Boys of Life (3 page)

Before I knew it he was touching my dick with the tip of his tongue. He ran his tongue up and down tfu 4 it, and then he-

slid it in his mouth.

□ PAUL RUSSELL

I'd never felt anything like that—before I knew what'd hit me, whoosh! I gave out this huge groan, and there I was shooting off in his mouth. But he didn't seem to mind, he just kept going at it harder than ever until finally he came up for air.

"Oh man," I said to him. It was like somebody'd gone and knocked the breath out of me. I was sorry I'd come in his mouth without telling him I was going to—I thought he'd be upset. "I didn't mean to do that, really I didn't," I said.

He wiped his mouth but kept on crouching in front of me. Then he started to laugh. He couldn't stop laughing—and I had to laugh too, so hard it was almost like crying. Laughing at how crazy it was, what'd just happened with us.

"You know," Carlos said when he finally stopped laughing enough to get his words out, "I've got you now. I've got you."

"What do you mean?" I had to ask. Suddenly I thought—maybe he's crazy. Maybe he's some kind of lunatic.

"Here's a scientific fact for you," he said. "A person's semen contains every piece of information about that person. It's all coded in there, genetically. And you know what? I think that's miraculous, Tony, I really do." Then he started laughing all over again. All I could think of was to grab both his ears and ease that laughing mouth of his back down onto my dick, which hadn't stopped being hard even after I came.

That shut him up, and it felt great to be inside there again. I started pumping into him, pushing my hips against his face till I came again.

This time Ik- jumped up and sort of scooped me into bis arms, and

re 1 knew it he'd kissed me, It was pretty surprising Ins tongue

just pushed on in, and it was like he had B mouth all gooey with snot.

c )nh it m t, I figured oui in .1 flash.

I pulled away from him. 1 didn't want a mouthful ol

come, even it it was my own. It tasted slimy and disgusting. And 1 • KtU like a gu> trying to kiss me, either. "Why'd you go and lid. I4 ( >h, I don't know." Carlos was still clinging onto my shoulders and talking right In m\ race. "Passion of the moment ["hat's whai I love He lei go of me and did this little dance

"All that I bet I * ould mal e you t ome three tunes

In a n m if I « u

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I was getting back into my pants and it was mv turn to laugh. "Any more and it'll tall off," 1 told him.

I wasn't feeling bad or anything. In tact, 1 was feeling pretty great, even if he had tried to kiss mc .

Back in the van, driving back to town, he didn't have much to say—but every once in a while Carlos would start laughing to himself, like he was remembering something—or like some little kid who's pleased with himself he just doesn't know what to do.

"Well," he said. "All in a day's work. Anything else 1 can do for you?" We were driving down Main Street, and I was looking at everything thinking, It all looks the same, it's like nothing happened to change anything. And I guess I felt glad about that.

"You could buy me," I said to Carlos, "a bottle of Canadian Club whisky."

I knew it was straight out of the blue, but what the hell?

"A what?" he said.

"Yeah," I told him. "A bottle of whisky." I pointed out the Main Street liquor store, which was the only thing in downtown Owen that stayed open in the evenings.

"Never a dull moment with you kids," Carlos said. He swung the van over to the curb and hopped out. The van was still running, the keys were in the ignition. "Now don't try to drive off or anything," he told me. I don't know where he thought I was going to go.

When he came back out, he handed me the bottle in its paper bag. "Notice," he said, "how I'm not asking any questions."

I just smiled at him. I was feeling pretty content. "It's time tor me to go home," I said.

My mom's car was in the drive. We stopped by the steps that led up to the trailer, and I pulled the laundry bags from the hack of the van and hefted them onto the steps so they wouldn't get in the mud. "Thanks for the ride," I told Carlos. It didn't seem like the right thing to say, but I couldn't think of anything else. I couldn't believe everything that'd happened.

"So—see you around," he said, like the whole thing had been kind of amusing to him.

1 stood there watching the taillights o\ his van down the road. Then they were gone and it was just me. I felt incredible and scared at the same time, and completely empty too. I took a swig trom the whisky bottle and then stashed it down under the trailer, behind one of the

□ PAUL RUSSELL

concrete block foundations. Then for about half an hour I just sat on the steps beside the black plastic garbage bags that were tied up to keep the laundry dry inside them. It was chilly out there, the clothes I was wearing got soaked though with the rain, my hair was all stringy and falling down in my face. But that was okay, that was what I wanted.

□ PAUL RUSSELL

that—I've always had to respect people who felt they could be indifferent about things. Not that I see anybody much—this protective custody stuff gets pretty exclusive. There's this one guard, Earl, who comes to see me, and we've gotten so we talk. I'm not a suspicious sort o\ person, so I don't really care what he's up to with his visits. Maybe they pay him to talk to me on the off-chance I might say something, but I don't think so. I think he's just curious about me. I think, of all the people here, he's the one who thinks he's got something in common with me. Or maybe I should say he's worried he does.

I'm not sure what I mean by saying that. Earl's a regular family man and everything. But four different times now, he's brought me this picture of his two kids. He never says anything, he just shows it to me, like it's always the first time he's showed it to me. Maybe he doesn't remember he's showed it to me before, though that's a little hard to believe.

They're about seven or eight, his kids—twins but not identical twins. It's odd—whenever he shows me that picture and I look at it, I can tell he's watching me. Like he's trying to figure something out. Like that picture's going to have some kind ot effect on me and Hail's ^oini! to be able to tell by looking at me what the effect it^ having is. But I don't think he ever gets the effect he wants, and the reason he keeps showing me the picture is, he knows there's something there and he's desperate to find it. At least I think that's what it is. Maybe he's lust weird—he's a prison guard after all.

I said those kids were twins, though von wouldn't realh guesa it unless Earl told you. They've got sandy hair, but that's all you can

really tell about them be

It's nut such a ^reat picture, it's |ust .1 snapshot. But 1 guest the

ut pictures I learned from Carlos is how the\ always say a !<'• «mii the person who took them than about the people

who're in them.

trios would s,i\. About everything, even about

>>t his kids. So siiu e Earl took the pi< tun-.

anything about Earl's little K>\s, hut 1 know it him. And I thmk I i .in definitely say tins Earl's scared foi Ins kids.

hat that | i> " me loud and ( leaf I he\ 'te at a sll

ntei. and one oi them's standini 1 m ith his head i n ©Iced to

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He's holding up his left hand to shield his eyes from the bright sun,

while the other kid's perched up at the top ol the sliding board JU8<

ready to go down the chute on his stomach. The) don't seem aware oi

each other, those two kicU—like each one think> he's the only one in the picture.

I never know what to say. I say Stupid stuff like "cute kids." and then Earl tells me they favor their mother, or that he's sending them to Olive Branch Christian Academy because the public Schools*re no good anymore. He says to me, like it's a secret only him and me are supposed to know, "Tony, the problem's not drugs OI blacks or His-panics per se, the problem's people who come here not understanding fundamental American values." He always leans close to me when he talks like that, and lowers his voice even though of course there's nobody to hear. He says, "This country's letting itself go to rum because it's just opened its borders wide to anything that wants to come through. A country that can't control its own borders, now where's that country going to be?"

I never have much to say to all that. I guess my life's pretty much been one big open border. And anyway, it's what you'd expect from Earl. It's what I grew up with in Owen and it things hadn't been different, it's probably what I'd be like now. There'rc even times when 1 wish I was still like that—everything would be a lot easier and clearer. Anyway, who's a murderer to go saying to Earl's tacc how it's bad attitudes like his that start to break a country down, not people coming in across its borders because they don't have any other place to go?

But back to that photo. I think it's iM tor some prison guard to be showing a murderer pictures of his kids. I think Earl looks at that picture and he knows there's something there he's not getting. Then he looks at me, and I think somehow he's pleading with me to tell him what it is. That's why he's so interested in me— he thinks it you kill somebody then you know things other people go rhrouuh life EM knowing. Terrible things that a man who's got kids needs to know it he's going to keep those kids sate.

Maybe that's why, last week, instead of showing me th.it photo again, he went and pulled out a newspaper article he had all folded up in his wallet.

"So what's that. 7 " I asked.

"Something I thought you might wani he said.

I wasn't too surprised—it wasn't the first rime in mv lite I evei my name in print. "Tony Blair's long nightmare 1- over," it Started

□ PAUL RUSSELL

"and another one begins." I read a little ways into it, and it made me pretty sick to my stomach what they said about me. Not that it was a bunch of lies, but just that they didn't have a clue. So I told Earl that. I told him what really snared me was how whoever wrote that article thought they could figure something out about me—like they had some kind of inside information.

t4 I got a drawer full of clippings if you ever want to see them," he told me. "Newspapers, magazines."

"I've got no interest," I said.

"I'm keeping them if you ever want them. I made a sort of album— you know, to keep things straight for you."

It struck me as sort of creepy, him pasting away at that scrapbook in his spare time. I could just see him sitting around the kitchen table at night, sipping coffee—I'm sure Earl doesn't drink, I'm sure his wife won't let him. I guess it's a free country, though—if that's what he wants to do.

I asked him, Did he read those articles?

"I read them all the time," he told me. "There're some things you just can't get out of your head."

"Tell me about it," I said.

"I still can't figure you," he said. "Nobody can."

Which made me laugh. "There's nothing to figure," I said. "I mean, once you know. It's just that nobody ever asked me my opinion

about any o\ it."

Earl didn't say anything to that. He jusl shuffled off in thai Earl

way ot his. t \nd I didn't think any more about it till about a week later he brought me this spiral notebook and a blue ballpoint pen. lie said he'd been thinking about it, and he thought it everybody else was going

i say, then maybe 1 should write my own side ol it too. He ire it would be fascinating, and he thought I could sell it Ine tor lots ot money "Wl Mm like me going to <\^ with lota oi money'" 1 asked

bun.

"Well then," he- said, "write n to nil the truth."

I itl. I hough there's just one othei thing I want to with n. ["he ummei when I was fourteen I got this completely iti

e little brown things about the had man rawl up Into my dt< k and gci l< 11

m there. It made this itch I couldn't get at; kept mc squirming ill

BOYSOFLIFE D

summer long. All I could think about was that rick getting tarter and fatter. I could feel it getting fatter, its little brown body bloating up like you see ticks on dogs, rill it was a big gray pellet .ill mushy with blood. Every nme I pissed I kept expecting to somehow be able to piss

it out— but I couldn't because of course nothing was up there.

Which is how I feel these days, only the rick isn't stuck in the slit of my dick anymore—it's crawled all the way to my heart. 1 can feel ir

hanging there, attached to that blood pump, feeding o\i it and itching me like hell. But no matter what I do I can't get at ir.

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he up and left us, a couple of years later when I was eleven 01 so, 1 knew why Pd felt that way.

With no more Red River Valley, I was pretty much on my own-bur when I was fourteen, I made this great discovery. I remember that afternoon: I was in the trailer watching after my two little sisters, who

at the rune were about tour and five, and because I was feeling restless

I decided to have a shot ot Mom's whisky to maybe relax me. I knew

she kepr it in the cupboard and did shots oi it at nighl before she went to sleep—but somehow it just never occurred to me to try some myself. It was bitter-tasting, but nice to feel go down warm in my throat, ,md then spread out in my stomach. I decided to have another swallow, and then atter a tew minutes I was feeling so ^okk\ I had another, and bd I knew it I was drunk.

I remember walking outside—it was a cloudy day in the middle of summer and the green ot" the trees about knocked me over, it seemed so close and heavy and I couldn't get enough ot looking at those trees and taking it all in. Then I came inside and tell asleep on the sofa, which was the first ^ood sleep I'd had in, it seemed like, years.