The Troop

Kent pictured it: Gloria Conkwright, an enormously plump woman with bottled-platinum hair and heaving, pendulous breasts that stirred confused longing in Kent’s chest, squashing her body on top of Mr. Turley, who always wore shiny short-shorts two sizes too small—nut-huggers, as his father called them—his oily chest hair tufting in the V of his shirt collars; he pictured Mr. Turley blowing on the pea whistle that was constantly strung round his neck, the air forced out in gleeful whoofs as Gloria’s body smacked down onto his.

There’s no fate worse than being a cuckold, his father said. You can’t let some woman go stomping on your balls—you just may acquire a taste for it.

Those ride-alongs, his father enumerating the secrets and shames of their town, made Kent realize something: adults were fucked. Totally, utterly fucked. They did all the things they told kids not to do: cheated and stole and lied, nursed grudges and failed to turn the other cheek, fought like weasels, and worst of all they tried to worm out of their sins—they passed the buck, refused to take responsibility. It was always someone else’s fault. Blame the man on the grassy knoll, as his dad said, although Kent didn’t really know what that meant. Kent’s respect had trickled away by degrees. Why should he respect adults—because they were older? Why, if that age hadn’t come with wisdom?

Kent came to see that adults required the same stern hand that his peers did. He was their equal—their better, in many ways. Physically this was already so: he was a full head taller than many of his teachers, and though he’d never tested this theory, he believed himself to be stronger, too. Morally it was certainly so. Like his father said: Son, we are the sheepdogs. Our job is to circle the flock, nipping at their heels and keeping them in line. Nip at their heels until they’re bloody, if needed, or even tear their hamstrings if they won’t obey. At first the sheep will hate us—after all, we hem them in, stop them from pursuing their basest nature—but in time they’ll come to respect us and soon enough they won’t be able to imagine their lives without us.

Suffused with this sense of righteousness his father had instilled, Kent held his hand out to Max. “Give me the walkie-talkie, man. You know that’s the way it should be.”

When Max handed it over, Kent clapped him on the back.

“Attaboy, Max.” He swept his arm forward. “Tallyho!”

STUNG, MAX loafed back to his customary position. Newton tugged on his sleeve.

“You didn’t have to give it to him, you know.”

“I don’t care. I don’t need it.”

“Yeah, but Scoutmaster Tim gave it to you.”

“Oh, shut up, Newt.”

Max regretted speaking so harshly, but there was something so… exasperating about Newt. His hidebound determination to stick to “The Rules.” Like this thing with the walkie-talkie. Who gave a shit? It didn’t matter if Scoutmaster Tim had given it to Max—they were away from the adults now. Different rules applied. Boys’ rules, which clearly stated: the big and strong take from the small and weak, period.

There was just something about Newt that made Max want to snap at him. A soft, obliging quality. A whiff of piteousness wafted right out of Newt’s pores. It was like catnip to the average boy.

Max felt a deeper, more inherent need to treat Newt shabbily this morning. It had something to do with the strange man on the chesterfield and the tight unease that had collected in Max’s chest when he’d gazed at him. Something about the unnatural angularity of his face, as if his features had been etched with cruel mathematical precision using a ruler and compass.

Max’s mind inflated the details, nursing the image into a freakish horror show: now the man’s face was actually melting, skin running like warm wax down a candle’s stem to soak into the chesterfield, disclosing the bleached bone of his skull. Max’s brain probed the tiny details, fussing with them the same way his tongue might flick at a canker sore: the smashed radio (why had the man wrecked it?), the crumpled box of soda crackers in the trash (had the Scoutmaster eaten them?), and the itchy smile plastered to the Scoutmaster’s face, as if fishhooks were teasing his mouth into a grin.