of white teeth plunged into red flesh, blood splashed on fur. He pulled himself raw until one night the sperm came, and then he knew he was ready. He rubbed it over his fingers, gummy and warm. Finally he was close. He’d been waiting for years.
Now Enzo was finally alone. He squeezed himself a couple of times before he pulled his left hand away, and again he pushed his right hand into the pocket of his hooded top. He moved close to the fence. The deer raised its head for a moment, surveying him with a large, bland steady eye, a black ball. If the light changes, Enzo said to himself, I will be in that eye. It will shine and I will be inside the deer. He breathed deeply, quivering as he exhaled. The deer bent its head and nibbled at a patch of grass by the fence. Enzo pulled his right hand from his pocket and flashed it into the flank of the deer, two, three, four times, the knife sliding in like a dream, the metal not catching the light at all. The blood burst from the fur, over the blade, and it was all Enzo could do to hold himself back and not finish right there. The deer brayed and kicked up its back legs, bucked away from the fence, and ran over to the rest of the herd, the wound leaking into the gray fur on its side. If I could just go there, Enzo thought, if I could just finish in there it would end everything, I know it. He stayed, despite himself, despite everything he had to get busy with, he stayed staring at that hole in the flank of the deer until it trotted behind a fallen log and disappeared from his sight.
Enzo started walking away from the enclosure quickly, and once he was far enough away, he broke into a run. He headed across the concrete in front of the bandstand, skater punks practicing moves, kids spinning around on bikes. He ran down beyond the pond, to the hedges that lined the northern edge of the park, bordering on a stretch of white houses. Every step that Enzo took made his prick bounce against his tracksuit bottoms, bounce dangerously. The bloody knife was hot in his hand. Enzo dashed around a wooden bench facing the duck pond and pushed himself between a green-barked ash tree and the hedge. He was careful, even though it was the last thing he felt like being. He checked the road behind the hedge first, and the path leading down by the pond. No one was approaching.
He fell down on his knees and rested his head against the bark of the tree, his cheek bitten by the weight of his body. The wood smelled green and bitter. (That day, a man wearing a hooded parka dragged him into a small copse, pushed him up against a tree.) Enzo touched the bark with his tongue, the way he had the first time, tasted the bitter green against his lips, flakes of it dirty on his teeth. (“You keep it quiet now, you keep your mouth tight and shut or I’ll open your throat.”) Enzo screwed up his eyes tight and closed his lips, his left hand moving to his pocket. (And the fur on the man’s hood brushing against the back of his neck as he pushed into him.) His eyes were screwed tight his mouth closed, the way he’d been told to keep it, his breath whistling down his nostrils. (And the feel of the man inside him, pushing against his insides, stretching and pushing, an ache that seemed to rise up through his guts, out of his mouth.) Enzo hardly had to touch his prick to come, it lashed out into his palms, a hot slap that seemed to explode from behind his eyes. (“You turn round, I’m gonna come and get you, cut your throat. Do you understand?”) He stayed for a moment, breathing through his nose, his cheek bitten by the green wood. He opened his eyes. That first time, he’d seen a couple of birds beating steadily in the sky. This time, there was nothing but a cloud.
He sat back on his heels and gently, carefully, pulled his left hand from his pocket and his right from his hooded top. Both palms were wet: the left with the white of his sperm, the right with the red of congealing blood. He looked down at them for a moment, feeling the power of what lay in his hands, all of birth and life right there for him to hold. He saw the red and white of the boys at Mass and the football strip of the boys in the park. He saw the white of the wolf’s teeth in the flesh. He weighed them in his hands and then slowly squeezed them together. He looked once more at his palms, and the white lay on the red like a blister, a pinkish tinge in the place where they had mixed. Life was this color. It caused things to be born.
That day, when the man had gone, Enzo had reached behind him to touch where he’d been hurt, and his hand had come back covered with the white and the red. He’d wiped his hands in the earth to bury it. Now, he bent down to the ground and wiped his palms over the dirt at the base of the tree. He pushed his hands hard into the mud, his fingers clawed at the earth, coming up black under the nails. He tried to bury it again, but this time he was planting it in the earth of the park, making it grow.
Enzo sat back, breathing heavily. The mud was caked onto his hands. Beyond the pond, the routine of the park was continuing. The boys were still playing football. Dogs chased the cyclists. A kite of red silk throbbed in the sky. Enzo watched it, thinking how good it would have been if he’d been able to open his eyes to this afterwards, how it would have been almost perfect. It had become his place now, this park, he ruled it like a kingdom. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t this park where it had happened, that first time. It didn’t matter that Enzo didn’t really know where he’d been, that it was all in pieces, all sharp and bright in his head, like the upturned broken bottles they cemented into the walls to stop the kids climbing over. It didn’t matter that Enzo didn’t really understand the ritual of it. All he knew was that he had to do this, and keep on doing it, because if he fed the land with the red and the white, then maybe he’d grow stronger and one day he would be the wolf.