“I wouldn’t call this dating,” I said. When I reached up to kiss her, she smiled and leaned down to embrace me. She tasted like her last sip of coffee. I closed my eyes and slid into it.
ALLIGATOR MISSISSIPPIENSIS—AMERICAN ALLIGATOR
Guys at our high school baited gator. Brynn didn’t like it, but she usually tagged along, which meant that I’d go too. They brought cases of cheap beer and built bonfires out of old Christmas trees down at the river, which ran about forty minutes away from our neighborhood. We’d carpool out in all the boys’ shitty cars with no air-conditioning, struggling souped-up engines, windows rolled down until we were nearly coated in condensation.
Could you sleep in the car? Brynn asked, cuddled up with someone in front of the fire, or drinking beer with another boy out near the water. Please? We need the tent.
Drunk dudes crowing, whooping, yelping, the high beams from their trucks boring holes into the reedy waterfront. Gator eyes, bright as stars, blinked at us and moved to deeper water.
I sat close to Brynn while she let me. Loud, aggressive rock pumped endlessly from truck stereos. Lights bounced off the water, and after a few beers your body drifted loose and floated out there with the wildlife. You’d feel as if you could disappear into the woods and it wouldn’t matter; feel like you could never be heard from again and that would be just fine.
Once the bonfire lit, I lost her. The trees were yanked from yards or begged off households long after the holidays were over. Some of them were already dark brown and flicking off needles, coats shedding in the back seats of cars, making our clothes reek of pine sap. The fires started small, but at some point they got serious, near arson levels, boys ready to light everything they could strike a match against. We crouched next to the tents as the trees went up like thousand-watt bulbs, shooting shards of tinsel into the river.
Brynn’s face lit peachy pink, wondering at the magic. She watched the fire, the boys; I watched her.
Milo wasn’t friends with those guys. Sometimes he drove out and sat with me, both of us watching Brynn, neither of us talking about what that meant. When we spent time together, we only talked about family stuff or stupid shit, watched TV together, drank beer out in the cemetery.
Milo was his tallest by then, taller than our father, but not filled out. Lean, our mother said. By contrast I was an oak, a sturdy base with wide hips and thick thighs, my ass not large enough to compensate for the round, doughy bowl of my stomach. Brynn was my opposite in every way: blonde where I was dark, thin where I was plump, breasts high and full where mine were small and sagged.
You’re like a mole. A little mole person, Brynn said, poking at my stomach, at the back fat rolling out from my bra strap, grabbing for the soft, fleshy places on my thighs. Sweet little moley Jessa.
Taxidermy needed muscle. The universe had organized my shape into what it would be most useful for: standing upright for hours, bending over carcasses. My tough hands were capable of pulling together threads and hacking at gristle, eyes squinty and narrowly placed, ready to analyze the tiniest defect in a pelt.
Older men prowled the perimeter of these campouts, grizzly, bearded guys with teeth discolored by chewing tobacco. They liked to circle the riverfront, calling out slurs that were meant to sound like compliments. One had a van straight out of an after-school special: white and rusted, the words GOOD TIMES spray-painted on the side. He called to us from a rolled-down window, asking to play us some music.
Brynn and I leaned against each other on a stumpy log while most of the boys were out in their boats riling up each other and the wildlife. Milo sat in the dirt at our feet, picking apart a palm frond and braiding the strips around a can of beer. Lindy was with us, one of the girlfriends that we didn’t know. She wore a pale blue cami and some cutoffs, what most girls wore at our school. Her hair was so bleached that she’d had to cut off most of it below her ears; bright white, kind of glowing under the lights from the van as the guy inside leaned through the open window and called to us again.
Brynn nudged me until I almost fell into Milo. He’s talking to you.
I don’t want to talk to him.
He was older than my father, face leathery and sun-beaten. His gray hair stuck up in greasy spikes, as if he spent most nights sleeping in his van. His shirt was stretched out around the neck.
Just go. You never talk to anybody.
By anybody she meant boys. None of the guys ever wanted anything to do with me, and that was fine. I didn’t want to curl up with them in their trucks or listen to them swear at each other, swaying on their feet, sweating out the cheap liquor they never managed to hold down. I hated the way they all smelled like wet dogs, crotches outthrust like they thought someone might want to look. They weren’t like my brother. You couldn’t talk to them.
Milo knew when to talk and when to shut up. He didn’t get grossed out by periods or make stupid comments about how women were weaker than men. He liked sappy, emotional movies and was tender to animals. The compassion he showed to other people made me wish I could be more like that. It was scary, to watch him be that open. It meant your heart could get yanked out and dissected.
Brynn pushed me the rest of the way off the log and my ass landed in the wet dirt. Lindy laughed and took my seat, the two of them snuggled together with a bottle of Fireball that Lindy’s boyfriend had gifted her before he rode off in the skiff. Brynn laid her hands on Milo’s shoulders and he leaned back into her, resting his head against her knees.
He didn’t look at me. Just turned and stared out at the water as Brynn drew little circles around his neck with her fingertips. I’m going to do that goose-bump game on you, she said, and I stopped watching.
I loped awkwardly toward the van, unfolding the cuffs of my flannel shirt until they hung past my hands. It was brown, like everything I owned, and worn in. It’d been Milo’s before he’d outgrown it. It swam on me six months earlier, but the middle had begun pulling forward, buttons over my stomach threatening to pop. When I reached the van, I looked back again. Brynn motioned me ahead and then turned away, leaning down to whisper something in Milo’s ear. He ducked a little and smiled, reaching a hand behind him to cup at her neck. My throat hurt to see them touch so intimately. I turned back around and opened the passenger door.
The inside of the van smelled like spilled beer. The man leaned back casually on the seat, legs spread around the circumference of his steering wheel. He had a wide red face with an incoming scruff of patchy dark beard. His clothes were damp and clung to his body, as if he were sweating, though the van was air-conditioned to the point that my hair stood up on my arms and legs. I climbed in beside him, but stayed close to the door.
You’re a little munchkin. You want something to drink? He pointed to a case of good beer lodged on the floorboard, not the shitty kind we always stole but the kind that cost money, with names that made you think of Northern states. Brick buildings. He kept smiling, lips wet with spit. Teeth gapped and dark at the root. He looked like every single friend of my dad’s. It felt safe enough, so I took one of the beers. Thanks.
He shrugged and took a pull from his own bottle. I’m Thomas. Tommy. Here, lemme show you something. It’s not far.
We drove past Brynn and Milo, skimming piled logs and debris along the beachfront. I could still see the boats out on the lake, the boys shining flashlights down into the water, stirring up gator while they tried not to drunkenly overturn themselves. The man parked his van between two trees, facing away from the road. The moon was out, high and white, shining on the wake rushing the cattails.