Disappearance at Devil's Rock (14 page)

They inspected the spot down near the base of the rock. Arnold had claimed what they were looking at was the devil's footprint. There were two round spots, the heel and ball of the foot presumably, and then four long scratches, or gouges, above the spots.

Josh said, “That's not anything. Everyone knows the devil had hooves, not, what, claws?”

Luis: “Everyone knows the devil has your dick.”

Tommy: “No idea what that means. But I like it.”

Josh went on critiquing the anatomical validity of the footprint. Luis had to admit, it had looked more realistic, more possible, the other afternoon than it did now.

Tommy filled a pocket with small stones and twigs then climbed
up to the top of the rock. Josh and Luis followed. Tommy grabbed Josh and pulled him toward the gnarly tree, trying to push him up against it.

Tommy said, “Go ahead. Touch it, touch it,” in some unidentifiable accent.

When Luis tried to help Tommy double-team Josh, it was a trap. Tommy let Josh go, who spun away awkwardly, landing on his hip, one foot dangling into the split (Josh shouted from behind them: “Assholes! I could've fell in!”), and Tommy wrapped his arms around Luis and kept saying, “Touch it, touch it!” in that weird voice. Luis put up a good fight, but he had no leverage. Tommy was already up underneath Luis's arms, lifting him up. He couldn't keep his feet on the rock and he lost, his chest and shoulder pinned up against the tree, and pinned hard.

Luis said, “Okay, okay. Goddamn it. Get off!”

Josh came to his rescue, jamming two hard fingers into Tommy's side (“Ow! Don't taze me, bruh!”) and the two boys muscled Tommy's back into the tree. Then it was Josh's turn to be pushed against it, because fair was fair.

After wrestling, they sat with their legs dangling over the edge of the split, and they tossed the stones and twigs Tommy had brought up, trying to hit an assortment of targets, including ants that were climbing the rock face.

Arnold arrived a few minutes later with more beer hidden inside a brown paper bag. Despite the heat and humidity, Arnold still wore the same pair of jeans with the long, floppy cuffs. He had on a plain black T-shirt this time. It was too big for him, the sleeves drooping to his elbows and the bottom of the shirt sinking almost to the tops of his thighs. He had a green Boston Celtics hat, worn backward, the oversized bill sticking out behind his head like a ledge.

“Gentlemen! You look thirsty.”

Josh and Tommy exchanged are-we-really-doing-this-again? looks. Luis laughed at them, his first hangover—a headache that felt like there was another, bigger head inside of his trying to push its way out—now forgotten, and said, “I know I am.”

Arnold gave Luis a beer and a fist-pound to punctuate the exchange. Luis paced quick circles on the top of the rock, too excited to sit still.

They drank, joked around, and talked, and Arnold fit in so easily, to the point where he started anticipating what joke or friendly put-down was next. Arnold also picked up on their
hardo
lingo and the accompanying hand signal, using both perfectly, like he'd always done it. Luis marveled that Arnold had not once talked about what he did when he was their age, and that he had yet to place Luis and his friends in an arbitrary age hierarchy like high school kids and other adults would normally do. Everything Arnold said to them was about the present, their inclusive, shared present. He was and wanted to be a part of their group, and Luis couldn't have been happier.

The conversation shifted to zombie contingency plans, as it generally did when Tommy was around, and Arnold's prescience gained momentum, started getting strange. Josh was being annoying again, overreacting (or acting drunk because maybe he actually drank some of the beer this time and didn't dump it out), shouting a long, drawn-out “Whoa!” to everything Arnold said.

Tommy was more straightforward and asked how Arnold guessed that Luis wanted to knock out the stairs to the second floor of his house and that Josh wanted to hole up at a school when the zombies attacked.

Arnold said, “Well.” He scratched the side of his face. “I can see things.”

“Really. No, really?” Tommy laughed like it all was a joke.

“Yeah. Seriously. It's not there all the time, you know? But some
times I can see things as—as they are, if that makes sense. Or as they were. Or as they will be. I know, it's weird, but it's true. I'm a, uh, seer.” He titled his beer can at Luis and added, “It's runs in the family. My uncle, the Rev, he was a seer, too. And good news. I see great things for you guys.”

Josh said in a bad imitation of Luis's voice, “I'll drink to that, yo,” and giggled.

Tommy: “Chirps!”

Luis: “Now I hate myself as much as I hate you.”

Josh choked and coughed midsip, and beer dribbled all down his front. “Ah, man. Now I'm gonna smell like beer. I can't walk into my house like this.”

Luis looked at Arnold and said, “Didn't see that coming did you, seer?”

Arnold: “Seer sees a drinking problem.”

Tommy and Luis yelled “Ooooh!” and pointed and laughed at Josh.

The laughter gave way to an awkward lull. They nursed their beers, everyone unsure of what to say next with the odd seer revelation out there. Luis wondered if Arnold regretted saying anything about it. Was Arnold being serious, or was he setting them up for a big joke? Either way, it made Luis wonder who Arnold was and what did he want from them?

Luis asked for more proof of Arnold's “seership.” It came out somewhere between accusatory and wiseass. He didn't mean it that way. He only wanted to keep the conversation or joke, whichever it was, going. Arnold looked at Luis with narrowed eyes and a titled head, like the quip stung, and Luis instantly wanted to apologize.

Arnold said, “Okay. It doesn't always work on command. It's kinda frustrating sometimes, you know.” He walked around the interior of their circle, staring at each of the boys. Tommy covered his eyes, pre
tending to be embarrassed. Arnold laughed and punched Tommy in the shoulder. “Jackass.”

“Hey, child abuse!”

Arnold suddenly turned and pointed at Luis, and said, “His father is a hardo.”

Josh: “Ah, come on. That's too—”

Arnold kept talking, not so much to Luis, but at him. “Your father is all over you about homework, right? Am I right? Like all over you? When you come home or when he comes home, he works late a lot?” Arnold spoke in questions that were actually statements, as though fishing for clues.

Luis didn't saying anything back. But not because Arnold wasn't correct.

Arnold: “Before your father says
hi
or
how was your day, son?
or
talk to any cute girls?
he asks if you've done your homework. And how much you have. He always asks how much, yeah? And you say”—the
you say
was long and drawn out—“
not much?
even if there's a shit ton to do. If you blow an assignment he gets so mad. It's like he takes it personally. Of all the things to get pissed about, right? Homework? And it's the worst when you have some big project or paper due, right? He dogs you about your plan and when you're gonna start and all that shit, yeah?”

In fourth grade Luis was assigned a land-forms project. He was supposed to build a diorama with a waterfall, forest, desert, and mountain all jammed into a cardboard shoe box. On the first day he legitimately forgot to bring the project notice home from school. He was so anxiety ridden about the imagined trouble he'd be in for failing to take something so important home, he vomited twice that night and missed the next day of school and the day after that. Then it was the weekend. When he finally went back to school on Monday the notice was there in his desk, and that was where it stayed. He left
it there for the two-plus weeks given to complete the assignment. He remembered the page sitting there inside the dark of his desk, always right there, on top of everything; he was careful not to bury it under his journal or textbooks. He'd lift the lid during class periodically to look at it. He wasn't so young or so addled as to believe it would disappear by itself. He couldn't explain why, but the more days that passed, the more impossible it became for him to tell his parents about the project, never mind actually completing it. The night before the project was due, and an hour before his usual bedtime, he crept up on his mother (she was reading a magazine in the kitchen, Dad was watching football in the TV room), tapped her on the shoulder, and asked if there were any empty shoe boxes lying around in a voice that didn't have any air in it. That infamous land-forms project blew up into emergency meetings and academic testing, but had since become somewhat of a family joke between Luis and his mom. It had scarred his father for the remainder of Luis's academic life.

Tommy: “Oh, shit. I've heard him do that. Luis, that's totally your dad.” Josh and Tommy giggled, high-fived each other, and whispered more stuff about his dad.

“Yeah, but not exactly.” Luis always felt small, there was never a moment when he wasn't in some way aware of his lack of size and physical maturity, but in the range of degrees of small, right then, he felt downright subatomic; a life and a relationship defined by interrogation over stupid homework. Was there anything more childlike? And he felt marked or stained by his father. Was
he
that easy to read? And he was superpissed at Tommy and Josh for laughing, for acting like they knew anything. They didn't know a goddamn thing.

Josh: “What about me? Do me next.”

Tommy: “Yikes, bro.”

Arnold rubbed his hands together then held them out like he was
surrendering. “I don't know if I see anything. Wait. Your mother is the hardo.”

Josh: “Eh, yeah, true. But both of my parents are hardos.”

Arnold: “I'm thinking she washes your clothes every day, right? She strips your bedsheets like twice a week, I'm thinking. Makes sure you always have clean underwear, right?”

Tommy: “Ew!”

Josh: “Pfft. Like you guys wash your own clothes.”

Luis did, but he didn't fess up to it.

Arnold: “You'll go home and put that shirt right into the washing machine because it's what she makes you do now that you're older. To try to give you more privacy, yeah? She talks about you becoming a
man
, like every day?” Arnold shrugs and laughs.

Josh is laughing, too, but he turns red at that statement. “It's like he can see me naked!”

Tommy: “And jacking off into your sheets!”

Josh screamed with mock outrage and wrestled Tommy.

Luis said, “Jesus Christ, I guess those two are actually drinking their beers today.”

Tommy shouting from beneath the assault: “What else you got on Josh? Need more dirt!”

Arnold: “I don't see much more from Josh. I can't turn it off and on like a faucet. I see what I see when I see it.”

Josh shuffled over to Arnold, scuffing his sneakers on the granite, like his feet were too heavy to bother lifting, and shook his hand. “Cool trick or powers or whatever. I'm impressed. But, come on, everyone's parents are hardos, right?”

Arnold said, “Most. My mother was so not-hardo that I'd end up staying with the hardest of hardos. The Rev wasn't my dad but he acted like one, and he was the worst. Mom had or has this little meth problem.” He paused and the boys didn't say anything and Arnold
shrugged before continuing. “The Rev used to have a batshit-crazy problem, but now that he's older and not the Rev anymore, he has a fat-shit lazy problem. That I can deal with, you know?”

Arnold stopped again, and Luis thought he was going say more and he figured that was what this was about. Arnold wanted to open up about his shitty upbringing. That was okay by him. Luis would listen and he'd commiserate, and tell Arnold yeah, everyone's parents are messed up, and Luis would say something he'd never told anyone before: admit that he'd already decided he'd never become a dad, that when he was old enough he was going to up and move to LA and help make scary movies. He didn't have to be the star or even an extra, as he'd be fine being the key grip or whatever, as long as he got to be a name on the credit scroll at the end.

Arnold said, “So not everyone's parents are hardos. Right, Tommy?”

Tommy was sitting down, on the outskirts of their circle, his back up against the gnarly tree, which was totally Tommy: smiling in the sun, happy to be a part of whatever was going on, content to comment here and there, but usually more than happy to be on the perpetual sideline.

Tommy snapped to and said, “Huh? I guess. Or—I don't know.” Tommy bounced looks back and forth between Luis and Josh, clearly in a near panic over what Arnold was going to say or ask and what he would then have to say about having no dad.

Arnold should have been able to tell that something was up with Tommy by his rabbit-in-an-open-field reaction. Luis said, “Hey,” but stopped, because what the hell was he going to say that would protect Tommy from that uncomfortable conversation? If he told Arnold not to guess about Tommy's parents, or if he came right out and said Tommy's dad ditched his family and ran away and then died in a drunk-driving accident, would Tommy still have to talk about his dad? Tommy would say it wasn't a big deal, but no, it was. How could it not be the biggest of deals?

Arnold ignored or didn't notice Luis's “Hey.” He walked toward Tommy and sat a few feet away, at the ledge of the split, the same spot at which they were all sitting before he showed up. He said, “Someone important to you, that someone is gone? Right?”

Tommy didn't say anything. He stopped looking at Luis and Josh, and tried to hold Arnold's stare, but he kept looking down to the rock and to the split, to the emptiness to his left.

Arnold: “Your father?” He was still speaking in questions, questions that were their own answers.

Josh stood there with his mouth open. Then he sidled closer to Arnold and Tommy, and sat down on the boulder.