Chapter 20 #2
But over time, the weight pressed deeper.
I saw it on his face, the way he moved through the world a little slower.
And even when his back ached from the burden, even when no one thanked him, he kept carrying us.
It was because of Heath that none of us went hungry again.
Because of him, we learned how to rip gills out with two fingers, peel skin from sinewy muscle, and pluck a liver from a rib cage, popping it into our mouths, all juicy and plump.
Some of us flinched.
Most of us didn’t.
And some of us liked the violence a bit too much.
In fourth grade, I found the blood boys bent over shattered rabbit skulls, bloodied rocks in their hot, tight grips.
I saw the chalky bones of a bellbird’s wing dangling from the cabin windowsill like a gruesome wind chime.
And I ran my tongue over my teeth while I chopped kangaroo meat into bloodied strips.
As we grew, so did the violence. A growing, pulsing rage. The cabin simmered with feral tension, and fights broke out like fires. Heath barked warnings no one listened to. And Luke stood too close, talked too smooth, encouraged our inner war. He didn’t push exactly. He didn’t have to.
“You’re not seriously chickening out, are you?” he’d say, voice dropping low, conspiratorial. “Go on, do it…no one’s gonna know.”
Blood boys grew into blood men, aggressive and insatiable. Heath’s steady influence could not reach the part of them that had already decided.
It ended abruptly.
And it ended with me.
I tried to drown Amy, couldn’t, and Trav stepped in, stepped up. Punctured her belly with a fillet knife, and proved his devotion. His bloody loyalty. Trav was a minor, so he was lucky. Amy not so much. Her family moved away, out of state, I heard. Trav was sent away, and police sealed the file.
Then Heath burned the cabin down. Luke was pissed about that. Their friendship didn’t survive the fire. As the cabin turned into embers, so did the last pieces of what they were to each other.
My mind drifts back to the conversation with Chris. Tell me about the fire.
I was there when Heath burned the cabin down, but I didn’t tell Chris that. Didn’t tell him how flames licked up the wooden walls and smoke poured out the window, thick and dark, curling into the sky with the smell of pine. How the roof groaned as it caught and beams snapped with loud cracks.
I only told Chris that a local saw the smoke and called the police.
I didn’t tell him that Heath, Trav, and I were questioned, along with the blood boys.
And I didn’t tell him that six years later, I left Kangaroo Bay and changed my name in an attempt to sever the ties to all that had happened there.
I pause in the woods, remembering the fire.
Ash floated up like gray snowflakes, and Heath watched it all, bloodless and defeated.
I hugged him and noticed how his shoulders slumped with that invisible weight he carried everywhere.
I wondered if he felt guilty about what happened, and I should have told him it wasn’t his fault.
None of it was. The violence in the blood boys was rooted too deep, simmering too long.
Heath stood in front of them, trying to hold it back, but their instinctual rage took over.
Not even Heath could hold back tidal wives of violence with his bare hands.
The town kids stopped meeting at the creek after school. Many dropped out in grade nine, traded their high school education for a fishing rod or their dad’s concreting business.
We never went there again.
But someone has.
I creep forward, pausing at the charred entrance. A snake skull hangs from a rusted nail, bones shining in the blood light.
A heavy animal smell makes my eyes water as I step inside. The sun is sinking low and fast, and the red-gold rays funnel down through five holes in the roof. The first thing I notice is that the wood-plank floor is splattered with blood.
Fresh.
Cobwebs hang loose from the roof, rusty spanners dangle from decaying hooks, looking like they’ll fall at any moment. A roll of orange extension cord is nestled on the workbench, and around me there’s a scurrying sound, like a family of mice trying to hide.
Under the blackened windowsill are four femur bones, thick with flesh, moist and pink, dangling like Christmas stockings.
The animal smell grows stronger. I survey the back of the room, pausing.
A shower curtain is strung limply across the center, partitioning the room off, swishing in the warm wind.
The curtain would have been pretty, once.
A winding row of butterflies in a field of buttercups and leafy vines.
Now it’s an abomination. The colors are dull, peeling and discolored.
Spots of mold dotting the buttery field.
And worse.
I creep closer, pinching the curtain between my fingers. It’s stiff and crunchy; splattered across it are fat droplets of blood.
I pull it up, ducking my head as I step under. The smell is everywhere, heavy, eye-watering, like the back of a butcher’s shop. Something feathery brushes my cheek. I tilt my head back, looking up.
Hanging from the ceiling, strung up by their bloodied tails, are four kangaroos.
Decapitated.