Adam Johnson - Emporium

No one got off easy. The FAA entertained accounts of gambling and drinking. The Gaming Commission was called, and the ATF, whose year of subsequent investigation will culminate in a secret raid, forty-eight hours from now, give or take. The airport tower faces an action for clearing a marine aircraft to land, and there are rival lawsuits against Berlin, who surrendered his flying permits and hangar privileges, but not the bottle, which remained until my arm got broke.

Berlin puts the Custer through some brief drills — a slouching roll into a double barrel, a nose-up loggerhead — as we pass the twin trellises of the Intracoastal bridge that mark the edge of the Lacassine Wildlife Refuge. A brackish mist pushes over the lip of the ocean ahead. The stunts make my stomach drop, and the roll makes all of Randy’s half-nelsons, cradles, and reverses suddenly come back from last night. I picture him working out in black body armor, teaching me arches, tucks, and bridges on a blue mat, his hands training my muscles to respond to a host of new moves. Randy’s been a junior twice now, so technically he’s a senior, which means he’s past head games. He’s way more mature than other guys, like the jerks on the squad who are always hiding your spirit basket. He’s also a transfer from Oklahoma City, so he’s not into all the high society and clubby-club stuff at school.

“About your friends,” Berlin says, his voice sudden and crinkly over the intercom. “The girls in your squad. Promise me you’ll make it up to them, because friends are what it’s all about. You’re a cripple without friends, a blind man.”

He gets all soupy like this when we fly.

“You’re right, Daddy. Friends are the best.”

“We’re about to find out who our friends really are. You’ll see. In a couple days, you’ll start to see.”

“See what?” I ask. “What are you talking about?”

“Keep your grades up,” is all he says.

Soon, we are over the ocean, flying under a sky the slick and grainy black of soaking charcoal, while beneath us the ocean is a milky, vinyl black, close to the Super Sport’s upholstery, but undulating, like sweet crude oil. I raise the minimegaphone and imagine its long pink swirl to the rollers below, coming to rest under all that water like the possessions of Teeg’s ex-wife or the booty of the pirate Jean Laffite. To the east, the horizon begins to faintly glow, which lends a sense of urgency to my officially becoming an ex-spirit leader. I’ll still know all the cool girls, still get Randy, but not have to attend all those stupid rallies, and forget the Honor Code. It feels like I should shout something profound into the minimeg, but I can’t think of anything. When my hand enters the sharp wind, it is simply taken from me, my hand left stinging.

Ahead are oil exploration platforms half lost in banks of fog that mark the edge of deeper, colder water. The blinking towers rise above the amber-glowing domes below, and I begin to make out Berlin’s faint snoring, thrumming off and on in the headset. The engine, too, has settled into a perfect drone, more a changing pressure in your ears than anything. In this fluxing hum, I hear the cooing of the rarest birds on earth, sleeping in our garage until they are wholesaled out.

Taking the stick, I put the Custer into a slow-banking one-eighty. School starts in an hour, and though I’ll have to wake my father to do the actual landing, he’ll have his rest until then. The gin is gone now, and there’s nothing to fear from sleep.

* * *

School is half day because of the Junior Crush Rally, so it’s parlez-vous, hypotenuse, The Red Badge of Verbiage , and then Randy driving me home in his boss Jeep. We bark out of the senior’s lot and lay flame past the cafeteria and gymnasium where the snare drum corps is psyching everyone up for the game and Sadie Hawkins dance. Suckers, I think, though I catch my lips moving with the distant Spirit Squad drill.

Rolling down Broad Street, we pass taxidermy shops, drive-through daiquiri huts, and Cajun J-Jon, the portable toilet storage lot that marks the edge of town. We shortcut across ML King Boulevard, our jerry cans sloshing with fuel on the train tracks, and I can tell Randy’s in a bad mood. He’s hunched up, steering with his elbows so he can crack his knuckles by bending each finger back.

“Listen to this shit,” he says and glances at me. “The sixteen-inch barrel of an assault weapon is rifled at 1:32. What’s the rotation of a bullet passing through at eighteen hundred feet per second?”

He’s wearing a black tee with an open, brown JROTC uniform shirt over it, so that when his fingers pop, I can see the little wave of his pecs and a jump in that vein in his bicep. Brown polyester whips in the wind. I can smell his skin.

“What?” I ask. I’m in a pixie skirt, pleated to hide my thighs.

“Bootleggers cut sixty liters of eighty proof rum with fifty liters of water. What proof results? Can you believe it? I’m sniper school material. My night vision is off the scale. I mean, I could have my ATF tactical badge today, but I got to learn this shit?”

Strewn across the backseat are coils of black rope.

“I’ll tutor you,” I tell him. “I’ll be the answer to all your questions.”

He glances up at the sky, smiles. “You gonna teach me Spanish, too?”

“You gotta learn Spanish?”

“Yeah, they say the whole future of the ATF is about Mexicans. They showed us this current events video. If you had seen this chart they had — by the year 2035, America is completely shaded yellow, with red zones in every major city.”

“What’s all the black rope for?” I run a loop through my fingers, feel the heat.

Randy trains his brown eyes on me, blinks back to the road. Past the fire station, we hit open road and pick up speed.

All his antennas start to sing. “Special ops,” he says.

“Kinky,” I tell him, and he kind of blushes. Behind him, the rice fields are a blur of gray-green water, and I wonder if he has any idea about the raid on my house or whether he’s just not letting on to the fact that he’ll be holding the flashlight when the advance team pulls me from my bed — in the semisheer emerald chemise I ordered special from Baton Rouge — only hours after he’s kissed me goodnight from the dance.

This thought, combined with black rope, makes the cords in the back of my neck go electrical, and I know I should have joined the Future ATF instead of the stupid Spirit Squad. I want my ATF outfit — Gore-tex boots, black Kevlar, a Spectra assault suit with chemical-proof panels thick enough to stop sarin nerve gas, yet still elastic enough to let you kick for the throat.

“I got the Super Sport for tomorrow night,” I tell him.

“About tomorrow.”

“I know, I know. You haven’t officially agreed to take me to the dance or anything, but my dress, forget about it. It’s a black silk skirt over a skin-tight catsuit.”

As we near the gates to my drive, we pass Jim Green, riding his bicycle at the edge of the road. Jim Green’s the most powerful man in south Louisiana, and Randy’s head turns as we pass him.

We park down the road a bit, and Randy leaves her running. I get out and lean against the Jeep’s grill, which is papered with the wings of dragonflies. I can tell by the way he puts his hands in his back pockets when he gets out, how he places his feet just so in the shale gravel in front of me, that he’ll try to give me another excuse.

“Look,” he says, “I’m eighty-five percent sure I’ll have tomorrow night off.”

Randy works some nights as a watchman on an oil recovery vessel parked in the Black bayou.

“My dad can have that boat sunk by tomorrow,” I say. “Towed to sea and burned. You don’t believe me, but believe me.”