LaRose(97)

After a few minutes, Father Travis pulled up next to them in the white church van. He saw them as he got out, said hello, and walked into the truck stop. They saw him sit down next to Buggy on a counter stool. When Buggy jumped up to leave, Father Travis put a friendly hand on his skinny shoulder and Buggy sat down hard.

The boys saw this clearly.

What’s he doing?

Maybe Buggy got a vocation.

They watched the two at the counter, Buggy talking and gesturing but hunching forward until his face was practically in his hash browns. Every so often, Buggy swiveled around, darting glances to every side as if somebody might be listening in, though most people in the booths were nearly deaf, tuning their hearing aids up or down, filling themselves with weak coffee. Finally, Father Travis handed some bills to the cashier and they walked out of the truck stop together. Buggy fidgeted, standing next to Father Travis, until Curtains drove up. When Buggy got into that car, Hollis started the engine. He was pulling out when Father Travis stepped over, stood right in their way, and put his hand on the dented hood. Hollis killed the engine. Father Travis came around the driver’s side and Hollis rolled down the window. Stepping back, Father Travis motioned for them to get out of the car. They did, and stood awkwardly, not wanting to meet his eyes.

I understand, Father Travis finally said. But don’t do it.

They shot looks at one another.

Buggy’s beyond intimidation. He’s breaking down, but still dangerous, so don’t go near him. His parents kicked him out. He did something to his sister. He’s just got the one friend left. I think you should let things play out. If you go after him, you could end up with assault charges, and that would stay on your record. Hurt you when you apply for college.

Waylon hadn’t seriously considered going to college, and it warmed him that the priest thought he might.

Once Father Travis had driven off, the boys got into Hollis’s car, talked for a while, and then drove out to look for Buggy Wildstrand, but he had disappeared.

Two weeks later, on a warm day, Coochy heard where Buggy was hanging out and they drove over there. The place was down a long unpaved tractor road and became no more than a mud rut as they crossed a slough. Past that, trees closed in and Hollis said, Isn’t this the place where that kindergarten teacher lives? Mrs. Sweit?

She had, notoriously in the area, fled town that past year.

Waylon and Coochy didn’t answer because they saw the house. It gaped open. The windows that weren’t broken were lined with stained blankets. Three crumpled black garbage bags lay in the thawed rocky muck and snowed-on shit of the yard. As the boys walked carefully forward they smelled and then saw that the bags were the sunken carcasses of dogs stretched out at the ends of chains.

This is bad. Let’s not go in, said Hollis.

Coochy and Waylon were already on the porch. Hollis stepped up behind them. Sharp chemicals and deadness hung in the air. They pulled their T-shirts up over their noses, stood in the entry.

The place was spectacularly trashed. Kitchen cupboards were torn apart. Every surface was piled with plastic jugs, snarled tubing, or melted plastic. Petrified gunk hung down from the ceiling and was flung up against flares of charred Sheetrock. The cold floor was heaped with clothes soldered together with food, mined with broken dishes, crushed cans, shattered bottles. They stepped carefully through bagged and unbagged garbage, pizza boxes, ancient pizza like slabs of reptile skin, gluey pop, gnawed bones, and human shit. Against the opposite wall of what might have been the living room there was no motion, but a sensation of something alive came over Hollis and his neck prickled. Waylon tore a blanket off the nearest window. They saw two people, one snared in garbage, asleep maybe. The other staggered upright. It gathered energy and they could see it used to be Buggy.

His eyes flickered like neon in his yellow skull; his mouth was a black hole. His hands clutched and unclutched. One hand dug at his scabby and bleeding arm.

You came here to kill me, said Buggy.

No, said Hollis.

We’re gonna leave now, said Waylon.

Coochy stepped back.

Buggy lunged, silently flailing and striking as he bore Coochy down. Waylon tried to pull Buggy off and Buggy reared up, head-butted Waylon, and then slugged Hollis so venomously that he dropped, gasping in the slippery filth. Buggy kicked and hammered them with such dazzling intensity that they barely made it out of the house and to the car. It was all done in hideous silence. Hollis gunned the car in reverse; Buggy flew after them with giant leaping strides. He threw himself onto the hood of the car and mashed his face on the windshield, pop-eyed, tongue swirling on the glass. Hollis had to wrench forward, hit the brakes, and jerk backward to fling Buggy off. Hitting the ground at an odd angle slowed him. But as they drove off Coochy looked back and saw Buggy crouching, as if to spring after them along the ground on all fours like a movie demon.

They drove for about a mile and then Hollis said that Buggy was supposed to graduate as class valedictorian.

Maybe, said Waylon, he will come in second now.

Salutatorian, said Coochy.

Hollis flipped on his windshield wipers to try to clear the glass of Buggy’s spit. But his car was out of wiper fluid and the spit smeared in a streak.

Just like a bug, said Waylon. But nobody laughed.



IN MARCH THERE was the war. Father Travis started to watch the shock and awe, then switched it off. He was trembling inside, couldn’t think. He turned out the lights, knelt beside his bed, and bowed his head onto his folded fists. He tried to pray but his body was enthralled by a sticky, hot, beetling-red rage. The air in the room went thick and whirled with freakish energy. He jumped out of bed, put on his running clothes, and dashed down to a field near the school and hospital where he could run in circles all night if he wanted. It wasn’t a large field and he’d made only a few circuits when he registered the light in Emmaline’s office.