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• January 2007

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1.

We’ve been stoking him like a furnace, feeding him sweet potatoes, black-eyed peas, a side of bacon, three whole cows — anything we can get our digits around, anything that has mass, heft. Boll is our meal ticket, our passage home. Boll will be the hammer, the most splendiferous, magnanimous, unfuckingholiest hammer you ever saw in cleats and a football helmet. He will rain upon our enemies with peals of thunder and angelic rage. He will smite them mercilessly, cast their thighbones haphazardly across the field. He will pause, rearrange their thighbones and forecast their doom, and their children’s children’s doom.

Boll is growing. We measure him constantly, take meticulous notes. We’ve locked him away in the boiler-room for nearly a week, hidden beneath a blue tarp. He cannot be cut loose too soon. He must be nursed like a porcelain dormouse, kept warm, snuggled close.

Cal is working the equations, crunching the numbers. Cal has six mainframes whirling endlessly, smoke leaking from their ports. Cal works in a shroud of darkness, an alchemist amidst his tools, bubbling vessels, iridescent powders.

Cal is the numbers man; he is Cal.

The difficulty is balance, the fine line between enough and too much: mass, speed, and force revolving in retrograde motions, always shifting, dancing like immaculate beads of sweat on a hot skillet. There is a perfect balance somewhere. Cal will whip the numbers into line. Cal will tell us when to stop stoking Boll.

Boll will be the hammer Cal wields.

I leave the others (Cal, BonBon, Emanuel) with Boll and walk out to the parking lot. It is a beautiful fall afternoon. The leaves are rioting, all amber and red, shot through with rust, blood. The air is crisp; objects seem clearer as if seen through the thin glaze of a corrective lens. I snap my fingers for the sound of it.

I fire up the car, the Love Machine. I give it much gas and hear the roar of it, a rumble-throated warning to all you honeys, you sweet, delicate creatures. It is only fair. I will allow you this, and nothing more. Piloting this car, I not so much pursue women as draw them into my immense gravitational well.

Do not blame them. It is not their fault; they are not immune.

I almost pity them.

I drive around, circulate, get out amongst them. The school day is finished and the parking lot is full. I smile, brandish my hands, wave to the good people, my fellows, countrymen and countrywomen. They are fresh-faced, smiling. They are ignorant of our machinations, blind to their salvation.

I do not begrudge them this. I love them for their ignorance, for their simple blind trust. I forgive them their trespasses, these petty intrigues, misguided thoughts, doings of wrong. If they have slighted me, it is of no consequence; I forgive them. I clap my hands and these things scatter like mourning doves.

I forgive them all.

Their hair rustles with electricity. I can see it.

In three days we play Hixon High, six-time champions of District 4 AAAAA, cross-town rivals, rapers of spavined cows. Do not think we are afraid. We do not fear them, those marauding bovine bungers, ill-sprung cast-eyed cretins, waking up in the small hours in their cramped, child-sized bunks, hands stretched to their smiling sister. Oh those infidels, sons of whores, slack-jawed and drooling corn-fed idolaters, mis–

I can’t keep going on like this; I must focus.

I leap from the car, glide inside my home, my domicile, mi casa. It smells of frying pork. My mother is standing in the kitchen, mopping her face with a dishtowel. Her mouth is open. I bound upstairs, pull the rifle case from beneath my bed.

The clasps spring open at the slightest touch. I cradle the rifle, work the bolt. The snapping of the machine-tooled parts is like music. It as an adagio in C Major, all cracking sinew and bone.

I slide the rifle back into the case, slip it over my shoulder. I take the steps two at a time.

My mother is waiting by the door. Her face is an alarming red. She really must begin to monitor her weight.

I need some money, she says. For groceries.

I whip out my wallet, peel off some bills. I give her twenty more for extra measure.

She tucks it into the pocket of her bathrobe and shuffles off.

Her flip-flops slap against the linoleum like pistol shots.

I park just off the road, in the woods above the football practice field. I take the rifle case from the back and hike quickly to my outpost, a small clearing with a clear line of sight to the field. I settle into the saucer-sized impressions of elbows and knees I have worn into the ground.

The green grass of the field blooms in the rifle scope. I track across the field to the sidelines. And there she is, thrusting her pom-poms towards the heavens.

Oh she is beautiful, my blond, firm-calved angel. The cheerleader uniform bares her midriff, and that sleek band of tanned girl-flesh obliterates me. It blinds me and I close my eyes and pray, beg for my eyesight to return and lo, when I open them I am saved. I can see, and behold, what I see is her, and she is holding her arms wide, welcoming me home.

I grind my cheek against the rifle stock. The smell of gun oil fills my head.

I keep the crosshairs nailed to her fine, taut stomach. Her navel fills the scope like a ripe peach. I make minute adjustments, compensating, and hold her fixed like a mounted lion’s head. She cannot escape me. She is mine. My love, my angel, my–

Do it, a voice says, and I come within the slightest of hairs of jerking the trigger in fright. I throw the rifle down, heart rattling betwixt my ribs, and turn, mouth as dry as a drought.

It is a girl. A beautiful girl. With dark hair.

Damn, she says, and shakes her head.

She looks as if she subsists on strictly milk.

I know this girl from the school band. I do not know her name, but she is there, somewhere among the woodwinds. I see how it might have occurred, how she could have escaped me. I play the tuba, and sometimes, with all those horns bristling around me, I lose myself.

I am not proud of it, playing the tuba. But if I am to do something, I do it fully, and with much vigor. I play the tuba like a demon, keep the others in line. The horns, Christ, they need me. Without me they are nothing more than a herd of giraffes, all knocking knees and elbows. And that desperate sucking and blowing, those spit valves, ach, it turns my stomach; I would turn away, but no. Someone must do it; someone must regulate them.

It is a question of sacrifice for the greater good.

I play the tuba for my mother. I play the tuba because my mother’s father, and his father, were players of the tuba. I come from a vast lineage of ham-thighed tuba-playing men.

I am not ham-thighed.

I play the tuba because it gives my mother joy, and little else does. I have no affection for the tuba: I have conquered it; I will tolerate it like some brass, battened leech. I rule it, and what it does, it does for me alone.

We all have our roles. Without the ravens to nurse him, Elijah would have withered away like so much flesh.

This beautiful girl is watching, waiting for me to say something. Fine. So be it.

Indubitably this must strike you as odd, I say.

No. I’ve been following you for the last two weeks. This seems to be your routine.

Gaaggh, I say.

My palms are wet. I hide them in my pockets.

She flashes me a smile of such sparkling splendor, and disappears with a slight twitching of her denim-sheathed thighs. I sit amongst the sun-dappled leaves and count my blessings upon my long fingers.

I pass her on the road and stop. She walks past the car. I drive ahead and stop. This process repeats itself.

Hey, I say. I get out and walk beside her.

You have disgusting manners, she says.

Yes.

That’s not the correct side, she says. You’re supposed to walk on the outside.

I move around her. My shoulder brushes hers. I can feel it, man, that agitation of electrons, crescendos, jostling, lord.

Thank you, she says.

I nod.

We walk. It is as if the side of the road is lined with a carpet of needles, of fine springing needles, and the walking is easy and good. The feet leap up as if of their own accord.

Should we talk about school, she says.

No.

I loathe school, she says. I absolutely loathe it. God.

You have beautiful eyes.

She turns away. But I can see her smile. It is there.

And teeth, I say. Beautiful teeth.

She compresses her lips in vague smile.

I get the braces off in two months, she says.

We will celebrate. We will arrange a most glorious shin-dig.

Shin-dig, she laughs, and sprints off.

I’m caught, watching the beauty of her running, and know not what to do. I’m lost in the hesitation. She is moving away. My car is behind me. To move in either direction is a loss.

I know where to find her. I walk back slowly to my car. I enjoy myself immensely.

I drive aimlessly to clear my head. I roll down the windows to get more oxygen. It is cold, and good.

I open my mouth to allow more air in. I drive faster. The roads here are very good. It is a pleasure to drive on them. It is a pleasure to see that someone has taken their work seriously. Many people do not. This is a true fact.

The next thing to do is place my head out the window. My head is out the window and my mouth is open. It is not as uncomfortable as it might seem.

I make excellent time.

At home again, and I barricade myself in my room. I call Cal on the cellular phone, and he assures me all is well with Boll. Boll is eating like a fiend, he says, and tells me he’s close, so close with the numbers. I wish him a most wondrous evening, draw the curtains, shuck off my clothes. I turn off the lights, and retire to the bed. The sheets are cool against my bare skin.

It is not her skin, but her eyes. That emerald cast, the suggestion of depth. Fish moving in pools, a flash of white exposed down among the silt, the slow moving, sullen water, the green water, globes of mud, algae hanging suspended. And the sun slanting down through it all, lighting it all, the fish, the water, her eyes, her eyes swallowed in the belly of the fish, hidden among a nest of perfectly round, glistening eggs.

I hear the bulk of my mother moving on the groaning stairs. She breathes heavily outside my door.

You got a letter in the mail, she says.

Her breathing sounds like an open furnace. I imagine the paint blistering off the door.

She slides something beneath the door and leaves. The stairs renew their complaint, protesting mightily.

I slip from bed, turn on the light. It is a pink envelope, the color of sunburned ears. It smells of rosewater.

Opened, the paper within reads:

My name is Greta. Do not feel bad that you do not know. I forgive you. I will reveal myself in the woods today. You will receive this letter later. By then you will be thinking of me. She does not love you. Not because you are unlovable, but because she does not know you. You will save time by believing me. We will save time. Please.

You will rescue me, take me away from this place. You are different. You shine with a different light.

Help me. Please.

It is written in a most beautiful hand, all sweeping loops and voluptuous whorls. I cradle the letter beneath the covers, place it across my chest. It feels like a hand pressing down upon me, with the lightest of pressure.

I sleep that night like a carved stone.

2.

It is a new morning. I most literally spring from my bed.

My atoms sing with a most resonant voice. I shower and shave. I arrange my hair in a most striking fashion. I make myself presentable. Nay, I make myself beautiful, nay nay nay. You must look away. You must.

I grab my backpack and cellular phone, and hustle downstairs. My mother is sitting before the television.

Hello dearest mother, I say, walking past her to the kitchen. She is asleep, a massive bowl of popcorn nestled between her thighs.

I am hungry, ravenous. There is absolutely nothing to eat. The soiled dishes rear upward in the sink, stacked like pancakes. I draw a glass of cold water and drink it, holding it in my mouth until my molars ache.

I creep up to her, plant a slight kiss on her forehead. Her skin is extremely warm. She does not stir. I grab a handful of popcorn and eat it as I walk out to my car. It is all butter and salt. I lick my fingers very clean.

Cal says Boll is doing fine. He says Boll is getting slightly restless.

Put him on, I say, switching the phone to my right ear as I drive.

Boll, baby, I say.

Hey.

You doing okay? You need anything?

I just want to go out for awhile.

No, baby, no, negatory. We talked about that, remember?

I know. I just don’t see why I have to stay here. This place smells like piss.

Because that’s the last place they’ll look, baby, at school. You see?

Yeah.

Besides, baby, it’s just for two more days. Two more days, baby. You can do two more days standing on your head. That’s easy, baby, cake.

Okay.

Trust me. Who was there for you in sixth grade, baby? Who’s always been there for you? Let me hear you say it.

You.

That’s right baby, me.

Okay.

Sure it’s okay. I’ll be by later. I’ll bring you a treat.

Okay, bye.

Bye, baby, goodbye.

My books jerk from my hands as I walk to gym, third period. I pick them up and a moment later, they somehow escape again. It’s a most unusual occurrence. I’m not prone to clumsiness.

I smile to the people watching, shrug my shoulders in a most mystified fashion, and begin to collect my books again. Someone stoops to help me.

He’s on the football team, someone I know slightly, but have never spoken to. His hair is bright red. I thank him, bob my head.

Our limbs tangle, and I fall headlong. My glasses scuttle away. Change rattles from my pockets and sparks across the floor. I lie prone on the cold tiles of the floor. It is most embarrassing.

He helps me up, but as I stand we somehow bang heads, and I am returned to the floor. I finally struggle up, and get my parts back together. My forehead stings, but I pay it no heed. It is of no moment.

I square my shoulders, address my gathered audience.

Ah, the vast travails and slings of misfortune, I say.

Everyone laughs at the appropriateness of it. I join them, and smile winsomely. One must be able to laugh when the absurd rears its head. It is a sign of great humility.

I abduct her as she leaves the band room. I only jest; she is willing, very willing, yea. Her willingness shows in the way her wrist turns; her willingness gathers in her musculature, ferments like summer wine. She smiles, and all I have to say is let us spring away, and away we go.

I hustle her to the Love Machine and escape in a great gout of exhaust.

I have to be back for sixth period, she says.

Fine.

We batter our way out to the rock quarry in a laughing burst of sunshine on chrome, pale skin and swirling hair. I am drunk on her, on the air ripping through the car windows.

The rock she chooses is very warm. It is shaped like a teacup. From it, we can just see the water below.

I meant what I said, she says. What I said in the letter.

I know.

She sits cross-legged beside me. The point of her right knee rests upon my thigh.

She begins to speak and stops.

When she speaks again, she tells me why I will rescue her. Why she is in need of rescue.

There’s nothing to do but hold her. We wrap upon one another in the warm, sunny palm of the rock, with the rock holding us high above the cold, cold water below. I could sit like this for ages. It feels so enormously right I can’t differentiate us from the rock.

Her tears retreat, subside. She stirs against me, wipes her cheek against my shoulder.

I’m sorry, she says.

No. Don’t apologize.

You must tell me a secret now, she says. Tell me something real.

I tell her two secrets.

The first is Boll.

The second secret — well. It is an odd secret, in that it depends on the most public of displays. Yet always coupled with the element of being incommunicado, the hidden beneath the non-hidden, reality cloaked in beggar’s rags.

What I am trying to say is that I am a banjo player extraordinare. People come from six counties away to see me play. I say this because it is true. I have no reason to brag or embellish what is true.

I can come all ways: three-finger, clawhammer, country bluegrass, tenor, five-string, dixieland, Irish tenor, etc. You name it, I can play it. I am wicked fast, and have an innate sense of timing. What I have cannot be taught. I am sorry. It is something with which you must be born.

If someone can be afflicted with banjo, that someone is I.

It is not rational. I was not playing banjo music whilst in the womb. I did not even hear a banjo played until I was twelve.

When it came over me it came like wildfire. Like fever.

I play in a band. We play in bars, honkytonks, county fairs. We play because we enjoy it, and because we are paid well.

Do not listen to anyone who tells you money is not important. It is.

I have a driver’s license that says I am twenty-two. The name on the license is Horace Biggenbottom. Horace looks nothing like me. He is jug-eared, with protruding teeth. It does not matter.

I give this secret to Greta as an offering.

We return to school flushed with the sun, and one another. She allows me to hold her hand. We have purchased a chocolate cake for Boll. It was sharply discounted. It has Happy Birthday Martha written across it in blue and red icing.

The warning bell for sixth period rings as we get out of my car. She kisses my cheek, and moves off in her speedy fashion. I run, and the cake claps against my thigh. I hold my elbow out, and run faster. I stow the cake in my locker, seize my physics book and fly to my seat just as the late bell rings. Anyone watching would be amazed, and assume that the mechanism to ring the bell was actuated by the precise distribution of the mass I possess upon the red plastic seat of the chair.

I look up at Cal, who sits across the room. He holds up a page filled with bulging equations. He nods, smiles, and I see approbation in his brown eyes.

It warms me like a wood-burning stove.

The boiler room is abandoned, and smells of rusty water. It is on the far side of the school, near the vocational buildings. I introduce Greta to Boll first, then the others. Her hand disappears within Boll’s. He is, quite literally, three or four Gretas stitched together. He accepts the cake most graciously. Greta makes small talk with Cal and BonBon.

I sit Boll down and explain again what our purpose is. I make him see the importance. I remind him to call his parents, who are vacationing on the Florida peninsula, amongst the elderly, the infirm, the sickly. He is to call them daily, assuage their fears. He is, as they say, a big boy, and has been allowed to remain behind because of the game.

He has devastated the cake by the time we leave. Boll sits at his table, surrounded by a ruin of empty plates, containers.

Greta pauses as we are leaving, and walks back to him. He looks up, and I see a smear of chocolate running down the length of his chin like creeping dark sutures.

Hold still, she says. She tucks her fine-boned hand within her sweater sleeve, and wipes the smear away. Boll’s face shatters with a look of immense happiness. I have never been so much in love.

Cal wants to recheck his numbers, so I tell him fine. I will take Greta home, then come back for him.

She sits beside me in the car, so that my arm naturally curls about her shoulders. She tells me where to turn, pointing with her finger, and it is like the whiteness of her bones leaves an afterimage on my retinas. I see the motion of her movements, cast not just in the present moment, in the now, but multiplied ten-fold, thrown out against that unknowable future as if upon a large, dark screen.

That’s it, she says, pointing to a tiny white house.

I stop the car. I sit, trying to hold all our moments within me. I do not forget the slightest detail.

Call me, she says.

I promise I will. I inform her a legion of wild equines could not prevent it. She smiles, kisses my cheek, and leaps from the car.

It’s like the air is drawn with her and I am left in the hard vacuum of space. I do not know what I’ll do without her.

Through a window I see her stepfather looming, moving in the shadowy darkness. He turns his face to me, and I see his skull, white and hairless, riding for a moment above his stooped shoulders. I blink and it is gone, and he moves away from the window as Greta opens the door and is swallowed inside.

Cal and I are walking to my car when the sky darkens and a shadow falls. We are each seized at the neck by a large, hairy-knuckled hand.

Coach Crews ambushes us. He moves quite silently for a large man. It is a remarkable thing.

Stringbeans, Coach Crews says, where the hell is Bollinger?

Who, I say.

You know who. Hebrides Zachariah Bollinger. My starting fullback.

I believe he is attending to the untimely expiration of a superannuated familial member.

Stringbean, he says, make some goddamn sense.

His great-aunt died, I say.

His hand covers my neck completely. In the edge of my vision I can just see the whorled, jutting hairs that cover his hand like a pelt. He squeezes hard, and my blood rushes towards my toes.

I don’t trust you, you little stringbeans, he growls. There’s something not right about you. Why Bollinger spends time with you, I don’t know.

His hand releases me, and I take a deep, full breath.

You stringbeans tell him his ass better be at practice today. We’ve got the biggest goddamn game of the season in two days. Tell him I’m coming after him myself if he isn’t at practice tomorrow.

He stalks away. The smell of aftershave hangs in the air.

And another thing: Boll plays both offense and defense. That is why our plan will work. Filling Boll with power creates a rippling effect, a sucking riptide of causality. He is just central enough to move the foundation. If we can move Boll, we move the world. The force he exerts will irradiate outward.

We will celebrate with glowing, victorious eyes.

We are parked in front of Cal’s house. He sits in the passenger seat, shakes his head.

I didn’t want it to come to this, he says.

We don’t have any choice.

I know we don’t. Still.

It wasn’t us, it was Coach Crews. He forced the issue.

I know, Cal says, I know.

Emanuel and I will take care of it, I say.

Cal nods, gets out of the car. He starts to shut the door and stops. He looks out over the top of the car, like he’s speaking to someone else entirely.

Last night I dreamed I was sitting in a cathedral, he says. I was sitting in a wooden pew, by myself. Other people were coming in, and I noticed that everyone was painted white, but that, beneath the white of me, I was a different color. Somehow I knew the others were the same shade of white beneath the paint. When I bit my hand, the color that was beneath was red. Crimson.

Cal is quiet, takes a breath.

I don’t know what it means, he says. It’s one of those things that can go either way.

Emanuel is sitting in his front yard in a children’s wading pool. He is wearing boxer shorts and sunglasses. He looks at me, nods, and disappears into his house. He comes back out dressed, with a camera strap slung over his shoulder like a bandolier.

Coach Crews’ pickup truck is parked behind the practice field. Emanuel holds the camera in his lap. He adjusts and re-adjusts the telephoto lens, spinning it back and forth as if it were a combination lock.

We know where he is going, but we will make certain. This is not the time for laziness, or slackhandedness. We have come too far to let the reins slip now. The mule will pull, especially if shown the whip.

Coach Crews comes out of the field house, scalp pink and scrubbed beneath the bristling crew cut. He moves as if devouring ground. I almost feel sorrow for him.

When he turns north and crosses the railroad tracks he seals his doom. We do not even have to follow him closely. If we wished, we could race ahead and be waiting for him.

It is her house. We have checked. It is a matter of public record, of deeds.

He is just getting out of his truck when we arrive. I park on the street, and we watch as he strides to where she kneels in the front yard, digging with a trowel. She stands, and wipes her hands on her cut-off shorts.

We wait five minutes, then creep close to the house. We hear them before we see them. We crouch down and peer over the lip of the bedroom windowsill.

Coach Crews mounts her like a he-goat. His hairy flanks pump like mammoth pistons. His pelt glistens. You can not help but watch.

When I finally look down I see we are standing in a bed of well-tended rhododendrons.

Emanuel fires off picture after picture. He does not take off his sunglasses.

We rush back to Emanuel’s home, to his darkroom in the basement. I watch his pale fingers in that red, charged light, moving against the darkness of the tray. The developer washes over the photographic paper like a vigorous tide, Coach Crews rising up, a dark leviathan summoned from the depths.

Twenty photographs, still slightly damp, are waiting in a manila envelope on the bench seat of his truck when he leaves her house. Clipped to them is a note explaining exactly what Coach Crews will and will not do. Even from a distance I can see the scarlet flush of blood race across that wide expanse of neck.

I spend the rest of the night at home. I sit on the couch and watch television with my mother. We watch a documentary about lions in Africa. When she falls asleep I cover her with a quilt.

Greta and I speak on the phone for a very long time. She must whisper, and asks me to do the same. She falls asleep and I do not know how to wake her. I am afraid of raising my voice, so I whisper that I love her, and gently hang up the phone.

3.

The next day passes quickly. I caution everyone in the morning to betray no sign of what is to come. We must draw no attention to ourselves.

We are students, I say. Simple sheep in the flock.

I make them repeat this themselves.

Greta and I play in the morning pep rally; BonBon, Cal, and Emanuel cheer. Meatloaf is served for lunch, which we eat in economic swoopings of our forks. We walk to and from class. We speak, talk, and move as if nothing is afoot.

The only noteworthy event occurs in gym. I am standing alone, doing nothing to draw attention to myself, when I feel a blossom of warmth travel down my spine. It centers on my back. I turn, slowly.

It is Coach Crews, fixing me with a most withering glare. I smile, and let him see it. We are supposed to be running wind sprints. I do not feel like running wind sprints today.

I walk lazily around. The others look at me, then look at Coach Crews. They do not understand.

Coach Crews understands. Oh yes.

We meet briefly after school and outline our plan. Cal will stay with Boll until we meet again tomorrow. Cal must stay, because he knows, down to the ounce, how much mass Boll will need. We will have a last dinner, a grand hurrah, before the football game begins. We will hustle Boll down to the field, girded for battle, and the crowd will deafen itself in their outpouring of joy.

I tell them I must retire, and attend to some important business. I cannot tell them that I must practice for my gig tonight. Only Greta knows, and that fills me with a most strange mixture of happiness and sadness. It is not something I have considered before, this nature of secrets, of keeping, and being kept.

I bid them farewell, and remind Greta that I will return for her. I look back and seize her in my eyes so that I will not miss her. I tell myself it will not be long. I almost believe it.

I do nothing but play for hours. I do not notice it has gotten dark, nor think a single conscious thought, until I finally rise, fingers aching and stiff. I am dressing in my best bluegrass finery when the phone rings.

There’s a problem, Greta tells me. Boll has stopped eating. He refuses to speak to anyone but you.

I finish getting dressed for the gig, throw my banjo case in the car. I yell my good-byes towards my mother, and drive quickly to school. They are standing outside the stout iron door like mourners, all downcast eyes and sagging chins. I nod grimly, and close the door behind me.

Boll has enveloped himself completely within the tarp, leaving only a small hole from which to breathe. I kneel beside him, address the hole. I lean close, feel the warm, damp breath rising out against my cheek.

Boll, I say.

No more, says Boll.

Nonsense.

I can’t. Please.

He shifts, and the surface of the tarp ripples, subsides.

I’m a monster, says Boll. You’ve made me monstrous.

Oh Boll, I sigh.

I shake my head. I collect myself, focus. It is a drawing inward. It is a silencing of all my disparate parts.

This is a moment of juncture. I must handle him carefully, like a glass lute strung with catgut. I must play him well, and ably.

I stare at the table beside him. There is an oval hand held mirror lying face up. It is pink, with plastic rosebuds affixed to its perimeter.

Boll, I say, Boll. Why, man, look at you. You’re beautiful, baby. You’re a piece of work.

I stand, stride back and forth.

You’re a masterpiece of Expressionism, a Dadaist wet dream. You’re the ideal, baby, the pinnacle, the most glorious pinnacle…

I’m fat, says Boll.

I shriek. I cut loose. I rage, throw dishes, spoons. I bang my head against the boiler pipes. They ring like church bells.

Boll pokes his jowled face out. His eyes glisten, and his nostrils quiver.

If you cry, I say, I will kill you my goddamn self. You are too beautiful to cry.

He begins to retreat, stops.

She could never love me, he says.

I stare at him. His eyes are round as saucers.

Come here, I say finally, holding out my hand.

He whimpers, closes his eyes.

Boll, I say.

He stands. The tarp slides off his shoulders like a velvet evening gown.

I am shocked at the sight of him. I do not show it. I am too fine an actor for that, but I must admit, it truly is shocking. It is. My God.

He is Boll, but not Boll. He looks as if he has been packed in wax, and held too close to a flame. For a moment, the slightest of nanoseconds, I wonder what it is we have done– the price, ach.

He takes a single step towards me and stops. I go to him.

I bring him close; I hold him. I wrap my arms as far as they will reach, and tell him to hang on. One more day, I tell him, and hold him as he cries. His bulk spills over me like wet, warm floodwaters.

Who showed him, I demand.

We have put him to bed for the night, with Cal to keep watch, and stand outside in the parking lot. BonBon and Emanuel stare at their feet. Greta is watching me with a most inscrutable expression.

Who.

BonBon clears his throat.

Emanuel points. It is Greta his finger points at.

She follows me as I walk to my car. I take long strides.

He asked, she says. He did.

I sit in the car and close my eyes. I close the door.

She stands outside and speaks to me. I roll down the window to hear her better.

Why are you so mad, she says. I don’t understand.

She takes a breath, exhales. I can imagine her standing there, her head slightly tilted, cocked.

Please don’t be mad, she says.

I open my eyes. She can never know the power the word please has over me now. If I keep anything from her, that is what I will keep.

We’re just so close, I say.

Can I come in?

I get out and open the door for her.

You can’t be mad at me. Please.

I close the door behind her carefully, with a firm hand.

Greta is lying with her head in my lap. The warmth of her rose-smelling hair heats my thigh. The windows are down. It is cold, but not too cold.

We are early, and sit parked behind the Why Not Bar. With the nose of the car pointed away from the bar, you can sit and look at a rolling expanse of cow pastures and trees. In the moonlight, with the neon of the bar cascading behind you, it is almost beautiful.

We sit and talk of nothing. We have patched up our differences, survived out first disagreement. Greta names our children. She decides we will own a dog and three cats, and that the smallest of the cats will be named Ezekial. She does not know whether we will shorten it to Zeke.

I am not sure what to do with my hands. I place one on her hip and she moves closer. She takes my other hand and places it against her neck. I feel her blood move within her. She is so very warm.

She moves against me. I trace the periphery of hidden skin. She opens and closes her mouth.

My fingertips are rough, callused, and I try to be light, to touch her with the barest piece of my fingers, the tips of the tips. It is not unlike other things, in that subtlety is richly rewarded.

She sits up, turns to me. Her tongue is in my mouth. It is not unpleasant.

Other things happen. Her sweater hangs on her wrist. I help her.

The door handle is pressed into the small of my back.

I try to imagine the water of the quarry. The coldness. Swimming in it, with that depth beneath you, the cold, dark floor of it sliding away. What rusting hulks are hidden below, ancient rusting cars, floorboards littered, the jaw of a tiger, boot-heel of a man. A woman’s compact, immaculate and small, reflecting.

Then something, a seizure, I am not sure. It is hard to say exactly what happens.

Somehow I fly backwards, and strike the door handle at the exact angle to send me spilling out. I would not believe it myself if it did not happen.

I have time to wonder if I am ill, and then she is there, slipping her sweater back on as she bends down to me. I am still lying half in, half out of the car door, trying to regain my breath.

Oh baby, she says, it’s okay. Please don’t feel bad.

She smoothes my hair. She adjusts my glasses.

Her fingernails feel as if they have been sharpened.

She is with me, so they allow her in despite her age. This is a night of promise. I will play well. Nay, I will play with a certain greatness, an ability in even my slightest gestures.

Because I will play for her, for Greta alone.

We do not play well at first. It is sloppiness, and I begin to burn. There is a drunken bearded man who keeps shouting for Wabash Cannonball. I imagine in excruciating detail the suffering perpetuated unto him.

The mandolin player keeps coming in too quickly, and I cannot get in behind him. We finally begin to swing and I break a string. A waitress drops an entire tray of drinks. And so on.

And then it comes, suddenly, with no warning. It comes in Cripple Creek, with the melodic style, all those scales. It surprises me, it rarely happens like this. There is nothing spontaneous about scales. Scales are all business and method. There is little room to shine amongst scales.

But my fingers begin to fly. I cannot say why. It infects us all. I roll into the next song, feel my eyes draw closed.

I try to fight it, to enjoy this moment and not lose myself. I want to engrave this feeling, this act, and keep it close to me, to feel the warmth.

My eyes shut.

The last thing I remember clearly is Greta sitting at her table, so beautiful, so removed from all that surrounds her.

Then people are clapping, shouting, beating upon tables, and much time has passed. I smile, and stumble around; I am wrung-out, drained. My shirt hangs wetly on my back, like a sloughing, second skin. I can barely take the picks off my fingers. My hands shake as I try to close the clasps of the banjo case.

Greta is helping me. I have to sit down. My head swims with colored lights.

Her arm is under mine. We are walking in the parking lot. I am lying on the cold, flat hood of my car. The stars seem to draw me upwards.

She drives very well. She concentrates fully, holds her hands high on the steering wheel. She leans slightly forward. All that is missing is the pink stub of tongue slipping out from between her pearled teeth.

I do not remember her helping me to my bed.

4.

It is late afternoon when she wakes me. At first I cannot believe this. It feels as if something has been stolen from me.

She explains it all, smiles at my confusion. She has taken care of all the details. We are dining with the others in two hours. Yes, Boll is fine. Yes, she has met my mother and they are getting along famously. Yes, I played wonderfully last night and no, none of the misfortune was my fault.

And yes, she loves me.

She has laid out clothes for me to wear.

We dress up in our best suits, scrub our faces. Greta wears a most stunning short black dress. I pin a carnation to her shoulder. It is by far the brightest flower the boiler-room has ever seen.

We bow our heads, grasp hands.

Boll, I say, closing my eyes.

He clears his throat. He starts to speak, stops.

God bless us, he says.

When he does not continue, I open my eyes, look up. Boll stares at Greta, then me. In the flickering candlelight his face is solid, pale. He closes his eyes, squeezes them shut.

God bless us in all things, he whispers. So that we may be victorious, in acts of love and in acts of war. Amen.

I eat as slowly as I can, and cannot remember being happier. We are like a family, all pointed to Boll, dressed in his pads and uniform, with his helmet arranged at his right elbow. I love myself, and love them all. The plan is almost complete, and things are happening far too quickly. I feel like this happiness is liquid, and runs through my hands. I would weep if I were prone to tears.

Greta gathers our plates. Only Boll is still eating.

Cal watches Boll like a hawk, checking his notebook with each bite. Boll lifts his fork of food. He places it within his mouth.

Stop, Cal says.

Boll places the fork down as if it were made of glass.

We break forth in the most thunderous of celebrations. Boll sits smiling in the midst of it like a graven idol.

I ask for a moment alone with Boll.

Greta and I change into our band uniforms, and meet the rest of the herd. We march to the football field, take our place in the stands.

And what we behold, lord.

Oh this night, it is all brightness and color, all brass and brashness, and loud, oh yes. The stands are packed; they are rocking with the stamping of feet. A walled city could not stand before this crowd. Do not think it could.

The entire town is here; it is a gathering. And those Hixonites, yea, they are here as well, sitting opposite us in the visitor stands. They defy us, ignore us, for they do not fear us yet. They have no reason to fear us. They have not yet seen Boll. They would be sacrificing their heathen goats if they had gotten the slightest glimpse of Boll, bones chattering fearfully in their skins.

It is all roaring, and we begin to play the school fight song. I have polished my tuba carefully, so it gives off a most brilliant light. It could spark a fire with the light it throws off.

I blow and we roar, and we add our voice to those around us, and the noise doubles, triples, and I wonder that I am not deaf.

And we roar louder when the players burst from the locker-room, in their burgundy uniforms. They look as if they are shod, hooves ringing like bells.

I look away because I cannot bear to see them. They are that beautiful.

I watch Coach Crews, as he scans the crowd, face strung with a frown. The muscles of his jaw coil. He finds me, pauses, passes on.

It is almost time for the kick-off. This is exactly as we have planned it.

We win the coin-toss, and elect to receive. The players race out onto the field and take their positions. The Hixon kicker stands with a bare foot, waiting to kick the ball.

The crowd hushes. The drummers start in. I can feel the bass notes strike deep within my vertebrae.

I hold myself still. I know what comes next.

Out of this lull comes Boll. He comes striding down the long hill leading from the school to the football field. Oh my God he comes, and comes in force.

BonBon waits in his truck, parked next to the field. As Boll approaches, BonBon tracks him with the spotlight we have installed. BonBon lights him up for all to see.

The crowd does not notice Boll at first. But then, like a brush fire, they begin to point and scream. They lose themselves completely in the apparition of him. They go crazy.

And Boll, God, Boll; I cannot even begin to describe him, his glory. He moves with a monstrous grace. It is like the earth itself is shifting.

It is not believable, but there he is; you cannot ignore him or reduce him. He is a great irreducible mass, and he moves with much gravity, creates his own gravity, yea, and we all are pulled behind him, whipping through cold, sucking space.

He strides down the hill, raises his arms above his head, hands clasped. He breaks through the line at the concession stands, makes his way to the sidelines, moving gently, as if blessing those who reach out to grasp him, to lay hands upon his magnificence.

He lumbers to where Coach Crews stands gaping. It is not possible, but the crowd roars even louder. When Greta turns to look back at me, she is weeping tears of perfect, distilled joy. They would taste of frankincense, seasoned with salt; they would hold their warmth for days.

The Hixon kicker draws back his gnarled, scaly foot, sends the football arcing skyward. The game begins.

It is brutal, all jostling and the dull thudding of flesh. It is not beautiful; there is nothing beautiful about high school football in this state. It is about battering, and the meeting of helmets. Winning is matter of enforcing your will, driving yourself forward, always forward.

And therein lies the beauty of Boll.

He plays like hell incarnate. He wreaks havoc, pounding men into the ground, and standing on their helmets. On offense he takes the ball and looks for someone to crush. On defense, he is a great wall of flesh, impossible to flank.

He knocks three Hixonites unconscious in the first quarter. One is carried away bleeding from the ears.

It is a war for Boll, and he fights it as such.

And even Coach Crews is magnificent, his broad chest out-thrust, tossing his chin like a stallion. Oh he rages, rages, patrolling the sidelines, shouting, rough-voiced, proud. But Hixon, Christ, they will not go away meekly. By all means they should, they should simply go gently into this glorious night, but no, nay, they resist, they struggle. Perhaps it is that heathen strength, some draught of blood, their mother’s love, but they begin to exert themselves, to flex.

They have a long row of substitutes waiting in fresh, lily-white uniforms, and they send them in as fast as Boll can smite them. It becomes a war of attrition, and they have the numbers.

And Boll, poor Boll, he begins to flag. He is carrying us, carrying us all, and the load begins to wear, to sag. He is slow to rise, and his great, bull head drops as if it is crowned with lead.

We rage, and the crowd rages, and we try to pick him up, to revive him, to raise him up upon a tumult of noise. And lo, it appears to work, he rises, he bellows, charges. He gives himself, all of himself, and when the gun goes off to end the half, he falls to his knees in the very picture of supplication.

Somehow we are leading by three points at halftime. It is a miracle in itself.

We march to the field and play. I slip away on the walk back to the stands, and run to Boll. He is lying on his back behind the bench. Cal is kneeling with him, holding his hand.

How is he, I say.

Tired, Cal says.

Boll nods, unable to speak.

Hang in there, baby, just one more half to go.

Boll whispers something I cannot hear. I bend over, so that my ear is touching his facemask.

Emancipation, he whispers.

His breath smells of licorice.

I make it back to my place in the stands just in time. Greta squeezes my arm as I pass, shows me the slightest hint of immaculate tooth. I raise the tuba, feel it settle itself upon me. I watch Coach Crews and two others hoist Boll to his feet like a side of beef. The second half begins.

Oh, but it is hard, so hard to watch now, from the first cracking of helmets. Boll is empty, flagging, with nothing else to give. He plays magnificently for brief stretches, but is slower and slower to rouse. The Hixonites swarm him under, chipping away, always returning. Boll shrugs them away with the slightest twitch of his arm, but two replace the one he has cast off. They are multiplying and Boll, poor Boll, begins to shrink, exhausted.

Coach Crews rests him, tries to run the clock. We cling to a one point lead going into the final quarter. The Hixon crowd crows, begins to swagger. They can smell blood in the air. We match them, nay, we out-roar them, but it is all effort, all rolling of the stone uphill. Greta looks up at me and all I can do is shake my head. It rends my heart to see the look that floods her face.

The Hixon quarterback throws a long, arcing spiral. I gnash my teeth, howl at the outrage of it, and watch as the effeminate, spindle-shanked receiver catches it for a touchdown. We are trailing now, by six points.

Boll has no choice, he must play. He is covered in sweat and mud, and not a small amount of blood. He has to be helped to his feet after each play. The Hixon crowd jeers, thumbing their aquiline noses. I drown them with my tuba, but they are not cowed. They come back, they keep coming back.

It is late, so late, and the clock keeps running. The clock has turned against us now; we are behind, and the clock flees, shows us its pale back. We get the ball but can do nothing. Boll can barely stand, much less run.

And Hixon, Hixon has the ball back, and they are running out the clock. They are only ten yards from the endzone but they do not try to score, nay, they just simply run straight head, milking the clock, that traitorous, godforsaken clock. Coach Crews calls our last time out with twelve seconds to play. This will be the last play.

The players stand huddled together, and I do not know, perhaps someone inadvertently struck me in the face, because my eyes are watering, and my cheeks are wet.

The cheerleaders yell, trying to rouse the crowd, the players. It is like pouring a thimbleful of water on a raging fire. Boll lies on his back, as the coaches work to revive him, kneading his flesh like dough.

The cheerleaders fall silent, pom-poms drooping, wilted.

From the silence a noise, a sharp whistling. The tune is discordant, yet it moves, stirs. There is some force behind it, some raw will. People stop, turn.

Greta is playing, alone, her clarinet a voice from the wilderness, calling. She turns, faces me. She plays for me, her eyes steady, fixed. My throat constricts, and I cannot breathe. I hold my tuba at an angle, turn my head so that I can see myself, my blurred reflection. I look back down at Greta, and she pauses, smiles around the reed.

Something breaks inside of me. I know what must be done.

I begin to scream, exhorting them, lashing out at everyone around.

We have one last play, I scream to them, and we will by God play. We will play for Boll, and play for us all. If we are damned, cursed to lose, then so be it; we will be damned and know that we have done all we can do.

And they all leap to it, and it is no song I know, no song we have learned but everyone, everyone striving, bursting all at once. It is not pleasant, but somehow it carries a certain power, an energy that rises, builds. It grows, and feeds upon itself.

And the noise of it reaches out, and heads turn, and one of those heads is Boll’s. He stumbles up, shakes his head, as if there is a nest of hornets inside. He pounds his chest. He runs to the field, sets himself in his stance, his breath rushing from his helmet like some tempestuous storm, cyclonic, full of rage.

And I am blowing hard, and my head is swimming, and I see the play, in such detail: the Hixon quarterback taking the snap from the center and trying, trying to simply fall forward, but there is something there, a mass he bounces off of, and that mass is Boll. Boll raging, devastating their line, crashing amongst them.

And the quarterback should fall, all he has to do is fall down with the ball, but Boll moves to him and sweeps him up, battering him with his meaty arms, nearly decapitating him, and the ball, oh Christ, the ball is free, and all Boll has to do is pick it up and run.

And he is running, so slow, but churning, with a massive power behind him, propelling him so that the defenders hit him and are cast aside, like so many twigs, swept before him, around him, after him, in a great swirling maelstrom of color.

And I am out of my seat and running too, blowing my tuba, because Boll needs help, he needs me, he cannot run that distance alone, cannot possibly run that far alone, with him so tired, and having done so much and yes, it is natural. I must help Boll, I must, it is what one does, and something only I can do for him, for us, and I am at the sidelines. I break through the players and run up the sideline, parallel to Boll, blowing for all I am worth.

And it is like a path clears for him, and the way is apparent, Boll rumbling, stumbling forward, ball cradled like an egg in his arms, as he runs up the sidelines, runs so slow, so impossibly slow but he is doing it, he is clear, and the last Hixon defender charges him, the last man between Boll and the goal line, and Boll leans forward, bracing, lowers that battering head, that monstrous, noble brow, and the defender is coming on, he is narrowing the distance, he is coming to meet Boll, he is coming hard, oh Christ, he is.

And my feet tangle, I slip, blow one last note, and fall, twisting, trying to see, but the tuba holds me pinned, and all I can smell is the rich, fertilized turf, and the tuba is heavy, so suddenly heavy, and I hear the concussion of the impact, a devastating crack, and then, then, the most glorious roar I have ever heard in my life, a roar that fills the wide expanse of sky whirling above my head, a roar you could build a house upon.

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