Part I
The Edge Is a Shantytown Filled with Gold Seekers
SUMMER 1996
One
AT THE COALFIELD PUBLIC POOL, THEY WOULD BLOW A WHISTLE and everybody had to get out of the water, and we’d all stand there, hopping on one foot and then the other because the concrete was so damn hot, burning the bottoms of our feet. And some lifeguard, barely older than I was, sixteen, looking like the bad guy in a teen movie, blond and buff and absolutely never going to save you if you were drowning, would wheel out a greased watermelon. There was a three-inch layer of Vaseline, which made the watermelon shiny, almost like it was turning from a solid into a liquid. And the lifeguard and one of his evil twins, maybe with crazier muscles and a scuzzy mustache, would dump this watermelon into the water and then push it to the middle of the pool.
And when they blew their whistles, the point was to jump into the water, and then whoever could get the watermelon to the edge of the pool would win it. You had to team up, really, to reasonably expect to win the thing, and so the game would turn into a kind of gang war, boys basically beating the shit out of each other, this watermelon slipping and sliding away from them, almost an afterthought. By the time it made it to the edge, the watermelon was covered in gouges from fingernails, pieces of the red meat of the fruit spilling out of it, pretty much inedible to anyone except the person who’d won it. I was smart enough to stay away, though it made me mad that no girls ever really took part, like we were too delicate for things like this. But the only time I’d tried, when I was twelve, some old man with a snake tattoo on his arm elbowed me in the face and nearly knocked out my front teeth.
The triplets, my brothers, were perfect for the greased watermelon contest, because they were eighteen and already giant. They were nearly feral, possessing a kind of strength that wasn’t just physical but a psychosis that made them impervious to pain, which they tested out on each other all the time. But they didn’t take part, either, because they used this time while everyone else was hypnotized by the watermelon to steal money and snacks from unattended bags.
I was standing there, my feet blistering, wondering why I didn’t just go lie down on my towel and wait for the time when I could safely wade back into the pool and . . . what, exactly? Just keep wading around and around, so you could never quite tell that I was alone? I hated the pool, but the A/C had blown out back home and it would be another day before it was fixed. I’d held out for two straight days, sweating and miserable, but finally hopped in the van with my brothers that morning. Honestly, if I had to be here, I wanted to see the fight over this thing. I wanted to hear the shouts and curses. I wanted to see violence done in the name of fun.
A boy was watching me from across the pool. I could see him, skinny and twitchy, probably about my age, and every single time I caught him looking at me, he’d smile this goofy smile and then stare down at the water, the sun reflecting off of it so brightly that it was blinding. I lost sight of him. Any second now, the lifeguards were going to blow their whistles. And then I felt somebody touch my elbow, which for some reason felt really intimate and weird, someone’s fingers on my rough, bony elbow. I whirled around, and it was the boy, his eyes black, his hair black, his teeth bright white and painfully crooked. “Hey,” he said, and I pulled my arm away from him.
“Don’t touch people that don’t like being touched,” I told him. He held up his hands in surrender, looking shy all of a sudden. Who touches a girl’s elbow and then gets shy?
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m new. I just moved here. I don’t know anybody. I’ve been watching you. It looks like you don’t know anybody, either.”
“I know everyone,” I said, gesturing to the entire congregation of poolgoers. “I know them all. I just don’t like them.”
He nodded. He understood. “Will you help me get this watermelon?” he asked.
“Me?” I asked, confused.
“You and me,” he said. “I think we can do it.”
“Okay, sure,” I said, nodding, smiling.
“All right,” he said, his face brightening. “What’s your name?” he asked me.
“Frankie,” I told him.
“Cool. I like girls who have boys’ names,” he told me, like he was the most open-minded boy who had ever lived.
“Frankie isn’t a boy’s name. It’s unisex.”
“My name is Zeke,” he told me.
“Zeke?” I said.
“Ezekiel,” he explained. “It’s biblical. But it’s my middle name. I’m trying it out this summer. Just to see how it sounds.”