Scott Nicholson - Disintegration

"Liar."

"I'll wish you, then. Put on your pants and shoes and let's go." Joshua sat up in bed, the crescent summer moon bathing his shoulders, his eyes glinting like wet beetles.

"No way. Mom will kill us."

"She'll have to catch us first." Joshua slipped on his shirt, leaving it unbuttoned as he put on his jeans. His legs and arms were more muscular than Jacob's, and the hair that rose from his groin to his belly button was thicker than his twin brother's. Joshua always said that though he had been born second, he had become a man first.

Jacob trembled with a mixture of dread and excitement as he hurriedly dressed. They climbed out the window onto the sloping roof, edged to the back of the house then worked their way down by leveraging against a long metal pipe that contained the utility lines.

The dew was cool and crickets fidgeted their legs. Fireflies blinked against the black curtain of forest and a sullen moon hid behind clouds of warship gray. Jacob's heart jumped like a trapped rat in his chest as he followed Joshua past the barn and across the hay fields. From the top of the rise, he looked back and saw the Wells house with its small yellow squares of light. The structure appeared to be a stage set, a lifeless thing that was waiting for something to happen.

They slipped into the trees and down a worn path the Mexican workers used when they carried hand tools from the barn. A creek ran below the trail, and its silver music played against the night sounds of the woods. The canopy overhead blocked most of the moonlight, but Joshua appeared to carry a map and compass in his head, leading Jacob through the stands of oak, buckeye, and maple without pausing to get his bearings. Soon they emerged into the regimented rows of Fraser fir, the trees a little taller than the boys and soon to feel the chain saws of autumnal harvest. At the bottom of the slope, the trees gave way to seedlings and a clearing where the box-like trailers lined an uneven dirt road. Music and laughter spilled from the open door of one of the trailers then someone shouted what sounded like a curse in Spanish.

"They're playing cards," Joshua said. "They do that on weeknights. They only fight cocks on Saturday night."

As if to punctuate Joshua's words, a rooster let out a cackle, seven hours too early. Joshua could make out the gray walls of a pen behind the trailers, chicken wire wound between crooked posts and plywood nailed across the openings.

"How many times have you been here?" Jacob asked.

"Not enough. Not yet."

They hunched and crept through the dwindling firs, then crouched just beyond a power pole whose lamp cast a cone of pale bluish light. Inside the noisy trailer, men sat around a table, shirts off, skin moist in the heat. Cigarette smoke wended out the door and rose toward the moon. The clink of glass was sharp and dangerous, as if bottles would soon be broken and used as weapons. The men were talking rapidly in Spanish, flipping cards, stacking American bills.

"They're gambling," Jacob said.

"Big deal."

A short, barrel-chested man exited the trailer and stood in the soft rectangle of light that spilled from the door. He wore a ragged bandanna on his head and smoked a turd-colored cigarillo. He hawked loudly, spat toward the darkness, then fished at the front of his pants and sent a stream of piss arcing into the dusty yard.

"Over here," Joshua whispered, shifting between the brittle bones of dead ornamental shrubs. "This is where the action is."

They worked their way to a tumbled outbuilding near the chicken shack. The shed was constructed of warped planks, tarpaper, and bulging plywood. Joshua opened the door with a shriek of rusty hinges, and Jacob glanced back at the urinating Mexican. The man swatted at a mosquito, sending his stream oscillating out in front of him. The boys entered the shed, the only light a dim, lesser gray that knifed between the wall's cracks.

Jacob bumped his head on something dangling from the ceiling, and a rain of grit went down the back of his shirt. He put his hand up and felt the leathery object. It was a salted rack of ribs, smoked and cured and hung where the rats and dogs couldn't get it. The room smelled of wet hay and used motor oil, and the air was stale. Joshua moved to the wall, motioning Jacob forward, his arm like a strobe against the lighted cracks.

There was a knothole in the wall the size of a silver dollar. "Cheap peep show," Joshua said.

Jacob squinted through the hole and couldn't see anything at first. Then he realized he was looking at one of the rear mobile homes. He rolled the gaze of his right eye downward and saw a window, its dirty curtain like a soft gauze veiling the scene beyond the glass. On the bed was a girl with black hair and eyes, reading a book by candlelight. She wore a bathrobe whose whiteness was in sharp contrast to her tan skin. She appeared to be slightly younger than Jacob and Joshua, though the swells on her chest beneath the robe suggested an early push toward maturity.

"What do you think?" Joshua said, as if he were showing off a star baseball card fresh out of the pack.

Jacob's heart turned a sick flip but he couldn't tear his face from the knothole. The girl stretched her legs and the robe parted below her waist, revealing pink panties. She must have just finished a shower, because wet hair was plastered to her cheeks. She worked her lips as if trying to pronounce the words in the book, and the sight of her moist tongue brought an electric tingle to Jacob's groin.

"Hot tamale, huh?" Joshua said. "How would you like to roll up in a burrito with that?"

Jacob finally forced himself away from the wall. "How long have you been spying on her?"

"Long enough. I figure she's the daughter of one of the workers, and they smuggled her up here. Because there ain't no damn way the government's going to give a work visa to an underage girl."

"An illegal immigrant? Like down in Texas and California?"

"Like all the way to North Carolina. Right here in Wells Country."

Jacob ached to take another look, though his stomach clenched with guilt. This was sneaky and wrong. This was something that perverts did, like Melvin Ricks, the janitor, who had been fired by the high school for drilling a hole in the wall to the girl's locker room.

There was only one door to the shed. "What if they catch you?"

"I only come at night, when they're already drunk," Joshua said. "Besides, what are they going to do? Tell Dad and get fired? Report me to the cops? They'd check everybody in the place for green cards and half these beaners would be on the next bus to Brownsville."

Jacob swallowed what felt like a sharp stone lodged in his throat. "Have you seen her naked?"

Joshua's grin flashed in the dimness. "Better than that."

"Bullshit."

Joshua clapped him on the shoulder. "Ten bucks and your run of Hulk comics says so."

"I don't gamble."

"Hang around here awhile and you'll get over it."

An unintelligible shout came from the trailer that hosted the card game, followed by laughter. "Sounds like somebody hit a full house," Joshua said. "Some idiot probably just lost two weeks' worth of trimming branches. Dumb fucks."

Jacob scarcely heard, because his cheek was pressed against the wall again, his one-eyed gaze crawling between the curtain and up the curving insides of the girl's thighs. He felt a small stir of air. Joshua had opened the shed door. The door closed with a rattle of metal, followed by the sound of a latch slamming home.

"Joshua," Jacob said with a whispered hiss. "Let me out of here."

"Keep watching, bro', and I'll show you what it means to be a Wells."

Jacob scrambled over the scrap metal, bundled straw, and tree baling equipment until he reached the door. He tried his weight against it then nudged it with his shoulder. He was afraid to make too much noise and risk drawing the attention of the card players. Despite Joshua's assessment, he could think of a number of ways the Mexicans could vent their anger at a gringo pervert.