Soft Mouth

We’d never spoken before, so I kept autopiloting down the hall until you called my name the second time. “Brian, hey.” You were slouched against the wall, your hands buried in the pockets of the bleach-stained hoodie you wore like armor. A few sophomores darted past, giving you a wide berth. Once they were gone, you turned back to me.

“What are you doin’ after school?”

“What?”

“After school,” you repeated. “Wanna hang out?”

I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t that. You had transferred at the beginning of senior year. Stomping through the halls in your combat boots, your long, greasy hair shielding your face, you immediately established a reputation as someone to be left alone. People called you J.D. as a joke. Whenever you were absent, someone would say something like, “Who do you think J.D. got this time?” J.D. standing for Jeffrey Dahmer. Joke is probably the wrong word.

I’d like to say I wasn’t one of the ones who called you J.D., but whatever rung one found themselves clinging to on the social ladder, they’d eventually be forced to kick down at those beneath them. ‘Drama Geek’ had a small foothold over ‘Potential School Shooter’ and I couldn’t afford to slip.

You were still looking at me with that inscrutable expression of yours, like a tiger studying someone from its enclosure. Sure, you’re safe over there, but why don’t we test this glass to see if it holds?

“Sure. I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”

There was something thrilling about having your attention. The boy no one knew, who even the worst pricks at school feared. It also scared the hell out of me. In my twenties, I’d learn through trial and error that the line between what excited and scared me might as well not have existed.

#

I threw my bike into the back of your dirt-streaked Buick, a task made easy as the trunk was empty aside from a couple of crumpled fast-food napkins. My mind couldn’t help but pipe up: Plenty of room to stuff a body in there. As the engine roared to life, the opening track of "Hunky Dory" filled the car. You weren’t saying anything as you drove, so I stayed silent as well, listening as Bowie sang about turning and facing the strange. The houses grew further and further apart out my passenger window.

Two thoughts came to me simultaneously: I had no clue where you lived, and nobody knew I was with you. My dad had an overnight in Lafayette, and Mom would be taking care of my grandfather until his aide got there at seven. It would be hours before anyone would even notice I was missing.

We eventually pulled into a dirt driveway on the outskirts of town, Bowie singing about sinking into the quicksand of his thoughts. I looked out the window. The house in front of us gave off strong ‘abandoned’ vibes. The lawn hadn’t been mowed in weeks, wilderness encroaching on the browning shrubbery surrounding the property. For a moment I wondered if you had picked Bowie to get me docile, a modern-day Pied Piper luring me to his kill house.

“Come on, we’re here.”

As I slid out of the car, a wave of humidity lapped up against me. Within seconds, my underarms had dampened, beads of sweat blooming along my hairline. I headed towards the front door but stopped when I felt a tug on my shirtsleeve.

“Nah, around back.”

The backyard was bare except for a pile of cracked wiffle balls and an ancient kiddie pool splayed on the grass like a dead animal, sun-faded to a milky blue. Wildflowers bled into the thick wall of pine trees marking the perimeter of the property. You had shuffled to a stop, staring at the woods that lay beyond. A good place to hide the bodies.

You were squinting, as if you were searching for something between the trees, and I tried to see what you were looking at. A light hum of insects swept through the air. Something scurried in the underbrush. Squirrels, or maybe a rabbit. Finally, you turned to me.

“Let’s head in, yeah?”

You yanked on the handle of the sliding door, but it held tight. You pressed your face against the glass, then looked around, cursing to yourself as you scuffed your boot against a small pile of rocks. With surprising quickness, you crouched down, grabbed one of the rocks, and sprung back to your feet. I stared, frozen, waiting for the windup, the throw, the inevitable sound of shattering glass. This wasn’t your house. We were breaking and entering. Best-case scenario, it was abandoned. Worst-case? My mind spun through a doom carousel of options: somebody was home, somebody’s guard dog was home, an alarm would go off and alert the cops… My bike was still locked in your trunk. We were miles from my house. Should I make a run for it? I was so wrapped up in the mental battle I was waging that I nearly missed you pull the hide-a-key out of the secret compartment on the bottom of the rock.

You unlocked the door, and I followed you into a combo dining room/kitchen that looked like a bomb had gone off. Empty pizza boxes and crushed soda cans littered every surface. A stack of yellowing newspapers in the corner of the room almost reached my waist. My shoes felt sticky on the linoleum, like walking on the floor of a movie theater. I was careful not to touch anything.

“You want something to drink?” You were rooting through the refrigerator, and I thought of asking for a glass of water until I saw you had pulled out two cans of Miller.

“Oh, uh, I’m good.” You shrugged, put one of the cans back, and cracked the other, taking a long sip. I shifted my weight to the other foot. There was a weird energy in the air, as if we were waiting for someone else.

“Come on.”

We rounded the corner into the living room and came face to face with a dead deer – its mounted head, anyway. It was a buck, its massive horns scraping the ceiling. Two rifles crisscrossed underneath, like a fucked-up pirate flag.

The guns freaked me out, though not as much as they would have if I hadn’t grown up around them. My dad would disappear on the weekends to go hunting, usually over at O’Keefe, sometimes down around Sunflower. He started bringing my brother Charlie with him when he was old enough, and though I was secretly pleased to have whole weekends without their noise and smells and utter masculinity, I hated that they took our golden retriever Lucy with them.

#

We rescued Lucy when I was nine. There wasn’t a single inanimate object that she didn’t try to eat. I’d once seen her chew the head off a spatula, but she could somehow hold an egg in her mouth for as long as you wanted without it cracking. I learned later this was common with hunting dogs. They call it soft mouth. You send them after whatever small game you’ve shot, and they’ll pick it up by the neck and bring it back without piercing the flesh.

I saw the practical application firsthand when I turned thirteen. My dad forced me to join him and Charlie on one of their weekend outings, no doubt an attempt to curb my more theatrical tendencies. I trailed behind as they stalked the marsh, tired and freezing in the chill of the dawn. After a few hours, Lucy flushed a handful of ducks hiding in the reeds, and as they took to the air, Charlie fired wild. We thought he’d missed, but after a suspended moment, one bird plummeted back down, landing in the water with a small splash. Our father clapped Charlie on the back with one of his meaty hands and whistled for Lucy to fetch. She darted forward, clamping her mouth gently over its neck and bounding back to us. But the duck must have only been startled, because it suddenly started flapping like mad, a mess of blood and feathers. Lucy dropped it, and the duck thrashed about in the shallow water. The bullet had crippled one of its wings, but it must have pierced its throat too, because when it tried to quack, all that came out was an awful, choked wheeze. Lucy leapt around the dying thing, barking like mad until Charlie yanked her back, letting our dad get in so he could wring the bird’s neck and put it out of its misery. My dad and my brother turned in unison at the sound of me throwing up my breakfast.

That was the last time they forced me to go hunting.

#

“Did you do that?” I asked, nodding towards the mounted buck.

Your eyebrows scrunched in confusion. “Hell, no. My uncle bagged him. Fuck hunting.” Though I agreed with you, I said nothing. You took another pull from your beer and started towards a closed door that I hadn’t noticed. You opened it, revealing a set of stairs leading down to a basement. “This way,” you said, disappearing into the darkness.

I coughed and forced my feet across the stained carpet. I should make a run for it, now, before you had time to realize I wasn’t coming. I stepped into the doorway and flipped the light switch. Nothing.

Your voice floated up from the darkness. “The first bulb is burnt. There’s another set of lights down here.”

My heart thumped in my throat as I descended, a white-knuckle grip on the railing. As the stairs creaked under my weight, I thought about the fruit cellar in the Evil Dead movies, which Charlie had forced me to watch with him when I was eight. You hit the lights just as I reached the bottom of the stairs, and as my eyes adjusted, I took in my surroundings. The wall closest to me was lined with stacks of boxes, each one overstuffed with old clothes. On the wall opposite, four folding tables had been shoved together, every inch of surface covered in Lego sets. There were about a dozen in total, everything from samurai castles to space stations, all set up in meticulously arranged tableaus. My eyes landed on an Indiana Jones knock-off, complete with sarcophagi and hieroglyphics. A little adventurer figure clung to a rope above a pile of plastic snakes, their forked tongues tasting the air beneath him.

Looking at the snakes, I couldn’t help but think back to last year, hearing my dad’s pickup screeching to a halt outside. I peered between the blinds to see he’d hopped the left front tire over the curb. He hoisted up something from the bed wrapped in a green blanket. As he turned, I saw the tail poking out from between the folds.

Lucy had run off after a squirrel despite his attempts to call her back. By the time he found her, she was quivering next to a log. Four bites total: two on her face, one on her neck and one on her left front leg. She must have nosed up on a rattlesnake while searching for the squirrel and didn’t have the good sense to keep away after the first bite. She was dead before he could get her to a vet.

I realized you were watching me. I’d been staring at the Lego set for too long. “Did you do these?”

You looked at me as if I might be joking. “They’re my cousin’s.”

“Oh.” What you said earlier about the deer finally clicked; we were in your uncle’s house.

“My aunt and uncle are away for the weekend,” you said, as if reading my mind. “Figured we’d have more privacy.”

I nodded, swallowing. “Right.” My mouth felt incredibly dry. “Hey. I actually could use something to drink, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure,” you said, starting for the stairs.

“Wait.” You stopped short and looked back at me, your lips parted. You looked nervous, maybe even more than I was, if that was possible. I don’t know how or when it happened, but at some point, the power dynamic had shifted in my favor. “I just need a sip.”

Your grip tightened on the can of beer, and I wondered if I’d misread the situation. My eyes flicked back and forth between you and the beer so that there would be no mistaking what I meant. A hint of a smile creased the corner of your mouth. I took the can from your outstretched hand, reveling in a long, loud sip. I’d never tasted beer before and found it revolting. You held your hand out for me to give the can back. Instead, I took another swallow and set it down in the middle of the Legos, scattering the snakes.

“Don’t put it there. My cousin gets weird about water rings,” you added as an explanation, looking mildly embarrassed.

“What are you gonna do about it?” I felt high, or what I imagined at that point it felt like to be high. Your eyes widened, and before I could react, you grabbed me roughly, your hands squeezing my head like you were trying to pop a balloon. I was certain I’d made a disastrous mistake until you yanked me in and kissed me.

As you pushed me against the wall, the back of my head banged against the brick, sending shooting stars across my eyelids. I tried to tell you to slow down but could barely get in air to breathe as your tongue forced its way into my mouth. When you stripped down, I saw you were slimmer than I imagined, your layers of clothes adding an illusion of bulk. You were almost as skinny as me. I had little experience back then, but it didn’t matter. The whole thing was over almost as soon as it had begun.

I took a swish of beer. There was something hilarious to me about the situation. I was still fully dressed, and watching you stumble around searching for your underwear, I had to bite the inside of my cheeks to stop from laughing. Maybe you sensed it, because you grabbed my forearm, not hard, but firm enough that I wasn’t sure if I could break free if I needed to. “You’re not gonna tell anyone, right?”

“I dunno,” I said, desperate to see what you would do. “Why not?” I slowly teased my arm away, which made you squeeze harder. An involuntary gasp escaped my lips. I didn’t want you to stop, but the rising shame was starting to outweigh the pleasure. “No, I’m not gonna tell anyone. Jesus.”

Your mouth formed an ‘O’ of surprise as you saw the bruise already beginning to form where you had grabbed me. You took my arm in your hand again, much gentler this time, but with no less urgency.

“Shit, I’m sorry – I’m really sorry.”

“It happens,” I said, as if this were a regular occurrence. You brought my arm to your lips and lightly kissed the purpling bruise, a sensation that informed most of my sexual proclivities throughout my twenties. And then we were face to face, and you kissed me for what would be the last time. You jerked back with a grimace, and it wasn’t until later that I realized you must have tasted yourself on my lips.

“You should probably get going.”

Dark clouds blanketed the sky. Thunder rolled in the distance. I kept waiting for the downpour as I pedaled home, but the storm broke off before it reached me. When I got to my house, I burrowed away in my bedroom and poked the bruise on my arm obsessively, disgusted and hungry for the dull pain.

#

I barely saw you the last few weeks of school, and I wondered if you were avoiding me. I finally saw you at graduation, getting fawned over by your parents. You’d washed your hair and gotten it trimmed, which made you look cuter, though a bit bland. Your dad snapped picture after picture as your mom squeezed you to her, almost knocking off your graduation cap. I quashed the impulse to walk over and introduce myself. I think I just wanted to see your reaction. The bruise on my arm had long faded, but I pressed on the spot as if I would still feel something.

My mom noticed me staring at you. “Is that a friend of yours?” She held up her own camera as if to ask if I wanted a photo with you.

“No,” I said. “We don’t know each other.” I looked for you again later, but you were already lost in a sea of identical caps and gowns.

Jeff Ronan is a writer and actor living in New York City. His fiction has appeared in over a dozen magazines and anthologies including Neon Door, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Nocturne, Metastellar and City.River.Tree. His award-winning play Bunkmates is published and licensed by Concord Theatricals. Jeffronan.com

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