Page 113 of The Bright Lands
“Do you swear to keep secret all that you see here, boy?”
“Yes, sir!”
“And do you swear to protect it, even with your own life?”
Luke hesitated. Could this man possibly be serious?
“That’s not a good answer, boy.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Very good.”
Boone and someone else began to clap. A moment later and the circle around Luke joined in, a steady one-two, one-two, one-two. Through the noise, Luke heard a new pair of feet approach him. The hands that had stripped him naked now grabbed his wrists and ankles, wrenched his arms back. The clapping grew louder. A new hand rested on Luke’s shoulder—a man’s hand, calloused and dry.
“To seal the oath you have just made, son, this old place will mark you. It hurts us a little so we know it can hurt us a lot. Do you hear, son?”
Luke’s throat had gone dry. It was all he could do to nod his head.
“Very good!” Boone shouted. The clapping grew wild. A cowbell began to ring, a noisemaker rattled, whoops and shouts echoed over open country.
The grip on his wrists tightened. From down near Luke’s feet, Mitchell Malacek murmured: “Whatever you do, don’t scream.”
A sudden, icy pain spread across the back of Luke’s thigh, just below his ass, and a moment later he felt warm blood spilling down his leg. He gasped. Something firm and cool and sticky came to rest on his shoulder, a few inches from his neck. A knife.
“And just like that, you’re in the end zone,” Mr. Boone shouted above the din. “You, my boy, are in the Bright Lands.”
Luke’s hands and ankles were released. The blindfold was pulled free. He was dazed by a brilliant flash of light. A sudden boom of a marching band coursed through the speakers, and when Luke’s senses returned to him he saw a tiny figure holding a Polaroid camera start up a tall set of wooden steps.
At the top of the steps—and it was a good ten-foot climb—there was a triple-wide trailer, skirted by a wooden porch. Mr. Boone, clad in nothing but a black leather harness across his chest and black leather chaps, smiled from the porch like a priest. Coach Parter, wearing a green Bison jacket and a pair of Lycra football tights, looked impatient to get on with something.
Luke turned and saw that he stood in the center of a wide circle of trailers: campers, double-wides, a little silver Airstream. Between Luke and the trailers there stood maybe fifteen boys. Boys in jockstraps and high socks, boys naked but for pads and sneakers.
Pale Tomas Hernandez. The Turner twins and their mirrored smile. Luke recognized some of the other boys from games—a few had played for Rattichville last week, others he knew from past seasons—but many were strangers.
Strings of Christmas lights ran between the trailers, little footlamps burned in the dirt and, high above them, a pair of tall halogen field lights rendered every hair on every boy’s head, every groove of every boy’s hard body, brilliant and crisp and unbearable.
Mitchell Malacek, wearing nothing but green face paint, rose from where he’d pinned Luke’s feet. Luke could only stare at him, feeling the blood trickle down his leg, and marvel at a reality that put eighteen years’ worth of wild rumors to shame.
“You did good, bro,” Mitchell said with a smile, and smacked Luke hard on his bare, bloody ass.
JOEL
Pain. The blaring horns awoke him to a pain in the back of his head so terrible he wondered if his brain was trying to wrench itself out through his skull. Joel strained to touch the wound, certain he would feel the soft gray matter exposed, but he couldn’t move his hands. His arms were spread wide, shackled to some sort of bar suspended from the ceiling above him that rattled when he moved. His feet had been secured to the floor. He heard a rustling noise somewhere ahead of him. Through the darkness he could just discern a shape on the floor maybe ten feet away.
“My Herd, My Glory.” That’s what those fucking horns were playing. Somewhere outside—outside meaning he was inside, his battered mind told him, okay, he was getting somewhere—there was the chatter of a small crowd of people. Joel tried to scream for help but found that his lips were sealed together. He tasted adhesive. Oh boy.
God, the pain. It brought back a jumble of memories: Deputy Browder shouting that Kimbra had been hurt. Seeing thousands of dollars spread around the floor as he ran inside the hardware store. The young cop going very quiet behind him. A blinding rush of—
Joel’s eyes burned as a door opened and light spilled in from outside. The shapes of two men appeared, one tall and heavy, the other shorter, more tightly packed. The two were followed, a moment later, by a lithe, muscled form that could only be Browder.
“Don’t let that door bolt,” said Mr. Boone, the county attorney. “My key—fuck, what did youdo?”
Deputy Browder closed the door softly. There was a click and a bare red light came on overhead, illuminating what looked like the inside of a small camper trailer. Joel was standing, he saw, in what had once been a living room but had long ago been emptied of all furniture but a black leather sofa. Hanging from nails across black walls were a range of instruments that Joel recognized from sex shops and some of the stranger corners his nocturnal adventures in Manhattan had taken him: riding crops, paddles, ball gags, chains.
The three men paid him no attention. They were standing in the camper’s bare kitchen, staring at the shape Joel had earlier seen on the floor. It was Kimbra Lott, he realized: her feet bound with black tape, her hands cuffed to something on the wall.
“Christ Jesus,” said Coach Parter.
