Choir Boys

by Ethan Fleisher

He spoke about them like they had something big up their sleeves. Like they were hiding out among the thieves and snakes, stealing women and playing with dice and guns. No one saw a thing, though. They were sneaky like thieves, sneaky like snakes, but they were good kids. Always had been, always would be.

The first one, Antonio Louise Eligio, he held it tight in his hand and didn’t miss a lick. “You’ve got to shotgun it,” he said. “It’s not like a cigarette. And don’t puff the wrong end, or you’ll puke.” He passed the pipe to Lem Patton.

Lem looked it over. It was a small, brass tube with a tapered end where the weed was pushed in. The other end glowed like a red eye, nothing but a pupil among the empty haze of streetlights. Perhaps it was alive, he thought. That maybe that’s why it does what it does. Gets you flying, cause it’s alive.

Anton studied Lem’s face. “You’ve never done this before, have you?” He said. “You lied back there in the car.”

Lem turned to Anton. Anton was about four inches taller than he was but he wasn’t threatening in the conventional ways. He was just overwhelming confident. He knew what he wanted and he knew what you wanted. You couldn’t hide a thing from him, and Lem knew he couldn’t hide this. “You’re right,” he said. “I’ve never done it before. Is that a problem?”

Anton shrugged his slim shoulders. “I don’t know. Is it?”

Lem smiled, and put his lips to the pipe. His chest pulled outward as he inhaled. A thin layer of almost effervescent smoke slid from one of his nostrils. He pulled it away and coughed. “Christ.”

Mark Parker laughed quietly. His eyes were faint and elsewhere; he’d already had his share. “Yeah, it’s some straight shit. Where the hell did you get that, Anton?”

Anton raised an eyebrow. “I got it from your cousin.”

“Really?” Mark looked down at the pipe in astonishment. “He must hate you or something. This is some bad stuff.”

“Hm,” Anton said. “That’s peculiar. You must smoke top of the line weed then, because I thought this was about as good as anything I’ve ever had.”

“Either that or you just smoke shit,” Mark said more to himself than Anton. He turned towards the rest of the trailer park, and let his eyes wander about the twisted broken siding and ailing shades. Lonely tired scrub oaks clawed at the houses, wailing silently at their young age and unnatural state. He blinked. “Who do you think lives around here?”

“People who do this sort of thing,” William Grayson said. He was eyeing the pipe in Lem’s hand. “Only every day.”

“Well that’s an unfair stereotype,” Anton said grinning. “What makes you say that sort of thing?”

Will smiled too. “A hunch.”

Lem took another long drag and inhaled with staggered breath. He let it filter through his lips and into his lungs and up into his head. The world tilted off its axis, and he handed the pipe to Will. “I think I did it right,” he said.

Anton watched him teeter awkwardly, and then stabilize. “Yeah, I think you did too.”

Lem smiled and looked at Mark. “You’re an ass when you’re high,” he said. “Really. You are.”

Mark laughed to himself again and looked back at the orchard of mobile homes. He didn’t like this view on a night like this. The moon was going to be full, he knew. But it didn’t matter because tonight was a night with the boys and a full moon didn’t aid in anything.

“You’re dad would kill us if he knew what we were doing out here,” he said. He licked his lips, continued staring towards the trailers. Something was catching his eye out there, but he didn’t know what. But it was something he didn’t like, an ominous ghost that hadn’t showed it’s ethereal figure quite yet. He blinked and looked back at Lem. “You’re dad. He would.”

Lem laughed, his increasingly heavy eyes locked on the pipe.

“He’s a lawyer. Doesn’t mean he’s Jesus or something.”

“Yeah I know,” Mark said. “But he’d still kill us. He’d kill Anton for sure.”

Anton shook his head. “Why does everybody’s parents hate me?”

“You’re Mexican,” Will said laughing. “That means people hate you. Haven’t you ever heard Mark’s dad talk before?”

“My dad is a prick,” Mark said, nodding his head in approval to Will’s comment. “There’s no doubt about that.”

A haze drifted from the porch of the trailer, rising to the darkening horizon. The black and blue sky painted it away, mixing it with the brilliant sunset below it.

“Well,” Lem said. “My mom likes you. She says you do your own thing but you’re still a good kid and that’s all anyone can ask for.”

The four boys stared at each other for a beat and then they began laughing like hyenas.

“You crack me up sometimes,” Mark said. “You really do, Lem.”

Lem gave an exaggerated shrug, throwing his hands up. “Why? She really said that. I’m not kidding.”

“I’m just touched someone doesn’t think I’m the anti-Christ,” Anton said. He picked the pipe from Will’s fingers and held a lighter to the end not near his mouth. He lit it and inhaled deeply.

“My dad would stick us all in jail if he had the chance,” Lem said. “He hates hippy culture.”

“Ah, he did it once,” Anton said. “I bet any money he has.”

The phone in Mark’s pocket vibrated.

At first, Mark wasn’t exactly sure where the hell it came from. He spun about, looking at the other three boys’ hands to make sure they hadn’t red flag touched him. “What the-“ He felt it again, near his thigh and groin, and pulled it from his pants. “Sorry, my phone,” he said.

“Don’t answer it,” Will said. “Especially if it’s your parents. You’re high as a friggin kite right now, Mark.”

Mark looked down at it. “Nah, it’s my cousin. I’ll answer it.”

“Tell him he sold me some shitty stuff,” Anton piped.

Mark opened the phone and put it to his ear.

He pulled up to the corner of the farmer’s yard and shut off the car. The radio played quietly as he absorbed the surroundings. He wasn’t sure what was the best option right now; it wasn’t supposed to rain for another hour or so. The cloudbank was still too far to the East, but it was moving in.

He pulled two gloves over his hands and moved his fingers around to stretch out the leather. A dog barked somewhere near the house, which was a big Mediterranean with black trim and white paint that looked all too perfect. He wondered if he was going to go to hell for this. He thought about it often, actually.

He would sit alone in his bed on nights when Teresa wasn’t over and he would just stare at a Crucifix across the room from him. He just didn’t know, didn’t get it. He had went to a Catholic school for grades one through eleven and they’d told him that Jesus died on a cross to save us all from our sins. He never understood that. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to; he just couldn’t grasp it. He would listen to the parables and stories and wonder how he could submit himself to the gods of good and love and kindness when all around him all he saw was pain and hurt and cocaine and weed and girls who would do terrible things with him if he just gave them some and then he would leave them in the back of a buddy’s car and never talk to them again because he felt responsible for what he’d done. Maybe that was the trouble of it all. He really felt responsible. He couldn’t talk about those things in school though, because in the back of his mind he really thought that Jesus Christ was watching him. And for all he knew, he thought as he sat in that car with the engine killed and the radio humming softly, Jesus really was watching.

And if he was, what it really came down to was the choice. Or how far he could look ahead. The choice was simple. If he killed this guy he would go to hell, and Jesus would shake his head from wherever he was and sigh. But more so the decision was based purely on how far ahead he could look. If he looked simply towards this life on earth, this one life and nothing after it, killing this man would be the simplest option and ultimately be the easiest route out of all the trouble he’d gotten himself into. But if he could gain the capacity to look further, to somewhere outside of this life, he would have to be something completely evil to walk into that house and kill the farmer. For if he looked far enough, the gates of the heavens would close and he would be damned to a life of suffering. It was not a matter of the decision itself, he realized, but how far he was willing to look ahead.

He watched the dark windows for awhile longer, chewing on his lower lip. Then he reached under his seat and pulled out a sawed off twelve gauge that had been fit with a pistol grip. He was using the twelve gauge because the tiny pellets don’t leave ballistics. It was sawed off with a pistol grip because he’d needed it to be quick and concealable.

He opened the door, and reached in his pocket and looked at the sun. It was a blazing hot orange, with red flares that left it’s image burnt in his eyes even when he blinked. He would sit outside for awhile until the sun went down a bit further. In his pocket there was a pen and a little notebook. He pulled them out and began to doodle on the paper. He drew pictures of the sun and the wisps of yellow glowing clouds but he had to imagine the vibrant colors for the pen was only blue.

The dog barked, and he looked towards the empty road, slipping the little notebook back into this pocket. There was no car sounds, only the quiet radio in his own vehicle. He looked from the road and back to the shotgun, which was laid across the hood of his car. Then he looked to the dog and thought. He scratched his chin.

After thinking, he picked up the gun and walked across the yard towards the dog. It was a collie, with a lolling tongue that hung pink and loose from its small thin jaws. It bounced up and down on its spring like haunches and its eyes were wide and gleeful. Then he stood still about ten feet from the animal.

It barked twice, and wagged its tail. He looked at its dark brown eyes, and sighed. Then he lifted the gun to its level. He kept the gun in that position, and just stood there looking at its eyes. The dog seemed oblivious to the barrel that was feet from its muzzle, until the a load of six shot game load came roaring out and struck the dirt and dust next to its left side.

The collie jumped three feet in the air, bounded like a jackrabbit, and took off across the yard to the woods.

He watched it leave, kicking up dirt in the bluish twilight as it went. It disappeared into the pines and poplars on the far side of the yard.

He opened the door to the perfectly constructed house and stood in the doorway, looking at the furniture. The first room was the living and kitchen area, combined into one. He saw a TV on and the man’s head in its silhouette.

His eyes fell to the fridge and he saw photos of a young girl about thirteen. She was smiling and happy, with green braces and a crooked grin that he knew would soon be beautiful and irresistible to a young man just as it was to her father now.

A hand drawn picture with crayon was in the center, of an tall stick person holding hands with a smaller stick person who had hair.

He sighed a third time and let his head fall. He closed his eyes and wondered how he was going to do it. Then he said, “Bill, you know I’m here. You heard the shot. So if you’ve got a gun on you, don’t try to use it. And don’t try to fake a nap either. You know what I came to do, and I hate it more than you know. But I’ve got to.”

Bill didn’t move. At all.

He slipped off his shoes and he walked slowly across the kitchen area, the shotgun muzzle lowered to the mans head. When he was just feet away, he saw that the floor beneath the couch was sprayed with a dark substance. He couldn’t see what color it was in the pale light from the television, but he had a hunch.

He cursed, and pulled a chair from a bar that divided the kitchen and the living room. Then he slid the twelve gauge across the countertop and sat there looking at Bill.

“Who got you?” He asked.

Bill did not answer, and he hadn’t expected an answer. There was no way the farmer could answer because the electricity, the fine tuned nerves that had pumped his lungs and pulled his vocal chords had burnt out like an old light bulb.

He shook his head, and looked at the phone on the side of the bar. He picked up the receiver and hit the caller ID button. Among the calls were several unknown numbers but one he knew. It was Carry Lindamin.

He shook his head again, and set the phone down on the counter top and stood up. “Well,” he said, but he had no idea what to say after that. He wasn’t sure if he was glad that Carry had killed him so he didn’t have to or if he was just mad at Carry for killing him.

He shook his head one last time and picked up the shotgun and went back to the doorway and slipped on his shoes. They were just sneakers, but he’d sanded the rubber pattern from the bottom until they were smooth like bowling shoes.

He went back to his car and saw that the sun had sunk nearly below the horizon, and he put the gun under the seat and thought about it all. Then he turned the keys in the ignition and pulled away and went off to find Carry Lindamin.

He didn’t turn on the lights until he reached the highway.

Anton said, “You’re full of shit.”

Mark shook his head. “He was dead serious, Anton. I swear to God. He was really tweakin out. I think he’s coming down off something. I’ve never heard him like this before.”

Will watched the expressions on Marks face and pondered it all, and then said, “So. What do we do then?”

“We get him the money,” Mark said. “What the hell else would we do?”

“Say screw it and get out of here,” Anton said, his eyes wide. “Jesus, Mark, think. This guy calls and threatens to kill himself if he doesn’t get six hundred dollars. It’s not petty cash. It’s six hundred goddamn dollars.”

“He’s also my cousin.”

“He’s a coke addict.”

“But he’s my cousin.”

Lem looked from Mark’s face to Anton’s. Anton had dark hair that fell down over his dark complexion and hazel eyes. He was a relatively good looking kid. Mark was shorter and thicker, with a broad barrel chest and small wild eyes. He had his moments of placidity but they often passed quickly and returned to a state of chaos that was only visible through those eyes of his. Lem worried about what would happen as the two argued.

Anton kept his eyes burning into Mark’s until he said, “Fine. Go get the money, but I’m not coming.”

“I’ll give you half,” Mark said quickly.

“What?”

“I’ll give you half,” he repeated. “I’ll get twelve hundred and then I’ll give you six hundred yourself. I know guys, Anton. I could do that if I wanted to.”

Anton smiled, and turned away. The sun had set almost completely and there was very little light left but just enough to see that there was something bad in his black and dilated pupils. They darted back and forth among the rusty swing sets and rotting piles of leaves, rolling pros and cons around like coins in a pocket.

After a minute had passed he looked back at Mark and said, “Who do we go to?”

“His name is Carry Lindamin,” Mark said. “He’s a friend of Jacob’s.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” Will cut in. “He’s a drug addict, right? Come on, Mark, those guys are about as unfaithful to each other as they are to themselves. You know what I mean? Loyalty means nothing to them.”

“That’s not true,” Mark said. “That’s not true at all.”

Carry Lindamin was tweakin out because he’d lied to him and now he was gonna come and kill him.

Son of a bitch, he thought. I’m a dead man.

He had spent the afternoon mustering up the courage to finally make his big break but then he’d screw it all up. He had went into Bill Denning’s house with a .30-.30 and shot him in the chest three times. The first shot had probably killed him but he’d never killed anyone before so how the hell did he know what was a legitimate shot? Then he’d went to get the money from Bill’s bedroom but he’d heard his daughter coming home. That was not good news, because she was supposed to be at her friend’s house till after he left. So he went out of the room and hid in the hallway by the living room.

She came in with two shopping bags bouncing at her sides. They had JC Penny’s written on them, and he had a fleeting thought that maybe he could take what was in the bag and pawn it off on his way out of town for gas money, but then she saw him.

Her eyes got big and she made a mad dash for the door. He whipped the gun around levered a bullet into the chamber and shot at her as she slipped into the kitchen.

He missed, because he was terribly inexperienced. He’d grown up dealing drugs in this shit hole tiny town and he’d never really fired a gun before. He used to imagine that it would be easy, that firing a gun took no real skill. All the hicks outside of town could do it just fine. Why couldn’t he?

But now, with a moving target and the fear and adrenaline pulsing through him, he couldn’t hit her.

She fell on her knees by the bar, and hit her head. He raised the gun to her face and was about to pull the trigger but he’d forgotten to lever another shell in the chamber and so nothing happened.

She kicked away from the bar and slid towards the doorway. He tried to cock the gun and grab for her at the same time, but the gun escaped from his slippery fingers and dropped to the tile floor. He felt her ankle in his hand though, and he pulled her toward him. “Damn you,” he kept saying over and over again. This was funny though, he realized, because she had done absolutely nothing wrong. He really had no justification damning her like that, but then again he was no man of God so damning anyone didn’t make much sense.

She kicked furiously, writhing about and tossing like a wounded animal. Her knee came up and smashed him in the chin and one of his teeth cut clean through his lower lip, and blood began gushing into his mouth and he desperately tried to swallow it as the girl fought him. He twisted the ankle sharply, but she slipped from his grip and reached her arm around him to something he couldn’t see.

It was at this point when he realized that, living on a farm and most likely having at least some experience in hunting or trapping, she’d probably shot a gun before. So when he saw with the .30-.30 in her hands and aimed directly at his face, he panicked and ducked down.

A deafening roar, a percussion like nothing he’d ever experienced, hit him in the head. There was a searing hot pain across the top of his scalp. He kicked out and felt himself make contact with her shoulder and he heard the gun slide away.

He looked back and saw her doubled over by the sinks and so he dove for the gun. It was lying a few feet from her knees, and she didn’t make a quick enough move. He snatched it, and stood up.

She looked terrified; Her face was red and ashen and her body was quaking. “Don’t,” she said, but that was it. Beyond her fear, he could sense honor and dignity. He’d never even thought of it before, he realized then. Honor and dignity? At age thirteen? It was foreign to him. He’d only remembered fear and anxiety and impulse. Things he did never called upon honor. Only a smooth tongue and a skateboard, and he didn’t exactly know how to use either of those things.

“Get up,” he said.

She did as she was instructed. On wobbling knees, she stood slowly. Her eyes never left his. Her hands grasped the sink behind her and she stood like a proud statue erected in admiration and a humbling honesty that he didn’t quite comprehend.

“Move,” he said, and gestured to a door to her left. It was the bathroom.

So the two made their way inside, and she stood by the shower. “Are you gonna kill me?” She said. Her eyes were blue and her hair was brown. She had green braces. He noticed them now. There was no more terror on her face, but something else that he knew he didn’t understand and probably never would.

“Are you gonna kill me?” she repeated.

He looked at her for a long time, his back to the wall and the gun lowered to her chest. He thought about what to say, whether he could really answer her.

So, there by the shower, he lied even as he took this completely innocent girl’s life. He said with a calm that would terrify the bravest of men, with a an easiness that the hardest of soldiers would shudder from, he said to her, “No.”

And then he shot her and the glass behind her shattered and she slid down from her valiance and poise into a heap in the tub. The wall behind her was chipped and there was a hole through the ceramic.

He looked down at her for awhile, trying to remember if he had said yes or no. He wasn’t sure.

Then he felt sick but he couldn’t figure out why. Isn’t his what they did? The good ones?

He went back to the living room to get the money, but Carry knew that in his struggle with the girl he was gonna be here in no time. And Carry knew that he would see the girl and the dead man on the couch, and he would know that Carry did it and come for him.

So he picked up the money and walked out to his car. He took a pot shot at the dog, which barked persistently as he drove away.

And then he was here, at his apartment, with no where to go because no matter where he went someone was gonna kill him. It was that simple.

He watched the doorknob like it was a bomb. This is it, he thought. This is it. I’m going to die.