Free We the Animals by Justin Torres Page B

it was us who had just broken the window on that old camper—that much was obvious—and there was an odd humor in his voice. The headbanger had been sniffing around us lately, trying to joke with us; we didn't know why; could be nothing more than we were the only ones near his age who were still out well past supper, could be something meaner. He came from up north, he claimed, from Texas, from California. Blond-white hair fell long and stringy down his back but was cut short at the sides and front. He was always pulling at his crotch and telling as many lies as he could cram into a sentence. This type of boy was everywhere around us, but mostly we kept separate, us three half-breeds in our world, and the white-trash boys in theirs. We had been as warned against them as they had against us, and besides, we didn't need them; we had each other for games and hunts and scraps. We still ran thick; Manny up front, making rules, and Joel to break all of them, and me keeping the peace as best I could, which sometimes meant nothing more than falling down to my knees and covering my head with my arms and letting them swing and cuss until they got tired, or bored, or remorseful. They called me a faggot, a pest, left me black and blue, but they were gentler with me than they were with each other. And everyone in the neighborhood knew: they'd bleed for me, my brothers, had bled for me.
    And then this headbanger swooped in with his "Hiya, fellas" and tore us open, thinned what was thick.
    And not even from our block, just moseying up the street with one hand stuffed into his pocket, pulling on his crotch from inside his dungarees. "I said, 'Hiya, fellas,' can't you talk?"
    And Manny, "What you want?"
    And Joel, "Yeah, what you want anyway?"
    And this headbanger, "I want to show you something. I got something good to show and nobody to show it to."
    "You talking about black magic?" Joel asked.
    "Shut up, Joel," said Manny.
    I waited for Manny to tell the headbanger to get the hell off our log, off our block; I waited for Manny to turn back to us, to turn his back fully on the headbanger, call him a clown, then turn to us and say, "OK, this is what's up for tonight, you listening?"
    But Manny kept his head forward.
    "What you got?" he asked the headbanger.
    And Joel, "Yeah, what you got, anyway?"
    The headbanger stood and clicked on the flashlight and said, "Come here."
    We followed him to the road, and he raised the flashlight high on our sectioned chalk circle as he had before, so that all of it was illuminated.
    "You know what this means?"
    There were the crickets and the lights in the windows of all the houses. We were cold. I put my thumb in my mouth and tasted the dirt.
    "Peace," the headbanger said, "this here's a sign of peace."
    Manny laughed, a knowing puff of air through his nose, then he bent his head back, raised his gaze from the pavement to the stars, right up into God's eyes. Lately, Manny looked out, looked up, looked into everyone and everything, not just us.
    And then this headbanger said, "I got something else to show you. Something good. Better."
    "That right?" Manny asked.
    And so we followed him home.
    In the front room, the headbanger's father smoked, washed in blue from the light of the television, one hand tucked into his armpit.
    "They know what time it is?" he said to the headbanger as we filed into the house and past the television, our shadows sliding over him.
    "They know."
    In the kitchen, I rubbed my hands all over the table, which was smooth and lacquered and cool. The headbanger set out plastic cups of pop for us, and Manny and Joel drank in a too-fast way that made me nervous, gasping for breath between gulps. The father shut the television, and the noise of the crickets rushed in. The headbanger squinted and listened, not for the crickets, but for the father, for his next move. We knew that squint; what stunned us was the way the headbanger was moving his lips—wild, without voice. He was animal-eyed