The Troop

Ephraim saw all this in the elastic instant they were perched atop the pile—a silly prize, really; a mossy heap of rocks—and the possibility of violence, his easy capacity for it, drained the strength from his limbs. Kent took advantage, flinging the smaller boy down. He copped a bodybuilding pose, the flexed double crab, face set in a caricature of a despotic monarch.

“I… am… invincible!”

Ephraim frowned and rubbed his elbow—the skin torn, blood weeping sluggishly to his wrist.

“Not cool, big K.”

Ephraim found Newt scraping moss off a log. Newt was always wandering off to press stupid leaves into his stupid notebook, cataloging everything with a black Sharpie. Eastern Sumac. Indian tobacco. God, so dorky!

Ephraim wound up to give Newt a kick in the ass, feeling sort of guilty—Dr. Harley wouldn’t approve; nor would his mother—so he delivered a lighter kick than usual.

“Where’s the first aid kit, numbnuts?”

Newt rubbed the seat of his pants. “I got ears, Eef. Don’t have to kick me.”

“I figured your ears were in your ass, Newt. Looks like everything else is—I was just knocking the wax out of them. Aren’t you gonna thank me?”

Sighing, Newt dug the kit out of his knapsack.

“Sit down, Eef.”

This was Newt’s role: the nurturer, the motherer. He had a natural affinity for it, and the boys sporadically accepted his ministrations—accepted them, then returned to making Newt the object of their torments. And Newt allowed it, because it had always been so.

He tore open a peroxide swab packet, pressed it to the wound on Ephraim’s elbow. Ephraim hissed between clenched teeth.

“It’s just fizzy,” Newt said. “Shouldn’t hurt.”

Ephraim slapped Newt’s hand away. “I’ll do it.”

Newton’s eyes drifted to the sky. His nostrils dilated.

“What are you doing?”

“I think that storm’s coming,” Newt said. “You can smell it. Like, an alkaline smell, like when you rip open a bag of water-softener salt.”

“We don’t have a water softener, Richie Rich.” Ephraim bared his teeth in a mock-snarl. “We like our water haaaaard.”

“You can spot it in the water, too. See?” Newt pointed to the sea. “The water always turns red before a storm. Not quite bloodred, but close. The electricity in the air as a storm brews, right, it causes plankton protozoans to lift up off the seabed; these tiny little creatures—like, the tiniest living things on earth—inflate with oxygen and turn deep red, covering the whole sea and making it red, too.”

Ephraim slapped a butterfly bandage on his elbow.

“Holy shit, dude. Your brain’s too big. Why doesn’t it ooze out your ears?” His eyes went wide. “Actually… fuck me! I see it oozing out right now!”

Ephraim licked his finger and went to screw it into Newt’s ear—a classic Wet Willy. His finger stopped just short, though, a runner of saliva clung to a whorl of his fingerprint. It seemed a heartless thing to do, considering.

He wiped the spit on his pants, bounded to his feet, and raced off to join the other boys.

“Saved your life, Newt! You owe me one!”

THE TRAIL descended to a pebbled shoreline lapped by the ocean. The boys doffed their boots and rolled up their pants, wading in the icy October sea. Their ankles turned pig-belly pink. They hunted for the smoothest stones and had a skipping contest, which Kent won with ten skips by his count.

“Hey, guys,” Ephraim said. “Check this out.”

He directed them to a deep cut within the shore rocks, fringed with sea moss. The boys gathered round. Flashes of shining skin made oily in the guttering light; unknown shapes humping over one another. Silky sibilant esses—husssss, husssss.

“It’s a snake ball,” Newton said.

How many snakes? Impossible to tell. Their bodies were entwined, a writhing network of tubes like an elastic-band ball. Their bodies were dark—sea serpents?—and wet like living, livid oil; that peculiar reptile smell met their noses: wet and fetid like a dewy field spread with dead crickets.

“What are they doing?” said Ephraim.

“They’re…” Newt’s face went pink. “…y’know…”

“Fucking?” Ephraim made a gagging noise. “That’s how snakes fuck, all twisted up in a ball? Like… a snake orgy?”

Kent and Max laughed. Ephraim was so perverted. A snake orgy. Inevitably someone tried to push Newton into the snake ball, make him touch it—Shelley in this case. Newt squirmed free of Shelley’s long simian arms, out of his smooth rubbery grip—almost like tentacles without the suction cups—and screamed at him to stop.

“Quit it, Shel! Lay off!”

The other boys watched idly. There was something off-putting—sickening, really—about the scene. A bit like watching a blind boa constrictor pursue a plump mouse around a cage: the chase might go on a while but the snake was dogged, plus it was a natural predator. Sooner or later it’d eat the fat little fucker.

“Stop it, Shel,” Kent said in a bored tone. “You’re gonna make him piss his pants again.”