The Troop

10

“JESUS… JESUS Christ… what is that?”

These six words cracked over the walkie-talkie clipped to Kent’s belt at four o’clock that afternoon.

“Tim?” Kent said. “Tim, what’s wrong? Do you copy?”

The boys stood in a loose circle, waiting.

“It’s nothing, guys,” came the reply. “Just sat on this goddamn thing accidentally.”

Kent glared, his eyes squeezing to slits. “What’s the matter, Tim? Come in, Tim.”

Tim’s voice—ragged, frustrated: “Why do you have the walkie-talkie, Kent? I gave it to Max. Anyway, how’s it going? Fulfilling your merit obligations?”

Ephraim snatched the walkie-talkie. “Kent almost walked us off a cliff.”

Kent made a grab for the walkie-talkie; Ephraim stashed it behind his back, his chin assuming that challenging jut again.

Silence from Tim’s end. Then: “I hope you’re joking. Where are you now?”

Newton gave Tim the compass coordinates. Tim said: “You’re a bit off-track, but it’ll be fine. Follow the path from here on out, okay?”

The sun hung low in the western sky. Its reflective rays turned the poplars and oaks into pillars of flame. The boys had rounded down from the cliffs around the northern hub of the island. Newton used his compass to keep them on track.

“None of this would’ve happened if Tim had come,” Kent sulked. “It’s his job, isn’t it?”

“Oh, bullshit.” Ephraim vented a harsh, barking laugh. “You wanted to play King Shit, Kent. Well, you played it. Now wear your crown of turds.”

The muscles humped up Kent’s shoulders—a defensive, kicked-dog posture. They walked in silence until Shelley said: “Kent’s right, the Scoutmaster should’ve come.”

Kent gave Shelley a look of pathetic gratitude. Next he was storming to the head of the line, which Ephraim was heading, elbowing the smaller boy aside to assume the lead. Shelley smiled fleetingly, nothing but a slight upturn of his lips—not that anybody noticed. Shelley had this way of hiding in a permanent pocket of shadow, that spot at the edge of your vision where your eyes never quite focused.

The boys came upon a large rock pile covered with spongy moss and decided to play King of the Mountain. It was a game they played often, but today it achieved a particular intensity—less a game and more of a fight. They played hard to dispel the jitteriness that had invaded their bones, a feeling whose root could be found back at the cabin. If they shoved and sweated and wrestled, it might just break the fear amassing inside of them, same way a good thunderstorm could break the intolerable heat of a summer afternoon.

Kent took command of the hill and repulsed their halfhearted attempts with hard shoves. He shoulder-blocked Max’s anemic challenge and flexed his biceps, his budding linebacker’s body set in a defensive stance. Dying sunlight petaled through the tree branches, glinting off his dental braces.

“Bring it on, Eef! I double-dog dare you!”

Ephraim stood at the base of the hill, arms crossed over his chest, hands cupping his elbows. A thin boy—so skinny he could slip down the drain hole, as his mom said—but his limbs were roped with powerful fast-twitch muscles, elbows and kneecaps hard as carbon. He thought about the mantra of his counselor, Dr. Harley: Don’t be a slave to your anger, Ephraim.

It was so hard. It bubbled inside him like that stupid geyser at Yellowstone Park, Old Faithful—except the geyser was, like, faithful: at least you could time it. Ephraim’s anger rose out of nowhere, this giddy charge zitzing through his bones and electrifying the marrow. His rage was a dark cloud passing over the sun where just moments before the sky had been clear blue.

“You chicken?” Kent flapped his arms. “Chicken-chicken brock-brock!”

Lips skinning from his teeth, a feral growl rising in his throat, Ephraim sprinted up the pile to tangle with Kent. He saw it in Kent’s eyes: this desperate, crawling fear. Fear of losing partially, but also fear of how far Ephraim might take it. And Ephraim saw how easily it could happen. His fist coming up over Kent’s clumsy arms, his fist hammering Kent in the mush, flattening his thick drool-flecked lips against the barbed braces, cutting the flesh open as the big boy toppled like a sack of laundry, Ephraim following him down, fists pumping like pistons to destroy the crude symmetry of Kent Jenks’s fuck-o face…