Free The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys by Chris Fuhrman

step.
    The trees dripped moss and sunlight. An occasional deerfly stung, was slapped against a neck, fell, and then rose buzzing to sting elsewhere. Our black uniform shoes gently thundered to a bend in the trail, then clapped up a long wooden plank onto a deck. A fence skirted the marsh in a wide oval and wires ranalong it to a metal box mounted on a pole. I saw only trees and grass and the river beyond.
    Past a green palmetto fan slid something brown. There were gasps, steps taken backwards or forwards. It was a large cat, a panther. The cat slunk by underneath us, its shoulder blades jabbing smoothly beneath the fur as it padded a worn path in the grass all the way around along the fence. The cat stopped and looked up. Its eyes flashed and held on Tim, who was leaning dangerously out over the log railing, his toes six inches off of the deck planks, his eyes bright as the panther’s. My breath snagged as he tipped past his balance and flailed, treading air, but Rusty already had him by the belt, pulling him back before anyone else saw.
    The cat dropped its gaze and prowled. Everyone crept closer. Paul, fallen behind with Ascension, crossed his arms, satisfied with our awe.
    Tim whispered, “That animal saw something in me.”
    Rusty, whose mouth had been hanging open, said, “He saw eighty pounds of meat, is what.”
    Tim glowered. “Eighty-three.”
    Wade said, “I’m going to draw one of those. Look at its muscles.”
    I said nothing. Another cat, slightly smaller, appeared from the opposite side and began pacing towards the first one. The original cat raised its paw, fat as a mitten, and both panthers tensed and flattened and snarled at each other so that my eyes got wide. The panther swiped the air between them. The girls gasped, drew back again. Sticks were forgotten in the boys’ hands as they stared at these animals that could surely kill them. It smelled like the scariest part of the circus.
    “Mountain lions,” Paul said quietly. “Cougars. Some folks up in the Appalachians call them ‘painters’ or panthers. They used to rule this part of the country, but there aren’t many of them left.”
    “What happened to them?” asked Therese Parker, staring atthe cats, her hands twisting nervously into her plaid skirt so that it raised above her knees, showed gooseflesh you wanted to sink your teeth into.
    “People killed them because they were dangerous, unpredictable. Now everything’s safe.” He smiled with one side of his mouth. “Automobiles and nuclear plants and all.”
    Craig Dockery, the kid who’d hurt the duck, asked which would win, a cougar or an African lion. Paul said it depended. Donny Flynn said his granddaddy had shot a cougar in Florida. Paul asked if he ate it, but Donny didn’t know.
    Tim nodded us over to the side away from the others.
    Rusty said, “So how do we capture one of those things?”
    “Blowgun,” Tim said casually. “I bring my blowgun down here and tag the cat with an anesthetic dart.”
    “Where the hell we gonna get that stuff?”
    “Steal it from a drugstore maybe. Or buy it off your sleazy drug buddy.” Tim meant the orphan kid who visited Rusty’s family one weekend a month.
    “This is too risky,” I said. “Joey was right.”
    “Risk leads to greatness,” Tim said. “Your sweetheart will love it. Francis Doyle, lion hunter.”
    “We’d have to disconnect those wires,” said Rusty. “This fence is electrified.”
    “So we’ll bring wire-cutters and rubber gloves.”
    “Wait a minute,” Rusty said. “How do we get the panther all the way from here to Blessed Heart? These son of a bitches weigh more than we do.”
    “We borrow a car,” Tim said.
    “Nuh, its gettin too complicated. Too many places we can mess up. We got to streamline it.”
    “Wade,” Tim said, “if one of those cats was knocked out, could you carry it?”
    Wade puffed his cheeks, weighing the cats, then exhaled. “Sure. No problem.”
    Rusty hissed. “That cat weighs a