Slaughterhouse High

The other trumpeter, the defiant-looking one, was resting his elbows on the trampoline pads in the center of the gym. His knuckles thudded an off-rhythm against the thick springs.

He had been clipped and curt when, on their way here, Winnie had offered a compliment on his playing. Now his restless drumming stopped and he strode over to them.

"Hey, Zinc," he said, "let's try it out."

"You don't mean jumping on the tramp?" The kid was incredulous.

Sarcastic: "No, I mean lobesucking. Come on, it'll be a blast." The taller boy, a lick of hair sickled over his forehead, pointedly ignored Bray. Grown-up, over-the-hill has-been, Bray could almost hear him thinking.

"Don't, Butch. You'll break your neck."

"Well, jeez, at least spot me. Come on, man. Sailing on up into the darkness? It'll get your juices flowing."

Balancing on one foot, he wrenched a shoe off and tossed it down thock fwap-fwap-fwap.

Its mate quickly followed.

"Is he always like this?" asked Bray.

"Only when something's eating him. The prom, you know. Going away to school next year."

The charcoal blur hoisted himself up onto the edge of the trampoline, then hop-rolled onto its yield of canvas.

"Let's spot him."

They skated across the smooth gym floor, a sensation like a layer of ice beneath the soles of their shoes. Other kids were coming in from all directions, and Winnie, turning her head, joined him.

"Couple o' converts?" Bray asked about the girls she had been talking to.

"Discontent is everywhere," said Winnie, "a micron or two beneath the skin. What's with your musician friend?"

The trumpeter had found the discolored center of the canvas. He staggered at first, then eased into a gentle bounce.

"Who knows? Maybe he wants to die."

"Hey, you guys," Butch shouted on the uplift. "It's all a crock. ( Sproing!) stop it, and we ought to."

Worked up already to nearly ten-fifteen feet, change falling out of his pockets and spinning on the canvas below, Butch stiffed up suddenly, knees bearing the brunt, arms shot out to the sides for balance. He bent and swept the coins off, metal clatters as they waterfalled through the springs, pinging and rolling across the floor.

"Zinc, come on, man," he said.

Then Zinc monkeyed up.

Bray steadied Zinc on the pads, and Butch helped him over the crisscross of springs. His shoes whip-rolled toward Bray, then fell floorward in twin thuds. "I can't believe I'm doing this." Standing, he linked hands with his lover and began a slow seesaw. "Woe, woe, woe!" he said, one at each bounce.

Bray glanced at Winnie. She looked sharp-eyed and stunning, a heartmelt.

"Kids," she commented in awe and disgust.

The seesaw diminished to nothing. The boys bounced now in synch and rising, white cuffs and clasped hands, their moonish faces alight with thrill, their arms angling out on the downfall, then snapping down flat like collapsed umbrella struts as they shot skyward once more.

A drifting horde of seniors, some of them tender, others not, rectangled all about, shouting encouragement and holding their hands up to offer instant rebuff against a bad fall.

Butch and Zinc were ill-lit as they pizza-doughed the canvas and it rebounded them upward. But on the rise, they slipped into even greater obscurity, a sleeve of blackness enveloping them, then releasing them on the downfall.

There was no ceiling visible. Just the one Bray sensed up there, climbing ropes strung up way high like dreams of vines, no limits to how daring the trumpeters might get.

Vanish.

Re-emerge swiftly downward, a plunge through squid ink into the dim ocean below.

Then arrow upward again, squeals of delight rocketing from their mouths.

Bray fancied he heard a noise up above, a metal strut adjusting to chill or weight.

Down again they shot, but Bray kept his eyes above, a dark shift in blackness he assumed he had to be imagining.

Up they rose.

But suddenly there oofed, above, an expulsion of breath, a blow to the belly, and one boy came down empty-handed, a look of terror smeared across his face.

It was the monkey-looking kid, too distraught to keep himself from an upward bounce as lofty as the previous one. Then he too, with a high choking sound, stuck up there.

Swift whickers of pain fell from above. More mechanical sounds, black on black, loud creaks, a spider dandling its web about trapped flies.

Someone asked stupidly, "Where are they?"

"Get the lights," Winnie called weakly, and it seemed to Bray that she thought she had shouted it.

Yes, I'll do that, he thought. I'll get the lights.

But all Bray could do was stare up into the blackness and listen to the bold shifting sounds, the creaking obscenity of movement and stretched rope, the shifts of some murderous shape about its work.

"They can't tender."

Others took up her word, the unfairness of it all and the shock in their voices.

In front of him, the trampoline canvas popped like a bedsheet snapped in a breeze.

Then again.

A wash of pops rained down, a sudden shower, foul-smelling.