A town in Elmore County, Alabama, in the early 80s.
The sun. Grady Holt, under it. He shimmers, you think, peeling back the skin of an orange. The smell from the juices hits both of you. It’s thrilling to know that Grady Holt is salivating at the same time as you. That he may want something you have: a ripe, succulent orange on the hottest day of July.
Small things. It’s always the small things. Small like oranges.
“Want some?” you say, deliberately casual.
He doesn’t look at you, but you know he heard.
“Your loss,” you say, knowing that the loss is, and always will be, yours.
You finish peeling the orange, twice bigger than your thirteen-year-old fist, and bite it like an apple.
…
It’s been three days since you and Grady Holt found the body of Jodi Jennings way out yonder in the forest creek.
The two of you weren’t there on purpose, not together. Paw had asked you to pick black trumpets after the night’s rain. All night, you heard bullets on the cabin’s tin roof and knew that shrooms would be plenty right around sunrise. You’re not quite sure why Grady Holt was there, though. Neither is the police. But you saw him downstream, knelt next to Jodie Jennings’ little body, soaking wet.
Jodie was dead. You knew the moment you saw her. Three years behind the two of you at school, the girl was gone. Her body was pale and blue, no blood, no veins. Just skin. Too much skin, you thought. The marshy waterway had washed everything into the Tennessee River. Her blood, her clothes, her soul. Jodie was naked. You couldn’t see scars. Next to her little, misshapen head, you saw a cluster of perfect, black mushrooms.
…
Back to the orange. You are outside the sheriff’s office on Main, standing in the shade, eating an orange. You paid good money for that orange. Three weeks’ worth of aluminum cans. Grady Holt is standing in the sun, hands stuck in his khaki shorts. You give yourself full liberty to stare, because he’s not looking at you. He never is. He’s staring at his shoes, the dirt road, anything but you. You wish he isn’t wearing a cap, so you could see his face, framed by golden locks of unruly hair. Unlike yours, which is a deep brown and cut short into a buzz.
Something moves between Grady’s feet — the thing he’s been staring at. A small lizard. You decide to walk over and bend down, squatting.
“Nice little creatures,” you say. You don’t ask him how he feels about lizards. You don’t even add a suggestive ‘huh?’ to your sentence, “they eat them nasty spiders in my Paw’s cabin”.
You know he’s looking at you now, not the lizard. But you don’t look up. You keep staring at the spiky, ugly little thing in the dirt, until your legs start to go numb.
His face is backlit, and the sun is too bright. But you know how gorgeous Grady Holt is. Golden, freckled skin. Even, symmetric features. Fuller lips than any white boy in town. His mother is Cuban, you know.
You stand up, and the lizard scuffles away, kicking up a dust storm behind it.
Grady looks up from the ground and into your eyes. You cannot speak. Even breathing becomes difficult.
“Too bad,” he says.
And you smile.
…
“I believe you,” you say. A week after the lizard, sitting across from him at recess.
The playground is a hill behind the school. A mound of dirt, really. He’s wearing the khaki shorts again, with a white tank top, too tight. Almost transparent in the sun. You worship his arms, golden brown like a gladiator’s. You want to sit closer but dare not. You wish that time would freeze, so you could touch his skin, glorious edges and all, with your fingers. For hours. You imagine it, how it would feel. A seamstress caressing precious fabric.
You wear old jeans and a dirty green shirt — Paw’s.
“I believe you.”
The two of you sit on a rare patch of greenish grass, away from the kids playing down below. He’s an outcast now, like you. Murderer. Grady Holt is like you, but not quite. You are his only friend. He is yours. Silent, mysterious, handsome Grady Holt. He looks at you, a thin blade of bristlegrass in the corner of his mouth.
“I know you do.”
…
“I hear you’ve gotten friendly with that Holt boy,” says Paw, cigarette dangling. He sits at the kitchen table. You lay on the floor where you sleep. Cinders fall like snow onto Paw’s dirty denim overalls. He wears nothing underneath.
“He’s real nice, Paw.”
He doesn’t speak. You look away as his left nipple pokes out from behind the fabric.
“He’s my friend,” you decide.
Paw takes a drag, “He found that girl’s body.”
“I know. I was there.”
“You be careful now, sonny. You don’t wanna get mixed up with trouble.”
You look at him now. Sparse, silver hair. Scruffy, unkept beard. Lazy eyes a lake glazed over with frost. A hint of kindness. A gravelly voice that always makes him sound as if he’s choking.
“Right,” you say, nodding as you flip through the one comic book you own. On a worn-out, soggy page, a black and white General Zod says in big, zig-zagging letters: “In return for your obedience, you will enjoy my generous protection. In other words, you will be allowed to live.”
…
The police won’t say anything, but the whole town thinks, knows, that the Holt boy did it. Found right next to the poor girl’s body. Wet as a fish. Won’t say why he was there. Trying to throw the girl into the river, probably. Killed her in the forest. With a big rock, I hear, bam! on the side of the head. Sick. Twisted. Evil. No, they haven’t found the rock. Dumped it in the river, I bet. Halfway to China by now. The mother is from Havana, you know. Some whore old Jerry Holt had an affair with down in Miami. You know how they are, Latin women. Thieves and hookers, the whole lot of them. Figures.
Small southern towns are built on cruelty but run by gossip.
Right now, the rumors are your friend. As long as Grady Holt is the murder boy, he is yours.
…
You dream of Jodie Jennings. Her pretty doll face: big eyes, long lashes. Even in death you could imagine her batting those lashes and sucking on hard candy with pale, blue lips. In your dreams, Jodie is screaming. But not with her mouth; her mouth is vomiting. Instead of putrid sludge with pieces of peas and carrots, creek water pours out of her — green and mossy with clumps of mud and an occasional, flopping catfish. Her jaws are open too wide, the bones must be broken. She is crying and screaming and retching. You look down and see a meadow of black mushrooms beneath your feet. You and Jodie are in your shack, but the floor is made of mushrooms. You feel them beneath your feet, alive. They’re almost crawling. The room is beginning to flood. You look up and see that Jodie’s body is decaying. Two large, black corpse fly larvae now bloom where Jodie’s eyes had been. Soon, centipedes devour her left shoulder and her skin begins to melt like ice cream. A beetle rips open her left cheek and crawls out from inside, leaving a scarlet, crumbling hole in her face like paper mâché. A red scorpion climbs slowly out from between the smooth plains of her thighs. All the while, Jodie’s mouth is open wide and screaming. But you realize that she’s not screaming at all. She’s playing the trumpet. Or, rather, trumpet sounds are vibrating out of her mouth with the creek, loud and crisp. Maybe the creek is playing the trumpet. No. No, it has to be Jodie. She’s trying to say something with her trumpeting. There is no melody, but you know exactly what she wants from you. You trudge through the muddy creek, stepping on the mushrooms, toward Jodie. But every time you get close to her, when her rotting arms reach out to you, you wake up to the sound of Paw’s truck.
…
The barren hill behind the courthouse is you and Grady Holt’s spot. For two weeks after Jodie’s murder, you meet at the foot of the hill and climb it together. Once at the summit, Grady shares a pickle mustard sandwich with you — the only thing his father knows how to make. Sometimes you talk about comics, about baseball. But mostly you just sit silently next to each other, embraced and comforted by your lonely togetherness. Grass and trees don’t grow on the hill, so you sit directly beneath the blazing sun and look out at the town below. This is your Mount Olympus. Grady Holt is your Zeus. You sit until both of you are parched, until your skins are blistering and burnt, until the sky bleeds orange and the moon arrives.
Grady Holt never looks at you, never sits too close. But he doesn’t tease you for staring at him. He doesn’t flinch when your fingers touch as he hands you a soda pop. He doesn’t rip the sandwich in half when you eat. Instead, he takes a bite and hands it to you. He doesn’t ask you to bite from the other side. He lets you bite where his saliva still lingers. You savor those bites. His DNA in your mouth. Some girls at school still believe that you can get pregnant from sharing food with a guy. You want to tell them, screaming at the top of your lungs, that you are pregnant with Grady Holt’s child.
…
You never talk about Jodie Jennings with Grady, even though she’s the only reason why he’s yours. You want to thank Jodie. You wish that, in your dreams, you could hug Jodie and whisper apologies in her ear. You don’t mind if the termites and maggots and worms spill out of her body onto yours. You don’t mind if you start decomposing too. Anything to stop her trumpeting.
…
Afternoon in August. One month after Jodie’s death. It hasn’t rained in Elmore County since then, but the clouds are rolling and the air is damp.
After sharing another sandwich with Grady Holt on the hill behind the courthouse, you ask him, feeling particularly brave, if he wants to see your comic book. He doesn’t stop staring dazedly into thin air. From where you sit, beside him, his angular jaw is lit perfectly by a ray of escaping sun. His shiny blonde curls light up the gloomy air like the halo of an angel. You know you want to kiss him, touch him, push him into the dirt and lay on top of him. Heaving chests. Kicked-up sand. Two boys at the center of a dust storm.
Your thoughts are so loud you fear Grady could hear them.
Grady Holt is so silent and still that you think you’ve ruined it. He’s going to stand up and walk away. Go to your house? Are you kidding me? The dirty shack where trash lives? You want to take me there? I’d rather be a lonely loser forever than go to your fucking dump.
But Grady Holt doesn’t say that. He stands and dusts his khaki pants off. You think he’s going to leave without you, but he doesn’t. He pulls you up by the hands and, together, you run down the hill.
Thrilled, your heart thumping fast and loud, you open the shack’s creaky old door. Paw’s out in the sugarcane fields; he won’t be back for hours. You lead Grady to the mattress where you sleep. You are embarrassed but you couldn’t care less. So what if you live in a dump on the floor? Grady Holt is here. Wherever Grady Holt is couldn’t be that bad, right?
You reach under your mattress and pull out the dirty old comic book. When you look back at Grady, he’s sitting so close to you, you stifle a shriek. His eyes dart around the room, and his fingers fidget with the peeling plastic edge of your mattress.
“Grady?” you ask, tentatively.
He looks at you and you die a little. His eyes are the color of fine molasses — brown and bottomless. You sit staring into those eyes for an eternity. You’re not touching, but he’s so close you could hear his heartbeat and feel his breath on your face. Both are quickening. There’s an angry rhinoceros where your heart should be. Smashing again and again against your chest. Faster and faster. You feel a burning in your skin like the sting of a bad sunburn. Grady’s molasses eyes move closer and closer. You tighten everywhere. The ragged copy of Superman falls out of your lap as Grady Holt kisses you on the lips.
You don’t close your eyes. You know you’re supposed to, but you don’t. You taste mustard in Grady’s mouth. The world spins around you. You don’t know which way is up. All you think about is little Jodie Jennings and her pale, blue lips.
…
“I know what you did to her,” says Grady, after pulling away from your lips.
You freeze, there’s too much to take in. You remember the orange you ate outside the sheriff’s office and wish you had an orange now. Your throat feels so dry it could fly out of your mouth in flakes.
“What do you mean?” you say, finally, after a long pause.
“I saw you that morning.” Cool and indifferent.
You don’t say anything. You think about the kiss.
“I saw you drag Jodie’s body through the woods.”
Why did Grady Holt kiss you? Is he like you?
“I saw you throw her into the creek.”
Does he want you as you want him?
“I saw her body float downstream.”
Could you be together, forever? Like in the fairytales?
“I jumped in to save her. I thought she was still alive.”
The prince and the beggar? Does that ever happen?
“I know you killed –”
You kiss him before he could finish. This time, you put your hands behind his head and run your hands, dirt lodged beneath your fingernails, through Grady Holt’s godly blonde hair. He doesn’t pull away, so you pull him closer. He tastes so familiar. It feels so right. Until it doesn’t.
When, finally, Grady pulls away from you, you are both sweating and panting for air. You lay down horizontally on the mattress. Grady lays next to you.
For a while, the shack is silent except for the occasional sound of distant thunder.
“I won’t tell,” Grady says, eyes fixed at the ceiling.
“But they think you did it.”
“I know. But they don’t have proof.”
“Why were you there, that morning, by the creek?”
He doesn’t speak for a while. I turn around to look at him. His face, usually vacant of expressions, seems tortured and in pain.
“Grady? Are you alright?”
“I like you,” he says, finally, “I’ve liked you for a long time.”
You don’t say anything. A cold breeze blows in through the cracks in the wall.
“I’ve been watching you. I know you’ve been watching me, too. I know you like me. Maybe that’s why I like you. I don’t know.”
“You don’t know if you like me?” A stupid question.
“No. I know that. I don’t know why I like you. Your hair, maybe. I like your hair.”
“I had no idea,” you say, weakly.
“I know you pick mushrooms in the woods. Whenever it rains, you show up to school with mud on your knees. And you smell like leaves.”
The heat and passion fade away and panic takes their place.
“I was out there that morning… watching you, I guess.”
Grady Holt knows what you did. Grady Holt will tell the police.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” you ask, afraid of the answer.
“Because.” He kisses you again, rolling on top of you.
“Because you want to kiss me?”
You look up at Grady, who is smiling now.
“Because I love you.”
“You love me.” A strange statement. You wince.
“Yes. I think I do.”
“And because you love me, you won’t tell the police.”
Grady rolls off of you and sits upright on the mattress.
“Promise,” he puts his right hand up.
You think. You think fast. Love is fickle. You know because your parents promised they loved you. You know because you loved Paw.
Grady Holt looks at you and you look at Grady Holt. You’ve tasted those lips. You’ve touched those curls. You make a decision and sit up.
“I have something to give you.”
It was a bad day. A storm coming. No one had seen Grady Holt walk home with you.
“For what?”
“For keeping my secret, of course.”
Grady looks around the room. You know he’s wondering what on Earth is worth gifting in this shack.
“Close your eyes.”
You reach under the mattress and pull out a necklace. Gold string upon which a gilded pendant hangs. The angel Gabriel blowing into his horn.
“Open them,” you say as you put the necklace in Grady Holt’s hands.
He looks at it.
“Where d’you get this?” You know he was going to ask.
“It’s my Ma’s. She gave it to me before she died.” You know she’s not dead, just hiding.
“Won’t she be mad that you gave it to me?”
“No. Take it. I could never wear it; they’d think I stole it.”
Grady Holt puts the necklace on. You smile.
“Why did you kill her?” he asks.
You shake your head.
“It’s going to rain tonight,” you say, looking out the patched-up window on the opposite wall.
Grady, right hand clutching the angel hanging from his neck, kisses you one last time before he leaves. You watch as he walks down the country lane leading back to town. When you’ve waited long enough, half an hour, maybe, you run to the Sheriff’s office with tears streaming down your face.
…
The police arrests Grady Holt that night, in front of his dad. The necklace Jodie Jennings was wearing the day she went missing — a gold pendant of the angel Gabriel and his horn, the one they never found — was found on Grady Holt’s neck.
…
On your way home from the Sheriff’s office, it begins to rain. You dread the rain. You hate it with every atom of your body. On the dirt road outside your shack, where no one can hear or see you, you shout curses at the rain. You beat and punch it. You cry so hard you don’t know if the puddle at your feet is rainwater or tears.
Paw’s truck arrives around dusk, right after you’ve dried your hair with an old rag. He brings home a boy, this time. You recognize him: Kevin Wycliff, fourth grade. You don’t say anything as Paw undresses Kevin and drags him, screaming through gagged mouth, into his room. Paw’s bedroom has no door. You lay on your mattress all night and listen to little Kevin’s squeals. You listen to Paw’s beastly grunts. The claggy sound of wet flesh. You try to focus on the bullets above. Pellets of rain falling on the tin roof, muddying the forest floor, covering the tracks.
Around dawn, the noises stop with a loud thud. Paw comes out of his room, naked and dripping.
“Go forage some black trumpets in the woods,” he says, absentmindedly.
“I don’t want to. Not anymore,” you protest.
Paw slaps you so hard, you see heaven.
“Remember our deal, sonny,” Paw whispers, “it’s either them or you.”
You begin to sob.
“And you didn’t like it when it was you, did you?”
You shake your head.
“Now, be a good boy and pick some juicy mushrooms for your Paw. You know how black and beautiful they are after the rain.”
…
Long after you bury Kevin Wycliff’s body (not the creek, this time, too risky), you stay out in the woods and cry. The rain has slowed to a drizzle. You walked so far that it’s almost noon, and you’re tired. So you lay down on a pile of leaves and cry.
Grady Holt’s lips.
You hear the vibrating wings of flies and beetles.
Grady Holt’s arms.
Something light and papery lands on your face.
Grady Holt’s hair.
You feel the subtle crawl of worms and centipedes.
Grady Holt’s jaw.
Sharp, pleasant pains all over your body.
Grady Holt’s smile.
You’re sinking.
Grady Holt’s eyes.
You fall apart.
All over your body, stalks and caps erupt from beneath your skin and black trumpet mushrooms bloom.
