Free Hall of Small Mammals by Thomas Pierce Page B

the maze of tables and children. He watches one kid drown a chicken finger—perfectly fried on one side but mushy and gray on the other—in a gush of ketchup from a sticky red squirt bottle. Another boy, with a blue bandanna wrapped around his tiny head, drums on his plate with metal silverware until a father leans across the table with a stern look. All the kids are wearing their yellow uniforms. From the right pockets, on leather strings, their white, red, and black beads dangle.
    Ryan, in his unadorned uniform, is sitting at the end of a table at the far end of the hall, three seats away from the next person. He’s barely touched his food. Flynn asks if he’d like to move over a couple of seats, but the boy says no, he’s fine where he is. So they sit together, apart from the others, poking tunnels into their mashed potatoes, drinking more and more lemonade, until the man with the megaphone, the camp director, stands at the front of the room with some announcements: tomorrow’s activities are posted on the back wall; the bonfire ceremony will be three nights from tonight; a special visitor is coming to help construct a genuine Native American sweat lodge; oh, and the water moccasins are back in the lake, so watch where you step.
    That night it rains, but only a little.
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    The nature hike the next morning is a success. Flynn is waiting at the tent when Ryan returns; his legs are bramble-scraped but he’s happy. Did he see any wildlife? No, no wildlife. Did he see any plants? Yes, they saw a few plants. Flynn has trouble understanding what exactly Ryan enjoyed about the expedition, but he doesn’t want to spoil the effect with questions, so he lets it go. That afternoon, after lunch, Ryan isn’t able to go on the canoe trip, as expected, so Flynn finds a tub of toys in the shed behind the director’s cabin. He takes out the soccer ball and tries to get Ryan to kick that back and forth across the field. But Ryan isn’t interested.
    â€œBasketball, then?”
    â€œNope,” he says. The boy is satisfied to sit in the rocking chairs on the dining hall porch.
    â€œWhat are you thinking about?” Flynn asks.
    â€œI don’t know,” the boy says.
    He’s inscrutable, his large eyes blinking and looking but not conveying any secret meaning. Flynn wonders if some fathers instinctively know what their sons are thinking, if there exists between them some kind of private language, little symbols and gestures that only the two of them can decode. Who are you? Flynn is tempted to ask.
    One of the cooks comes outside on the porch and says Ryan can ring the dinner bell if he wants. Ryan takes the cord like it might shock him, then gives it a gentle tug. “Needs more than that,” the cook says gruffly; Ryan pulls harder. The sound is immense, a physical presence, a peal felt in the bones. The boy is smiling, and Flynn is hopeful.
    John Price finds Flynn at dinner. Does he want to smoke a cigarette? They go out on the porch with the other fathers. They struggle to keep the matches lit in the breeze.
    â€œSo you never told me what you do for a living,” John Price says.
    Flynn tells him about the treatment center. How you can’t understand addiction until you’ve seen someone fight one.
    â€œI got a sister-in-law who used to do cocaine,” John says. “Even at Thanksgiving.”
    â€œDid she get help?”
    â€œMaybe, I don’t know. My brother never talks about it anymore, so I guess she did.”
    Flynn opens a new pack and offers up cigarettes. Almost everybody accepts. They use the first butt to light the second because of the breeze.
    â€œMy kid’s up for his Second Truth Bead this week,” a father says.
    â€œMine too,” John Price adds.
    The others perk up at that.
    â€œThe Second Truth is about what happens when you die.”
    â€œThat’s not what I’ve