Kent was old enough, fourteen years and a few months, to have lost the prominent tummy of childhood. You could see now that he might make a good linebacker, as far as width and bulkiness of shoulders went. The boys followed him for the simple reason that he was the biggest and strongest and harbored every expectation that he should be followed. It wasn’t that he had the best ideas—those were often traceable to Newt. It wasn’t that he was particularly charismatic, like Ephraim. It was that the boys were at an age where physical strength was the surest marker of leadership.
Kent had learned what little he knew of leadership from his father, who’d counseled: It’s all how you present yourself, son. Draw yourself up to your full height. Stick your chest out. If you look like you’ve got all the answers, people will naturally assume that you do.
Kent’s dad, “Big” Jeff Jenks, often bundled his son into the police cruiser and drove a circuit of town—a ride-along, he called it. Kent loved these: his father sitting erect and flinty-eyed in the driver’s seat, sunlight flashing off his badge, the dashboard computer chittering with information of a highly sensitive nature—which his father was all too willing to share. Got a call for officer assistance there a few weeks back, he’d say, pointing to a well-tended Cape Cod belonging to Kent’s math teacher, Mr. Conkwright. Domestic disturbance. Trouble in paradise. The missus was stepping out—you know what I mean by that? When Kent shook his head, his father said: Breaking her marital vows. Enjoying the warm embrace of another fellow, uh? You get me? And that other fellow happened to be George Turley, your gym teacher.
Kent pictured it: Gloria Conkwright, an enormously plump woman with bottled-platinum hair and heaving, pendulous breasts that stirred confused longing in Kent’s chest, squashing her body on top of Mr. Turley, who always wore shiny short-shorts two sizes too small—nut-huggers, as his father called them—his oily chest hair tufting in the V of his shirt collars; he pictured Mr. Turley blowing on the pea whistle that was constantly strung round his neck, the air forced out in gleeful whoofs as Gloria’s body smacked down onto his.
There’s no fate worse than being a cuckold, his father said. You can’t let some woman go stomping on your balls—you just may acquire a taste for it.
Those ride-alongs, his father enumerating the secrets and shames of their town, made Kent realize something: adults were fucked. Totally, utterly fucked. They did all the things they told kids not to do: cheated and stole and lied, nursed grudges and failed to turn the other cheek, fought like weasels, and worst of all they tried to worm out of their sins—they passed the buck, refused to take responsibility. It was always someone else’s fault. Blame the man on the grassy knoll, as his dad said, although Kent didn’t really know what that meant. Kent’s respect had trickled away by degrees. Why should he respect adults—because they were older? Why, if that age hadn’t come with wisdom?
Kent came to see that adults required the same stern hand that his peers did. He was their equal—their better, in many ways. Physically this was already so: he was a full head taller than many of his teachers, and though he’d never tested this theory, he believed himself to be stronger, too. Morally it was certainly so. Like his father said: Son, we are the sheepdogs. Our job is to circle the flock, nipping at their heels and keeping them in line. Nip at their heels until they’re bloody, if needed, or even tear their hamstrings if they won’t obey. At first the sheep will hate us—after all, we hem them in, stop them from pursuing their basest nature—but in time they’ll come to respect us and soon enough they won’t be able to imagine their lives without us.
Suffused with this sense of righteousness his father had instilled, Kent held his hand out to Max. “Give me the walkie-talkie, man. You know that’s the way it should be.”
When Max handed it over, Kent clapped him on the back.
“Attaboy, Max.” He swept his arm forward. “Tallyho!”
STUNG, MAX loafed back to his customary position. Newton tugged on his sleeve.
“You didn’t have to give it to him, you know.”
“I don’t care. I don’t need it.”
“Yeah, but Scoutmaster Tim gave it to you.”
“Oh, shut up, Newt.”
Max regretted speaking so harshly, but there was something so… exasperating about Newt. His hidebound determination to stick to “The Rules.” Like this thing with the walkie-talkie. Who gave a shit? It didn’t matter if Scoutmaster Tim had given it to Max—they were away from the adults now. Different rules applied. Boys’ rules, which clearly stated: the big and strong take from the small and weak, period.
There was just something about Newt that made Max want to snap at him. A soft, obliging quality. A whiff of piteousness wafted right out of Newt’s pores. It was like catnip to the average boy.
Max felt a deeper, more inherent need to treat Newt shabbily this morning. It had something to do with the strange man on the chesterfield and the tight unease that had collected in Max’s chest when he’d gazed at him. Something about the unnatural angularity of his face, as if his features had been etched with cruel mathematical precision using a ruler and compass.
Max’s mind inflated the details, nursing the image into a freakish horror show: now the man’s face was actually melting, skin running like warm wax down a candle’s stem to soak into the chesterfield, disclosing the bleached bone of his skull. Max’s brain probed the tiny details, fussing with them the same way his tongue might flick at a canker sore: the smashed radio (why had the man wrecked it?), the crumpled box of soda crackers in the trash (had the Scoutmaster eaten them?), and the itchy smile plastered to the Scoutmaster’s face, as if fishhooks were teasing his mouth into a grin.
Max pushed these thoughts away. Scoutmaster Tim had made the right call by sending them off. It was easier out here: the dry rustle of leaves tenaciously clinging to the trees, the slap of waves on the rock face. He glanced at Newt—his wide ass hogging the trail, each cheek flexing inside tight dungarees. He reminded Max of a Weeble, those old kiddie toys.
Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down…
Newt never did fall down. He withstood the boy’s torments with stoic determination, which made it easier—Newt could take it, right? Picking on Newt uncoiled the tension in Max’s chest. It was awfully selfish, yet awfully true.
9
“WHAT WOULD you rather,” Ephraim said, “eat a steaming cowflop or let a hobo fart in your face?”
It was one of their favorite games, a great way to pass the time on long hikes. Had Scoutmaster Tim been leading, the game would’ve been far more vanilla—What would you rather: get bit by a rabid dog or swallow a wasp in your Coke can?—but now, no adults around, it took on a saltier tone.
“What kind of hobo?” Max asked. It was common to mull these choices from several angles in order to make an informed selection.