John McManus - Fox Tooth Heart

“My friend’s gone and I can’t find him,” said Hunter, his voice cracking enough that something changed in Buck.

“What’s his name?” Buck said, seeming to have detected at last that Hunter was only a boy who needed help.

“Cody Avery. It’s been hours.”

Buck walked out of hearing range and spoke on the radio. When he was done, he told Hunter, “Seems you’re under arrest, but hang tight.”

Hunter sat on a log and flipped through old issues of Bike . After a while a helicopter flew overhead and vanished below the canyon rim. He didn’t want to think about what that meant. Staring down at the glossy trail photos, he focused on keeping Cody’s obituary out of next month’s issue, occupying himself with that hope or prayer until Buck ambled over to ask what he’d been doing in Charlie’s Bar.

“I drove past and saw it.”

“So you’re twenty-one?”

“Thought maybe they’d serve me.”

“How old’s your friend?” said Buck, again adding a subtly lascivious innuendo to the word friend .

“We were both born in seventy-eight,” Hunter replied. His stomach growled audibly. He felt a swell of something, roiling him more than hunger.

“There’s a steakhouse past the boundary.”

“What?” he said, as if Buck had delivered a non sequitur.

“Show up with me, they’ll serve you drinks.”

“I already ate,” he said, certain now Cody was observing from the afterlife, snickering in derision.

Buck held up a key chain with a pink rabbit’s foot. “Your friend will be okay,” he said, rubbing it.

“Do you believe in that?” Hunter said. He heard the latent anger in his own words. On the verge of losing control, he counted the seconds, timing his breath.

“No, you’re just cuter when you smile.”

Hunter pulled out his training journal. Although he no longer desired emancipation — felt petty to have considered it — he handed Buck the court papers.

Buck pulled out reading glasses, read down the first page. “I see,” he murmured.

“Do you see?” said Hunter.

“I believe I do.”

“What, exactly?”

“That finger, for one.”

Hunter had to look down at his hand before he understood what Buck meant.

“You know, your church founder paid dentists to fix her teeth.”

“Medicine back then was hardly better than praying,” Hunter answered, startled to hear himself defending Emily’s ideas.

“She wrote that it was a still birth.”

“It wasn’t,” was all he could reply.

“Well, is there something to write with?”

How dare you, Hunter almost said now, just like those hackneyed boys on TV — you ruined my life — but he only shook his head.

“Your ma’s the superstitious one,” Buck said. “She wanted a baby in seventy-seven because it’s a lucky number. I skedaddled. See you in seventy-eight, I told her.”

He was stroking his rabbit’s foot again. Hunter shut his eyes. Earlier in his count he’d reached seven; now he whispered eight Mississippi, nine Mississippi, ten.

“Know what else? My dad had a stroke, and Emily took my hands and said, ‘Arthur, this life is but a stem on a rose.’”

“A thorn,” Hunter corrected. Eternity lasted forever, while life was but a thorn on a stem in a garden of flowers, all manner of them, all colors, fertilized by the divine, infinite mind.

“Thorns grow on stems, last I checked. Is there really no pen?”

In the silence, as Hunter’s glands prepared spit for a fit of rage, he could hear Emily’s soft voice describing those flowers. He got ready to drown her out. “Never show your face again!” would be his first words, and then he would lose track, screaming anything, because of course there were pens. He’d been called out in a silly lie; Buck could see them in the coin tray, the ones Cody had used to denote bike routes.

“They’re out of ink,” he whispered.

“Can’t sign without one.”

“I don’t need your signature anymore.”

“You’re not under arrest. Jenny wants me to call the state police, but I’m the one told you to come.”

“As if I care,” Hunter managed to say. He no longer wanted to stifle his screams. To do so dishonored his mother. Still, that was the effect of Buck’s lines: he breathed more slowly again, peering into the future at the end product of rage. Buck, already a sad sack, now KO’d into suicide by this kid he might have loved if given a chance. Whom he hadn’t meant to hurt — and so forth in a maelstrom of empathy run amok.

“Speaking of calls,” he said, “I should alert Cody’s folks.”

“There’s a phone at the entrance kiosk. Anyone asks, say Buck Flynn sent you.”

Hunter climbed in the van. “Be right back,” he said, disgusted by how he’d suppressed his emotions. Throttling even apt rage was what made him a pussy. He drove away. He bypassed the shut park gate without stopping. After a while he passed a Western Sizzler that stood alone on that red plain. There was a pay phone. He sped up, took off his seatbelt. “I’m an atheist,” he said aloud as a tractor-trailer rushed toward him, straddling the yellow line and shaking the van in its rough wake.

Someone braver would have to call Cody’s folks, he was thinking when he spotted a shirtless cyclist coasting toward him down the center line. A jersey, red like Cody’s and rippling in the wind, hung out of that rider’s shorts.

Hardly had Hunter stopped the van before he was rushing out onto the empty highway, catching a bewildered Cody in his arms.

“Dude, chill out,” Cody said.

“You’re alive,” Hunter choked.

“Yeah, shit was sick. I almost died so many times. Are you. .?” He didn’t need to say crying , now that the answer was obvious.

“I waited forever.”

“Must have made a wrong turn; I’m the one who waited.”

“There weren’t turns.”

Cody opened the hatchback door to load his bike. “What the hell?” he said.

“They confiscated my wheel. They’re looking for us now.”

“Rangers? No way. That’s awesome.”

“I thought you were dead.”

“Yeah, you wish. Ready to go?”

“Go where?” He was weeping openly now under that endless sky. He could see forever, and there was nowhere he wanted to go besides home.

“What time did you reach the river?”

“I didn’t notice,” he lied.

“Bullshit. I was 8:21 and ten seconds.”

“You probably beat me,” Hunter said — another lie. Not that it mattered if they’d descended different routes, but he recalled touching the water at 8:18.

“Damn straight,” Cody said, launching into an account of the hairy turns and narrow ledges. Hunter winced to hear of every skid, as if the telling put him in danger again. “How about you? You crash?”

“Only when you hit me.”

“We’ll be cult heroes. We’ll name our RV Cult Hero .”

“You be the hero. I need to focus on my mom.”

“Let’s try not to be retarded, okay?”

“I think something’s really wrong with her.”

“Yeah, Death Wish, it’s called her brain?”

“I’m glad you’re not dead,” Hunter blurted, suddenly needing his friend to speak sincerely too. To be reverent for a moment, like at sunrise; to ease up so Hunter could admit it all felt like a magic trick, this crimson desert whose deadly cliffs he’d navigated by force of will. He’d stopped trusting in reality. There was no helicopter. If it were out searching, wouldn’t they be hurrying up the highway, deeper into the red dream of earth? He yearned to come clean, and then for Cody to admit he believed in something too. Whatever that thing was, it had held Cody in its stead down the canyon, or Cody had perished and been resurrected by Hunter’s wishes — but Cody said only, “Guess I’ll emancipate myself from my own parents. Christ.”