The Troop

Max heard the high sweet crack! which lingered under the vapor-halogen spotlights. His father stood woozily, his arm hanging at a funny angle: bent back at the elbow, the lower half dangling like a cooked noodle. A shard of bone protruded from the joint, shining wetly under the lights.

The second baseman had driven his father’s car to the ER. Max sat in the backseat, his father in front. He leaned over the seat rest, smiling gamely. It’s okay, Maximilian. It’s just a flesh wound, he said, repeating a line from one of their favorite movies. At the hospital, Max’s dad sat on a bed encircled by a white curtain. Max wasn’t allowed to sit with him because, as his dad said, This is bound to be gross. So he’d only heard the rattle of the bone-setter’s tray and the crisp, blood-jangling click! as his father’s broken bone was set back in place. When the curtain withdrew, there he was, his arm in a sling and a tired, doped-up smile on his face.

Jeff Jenks showed up to say he was sorry but not really—some men are incapable of offering a sincere apology, Max realized; something in their nature refuses it, so instead they frame it as an accident, a misunderstanding, or a “sorry you’re so upset” sort of thing that placed subtle blame on the other person for making such a big deal. Kent was there, too, and told Max he was sorry about what’d happened—which wasn’t an apology, either. Max would always remember that glint of pride in Kent’s eye.

Afterward Max’s father drove them home. Can you drop the transmission into drive, son? I can’t manage it. They drove through streets wrapped in darkness, his father palm-guiding the wheel. Getting old, kiddo. His father smiled. And I’m barely hanging on to the “getting” part. A sudden fear had stolen over the crown of Max’s skull—fear and sadness intermingled, so powerful he wanted to cry. Up until that night, he’d sincerely believed that his father was invincible. He was mammothly strong, capable of reshingling a house or chopping down trees with a sharp axe. But that night he’d looked frail, tired, and vaguely spooked. Vulnerable—something Max had never seen. All bodies fail, he realized. They fall to pieces in pieces, bit by torturous bit, and a man had to watch it fall apart around him.

Max now thought of this as he looked at the Scoutmaster, and shivered.

“I’LL NEED your help, Max. I’ll need it quite a lot in the next few minutes.”

Max said: “Um, what do you want me to do?”

At fourteen, Max was a little smaller than average, but there was a wideness to his shoulders and a thickness to his chest. He moved with a litheness that was not at all common for boys his age—most of them were made of knees and elbows all held together with scabs. His face was Rockwellian: the bristle-brush red hair and star-spray of freckles over his cheeks. He looked like a more compact and muscular Opie.

What set Max apart from the other boys was his reservoir of remoteness and cool self-control. Tim didn’t believe his father had inculcated this into him: Reggie Kirkwood was a good man but flighty as a hummingbird, prone to gossip and drink. Tim had seen the same cool quality in some of his classmates at med school who’d gone on to become the top “blades” at Johns Hopkins and Beth Israel. It wasn’t exactly cockiness: more an absence of panic or hesitation. They trusted their instincts and they trusted their hands to carry those instincts into action.

Tim would try to not ask too much of the boy during the coming operation—but even asking him to be here at all was a terrible request. HAL 9000’s maddeningly reasonable voice echoed this.

Tim, I think you’re losing it. Tim could see HAL in his mind’s eye: a reflective glass eye, very dark, a dot of redness expanding and contracting like a dilated pupil. And now you’re taking a child down the rabbit hole with you.

Don’t listen to that bullshit, the other, more comforting voice boomed. This is your duty as a doctor—what other choice, just watch this man die? And you can’t do this alone, can you?

He couldn’t. It was that simple. Tim switched on the soldering iron to let it heat. “I’ve doped him up.”

It wasn’t true anesthetic—two crushed Vicodin discovered in a forgotten pocket of his backpack; he’d been prescribed it years ago while recuperating from a calf infarction. It could very well be expired, but what the hell, better than nothing.

“He shouldn’t wake up.” Tim gripped the blankets gathered at the man’s throat. “Ready?”

Max nodded. Tim pulled the blankets away.