Boys of Alabama Read online

  Pan was training that same power by going to crime scenes in Alabama and standing in the energy and concentrating on his visions. He was learning how to detect trauma in the molecules of the air.

  I went out to a gas station last week where a group of men murdered a woman they knew, he said. I stood near the dumpsters and felt my whole body beginning to bruise. My legs left the ground and I started to drift up to the power lines like something was going to tie me to them. But when I opened my eyes, I was alone. No one was with me except for the wind and the rats and the trash.

  You are being serious? Max said, unsure if Pan was telling the truth.

  I was inhabiting the past moment. I was reaching back toward the killing and for a moment I was close. I had visions. But I never got there completely. I hit a spiritual wall.

  Is this what witch is? asked Max. Is psychic and witch the same thing?

  Basically, yeah, said Pan. Basically.

  Pan riffled through his purse and handed Max a pair of scissors to hang at the entrance of his door. The scissors had red plastic handles.

  For protection, said Pan.

  Protection from what? Max asked.

  Pan ignored the question and said, If you decide what you really want from life, there are visualization techniques you can practice to manifest your destiny into reality.

  Pan said, You can learn to make a force field. To be a magnet.

  And Max walked right up to Pan when he said it, so how could he not believe him?

  That night, Max thought about the odd Pan and his odd words. Toodalooooo was how he’d said goodbye. He’d kissed his cheek like he was French. Strange. Max stretched out in bed and felt the humidity raise acne on his neck. He jerked the sheet off his stomach and considered the question What did he want? Had he ever thought about it? Max had forgotten to ask Pan what he wanted. He wished he could travel back in time and ask him. He would stare right into his odd face and say What do you want anyway for this life? It seemed like Pan had thought about it, like he would have an answer. It would be different if Pan had wings, if he had fangs, if his nails were pointed, if his tail were wide, but he was only a boy.

  DURING CLASS, PAN WROTE SOMETHING in his notebook just for Max to see. He scribbled: Ignoramuses don’t even believe in the big bang theory or the evolutions. They think God put dinosaur bones in the earth’s crust to trick us. How about the earth is 5000 years old? So much for science. Bet it’s not like that where you come from. Is it?

  Max didn’t know what to say.

  Pan swallowed a laugh. He wanted Max to step inside the joke with him. The joke was that an ignoramus was teaching them, and that science was real. Max picked up the pencil after Pan put it down. The utensil was warm from his touch. Max wrote: Wow. Would make my mom freak. She loves science.

  Freak, a saying Max had recently picked up. Along with flip your shit and go mad.

  Pan wrote: Tell me about Germany.

  Max wrote: Very different in Germany. Also not so different.

  Then the bell rang, and time was up.

  At lunch, Max ate with the football team. They placed chips that smelled of vinegar inside their ham sandwiches and smashed the white bread, so he could hear the sound of something break against a layer of mayonnaise. The fruit punch they drank turned the tops of their tongues neon. Max watched their tongues go flat in their mouths as they haw-haw-hawed about how they shoved a melted chocolate bar in a boy’s boxers during gym so that it looked like he had shit himself. The boy had to go home for a new change of clothes. He had been chosen as the target because years ago he had farted during history class and when he stood up shit had slid down his leg. The boys would never forget.

  He cried like a baby, said Knox. A baby who shat himself.

  The boy hadn’t come back to school yet with his new clothes but when he did they would be ready. They would redo the candy bar incident but worse. The boys would jump him in the locker room and shove the candy bar up his butt and pull a pair of shit-on boxer briefs over his head. The new candy bar was naked of its wrapper and sealed inside a plastic bag. It sat in the middle of the table like a centerpiece. Graham bragged about how he snuck into the girl’s locker room the week before and jacked off into a shampoo bottle in their showers.

  Max had vaguely heard of the concept of American hazing. His gut clenched. He jabbed at the layer of marbled ham hanging from his sandwich, hoping no one was going to ask him to do something like that. But he enjoyed the sound of the boys’ laughter. It soothed him the way the sound of autobahn traffic did, whirring when his dad went particularly fast. Max could close his eyes and get lost in the drone of wheels purring over pavement and engines vibrating at fast speed. But there was always something threatening running underneath the highway rumble. It was harmless until it was not. All it took was one turn and the traffic became dangerous and the laughter became cruel.

  Max plowed his fork through a lump of just-add-water potatoes that the ladies in hairnets had applied to his plate. Sandwich and mashed potatoes and chips. Max found the combination intriguing. White on white on white. A woman with purple nail polish had given him an extra cookie. Taking it made him feel bad for her. He hated watching elderly ladies stand on the other side of the buffet in lab coats and serve him. It was worse when they grinned, and lipstick was smeared on their teeth. Sadness could crush an appetite.

  Lorne joined the table. He slammed down his tray and started to make his way through a footlong. He’s still hungry, thought Max. And Max felt hungry, too. Lorne held the sub in both hands in front of his face and opened his freckled lips. He didn’t seem to be listening to the conversation at the table, but then he smiled. It startled Max. He was listening. Lorne dotted his mouth with a napkin, guzzled an energy drink, and continued through his sandwich with a kind of ravenous precision Max was sure did not leave any room for pleasure. It was about efficiency. It was about consumption. He noticed Max watching him and raised one finger like hello.

  MAX STOOD IN FRONT OF the weight room mirror and lifted a barbell to his shoulder. Let it drop to his hip. His bicep swelled. In the mirror, he watched Wes bench-press. Knox stood above Wes, spotting the quarterback in case he buckled under the load. Max switched arms. Davis did legs in the corner. Boone worked out his shoulders on a stationary machine. A vein bulged in his neck.

  Coach came in and leaned against the door frame. He said, Max, you got a minute?

  A half-eaten ham sandwich sat on Coach’s desk. Mustard leaked from the crust. In a painting on the wall, Jesus lifted his hands above the bent heads of a crowd that had gathered. Purple rays shot down from Jesus. Jesus was a white man with rosy cheeks and long brown hair and a sharp angled chin. Max scanned the rest of the office. If God’s Way had won trophies, Max figured they would have been displayed on the bookshelf. The only achievements Max noticed in the windowless room were a framed diploma with the Coach’s name saying he had earned a BA in exercise science, a heart-shaped photograph of his wife and Hayes, and a taxidermy raccoon Max assumed Coach had killed himself.

  Son, we sure are glad to have you this season, said Coach. Even if you aren’t starting, you are an asset to our offense. Wes needs a good backup receiver. Someone he can rely on. You keep practicing, and I think you’ll surprise yourself with what you’re capable of. I see determination in your eyes. Speed in those legs. Now that’s not something we teach. That’s something God gives you.

  Max nodded.

  Coach opened the playbook and turned it toward Max.

  This is Wes, said Coach, pointing to a square with the letters QB in it. Wes, he’s the focal point of the offense—the one who starts every play. Knox, center, snaps him the ball. Wes drops back. This here.

  This would be you.

  His pen landed on a circle with the letters WR in it.

  You’re nimble. You’re fast. You got to move quick. Zoom. Zip. In and out.

  Max nodded again. He let the sport sink into him. The plays he’d need to know. He tried to grasp the
fundamentals. Coach leaned in closer, and Max leaned in, too.

  A TEXT MESSAGE FOUND MAX standing in his kitchen about to slice the midsection of a lemon. The sight of Pan’s name on his screen caused his stomach to rise into his sternum. Pan sent a selfie of himself drinking diet Mountain Dew with just his lips showing: bright green on skin where drink met mouth. The next text showed a pink tongue extended. A blue Skittle sat in the center. His cat, Mr. Sprinkles, was curled up on his shoulder.

  Protection, Max thought.

  Before going to sleep, Max listened as the protection scissors above his door swung from a string hammered into the crown molding. They seemed to sway mysteriously. No breeze touched them. The tip scraped the wall and started to chip away at the paint. It was like Pan was in the room with him picking at the color, tapping on the door. Pick, pick. Tap, tap. Max didn’t need protection. He rolled over in bed and dreamed of suicides on the wet field in the wet wind with the strong boys.

  In Physics, they wrote notes back and forth in the margins of Pan’s comic books. Pan took a Sharpie and drew a dress on Superman. He gave Mary Jane Watson a huge dick. He outlined thought bubbles that climbed from their lips.

  What should she say? Pan asked Max. He wanted to put words in their mouths. What should Mary Jane say to Spidey?

  Pan spoke of himself like he was a loner, but Max saw he was engaged in many social scenes at school. Girls especially seemed to like Pan. One girl was always by his side. The girl appeared to be enduring a lecture whenever Max spotted them together; a smile perched on her mouth as if everything Pan said was slightly funny. The pair passed Max at his locker one afternoon and Max strained to hear what Pan said, but he couldn’t hear anything but the slam-bang of lockers hitting their hinges. Max thought he might walk up to them and say hello, but what would he say after that? He didn’t know. Max leaned against the locker. Lockers. In Hamburg, you took all your books home with you from school. But this was just like the American TV shows. Just like Saved by the Bell.

  At practice, Max watched Pan wait in the parking lot in his tiara. Max threw the football with Wes for warm-up. A man arrived on a motorcycle to pick Pan up. Pan climbed onto the back and held the other man’s body. They flew away. The motorcycle engine lingered like a scream in Max’s ear.

  Distracted? asked a whisperer.

  Lorne stood behind him.

  He pushed on Max’s shoulder pad. The weight of him was much.

  No distraction, said Max. Just ball throwing for warm-up.

  Good, said Lorne. Big game coming up. First game’s a big game. Always.

  He winked at Max like he knew him. Max felt the sweat on his face turn cold.

  DAVIS INVITED MAX TO ATTEND a campaign luncheon for the Judge. It was a small affair in a backyard. The heat had begun to lift into a temperature that felt almost pleasant against his bare arms. Pan texted. Max knew enough not to tell where he was, but he didn’t know where this intuition originated. If he could trace the source of his intuition, Max would say it was a spot lodged under the curve of his right rib.

  His instinct told him: Don’t reply to Pan. And then: Look up. Lorne stood in the shade of a ginkgo tree alone. He took his phone from his pocket, stared at the screen, grimaced. Or was it a grin? Max’s instinct told him: Pan’s texting him, too. A crowd descended on Lorne, surrounded him with smiles and sagging paper plates. He put his phone away and shook the hands held out to him. A swing creaked in the wind—a plank of sanded-down wood that’d been hung from two old ropes tied to a high branch. There was something unsettling about the way it moved back and forth, wildly, with no one on it. A cloud traveled across the blue. It was skinny and long and hopelessly white.

  There was a good turnout of faces. The faces smiled over red-checkered tablecloths where food gleamed in plastic bowls. Davis orbited among them. The faces smiled as they smeared spoonful after spoonful of pimento cheese onto butter crackers and spread mayo over thick-cut tomatoes. Max had learned to dress exactly right for occasions like this. He chose a bright yellow button-up. Yellow as in happy. Happy as in what he hoped to be. He rolled up the sleeves so that his forearms showed. He wore shorts that cut off midthigh. He blended into the pastel.

  Max overheard two men talking beside him on the porch. One was lanky with a face that made Max think of cobwebs. The other was hulking with jowls that dropped.

  Listen now. It’s clear as twenty-twenty the Judge has that Midas touch, the lanky man said.

  That’s the touch of God, the other man said. There’s nothing Midas about it.

  Yes. The touch of God.

  The longer Max watched the lanky man, the more he began to look like his own father. The protruding brow. The pointed nose. The long front teeth. What else?—there was a kind of spiritual symmetry.

  The men talked about how the Judge had traveled up and down the state, made speeches, attended fund-raisers exactly like the one that afternoon. The Judge read to ladies at the retirement center, took boys on fishing trips and visited the cemeteries of steel mills, and prayed with the workers who had black lung. He’d been traveling to churches and Bible studies and NRA meetings because he cared about community. He wanted to know the people he would represent, so he could help them. You can’t help who you don’t know. Simple as that.

  The Judge, the thick man said, is the new face of Alabama.

  We need God-fearing individuals in office if we want to save this state. It’s not right, the secularization that’s sweeping through the South, through America. It’s downright terrifying.

  The other man nodded, It’s a sign of the times.

  The man acknowledged the Judge had formidable trouble on the horizon. A young liberal had been riling up a crowd of professors and intellectuals and leftists on the college campus. The liberal wanted women to marry each other, advocated for access to abortion, and claimed there should be a state tax on carbon emissions. The liberal had started a petition to outlaw bump stocks, a small device that transformed semiautomatic weapons into automatic ones.

  Owning a gun does not make one a psychopathic killer, said the thick man. If one is a psychopathic killer they will kill, gun or no gun. A psychopathic killer will eat a man’s face off with a fork and knife. He doesn’t need a gun. So, my point is—why take away my gun, a gun that protects me and you and all us here, just so people who don’t know better can feel better, in theory, about being safe and protected? I’ll tell you one thing. Everyone I’m around is safer because of the gun in my holster.

  The man patted his side, and Max noticed, for the first time, a handgun attached to his belt. His arms prickled. He told himself: Feel safe.

  Over my cold dead body will a spine-shucked immoral step into the governor’s seat in Alabama, said the one who reminded Max of his father. Know what Sara Beth told me?

  Sara Beth told him her history teacher at the university was a man who had assigned the class an article that advocated for the removal of Confederate monuments across the South.

  And wouldn’t you believe that she claimed to agree with him? said the lanky man.

  Am I surprised? The thick man said, pantomiming shock, bringing his hands to his cheeks. Listen. Schools aren’t even for teaching facts. They’re fantasy-making machines. You go in to get your brain good and washed. You put perfectly open kids in one way. They come out tumbled and confused. It’s moving so far away from the way God wanted things. People are so far away from God. I’m tired of people explaining to us how to live, and I’ve had enough. If God wants the planet to heat up and burn, there’s nothing recycling a plastic bottle is going to do about it.

  I like this idea about everyone registering with a church, said the other man. Even if you don’t go to the church, you got to get yourself registered. Church brings people community. I don’t know what Duris would do without her church group, and many people do not know the resources a church would give them. I’m talking even outside the love of Jesus Christ. I’m talking free meals when you’re hungry. Someone to play cards
with when you’re lonely. No judgment either. Just come however you want to be.

  You are speaking to the converted right now. Could not agree more. The way to heal is through relationship.

  The Judge was inside, but his body was visible through the sliding glass door. He was making his way to the porch. Max watched him work the room. He gripped a woman’s shoulder in a way that seemed to convey a spiritual message. Max could not hear the laughter, but it brought joy to his own mouth. The Judge was everything Max wanted to be: confident, speaker of the right words, comfortable in the body that was his.

  Lorne walked across the grass, passed Max and the men on the porch, and met his father at the door. The Judge’s presence struck the small area around him with a kinetic charge. He was so close now, Max could reach out to touch his arm.

  Bless the day. It is good to lay my eyes on you, the Judge said to a woman near Max.

  The Judge’s voice sounded like a hero from an American movie. It was sweet yet somehow tough as a boot. Nearly everyone in Alabama sounded like that. Max sometimes felt like he’d walked onto the set of a Hollywood Western, but he had not. This was real life. People dropped their r’s when they spoke and let the vowels linger on their tongues. Max practiced speaking in this way, but he couldn’t manage. Not yet.

  The Judge’s laugh was a breeze that spread his warmth around him. He wore a ring, a ruby stone, on his pinkie. No rot stained his teeth like Max had seen on people in this town. No sign that he drank too much soda. His hands were gentle and giant and strong. His black felt cowboy hat sat like a crown on his head. A large golden belt buckle showed a scene of a cowboy kneeling before a cross; a horse stood by the cowboy’s side as if he had to journey from far away on horseback just to get there.

  The Judge took Max’s hand and held it.

  You are a mighty fine runner, son, the Judge said. I’ve seen you practicing out there with my Lorne.