John McManus - Fox Tooth Heart

“My mom’s on disability. She’s possessed.”

“Mine’s a nurse.”

“She wrote to Rome to ask for an exorcist, but they wouldn’t send one, so she switched to Adventist.”

“Mine’s nothing,” said Victor, giggling, because the alcohol was in his blood now, and his body felt like an unclenching fist.

“Here’s the swamp.”

They emerged into a meadow where willows grew by the shore of a cow pond. It wasn’t a swamp. From now on, thought Victor as he drank again, if he felt like saying something dumb like “It’s not a swamp,” he would drink instead.

“Dad will whip me later,” said Albert with a cramped smile.

“He won’t find out,” said Victor.

“Maybe I want it,” said Albert, and suddenly it didn’t matter if the blond fuzz on Albert’s arm belonged to someone with an unattractive name; Victor couldn’t go any longer without touching it. He reached a hand tentatively toward the boy. It felt like he was pushing through a thick morass. Then, as his finger hovered near Albert’s skin, a heron’s wings flapped, rippling the water.

Scared out of his reverie, Victor pulled back. “I wanted it to keep going,” said Albert, as if he meant the approach of Victor’s hand.

“Getting whipped?”

“Sievert and I punch each other.”

Following his new protocol Victor sipped from the flask until he had a better reply than “I like Sievert’s name.” The better one was, “Why?”

“To see who can take more hits.”

“Should I do it to you?”

“Are you gay?”

“You just said you like it.”

“No, assmunch.”

“Want to do it to me?”

“In the face like a girl?”

“However you like,” said Victor, immediately gulping down an impulse to take it back, to run away from this strange thrall. He folded his hands across his lap. Beyond Albert the sky was ripe with white clouds that floated above the pines while Albert’s cupped palm whooshed in to slap him. Right away Albert gasped as if he’d been the one hit.

“Happy now?” he asked.

“I guess,” said Victor, his cheek stinging.

“Again, assmunch?” said Albert, as Victor kept unclenching. Hard not to conflate that with the stinging, so he presented his cheek. He breathed with ease. He hadn’t liked the slap, but being drunk felt sublime. His lungs weren’t tight anymore. His head didn’t hurt. He had binocular vision, not just in the merging of his two eyes’ fields but in the two halves of the earth. In this new state as he awaited Albert’s palm, beauty wasn’t repelling ugliness. He desired no stick for raking scum off the pond water. He didn’t care about the trash strewn on the far shore.

From then on, Albert let Victor drink with him once a week when his family was at service. They did it in Albert’s basement and in the woods, in an abandoned school bus there, or by the pond where it had first happened. A summer evening in the school bus could calm Victor for a week. They smoked Marlboros Albert purchased from the cousin who sold him gin. They arrived home reeking of gin and cigarettes, so Victor started stowing a toothbrush and toothpaste behind a loose house brick, brushing his teeth to mask the scent. Not that Mary noticed stuff like that. As for Albert, he didn’t care what his parents smelled; he hated them for messing up his brother’s head.

“What did they do to it?” asked Victor more than once, to which Albert would say only, “Fucked it up.”

Victor hadn’t forgotten how he used to react to the harsh edges at the end of fuck and crap . Such a childish kid he’d been. “Is that why you worship the devil?”

“Micah, don’t be a dipshit.”

“What do you mean?”

“Should I hit you again?”

Victor nodded not because he liked the feeling, but because of symmetry. If Albert wished to slap him, and Victor wished to allow it, there was symmetry. Anyway it never hurt much, at least not until the day Albert watched him brush his teeth.

They had spent three hours in the bus. Afterward Victor swallowed the toothpaste like usual.

“Raise your arms,” Albert said then. When Victor did, Albert punched him in the gut. He dropped his toothbrush and bowled over.

“Why’d you do that?” he howled.

“Because you’re retarded.”

“For swallowing toothpaste?”

“Did you swallow toothpaste?”

“I’ve always done it that way.”

“You’re worse than Sievert,” said Albert, turning to go.

As he crossed the road home, the curtains fluttered in the Alfssons’ living room. “I don’t care,” said Victor aloud, enjoying the words as he spoke them. He stayed put afterward, admiring their echo. Nothing was symmetrical about I don’t care , but the phrase wasn’t ungainly. He was seeing beyond its shape and sound to the deeper meaning, the notion of not caring. Who gives a fuck, he thought, feeling wise beyond his years. That night, still buzzed, he spat his toothpaste out for the first time. Thinking back to Albert’s last withering glance he watched it swirl down the drain.

The next morning, sober but still wise, he did the same. “It’s what I always do,” he let himself whisper aloud, a workmanlike phrase striking in its plainness. After a few more days, spitting was old hat. The shift proved so strangely easy that, when Albert didn’t show up the following weekend at the usual hour, Victor braved beginning a journey on his right foot, ending on the Alfssons’ porch on his left.

He rang the bell. Almost immediately the door opened to reveal white-haired Mr. Alfsson, his hazel cat-eyes daring Victor to ask, “Albert home?”

“Where Albert is is the Lyman Ward Military Academy,” Mr. Alfsson said. “You can write to him there.”

“When will he be back?”

“Sievert is inside. Would you like to play with Sievert?”

“Okay,” he heard himself say, but he meant no . Suddenly Sievert appeared at the top of the stairs, as fat as his brother used to be. Their spirits had traded bodies, Victor thought, already pondering an excuse to leave. “I forgot my mother needs me,” he said, backing away.

Switching feet hadn’t worked out, he thought as he headed home. He should obey his own rules, heed words’ sounds and keep things tidy, swallow his toothpaste every time. Except he was realizing something. He wasn’t sad to lose Albert. Or he detected no sadness. What he gulped down as he crept across the road was excitement. Adrenaline. At school there were tons of better-looking boys than Albert, with names as hideous as Hugh and Horace and he didn’t care, he had put that crap behind him. Names were subjective. The objective problem was obtaining alcohol.

Victor studied that problem until the day a Desert Storm veteran and addict in recovery came to speak at Magnolia High. On the gym bleachers, Victor positioned himself behind two kids he’d heard speaking on the subject in biology class, the ugly-named Hugh and Hugh’s neutral-named friend Clint. It seemed they drank from Clint’s parents’ liquor cabinet while they played Dungeons & Dragons. The fact that they were gaming nerds lowered the stakes for Victor, who waited to make his move until the assembly speaker alleged that no one ever wanted to grow up and become a drunk.

“I want to grow up and become a drunk ASAP,” Victor said.

Hugh laughed and turned to see who’d spoken.

“I’ll be better at it,” Victor added. “I’ll set high goals.”

They got to talking. Victor mentioned Dungeons & Dragons admiringly. Soon enough Hugh was suggesting he hang out with them. Did he want to? “Why not,” Victor answered. Within hours they were in Clint’s bedroom pouring peach schnapps and rolling dice to learn what qualities his character would have in the campaign.