LATER THAT NIGHT, THE BOYS pushed a cooler off the back of a Ford pickup truck and carried it down a red dirt road. The night was tar black with stars punched into it. Something unsettled Max about the smells: like rotting wood, wet hair, and skin that’d burned and blistered. He tasted mud on the roof of his mouth. There was a strand of grass in his molars.
Davis said: Feels like we’re walking on a dog’s tongue.
All teeth and heat and sweat.
The sound was running roaches smashed beneath steel-toe boots and wind slapping at the bushes and the kind of deadened silence that only comes past midnight in rural parts of America. Country ballads lifted from the speakers somewhere in the darkness ahead. A fire snapped. It guided the way like a door cracked open at the end of a hall. The field, which belonged to Cole’s father, careened into black-black for acres on either side. It had taken nearly an hour of winding down skinny roads with many right turns to get here. Nothing had been marked. The boys just knew the way.
The fields had once contained cotton, but Max didn’t see any white heads reaching up from their stems. He saw shadows. He saw his hand only when it was in front of his face. The land was undressed by all the darkness. Like it’d been stripped down. Like it had been left to go wild.
The boy Max rode with said, Where the ladies at?
Max thought girls would be at the patch of bald earth that’d been trodden down to something worn and grassless for socializing. For late-night whatevers. A pit for fire had about a dozen boys from the team circled around it. No girls. A few logs. A shed with a broken window. A four-wheeler and some old barrels that looked like they were there for sitting. The same song from the barbecue was still playing. Or was it a different song? The chords were so full of longing, Max felt like he was right beside the girl singing about her sexy man and his tractors and his fishing lines and his big red dogs.
A boy named Price put his elbow on Max’s shoulder and leaned in so he could whisper. The bill of his dirty ball cap edged into Max’s forehead.
Price said through his stutter, Looks like someone brought the goddamn witch.
Max’s eyes found an image on the other side of the fire. The shock of Pan in fishnets. Pan’s legs were crossed at the knees. He sat on the back of the four-wheeler next to Lorne, whose hair was orange as the flames. Lorne’s wide chest was covered in a camouflage shirt with deer running across it. Lorne. The Judge’s son. Lorne was a sluggish and muscled boy who seemed to have as much personality as a blade of sun-dead grass. Nothing like his sinewy father, whom Max had seen on the sideline of football practice, clapping and whistling. When Lorne had joined his father near the watercooler, Max had watched them huddle in what Max had come to recognize as prayer, hands clasped to shoulders, heads bowed.
Lorne prodded Pan with his hooded eyes. His lips opened and closed in something Max recognized as hunger. Lorne was quiet and cagey anytime Max had been around him, but that night he seemed to have a lot to say to Pan. Pan stroked his own tuft of coal-colored hair as he listened to Lorne, nodding occasionally. Pan’s back was ramrod straight; he moved from his core with an elegance that seemed acquired from other worlds. Movies maybe. Or books on dancing. Max wondered if he was a dancer. He pictured him spinning in the middle of an empty room with four beautiful white walls. He might leap into the air and land spinning or land in a split or land on the tips of his toes. Max thought Pan would look beautiful in a room with four white walls because his features were so drawn and heavy and dark. There was something in them that sprung out like they were shouting the word look. His mouth was as red as a cherry pit but that night it was painted even redder. Max could see, or did he just remember, a black mole shaped like America beneath his left eye. He tapped at the four-wheeler’s bumper with the heel of his fat army boot. He and Lorne appeared to be flirting. The flirting seemed clear to Max. He glanced at the other boys. Did they see the flirting, too? The longer he watched, the clearer it became. Pan scooted from his seat and led Lorne into the tall grass.
Price watched Max watch the two silhouettes disappear.
Jesus H. Christ, said Price. He thinks he’s a frigging princess. Look at that outfit.
What? Max said, because the snap hiss of the fire ate the words from the boy’s mouth and plus, he was distracted. Can you please say it again?
I said princess over there wants to be a freak and sometimes we let him.
Price shrugged as if it were an inconvenience no one could do anything about. He spat a kernel from his mouth into the fire. The small black stone smoldered, and Max wondered what kind of a freak Price let Pan be.
A freak for sure, said Wes. Once he lit his feet on fire and just laughed as they burned. We could smell it. We poured beer on it or who knows what would have happened to his toes.
Yeah but the freak didn’t have any burn marks, said a boy named Boone. Like what the actual F?
I think he liked it, said Price. You know? He likes the pain.
Max understood. He bit down on his tongue to remind himself how much he liked pain. Price’s eyes, which were the striking green of a Mountain Dew bottle, danced with mischief. Had Price said you’ll know—as in, one day, Max will know, too? Max wasn’t sure he heard it right. A cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck and under his armpits and around his cock.
He’s only been like that, all freaky, for a year tops. Maybe two. He used to look preppy as a frigging boy scout. It’s some kind of weirdass phase or something.
What is preppy? asked Max.
Preppy, said Price. I dunno, man. It’s like fancy. It’s like buttoned-up and kind of rich or something, but you don’t have to be rich to look preppy.
Preppy is like boat-riding clothes, said Knox.
Max couldn’t believe it. He tried to imagine Pan preppy, peering from under the same swoosh of bang that hung over the eyes of the boys beside him. The thought made him smile.
What is happening next? asked Max. He wanted the boys to tell him everything they knew about Pan.
Beats me, said Price. He’s going to grow out of it. My dad says it’s a call for help.
That’s about right, said Knox. A big-ass call for help. I don’t know why Lorne bothers with him at all right now.
Wes shrugged. They used to be tight, he said. I bet he’s trying to save him. He doesn’t want him in the fire pit of hell. Roasting and setting his feet aflame like we know he does. Lorne can be sweet like that.
It’s about time he takes some rat magic, said Knox. See if God’s gone from him or if he’s still in there somewhere sleeping.
Price jabbed Knox in the side.
Ow, said Knox. What the fuck, man?
Keep your trap shut. We don’t want to freak out Germany.
The boys were lit in orange by the fire in front of them.
Davis handed Max another beer. The necks of the bottles were sweating. Max touched the cold glass to his forehead and wondered about the rat magic.
Hey, Davis said to Max. Say y’all again.
Please, Max said, flashing a smile. I would not like to.
He sound like a goddamn Nazi, don’t he?
Max decided to laugh with them this time. They could call him a Nazi, he guessed—though it made him wince. The fire in front of Max smelled sweet. Like tree spine and tree blood and tree brain. Like a log of cedar splayed perfectly along the groove. Max thought of Pan’s feet on fire and how the burning must have stank of shells and keratin and human skin. He saw Pan roasting on a spit in a pit of hell as flames licked his charred calves. He saw himself on the same spit. He popped his neck. The coals in the fire turned white with heat. A boy picked up a can of gasoline and held it in front of his crotch and spurted it on the flames.