Nathan Hill - The Nix

They waited for the Berg here, Samuel feeling scared and nervous about this whole thing, about what Bishop planned to do, which was to lock Andy Berg in the stairwell and leave him there all night.

“I really don’t think we should be doing this,” he told Bishop, who was at the bottom of the stairwell hiding a black plastic bag he had produced from his backpack, burying it under the leaves and dirt and debris.

“Relax,” he said. “It’ll be fine.”

“But what if it isn’t?” said Samuel, who was right on the cusp of a Category 2 just thinking about the ways Andy Berg could get them back for what seemed like a pretty stupid trick.

“Let’s just go right now,” Samuel said, “before he gets here. No harm done.”

“I need you to do your job. What’s your job?”

Samuel frowned and touched the bulky metal padlock he was currently hiding in his pocket. “When he gets to the bottom of the steps, close the gate.”

“ Quietly close the gate,” Bishop said.

“Right. So he doesn’t notice.”

“I’ll give you the signal and you’ll close the gate.”

“What’s the signal?”

“I’ll give you a look pregnant with meaning.”

“A what?”

“A real bug-eyed look. You’ll know it when you see it.”

“Okay.”

“And after the gate is closed?”

“I lock it,” Samuel said.

“That’s the essential part of the mission.”

“I know.”

“The very most important part.”

“If I lock it, then he can’t get out and beat us up.”

“You have to think like a soldier here. You have to be focused on your part of the operation.”

“Okay.”

“I didn’t hear you?”

Samuel kicked at the ground. “I said hooah. ”

“That’s better.”

It was warm and wetly humid, the shadows lengthening and the light a deep orange. Storm clouds gathered on the horizon, those great Midwestern clouds like floating avalanches, which meant an evening of thundershowers and heat lightning. The wind blew roughly through the trees. A tang of electricity and ozone in the air. Bishop finished arranging the bag at the bottom of the stairs. Samuel practiced closing the gate without making it squeak. Eventually they climbed up onto the loading dock and waited, Bishop checking and rechecking the contents of his backpack, Samuel fingering the ridges of the heavy padlock in his pocket.

“Hey, Bish?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened in the principal’s office?”

“What do you mean?”

“When you went for a paddling. What happened in there?”

Bishop stopped fussing with his backpack for a moment. He looked at Samuel, then away, off into the distance. He assumed a certain manner Samuel had begun to recognize, where his body seemed coiled and tightened and his eyes turned to slits and his eyebrows wrinkled into check marks. A posture of defiance, a look Samuel had seen before: with the principal, and Miss Bowles, and Mr. Fall, and when Bishop threw that rock at the headmaster’s house. It was a fierceness and hardness usually foreign to eleven-year-olds.

But it dissolved just as quickly, as Andy Berg rounded the corner of the building, lumbering in his big stupid way, shuffling along, dragging his toes like his feet were too far away from his tiny brain, as if his body were too large for his nervous system to handle.

“He’s here,” Bishop said. “Get ready.”

The Berg wore his usual uniform of black sweatpants, generic white sneakers, and a T-shirt with something juvenilely funny written on it, this time “Where’s the Beef?” He was the only male in the class not made fun of for wearing imitation off-brand shoes. His giant size and proclivity to violence gave him a free pass, fashion-wise. The only acknowledgment he made to current tastes was the rattail he grew, a hairstyle that was en vogue with roughly a quarter of the boys in the class. A proper rattail was achieved when a boy cut his hair short but left a spot in the very middle of the back of his head to grow wildly away. The Berg had so far achieved a frizzy black curly rope that extended several inches down his neck and back. He approached the loading dock, where the two boys sat, elevated, slightly above him, cross-legged.

“You came,” Bishop said.

“Let’s see it, fag.”

“First tell me you’re not going to freak out.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“A lot of kids freak out. They’re not mature enough. This is hard-core stuff.”

“I can handle it.”

“Oh can you?” Bishop said. His tone was playful and sarcastic. That tone where you can’t decide if he’s having fun with you or insulting you. That tone that makes you feel like you’re one or two steps behind him. The understanding of this registered on the Berg’s face — he hesitated, unsure of himself. He was not accustomed to kids showing any kind of spirit or spine.

“Okay, let’s say you can handle it,” Bishop continued. “Let’s say you’re not going to freak out. Nothing you haven’t seen before, am I right?”

The Berg nodded.

“Because you see it all the time, right? That high schooler you’re banging?”

“What about her?”

“I’m wondering why you’re so eager right now when you have a girl whenever you want her. Why do you need the porn?”

“I don’t need it.”

“And yet here you are.”

“You don’t even have it. You’re lying.”

“Makes me think maybe there’s something you’re not telling us. Maybe the girl’s ugly. Maybe she doesn’t exist.”

“Fuck you. Are you gonna show me this shit or not?”

“Okay, I’ll let you see one picture. And if you don’t freak out, I’ll let you see the rest.”

Bishop rummaged in his backpack for a moment before pulling out a page from a magazine, folded several times, one ragged edge where it had been torn free. He handed it — carefully, slowly — to the Berg, who snatched it, annoyed at Bishop’s manner, his theatricality. The Berg unfolded it, and even before it was fully undone his eyes seemed to open wider, his lips very slightly parted, and his face melted from its usual barbaric severity to a kind of giddiness.

“Whoa,” he said. “Oh yes. ”

Samuel could not see the image that delighted the Berg so much. He could only see the back of the page, which appeared to be an advertisement for some kind of brown liquor.

“That is awesome, ” the Berg said. He looked like a puppy staring at your food.

“It’s good,” Bishop said, “but I wouldn’t call it awesome. Actually it’s pretty par for the course. Even a little droll, if you ask me.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“Irrelevant. Would you like to see more?”

“Fuck yeah.”

“And you’re not going to tell anyone?”

“Where is it?”

“You need to promise. You won’t tell.”

“Fine, I promise.”

“Say it with feeling.”

“Just show me.”

Bishop raised his hands in an I-give-up gesture, then pointed at the stairwell below him. “Down there,” he said. “I keep them down there, hidden in the dirt, bottom of the stairs.”

The Berg dropped the page he was looking at and opened the gate to the stairwell and rushed down. Bishop looked at Samuel and nodded: the signal.

Samuel leaped off the loading dock down to the spot where the Berg had been standing. He walked over to the gate and very slowly shut it, just as they had practiced. He could see the Berg at the bottom of the stairs, his long horrible rattail, the fat expanse of his back as he huddled down and swept away the dirt and leaves and discovered the plastic bag that Bishop had planted there.

“In here? In the bag?” the Berg said.