Read Online Poppy Z. Brite - 1992 - Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Poppy Z. Brite
Ads: Link
school wearing shirts that were clean but always seemed
to hang from him too loosely. Steve sat behind him in class and saw that his
shoulder blades were as distinct and articulated as the joints of birds’ wings.
By
rote the new kid was ignored at first, though there was some discussion of his
funny name and his hillbilly origins. Then, by virtue of his appearance, his
quietness, and his disinclination to join in the sixth-grade touch-football
games at recess, he was judged a fag and thereafter jeered at. Everyone knew he
must be smart because he’d come up a grade and was a year younger than the rest
of the class. Most of the kids in Missing Mile had something weird about them:
their fathers had died in the big fire at the old cotton mill, or their mothers
worked as strippers in Raleigh, or they lived out on Violin Road and were so poor,
the rumor went, that they had to eat roadkill .
These
children were happy to have someone to look down upon. The new kid didn’t seem
to care, or even really notice; even when the sixth-grade boys zinged him with
pinecones and chunks of gravel, he looked around bewilderedly as if he thought
they might have fallen out of the sky. He checked out grown-up hooks about
space from the school library and spent his recesses in the fringe of woods at
the edge of the yard.
Steve
was curious. He’d heard the new kid and his grandmother had moved here from the
mountains, and he wanted to hear about the mountains. He and his parents had
driven through them once, and to Steve they had seemed a place of dark mystery,
of lushness, of a foreboding beauty that verged on the sinister. In the
mountains you wouldn’t need a hyperspace machine; in the mountains they kept
giant possums for yard dogs.
So
one day Steve forsook the touch-football game—it was kind of a stupid affair
anyway, less concerned with the actual rules of football than with knocking
down as many kids as possible and grinding their faces into the dirt—and took
his own walk in the woods. He walked with his hands stuffed in his pockets,
feeling awkward, half-hoping he wouldn’t meet the new kid, who probably only
wanted to be left alone, who surely thought he was just a roughneck jerkoff like the others. The woods were sun-dappled and
quiet, but Steve kept walking into old strands of spiderweb that stuck to his face and made him think tickly legs were racing down his
back. He was about to give it up and go play football after all when he heard a
quiet “hey” from above his head.
Steve
looked up into the calmest blue eyes he’d ever seen. No wonder this kid didn’t
mind insults or pinecones. Set in a face that was far too delicate, framed by
wisps of rain-pale hair, those eyes were nevertheless at peace. Steve wondered
what it felt like to have eyes like that.
The
kid was perched comfortably in a tree, his legs stretched out along a low
branch, his back snuggled against the trunk. He raised an arm and pointed to a
spot along the path just past Steve.
At
first Steve didn’t see anything. Then all at once it came clear, the way an
optical illusion will suddenly resolve itself: an intricate and enormous web
that spanned the path, and hanging head-down at the middle of the concentric
gossamer circles, a particularly large, juicy-looking brown weaver. Another
couple of steps and Steve would have walked right into it.
He
tried unsuccessfully to suppress a shudder.
“Spiders
are spinning all over the woods,” said the kid. ‘That means it’ll be cold
soon.”
This
went against the rationality that Steve so loved. It sounded childish. What
could spiders have to do with the weather? “How do you know?” he said.
“My
grandmother knows all that stuff.” The blue
to hang from him too loosely. Steve sat behind him in class and saw that his
shoulder blades were as distinct and articulated as the joints of birds’ wings.
By
rote the new kid was ignored at first, though there was some discussion of his
funny name and his hillbilly origins. Then, by virtue of his appearance, his
quietness, and his disinclination to join in the sixth-grade touch-football
games at recess, he was judged a fag and thereafter jeered at. Everyone knew he
must be smart because he’d come up a grade and was a year younger than the rest
of the class. Most of the kids in Missing Mile had something weird about them:
their fathers had died in the big fire at the old cotton mill, or their mothers
worked as strippers in Raleigh, or they lived out on Violin Road and were so poor,
the rumor went, that they had to eat roadkill .
These
children were happy to have someone to look down upon. The new kid didn’t seem
to care, or even really notice; even when the sixth-grade boys zinged him with
pinecones and chunks of gravel, he looked around bewilderedly as if he thought
they might have fallen out of the sky. He checked out grown-up hooks about
space from the school library and spent his recesses in the fringe of woods at
the edge of the yard.
Steve
was curious. He’d heard the new kid and his grandmother had moved here from the
mountains, and he wanted to hear about the mountains. He and his parents had
driven through them once, and to Steve they had seemed a place of dark mystery,
of lushness, of a foreboding beauty that verged on the sinister. In the
mountains you wouldn’t need a hyperspace machine; in the mountains they kept
giant possums for yard dogs.
So
one day Steve forsook the touch-football game—it was kind of a stupid affair
anyway, less concerned with the actual rules of football than with knocking
down as many kids as possible and grinding their faces into the dirt—and took
his own walk in the woods. He walked with his hands stuffed in his pockets,
feeling awkward, half-hoping he wouldn’t meet the new kid, who probably only
wanted to be left alone, who surely thought he was just a roughneck jerkoff like the others. The woods were sun-dappled and
quiet, but Steve kept walking into old strands of spiderweb that stuck to his face and made him think tickly legs were racing down his
back. He was about to give it up and go play football after all when he heard a
quiet “hey” from above his head.
Steve
looked up into the calmest blue eyes he’d ever seen. No wonder this kid didn’t
mind insults or pinecones. Set in a face that was far too delicate, framed by
wisps of rain-pale hair, those eyes were nevertheless at peace. Steve wondered
what it felt like to have eyes like that.
The
kid was perched comfortably in a tree, his legs stretched out along a low
branch, his back snuggled against the trunk. He raised an arm and pointed to a
spot along the path just past Steve.
At
first Steve didn’t see anything. Then all at once it came clear, the way an
optical illusion will suddenly resolve itself: an intricate and enormous web
that spanned the path, and hanging head-down at the middle of the concentric
gossamer circles, a particularly large, juicy-looking brown weaver. Another
couple of steps and Steve would have walked right into it.
He
tried unsuccessfully to suppress a shudder.
“Spiders
are spinning all over the woods,” said the kid. ‘That means it’ll be cold
soon.”
This
went against the rationality that Steve so loved. It sounded childish. What
could spiders have to do with the weather? “How do you know?” he said.
“My
grandmother knows all that stuff.” The blue