Boys of Alabama Read online

  Walmart’s got the best fried chicken in town, Coach assured Max.

  Max lifted a chicken thigh to his mouth. The meat was the sweetest flesh his tongue had ever tasted. He gnawed. He chewed at the bones. He pulled barbecue onto his plate. The sauce stained his chin and got under his nails until he was marked like the rest of them. It felt like he signed his name to something important.

  Max had never been invited to a party before. In Germany, his classmates had found him incredibly strange. His lonesome runs that stretched on for hours, the way he always needed people to repeat themselves, the time it took to form the right word with his mouth. After Nils died, he had sometimes worn a sling around his arm as a reminder not to touch anything dead in front of other people. He’d cinched down his fingers with ace bandages and said he sprained them. Sometimes he inflicted real harm on them. Weird boy with the weird bandages. Runner boy always running away. But in Alabama, no one had a reference for how Max should act or how he should respond. If he stared at someone without talking for whole minutes after they asked him a question, they thought it was an issue with translation. His strangeness was connected to his foreignness. If he didn’t know how to say a thing correctly, it was the language he hadn’t mastered, not living itself that he couldn’t do right. He could learn everything like it was the first time. A second chance.

  The boys streamed music from speakers. They walked through the music in their camouflage pants and hats with cursive A’s and cartoon elephants holding footballs. It was exactly what Max had seen in the movies: a party in the backyard of a suburban house with cars parked in the driveway and gallons of soda poured into plastic cups and paper napkins to use once and throw away. People brought jars of white sauce and slathered the meat in it. He watched a man open a soda can and pour in a pack of sugar. Max couldn’t stop admiring how similar it was to what he expected, even with all the ways it was different. Someone asked him—what you want? Cola? Diet Dew? Grape?

  When Max said nothing, they said, Why you smiling goofy like that? Cat got your tongue?

  Max blinked at them. His face told them he did not understand.

  Aw, he’s just messing with you, said Davis, who dug his hand deep into a cooler full of crushed ice. A Coke appeared in his hand. He held it out to Max.

  Here you go, buddy, Davis said. Loosen the mind. Soften the spirit. You’re wound real tight. I see it in your jaw.

  Just messing with you, Max thought in his head. He popped the top of the Coke. He tried to tell his shoulders: unclench the jaw. Cat got my tongue.

  Thank you, buddy, said Max, trying out the new word.

  The boys and their fathers wore clothes a size too big. They seemed to dress intentionally unstylishly, as if to announce their masculinity, but somehow, maybe without meaning to, they’d invented a new style. The dress code was specific and mandatory. Their feet wore strappy sport sandals or cowboy boots or sockless boat shoes. The shirts that hung from their shoulders were pastel polos or rayon casuals or ragged white tees with Confederate aphorisms. dixie republic. this is our heritage. They clasped delicate gold crosses around their thick necks. The songs they played told of tractor trucks, fishing lines, and girls in short skirts who loved them. They sung these songs loudly. They tossed their arms around one another’s shoulders and swayed. One song was about Alabama itself and how blue the sky was and how sweet it was to be home and how big the wheels were that would take them there.

  Knox’s dad slapped Max on the back, startling him back into his body.

  That’ll put some hair on your chest, son, he said, giving Max’s frame a once-over.

  He pointed at the Coke perspiring in Max’s grip and laughed.

  Scrawny, isn’t you? said Knox’s father.

  It was true Max’s body appeared smaller than the others who loomed above him, bloated and strong. It was true his chest was without hair. Max gripped his can tighter.

  Just don’t drink too many.

  Knox’s father narrowed his red-edged eyes, frowned from behind a slim, drawn face, like he was scolding Max for something he hadn’t done yet.

  Too many will make you fat. You want to be strong. Not fat.

  Okay, said Max. I will not too many.

  Not okay, said Knox’s dad. Yes, sir.

  Apologizing, Max said, Yes, sir.

  Fellas, said Coach, with his booming voice. Fellas, circle up!

  He raised his pitch, so he could be heard above the chatter.

  Wes turned down the music and took off his hat.

  I want to pray with y’all, Coach said.

  The crowd swarmed him. They formed a huddle, almost like it was muscle memory. The warmth of the bodies could have felt smothering, but it had a sedative effect.

  Know why? Coach said. Because we got something to lift up to the Lord God right here. Right now.

  Max looked around. The boys nodded, peered at their feet, squinted at Coach lit by the sun. Max wondered what they had to lift up, wondered what lifting up even meant. He stepped back into the crowd, almost behind the toe line, trying to blend in.

  Fellas, we got a new friend that’s come to us from all the way over in Europa.

  Max’s heart struck the curve of bone around it.

  Max, son. C’mon over here. C’mon here, son.

  Coach moved his arm in a corralling motion, gesturing for Max to come to him. His voice was lighter than it was at practice, silky at the edges, almost inviting with that peculiar, pleasant twang. Max walked over and stood beside Coach. The sting of being watched spread over him, squared his shoulders. Coach’s skin had the charred sheen of someone who’d spent a lifetime outdoors. Max could see Coach’s son, Hayes, in his father’s hook nose and watery eyes, in the square tips of his fingers that he now slammed together in front of his polo-clad chest. The boys bent their heads in unison. Someone named Graham kept staring at Max and nodding his head with a deranged look, like one of those bobble-head dolls that keeps bobbing forever, eyes painted open.

  Father God, started Coach. We know whenever two or three are gathered in your name you’re here, too, God. So, we want to take that opportunity to welcome Maximillian today. We ask that you make his heart a fertile ground for your seeds of everlasting love to sprout. We ask you be with him, bless him, and keep him well in his new life here in Alabama. We ask you use him as a vessel to do your blessing.

  Coach’s hand rose up and clasped Max’s neck. Max felt the Coach’s calluses. The hand squeezed. Maximillian was not Max’s name, but he said nothing to correct this.

  Father God. Coach’s voice split down the center. The grasp on Max’s neck tightened. Max wanted to step into the crack of his voice. The voice could carry him. He might like where it went. The emotion that clenched Coach’s voice raised a response from the crowd, too. Max had never observed emotion in a man like this, in a man like Coach, who preferred crudeness and coarse talk and handshakes that hurt you.

  Yes, Lord.

  Yes, Lord.

  A minute of silence passed. Max heard the traffic in the distance, the breeze thick in the trees.

  Lord God. We ask you protect this boy. Show him your love so he might see you as we see you. Let him never lose the faith.

  Amen! Coach bellowed to end it.

  Amen, Father, said the boys.

  Amen?

  Amen!

  With the final amen, the tension that had seized the backyard eased. Coach’s voice returned to its growl. He gave Max a shove.

  All right, boy, all right, he said, chuckling to himself.

  All right, said Max.

  Son, Coach said. Coach leaned in so that their eyes were fixed on each other, at the same level. Max focused on the sty on Coach’s left lid. Do you know the love that Jesus Christ has for you?

  What? said Max. I mean, he said, catching himself, What, sir?

  Coach’s brow had a high, skeptical arch. He seemed to want to say something else but thought better of it. He slapped Max on the shoulder. So much touching, thought Max.


  You’ll know soon, son. The Lord’s got plans for you. For all of us.

  Yes, sir, said Max.

  Good boy, Coach said, giving him an uneasy once-over. Good. Boy. Then Coach walked off.

  Wes turned the music back up. No one else seemed affected by the outburst of prayer. Above them, the sun sizzled. Everyone flushed under a fine layer of sweat. Max’s neck was sticky from the meat of Coach’s hand. The spot where he had held him while he prayed vibrated and hummed. He didn’t want to touch it, for fear that he would wipe the sensation away.

  Wes licked his thumb and stuck it into Max’s ear. Max laughed. It felt good to laugh. Wes laughed back like they were friends.

  They lifted their Cokes to the chemical blue sky and toasted to their luck but also to their God. The can was so thin, Max wanted to crush it in his fist. He wanted to crush the moment in his fist. The music opened up. It reached the treetops. It pushed into the leaves. The twang of them singing out of tune together swallowed the afternoon in one boyish yawn. Max wished he knew every word to every song they sang, and he pretended he did.

  LATER THAT NIGHT, THE BOYS pushed a cooler off the back of a Ford pickup truck and carried it down a red dirt road. The night was tar black with stars punched into it. Something unsettled Max about the smells: like rotting wood, wet hair, and skin that’d burned and blistered. He tasted mud on the roof of his mouth. There was a strand of grass in his molars.

  Davis said: Feels like we’re walking on a dog’s tongue.

  All teeth and heat and sweat.

  The sound was running roaches smashed beneath steel-toe boots and wind slapping at the bushes and the kind of deadened silence that only comes past midnight in rural parts of America. Country ballads lifted from the speakers somewhere in the darkness ahead. A fire snapped. It guided the way like a door cracked open at the end of a hall. The field, which belonged to Cole’s father, careened into black-black for acres on either side. It had taken nearly an hour of winding down skinny roads with many right turns to get here. Nothing had been marked. The boys just knew the way.

  The fields had once contained cotton, but Max didn’t see any white heads reaching up from their stems. He saw shadows. He saw his hand only when it was in front of his face. The land was undressed by all the darkness. Like it’d been stripped down. Like it had been left to go wild.

  The boy Max rode with said, Where the ladies at?

  Max thought girls would be at the patch of bald earth that’d been trodden down to something worn and grassless for socializing. For late-night whatevers. A pit for fire had about a dozen boys from the team circled around it. No girls. A few logs. A shed with a broken window. A four-wheeler and some old barrels that looked like they were there for sitting. The same song from the barbecue was still playing. Or was it a different song? The chords were so full of longing, Max felt like he was right beside the girl singing about her sexy man and his tractors and his fishing lines and his big red dogs.

  A boy named Price put his elbow on Max’s shoulder and leaned in so he could whisper. The bill of his dirty ball cap edged into Max’s forehead.

  Price said through his stutter, Looks like someone brought the goddamn witch.

  Max’s eyes found an image on the other side of the fire. The shock of Pan in fishnets. Pan’s legs were crossed at the knees. He sat on the back of the four-wheeler next to Lorne, whose hair was orange as the flames. Lorne’s wide chest was covered in a camouflage shirt with deer running across it. Lorne. The Judge’s son. Lorne was a sluggish and muscled boy who seemed to have as much personality as a blade of sun-dead grass. Nothing like his sinewy father, whom Max had seen on the sideline of football practice, clapping and whistling. When Lorne had joined his father near the watercooler, Max had watched them huddle in what Max had come to recognize as prayer, hands clasped to shoulders, heads bowed.

  Lorne prodded Pan with his hooded eyes. His lips opened and closed in something Max recognized as hunger. Lorne was quiet and cagey anytime Max had been around him, but that night he seemed to have a lot to say to Pan. Pan stroked his own tuft of coal-colored hair as he listened to Lorne, nodding occasionally. Pan’s back was ramrod straight; he moved from his core with an elegance that seemed acquired from other worlds. Movies maybe. Or books on dancing. Max wondered if he was a dancer. He pictured him spinning in the middle of an empty room with four beautiful white walls. He might leap into the air and land spinning or land in a split or land on the tips of his toes. Max thought Pan would look beautiful in a room with four white walls because his features were so drawn and heavy and dark. There was something in them that sprung out like they were shouting the word look. His mouth was as red as a cherry pit but that night it was painted even redder. Max could see, or did he just remember, a black mole shaped like America beneath his left eye. He tapped at the four-wheeler’s bumper with the heel of his fat army boot. He and Lorne appeared to be flirting. The flirting seemed clear to Max. He glanced at the other boys. Did they see the flirting, too? The longer he watched, the clearer it became. Pan scooted from his seat and led Lorne into the tall grass.

  Price watched Max watch the two silhouettes disappear.

  Jesus H. Christ, said Price. He thinks he’s a frigging princess. Look at that outfit.

  What? Max said, because the snap hiss of the fire ate the words from the boy’s mouth and plus, he was distracted. Can you please say it again?

  I said princess over there wants to be a freak and sometimes we let him.

  Price shrugged as if it were an inconvenience no one could do anything about. He spat a kernel from his mouth into the fire. The small black stone smoldered, and Max wondered what kind of a freak Price let Pan be.

  A freak for sure, said Wes. Once he lit his feet on fire and just laughed as they burned. We could smell it. We poured beer on it or who knows what would have happened to his toes.

  Yeah but the freak didn’t have any burn marks, said a boy named Boone. Like what the actual F?

  I think he liked it, said Price. You know? He likes the pain.

  Max understood. He bit down on his tongue to remind himself how much he liked pain. Price’s eyes, which were the striking green of a Mountain Dew bottle, danced with mischief. Had Price said you’ll know—as in, one day, Max will know, too? Max wasn’t sure he heard it right. A cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck and under his armpits and around his cock.

  He’s only been like that, all freaky, for a year tops. Maybe two. He used to look preppy as a frigging boy scout. It’s some kind of weirdass phase or something.

  What is preppy? asked Max.

  Preppy, said Price. I dunno, man. It’s like fancy. It’s like buttoned-up and kind of rich or something, but you don’t have to be rich to look preppy.

  Preppy is like boat-riding clothes, said Knox.

  Max couldn’t believe it. He tried to imagine Pan preppy, peering from under the same swoosh of bang that hung over the eyes of the boys beside him. The thought made him smile.

  What is happening next? asked Max. He wanted the boys to tell him everything they knew about Pan.

  Beats me, said Price. He’s going to grow out of it. My dad says it’s a call for help.

  That’s about right, said Knox. A big-ass call for help. I don’t know why Lorne bothers with him at all right now.

  Wes shrugged. They used to be tight, he said. I bet he’s trying to save him. He doesn’t want him in the fire pit of hell. Roasting and setting his feet aflame like we know he does. Lorne can be sweet like that.

  It’s about time he takes some rat magic, said Knox. See if God’s gone from him or if he’s still in there somewhere sleeping.

  Price jabbed Knox in the side.

  Ow, said Knox. What the fuck, man?

  Keep your trap shut. We don’t want to freak out Germany.

  The boys were lit in orange by the fire in front of them.

  Davis handed Max another beer. The necks of the bottles were sweating. Max touched the cold glass to his forehead
and wondered about the rat magic.

  Hey, Davis said to Max. Say y’all again.

  Please, Max said, flashing a smile. I would not like to.

  He sound like a goddamn Nazi, don’t he?

  Max decided to laugh with them this time. They could call him a Nazi, he guessed—though it made him wince. The fire in front of Max smelled sweet. Like tree spine and tree blood and tree brain. Like a log of cedar splayed perfectly along the groove. Max thought of Pan’s feet on fire and how the burning must have stank of shells and keratin and human skin. He saw Pan roasting on a spit in a pit of hell as flames licked his charred calves. He saw himself on the same spit. He popped his neck. The coals in the fire turned white with heat. A boy picked up a can of gasoline and held it in front of his crotch and spurted it on the flames.

  Cicadas buzzed in the background from their secret spots. The air was heavy as tea steam. Wind didn’t move it. Max steeped in it. His feelings brewed until they were strong as a tannin. He sipped his beer, which was going warm, and searched the grass, through the stems, through the black-black, for a sign of Pan and Lorne.

  Excuse me if I need to go to the bathroom, said Max. Where is it?

  Urinal’s right there, said Price, pointing to their field.

  Max walked to the edge of the field. He tipped a stream of beer into the dry split-up dirt as he urinated. He was afraid to get drunk, to unclench his mind in that way. The field bunched together and seemed to release an outbreath of air that cooled him, as if the stalks themselves could offer their own shelter from the sweat and swamp of sky. He noticed a dead worm half buried in the dirt. He directed his urine right onto the worm. Then he bent down and touched it. The pink slime wriggled back to life.

  Max flexed his biceps and balanced on his heels. He admired the smooth skin of his ankles. His shinbones dusted in white blond hair. He didn’t believe that Lorne wanted to save Pan. He’d seen the way he looked at him. He knew that look.

  Back at the fire, Knox came up to Max with a plastic bottle. The liquid inside glowed a strange green.

  Made this myself, Cheeto, said Knox.

  The mouth of the bottle smelled astringent. Even a whiff was potent enough to snap shut his eyes.