The Troop (23 page)

newton pulled his knees up and encircled them with his arms. He closed his eyes and found himself back in the cabin where they had discovered Scoutmaster Tim. As he’d watched those worms waver back and forth making those
pfft! pfft!
sounds, he’d been sure things would only get worse. The odds were very sharply aligned against them, weren’t they? But he remembered something his mother once said:
The only way you’ll ever really know people is to see them in a crisis. People do the worst things to each other, Newton. Just the
worst.
Friendships, family, love and brotherhood—toss it all out the window . . .

And though he’d desperately wished he were home, some deeper part of his psyche recognized that rescue was not an immediate probability. Something bad had happened and they were trapped in the middle of it. All they could do was hang tight until the adults figured things out.

That was the biggest part of survival, newton realized: maintaining a belief in the best-case scenario. It was when you started to believe the worst-case one that you were doomed.

The boys gathered an extra pint of berries to take back to ephraim. max rolled them up in a kerchief and stashed them in newton’s backpack.

The land dipped gradually. The gentle downslope led into a narrow valley. Pine trees bent over facing precipices, casting long shadows. The lowering sun burnt without heat behind edgeless gunmetal clouds. A cold breeze skated through the natural wind tunnel to pebble their arms with gooseflesh.

newton crouched next to a lightning-cleaved tree. The stump was ringed with toadstools. Pale orange in color, each stem shaped like tiny moose antlers.

“Coral mushrooms,” newton said. “They’re safe to eat, but also a powerful laxative.”
“What’s that?”
“They give you the shits.”
“not poisonous?”
“The antler-shaped ones are okay. Those
do
look like antlers, yeah?”
max squinted. “Yeah.”
newton picked a few and put them in his pack. “When we get back to camp, we can boil them. make a tea. Then Kent can drink it. Clear him right out.”
“You think?”
“You got a better idea?”
max smiled. “You know what? You’re a real fun guy.”
“What?”
“It’s a joke mr. Walters told in science class. What did one mushroom say to the other? You’re a real fungi.”
A slow smile broke over newton’s face. “oh, I get it. Fungi. Fun guy. That’s funny. That’s really, really funny.”
max frowned, and newton immediately felt bad. It was just like him to suck all the funny out of a joke. He was a humor vampire. He thought about his Facebook persona, Alex markson. Cool, handsome, suave Alex markson. What Would Alex markson Do—WWAmD? not what newton had just done, that’s for sure.
max said: “mr. Walters told another joke that he got in trouble for.”
“What?”
“How do you make a hormone?”
“How?”
“You refuse to pay her.”
newton cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t get it.”
“neither do I. But Shelley repeated it to his mother. That got mr. Walters in some deep shit for a few days.”
max squinted at an area about ten yards past the tree stump. A trail was tamped through the grass.
“Animal trail,” he said.
only a foot wide, maybe less, so it couldn’t have been made by a very big animal. A fox or a marten or a porcupine.
“How did animals even get on this island?” max wondered aloud. “You figure someone built an ark?”
“The Department of Game and Wildlife might have dropped them off,” newton said. “They would have surveyed the land and, y’know, figured out what species would live best.”
“How’s it feel carrying around that big-ass brain of yours all day?”
newton’s eyes darkened. “Don’t make fun of me, max. not now.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Yes, you were. You were starting up on it, anyway. Just quit it, okay?”
newton huffed back snot and raked the back of his hand over his nose. Was he about to cry? max had never seen newton cry. not even after the most merciless teasing sessions. not after an endless round of “Keepaway” with his Scout beret—a game that often ended out of pure apathy: someone would simply drop newton’s beret and the jeering circle would dissolve, leaving newton to grope pink-faced in the dirt for his hat.
“Don’t be an asshole, max.” newton’s eyes blazed from the reddened flesh of his sockets. “not now.”
max took a step back as if newton had physically struck him. He held his hands out in a penitent and pleading gesture.
“really, newt, I wasn’t—”
The following words came out of newton in a hot rush, like a bottle of soda that had been shaken so hard and for so long that the cap had finally blown off.
“I like weird stuff, okay? So what? And I’m fat. I
know
that, obviously. I wish I wasn’t but it’s not like I eat like a pig. I mean, yeah, I like ice cream but so do lots of guys. mom says it’s glandular. A slow metabolism. She even ordered me a pack of Deal-A-meal cards from that guy on TV who wears those glittery short-shorts.”
max was stunned. newton had never spoken this way to him—to
anyone,
as far as he knew.
“You know what’s hilarious?” newt said. “I was skinny as a baby. like,
I
-
could’ve-died
skinny. I couldn’t put on weight. A total shrimp. I slipped four percentiles, mom said. The pediatrician told her to feed me butter—pure warm butter.”
max wanted to apologize. To say, more than anything, that it wasn’t really newton’s fault. max and the other boys didn’t pick on him because they despised him . . . it was more a case of boys needing someone to single out. A fatted calf to sacrifice. They had to turn
someone
into that bottom rung on the ladder if only so they didn’t have to occupy it themselves. Boys weren’t very inventive, either. The simplest flaw would do. A lisp. An overbite. Dental braces. Being fat. Add to it a few glaring idiosyncrasies—such as being a know-it-all bookworm who was fascinated with mushrooms—and
presto!
one made-to-order sacrificial lamb.
max gave newt a look of cautious empathy. “Sorry, okay? I wasn’t trying to like, be a shithead or anything.”
newton set his jaw off-kilter and touched his lip to his nose. “okay. Forget it. It was nothing.”

THe TRaP
proved a lot harder to build than they had figured. newton had found a diagram for a “sapling spring snare” in his field
book. He claimed to have built one in his backyard—Scoutmaster Tim
had come over and certified it, awarding newton his Bushcraft badge. But the saplings in his backyard were limber. The trees edging the
game trail were old or dead: they snapped as soon as the boys bent
them. When they finally found one that might do and tried to bow it
down—the “spring” part of the trap—the natural tension of the wood
was simply too much.
“This might make an okay wolf trap,” newton said with a shake of
his head. “But a small animal would get catapulted into the sky.” They retired to the bluffs overlooking the game run. They sat with
their feet dangling over the bluffs. The air smelled of creosote. The
clouds lowered like a gray curtain coming down.
newton said: “You don’t feel sick, do you?”
max said: “I don’t know what sick should feel like.”
“Hungry.”
“Well, okay yeah, I
am
hungry.”
“Yeah,” said newton, “but not
hungry
hungry, right?”
“I guess not. I guess it’s bearable.”
newton looked relieved. “Good. I mean if we were really that hungry—that crazy—we’d know it . . . right?”
max rubbed his chin, wondering if ephraim’s knuckles would leave
a bruise—wondering, more gloomily, if he’d live long enough for that
bruise to heal. He gave no answer to newt’s question. What was there
to say? If that particular hunger fell upon them,
crazy hunger,
nothing
would really matter anymore. It’d be far too late.
night birds sang in the trees: haunting, melancholy notes. newton’s
foot went to sleep. He stood to walk the tingles out of it, wandering to
the edge of the valley where the soil gave way to a flat expanse of shale.
Gentle waves slapped the shore. The water was the gray of a dead tooth,
liquefying into a sky of that same unvarying gray.
newton squinted into a tide pool. Something popped up on its
placid surface. Whatever it was, it had the coloring of an exotic bird’s
egg. It vanished again.
“max! Come over here.”
They peered down. Their breath was trapped expectantly in their
lungs.
There
—whatever it was popped up again. Bubbles burst all
around it. Then it was gone.
“It’s a sea turtle,” newton said.

THeY cRePT
down to the shore. The tide pool was hemmed by honeycombed rock. How had the turtle gotten in? maybe there was a gap in the rocks underwater. more likely it had gotten carried in with the high tide and was trapped until the tide came in again.

“Could we eat it?” max said. His voice was raspy with excitement.

“We could.” newton’s voice held the same anxious rasp. Something about the idea of
meat
—even turtle meat—was insanely appealing.
They doffed their boots and socks and rolled their pant legs up past their knees. A light wind scalloped the water, spitting salt water at their naked legs.
The tide pool sloped steeply to a bottom of indeterminate depth. The turtle’s shell was the size of a serving platter—they could just make out its contours when the turtle poked itself above the surface. Its head was a vibrant yellow shaded with dark octagon-shaped markings. Its eyes were dark like a bird’s eyes. It had a wise and thoughtful look about it, which was pretty typical of turtles.
The boys patted their knives in their pockets. max had a Swiss Army knife. newton had a frame-lock Gerber with a three-inch blade.
“How should we do it?” newton whispered with a giddy, queasy smile.
“We have to do it fast. Grab it and drag it out and kill it, I guess. Fast as we can.”
“Do they bite?”
“I don’t know. Do they?”
newton pursed his lips. “It might if we aren’t careful.”
They waded gingerly into the pool. The water was so cold it sapped the air from their lungs. The water rose to the nubs of their kneecaps.
The turtle was a darker shape in the already dark water. It swung around lazily, unconcerned. As it rose up the boys caught sight of its shell: a mellow green patina flecked with streaks of magenta. Strands of sea moss drifted off it like streamers on a parade float.
It swam right up to them, totally unperturbed. maybe it was curious—or maybe it was hungry, too, and thought the boys might make an easy meal. It swam between newton’s split legs. He trembled from the cold and from the fear that the turtle might snap at his thighs. But it swam through serenely enough.
It had four flippers. The two at the front were long sickles, sort of like the wings on a plane. The two at the back looked like bird talons, except with webs of tough connective tissue. The skin on all four flippers was iridescent yellow overlaid with dark scaling. It was a beautiful creature.
max gritted his teeth and plunged his hands into the water. His fingers closed around the edge of turtle’s shell, which was as slimy as an algae-covered rock. The turtle kicked forcefully—its strength was incredible. Suddenly max was on his knees in the freezing surf. The rocks raked his shins. The turtle’s small ebony claws dug into his thighs. He opened his lips to cry out and when he did the sea washed in, leaving him choking and sputtering.
The turtle slipped out of his grip. He splashed after it blindly.
“newt! Get it before it gets away!”
newton hobble-walked to where the turtle was throwing itself against the tide pool barrier. He grabbed one of its rear flippers. It was slippery and tough like a radial tire slicked in dish soap. The turtle swung around and snapped wildly at newton. Its head telescoped out on its wrinkled neck farther than he’d thought possible: it reminded him of that game, Hungry Hungry Hippos. newton let out a fearful holler as its jaws went
snack-snack-snack
inches from his face. He caught the briny smell of the turtle’s breath and another, more profound scent: something hormonal and raw.
He reeled back and nearly tumbled face-first into the water. The turtle went back to flinging itself at the rock. max was breathing heavily through gritted teeth. Water hissed between the chinks with harsh
hsst!
sounds. The bitter tang of fear washed through newton’s mouth. This situation had developed horrible potential, though he wasn’t quite sure how that had happened.
“You grab one flipper,” max said, his eyes squeezed down to slits. “I’ll grab the other. We’ll get it up on shore. It won’t be so tough on land.”
They took hold of its back flippers and dragged it out. The turtle’s front flippers paddled in useless oarlike circles. Its head thrashed, sending up fine droplets of water. max’s whitened lips were skinned back from his teeth—more a funhouse leer than a smile. A look of horrible triumph had come into his eyes.
They heaved the turtle up onto the sickle of rain-pitted sand. It tried to scuttle up the beachhead but it was hemmed in by steep shale. The boys hunched over with their hands on their knees—their kneecaps chapped red with cold—to collect their breath. The sky had gone dark: an icy vault pricked with isolated stars. A fingernail slice of the moon cast a razored edge of brightness over the sea.
“We should build a fuh-fuh-fire,” newton said, his teeth chattering.
“First we have to kill it.”
A painful tension had sunk into max’s chest: the pressure of a huge spring coiled to maximum compression. He was angry at the turtle for its mute will to survive and for its defiance of his own needs. He was frustrated that the turtle had scared him. He’d have to kill it for that transgression alone.
The turtle turned to face them. Its head was tucked defensively into its shell. It struggled forward on its front flippers, aiming to return to the tide pool.
max stepped in front of it. The turtle’s head darted out to snap at his toes. max pulled his foot away with a strangled squawk. The turtle had taken a V-shaped bite: the wound went a quarter inch into his toe, almost to the nail.
max felt very little—his toes were still numb and his system was awash with adrenaline—but as his blood pissed into the sand he sensed all the threads inside his body gathering up, tightening, and committing themselves to a steely purpose.
He’d kill this thing. He wanted it dead.
max found a bit of driftwood and hooked it under the turtle’s shell. It wheeled and snapped off three inches of bleached wood. max jammed the remaining portion under its front flipper and levered it up savagely.
The turtle flipped onto its back. It uttered a pitiful squall that sounded too much like the cry of a human infant for newton’s ears.
“
There
.” max’s chest heaved. “
There,
you fucking tough guy—
there you go.
”
With one trembling finger, he flicked open the largest blade of his Swiss Army knife. moonlight lay trapped along its honed edge. His anger and fear helixed into each other. Things were speeding up and yet everything was held in a bubble of crystalline clarity: the tide swelling over the rain-pitted sand and smoothing everything with a layer of silver; the shriek of gulls overhead that seemed to urge him toward an act of savagery he’d already settled his mind around.
max pressed the knife to the turtle’s stomach, which was the off-beige color of the rubberized mat in his bathtub at home. The tip slipped into one of the grooves in the turtle’s shell as if guided by its own inner voice.
max had never killed anything. oh, maybe bugs—but did they really count? He’d never stabbed anything, that was for sure. newton stared at him with eyes that shone like cold phosphorus. max wished he’d look away.
He bore down, unsure at first but steadily applying more force. The blade slipped and skittered along the turtle’s belly, leaving a milky scratch on its shell. The turtle mewled. Its flippers oared in crazy circles. Its helplessness made it look stupid, comical. max could do whatever he wanted to it.
He refolded the knife and pulled out the leather awl: just a simple metal spike. He held the knife in both hands as if it were the T-handle on a TnT detonator box. He took a rough guess at where the turtle’s heart might lie, then hunched his shoulders and bore down with all his weight.
The spike pierced the turtle with the sound of a three-hole punch going through a thick sheaf of paper. Blood poured from the perfectly round hole, darker than max had ever imagined. The turtle’s back flippers clenched and unclenched spastically. Something dribbled out between those flippers: pearlescent roe that had the look of delicate soap bubbles.
max punched the leather tool through a second time. The turtle’s body compressed under max’s weight, its chest buckling like when you press down on a plastic garbage can lid. Its flippers beat helplessly at the air. Blood burst out of the wound in a startling syrupy gout. The smell was profoundly briny, as if the turtle’s organs were encrusted with salt.
max punched the spike through again, again . . . again. The turtle gurgled, then made a fretful stuttering sound:
icka-icka-icka,
as if it had a bad case of the hiccups.
max moaned and sawed his arm across his eyes—he’d begun to cry without being aware of it—and stared at the turtle with eyes gone swimmy with tears. Blood was coming out of it all over. It rocked side to side frantically. A low venomous
hiss
came out of the punctures; it was as if the turtle’s organs had vaporized into steam that was now venting through those fresh holes.
“Please,” max said. He punched the spike through again. It went in so goddamn
easy
now, as if the turtle’s skin had relinquished its prior rights of refusal. “Please won’t you just
die.
“
But it would not. Stubbornly, agonizingly, it clung to life. Its head craned up to take in the bloody wreckage of its own body. Its eyes were set in nets of wrinkles, inexpressive of any emotion max could name. Its will to live was terrifying, as it rejected the notion of an easy death.
Why had he done this—
why?
Jesus, oh Jesus.
on TV it was always so quick and easy, almost bloodless: the detective shot the murderer and he collapsed, clutching his heart. or the knife slid in soundlessly and some guy went down clutching his stomach, venting a sad sighing note—“
Eeoooogh . . .
”—before he died. But it didn’t work that way in real life. Suddenly max understood those awful stories he’d seen on the national news, the ones where a reporter grimly intoned some poor person had been stabbed forty times or whatever. maybe the stabber would have stopped after a single stab if that was all it took. But most living things don’t
want
to die. It took a lot to kill them. events take on a vicious momentum. All of a sudden you’re stabbing as a matter of necessity. You’re hoping that if you just put enough holes into a body, the life will drain out and death will rapidly flow in . . .
“newt,” he pleaded. “newt,
please.
”
The boys knelt in the sand, wet and shivering. Sand stuck to the pads of their feet. max was shaking and sobbing. He could never, ever be hungry enough to kill something if this was what it meant. The turtle was still hiccupping, but now those sounds were interspersed with frantic
peeps,
like a baby bird calling from its nest.
newton grabbed blindly for the turtle’s head. He slashed wildly with his knife, trying to hack through its throat. But the turtle withdrew into its shell and newton’s knife only cut a deep trench around its jawbone. WWAmD? not this. Alex would never have done this. newton burst into a freshet of tears.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his chest hitching uncontrollably. “I thought that might be the quickest way. Y’know, cut its head off. like a guillotine. A terrible thing to do but still better than . . . “
The turtle peered out from the leathery cave where its head now resided. Its eyes blinked slowly. Its mouth opened and closed like a man at the end of a long run. Blood filled the lower hub of its shell and dripped onto the sand. It kept peeping and peeping.
The boys knelt with their shoulders bowed as the turtle bled to death. It took so, so long.
At one point, its head poked out of its shell. Its blood-slicked eyes stared around as if in hopes that its tormentors had grown bored of their sport and left it alone. maybe it thought it could still return to the tide pool and be carried back into the ocean. Animals never gave up hope, did they? But its glazed eyes found them, blinked once, and resignedly returned to the darkness of its shell.
The great wave of the tide moved farther inland. The water lifted. The surf sucked at the boys’ bare feet. The turtle’s flippers went stiff all at once, then relaxed. Tiny translucent creatures that looked like earwigs crawled out from the deep folds of its skin to trundle over its cooling body. Aquatic parasites looking for a new host.
“I’m not huh-huh-hungry anymore,” newton said.
“me neither.”
“my muh-muh . . . my muh-muh . . . my
mother
says you can’t really love yourself if you hurt animals.”
“I didn’t mean to. not like this. If I’d known—”
“I know. It’s over now anyway.”
The water lapped at their feet with a dreadful languidness. The gulls hurled down shrill shrieks from high above. The wind whispered in a language they could not name.
They buried the turtle in the forgetting sand of the beach.