Burning (2 page)

And neither could the girls; I guess there’s something about suffering that turns chicks on.

We drank our beers and didn’t say much for a while, just watched the sky as clouds began to roll in, slate gray and smokelike and not thick enough to offer any real hope of rain.

It was Hog Boy, of course, who broke the silence.

“Knock, knock,” he said.

Pete rolled his eyes and refused to bite, but I decided to throw him a bone.

“Who’s there?” I asked.

“Ben.” He grinned.

This couldn’t be going anywhere good. But I replied gamely, “Ben who?”

“Ben over and lick my ass,” he said, and snorted.

Pete shook his head. “Nice, Hog Boy.”

“You’re just jealous you didn’t think of it.”

“Hog Boy, I’ve heard versions of that same joke about a thousand times. You didn’t make it up. You couldn’t make anything up.”

I laughed. I was going to miss these guys.

We shot the shit while we drank our beers. Hog Boy told us his favorite story, the one about the chick he’d met last summer at Burning Man. I gave the story about a fifty percent chance of being true.

“It was better than Christmas! Naked chicks everywhere, tits flying, a fucking
cornucopia
of drugs and booze. Burning Man was, like, exactly what you’d get if you looked inside my sick little fantasy world. I shit you not, there’s no place like it.”

Pete and I had to take Hog Boy’s word for it. Of the three of us, he was the only one with parents permissive enough to let him go.

Other than the gypsum mine, our town didn’t have a lot going for it. There was Burning Man, though.

Picture this. Gypsum, Nevada, was home to just under five hundred people. Burning Man, a weeklong event atop the playa just twenty minutes outside our town, had attracted over fifty thousand people last year. Fifty
thousand
. They show up—artists, musicians, druggies, hippies, ravers, nudists—from all over the world, they park themselves on the playa the week before Labor Day, and they party for seven days straight. On the Saturday before Labor Day—two
days before they close up camp and drive away, back to their real lives for another year—they burn an enormous wooden effigy. That’s Burning Man.

It was another reason some of the Gypsum families were still in town—to keep our local store open and make a few more bucks while we still could.

It made sense that Hog Boy thought Burning Man sounded like heaven. Ever since we were kids he’s been the one to try and get the party started, smooth talking the girls in hopes of getting them to show him their panties. He was a social animal. His family—like mine—was relocating to Reno, just about a hundred miles from Gypsum. Now that he’d graduated high school, Hog Boy would be looking for full-time work.

“She was painted hot pink, all of her, and the way she moved …” Hog Boy shook his head, reminiscing, maybe, or losing himself in his own fantasy. “She was crazy for me, too. Couldn’t keep her hands off me. Course, who could blame her?”

Pete and I shared a glance. His doubtful expression mirrored my feelings exactly. A sexy, naked, painted chick desperate to get her hands on
Hog Boy
?

This was the last year the three of us would ever be like this, out here in the desert, practically walking distance from the festivities. I could almost feel the pull of them, the fifty thousand outsiders just down the road, people who had come to our playa from all over the
planet
practically. It was in the air—the migration, the invasion, whatever you want to call it, all those people—and nearly half of them women.

“I still don’t see how you talked your parents into letting you go to Burning Man,” Pete said, his voice tinged with envy. “I mean, don’t they have any idea what goes on out there?”

Hog Boy shrugged. “I can be very convincing,” he said. “And I had a fake ID. But this year I don’t need one. I’m eighteen—we all are. We should totally go.”

But even as he said it some of the wind seemed to go out of his sails. Admission to Burning Man was $360 a ticket. Pretty steep even when times weren’t so lean; with the mine shutting down and the impending move on everybody’s mind, the three of us shelling out a combined thousand bucks to go to a festival of wackos sounded far-fetched, even to Hog Boy’s ever-hopeful ears. So close, but still a world away from us.

“What a bitch,” he mumbled. “I fucking hate being poor.”

No argument from me and Pete. Of course, as we nodded our agreement and tipped up our beers for the last sips, a pang of guilt shot through me. Because even though my pockets were as empty as Hog Boy’s and Pete’s, there was a gigantic difference between their situations and mine.

A scholarship.

There’s not a lot to do in Gypsum, but there’s a hell of a lot of room to do it. I came by running naturally: My parents had both been on their high school’s track-and-field teams in Reno. That’s where they met and got married, and where they made the decision to move to Gypsum when the mine was booming.

It’s not bragging to say that I’m fast. It’s just true. My
times speak for themselves. It’s a good thing I’m into running and not some sport that requires a lot of equipment, like lacrosse or football. Our tiny high school in Gypsum has never had a budget—or a student population—large enough to support those kinds of programs.

And one of the guys my dad went to high school with went to UCSD back in the day, so when my dad sent him my times, he gave us some suggestions about qualifying for a scholarship. But UCSD doesn’t give enough scholarship money to its athletes to cover even close to all its costs. Luckily I had good grades, too, and of course the fact that our entire town was closing down must have impressed the scholarship committee, because all I have to pay for the first year is my bus ticket.

I tried not to talk about this stuff too much with Pete and Hog Boy. No reason to rub salt in their wounds. Hog Boy would end up working at a gas station or a mini-mart; maybe Pete would get lucky and get a job at a casino.

The beers were gone. We’d brought a six-pack—two cans each—and that was enough to take the edge off, I guess. Hog Boy, though—he should never drink. It always turns him into an even bigger asshole than he already is. You wouldn’t think that two beers could have any effect on a guy his size, but maybe the beers are just an excuse to let his inner douche bag really shine.

After he finished his second beer, he smashed the can flat with his foot and started kicking it around, trying to keep it up in the air like a hacky sack.

“How’s your girl, Petey-boy?” he asked, even though we’d
all seen Melissa just before we headed out to the mine to skate. She worked at the store in town, and this week she was too busy to do much else since Burning Man was in full swing and each day brought new busloads of half-baked partiers jonesing for Twinkies and soda.

I knew from the twitch of Pete’s jaw that Hog Boy was skating on thin ice by starting in on Melissa. Pete was probably going to marry her, and he didn’t like Hog Boy opening his fat mouth about her.

“She sure is pretty, that Melissa.” Hog Boy was singsonging now. Sometimes I hated that fucker. It wasn’t really what he said so much as how he said it.

“Uh-huh,” said Pete. I watched his fingers curl into a fist and relax again.

“Too bad she doesn’t have a sister,” said Hog Boy. “A twin sister. Boy, if she did … I sure would like to dig into a piece of that pie.”

Pete was up in a flash, and he leaned forward menacingly.

Hog Boy laughed and held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “You misunderstand me, my friend. Not
Melissa
, I would never
dream
of sticking it to
Melissa
, she’s
your
girl. Just … you know, hypothetically, if Melissa had a twin. I’d be happy to stick it to her
twin
, you know … if she had one.”

I had stood up, too, though I didn’t remember doing so, and I had angled myself between Pete and Hog Boy just in case Pete lunged at him. I knew who would win that fight—Hog Boy, no doubt in my mind. Pete’s eyes may be smoldering, but Hog Boy knows how to throw a punch, and even
though he has a hard-packed gut already, it doesn’t seem to slow him down any.

Luckily, Pete decided to see the humor in the situation. “Hog Boy,” he said, “it’s a good thing that fantasy world of yours is so rich, because you’re
never
going to get laid in real life.”

“I told you, the pink chick at Burning Man last summer …”

I left them to bicker it out. The situation was defused, I could feel the difference in the air, so I kicked my board back onto its wheels and meandered around the shipping dock, turning smooth, wide curves, just paddling because there was nothing better to do, enjoying the sound of the wheels against the cement.

There was more moisture in the air now, or maybe it just felt that way since there was more moisture in me. But the clouds seemed thicker, too, like maybe they were considering turning into something more like rain. The weather here is fast to change. I knew that just because it had been sunny a couple of hours ago, that was no guarantee that there couldn’t be a storm before tonight.

I looked back at Hog Boy and Pete. They were playing kick the can together now, argument forgotten, and laughing together about something I hadn’t heard.

I skated over toward them. “Hey,” I said. “You guys about ready to head back to town?”

Hog Boy looked up at me, still laughing. “You’re still a goofy-footed bastard, aren’t you?”

Hog Boy is one of those people who derives pleasure from pointing out any differences he might happen to notice. So I ride with my right foot forward instead of my left. Big frigging deal.

“Always have been, always will be,” I said. “You guys ready to go?”

“I wonder,” Hog Boy said to Pete in his best pseudo-intellectual voice, “if there is any sort of positive correlation between being goofy foot and being a homo.”

The smile dropped off Pete’s face. “Ben,” Hog Boy said, still enjoying himself, “maybe you can shed some light for us. Is your little brother goofy foot, too?”

And that was when the school counselor’s deep-breathing technique stopped being effective. It seemed amazing to me that Hog Boy could
still
get off on pushing that particular button. Un-frigging-believable. Just as I had stepped between Pete and Hog Boy earlier, now Pete tried to wedge himself between the two of us. But I pushed him aside.

“You opened your fat mouth one time too many, Hog Boy,” I said, and then I split open my knuckle on his front teeth.

It hurt like a bitch, but Hog Boy just stood there laughing like an idiot as blood trickled down from his lip. Then he rushed me, his refrigerator-like body knocking me hard to the ground. I felt the back of my head connect with the cement, and sharp pain radiated through me. Later, when I was alone and calm again, I’d be able to rationally explain Hog Boy’s drive to piss me off. He was angry that I was going somewhere better than he was, and he wanted me to
pay for it. But flat on my back at the shipping dock, I wasn’t thinking in words. Just a red explosion of anger, and reaction, and a desire to break something. Preferably Hog Boy’s fat face.

I brought my hands up to push Hog Boy off me. He’s like a heavy wheelbarrow: hard to get going, but once he’s in motion he just rolls along. I flipped him on his back and hit him again, this time in the temple, and Hog Boy wasn’t laughing now. I wanted to hit him again. And again.

But Pete grabbed me then, underneath my armpits, and hauled me up.

“All right, all right, enough,” he said, and he shook me.

Hog Boy lumbered to his feet and brought his hand to his temple. For a minute I didn’t know if he was going to attack me or not, and I could feel myself all coiled up inside, ready to react,
hoping
he’d come at me so I could fight some more and knowing that Pete couldn’t hold me back if I really wanted to get loose. But then that shit-eating grin spread across Hog Boy’s face and he said, “Damn, Stanley, you’re getting strong. Big Bad Hog Boy sure is proud of you.”

There was an instant when it still could have gone either way, in spite of Hog Boy’s half-assed attempt at making peace. It was up to me. And even though there was a roar in my head that drove me forward, I forced myself to take deep, clearing breaths, and I felt myself slowly unwind.

Three years earlier I wouldn’t have been able to control myself. But then I hadn’t had so much to lose.

I wasn’t ready to smile back, though, not yet. I shook Pete’s hands off me. “Not my brother,” I said. My voice was
quiet but clear. “Talk whatever shit you want about me and Petey here, but not James.”

“Hey, hey, whatever, man,” said Hog Boy. “You know I just like to joke. But okay, I won’t mention the little man, if it means so much to you.” He held out his hand. After a minute, I shook it.

“No hard feelings, right?”

I nodded. No hard feelings. What was the point, anyway? Just a few more days, and then I’d be gone. Hell, I might never see Hog Boy again.

We climbed into Pete’s piece-of-shit pickup that his dad had left him. I took shotgun, forcing Hog Boy to clamber into the open bed with the skateboards and our cooler. He didn’t say anything, just shook his head and laughed his Hog Boy laugh before swinging himself up into the back.

Pete managed to get the engine going after just a couple of tries—better than usual—and we pulled away from the shipping dock. The cab of the truck was sweltering. I felt like I was sitting in an oven until the truck got moving and the wind pushed through the open windows. It cooled down a little then, enough to make it bearable, but just barely. The road back to Gypsum is straight and flat, and we watched the town grow larger as we sped toward it.

There it was—all our lives, everything we knew, just days from becoming a ghost town, a memory, a graveyard. And we were driving back toward it. What did that make us? Mourners? Or ghosts?