The Hurt Patrol Page 5

  It was baffling; there was no reason to hate on him. He had never crossed any of these guys. When he spoke neutrally to them at the start of the year, they were unreceptive and informed him he was a fag . . . surprise, surprise. It was so predictable and tribalistic that Beau felt like he probably should have brought them some beads and a wild boar, or something, like in Lord of the Flies.

  But other things had evolved. Because of Beau’s newfound enthusiasm for traditional family values, he also developed a brand-new enthusiasm for Scouts. Whether his passion was actually for Scouting or just for showing his dad that they were a team was uncertain, but all Beau knew was that he was ready to give the BSA another try. For real.

  Thus they had come to the time of year for all good Scouts to go snow camping.

  “Snow camping?!” I whisper in horror, as Leo stirs in her sleep. “Omg!”

  I look over at Beau with a judgmental face. He nods.

  “Yep. And it is exactly as fun as you’d think it is.... But that’s when I first got to know the Hurt Patrol.”

  Like Jason, Pete’s dad, David, was the Scouting enthusiast of their family, though also remarkably absent for anything too daunting, like being one of the scoutmasters for this whole snow camping deal. Once again, Pete had been chosen to express his dad’s great love for Nature.

  But Pete was not perturbed. There are many ways to thrive in extreme conditions. Pete had discovered that there is also more than one way to skin a scoutmaster because he invented a bunch of them, mostly while getting his character built. The Hurt Patrol grew strong because of his personality. The hurt, the outcast, and the weary, the huddled lame-o’s seeking to breathe free, all dragged their sorry asses together and somehow their little group worked. It became a refuge. When Beau joined, the Hurt Patrol had three other guys besides Pete. They were scruffy and ill-favored and fit together because they didn’t fit anywhere else. Their skill sets were not admired. Beau didn’t know any of this yet, but he would.

  Oldest next to Pete was Kyle. He was fifteen, an intellectual, as well as being skinny and pale. He was also a ginger, so he was a hella huge target. It was like a bull’s-eye tattooed on his freckled forehead. He was the most intelligent of the patrol. Like extremely. It didn’t help his social standing.

  His brother Rob was almost fifteen too—they were actually the same age for three weeks out of the year. Rob was a dark ginger, a day-walker, and a total comedian who didn’t think the Boy Scouts had a lot to offer anyone who planned to live in a city. He said the best thing about moving out of his parents’ house someday would be to take all this Scout crap to a huge field and blow it up. Or maybe he’d have a Viking funeral, setting it aflame on a lake and reducing everything to ash, like their dad’s idiotic dreams of them being Eagle Scouts. Beau liked Rob a lot. Rob cracked them up, though he was very pissed off all the time.

  The other guy in the Hurt Patrol, also the smallest, was a kid named Hunter. He was thirteen. He was like the patron saint of victims; there were so many things to bust on him for. He was short and spindly, he needed glasses, he was lily white, and he’d been hospitalized for a long time when he was born because he had been born really premature. You could still see a short white scar where he had an IV tube in his head as a baby. And he bit his fingernails till they were bloody.

  Hunter had dreams that freaked him out. He was the one who’d wake up screaming and then throw stuff around when he realized he’d wet the bed—or the sleeping bag. That’s how he came to be in the Hurt Patrol; he’d been thrown out of two other patrols, both because of his nocturnal uproars. He was also maybe the scariest because he would talk about all the bad things that he could do at the meetings but hadn’t. Like bombs and flying body parts. Then he’d snicker under his breath. He kind of creeped Beau out.

  This was the Hurt Patrol. Beau was the newest member.

  The snow campers and their rides all met at the church parking lot to put the camp stuff in the old Blue Bird school bus waiting there with chained tires. Jason, as the Scouting cheerleader, was the one who always dropped Beau off on his camping trips. Then he’d usually wait till the bus pulled away, waving to Beau tenaciously.

  The troops were sorting themselves out when Beau and his dad pulled up. Backpacks abounded. Parents were saying “be good” and “stay warm” to their kids.

  “Here we are.” Beau’s dad liked to state the obvious.

  “Yep.” Beau was trying to be neutral about snow camp. He didn’t like his face to be cold. He hated when his red nose ran and his skin got chapped. But he was trying to put a good face on it. Or at least a not-pissed-off cold face. He’d just be resigned . . . it hadn’t ever done any good to resist, anyway.

  “Remember, if anybody gives you any guff—”

  “Yeah, Dad, I got it, chin down, knuckles flat like a brick.” Beau sighed. His dad, always so ready for him to bring it.

  Beau climbed down out of the truck and went around to get his gear. As he pulled out his sleeping bag, he saw the back of a familiar figure stuffing a backpack from the side of a familiar minivan. Pete was still hurriedly packing.

  Beau and Jason got out of the truck and grabbed Beau’s stuff. He had a camp roll and a gigantic knapsack with wooden scaffolding that required a Cirque du Soleil–type balancing act to put on. Beau stowed it over by the other stuff waiting to be loaded in. When he turned back, he saw his dad standing with the other bag over his shoulder, just as Jewels appeared out of the side door to the kitchen of the church. She was in Jason’s direct field of view. At first she glanced at Beau and didn’t change her expression.

  Beau waved at her, noncommittally. Then she smiled, and it was like a flashbulb went off, or something—white and astonishing. She waved back. Beau looked at the toe caps of his boots in sudden bewilderment. When he looked up, she had disappeared. He could feel his stupid ears turning red. He knew his dad had noticed and was just smirking away, about to bust on him, calling him names, saying, “Player” and “L. L. Beau” (Ladies Love Beau) with just a touch of stink, as well as all his jacked-up comments—like he was so funny.

  Beau chucked his rucksack and his canteen in the pile as his dad moseyed over and stood eyeballing him, archly. Beau pretended he didn’t notice, till Jason dug his elbow in Beau’s side. Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, he smacked him not at all subtly on the ass, and gestured with his head toward where Jewels had been, nodding, like, “Nice!” Of course this beyond mortified Beau, and he made for the basement. A tall Scout leader met him. He was older, very tall, and thin—kind of stooped over.

  “Hi, Beau,” he said. “Welcome to your first Snowstrava-ganza!” He shook Beau’s hand and then his dad’s hand, too, when he came downstairs.

  Beau’s misgivings shifted slightly. So far, so good. He smiled at the tall guy, Mr. McLenz, whom they called Scoutmaster Tim. He was a social studies teacher at the middle school, quiet and kind. Then another scoutmaster came over. He was shorter and stouter. His face was redder.

  “Well, Mr. and Master Gales, welcome to Troop 23, aerie to eleven Eagle Scouts! With any luck, you’ll be our twelfth!” he laughed.

  Beau had come to find out this was the line Scoutmaster Jeff, aka “Scoutin’ Jay Rockins,” aka “Scoutie Jeff” or “Scoutie-J,” as he was interchangeably known, used every time he was at an event; it was his special joke, and he never got tired of it. Beau had been staring up at the snowbound windows, but he looked over to smile warmly at Scoutie-J.

  Scoutie-J was a total nutter, but very kind.

  “Great!” Scoutie-J gave him a pat on the shoulder. “There’s that great Scouting Attitude! Remember, this experience is what you make it! Okay, let’s get our stuff loaded!” And off he went, blowing his gym whistle, reminding Beau very much of a teapot.

  Beau and his dad exchanged a look. His dad rolled his eyes. Beau smiled and shrugged. The poor man couldn’t help if he was a loony. He was harmless, if a tad over enthused. Beau had heard he didn’t have much going on in his life besides
Scouting. He heard a lot of stuff about folks, it being such a small town.

  His description of Scoutie-Jeff was funny. Beau looks over and sees me smiling at his story.

  “Get to the snow camping. It sounds grisly!” I like to incorporate new words into my vocab. I have Scottish friends on Facebook, one of whom used the word grisly a few days ago, and I been a-itchin’ to use it, since. Also muckle and chuffed. And snog.

  Beau grins at the word. “It was. It was grisly.” But he keeps smiling.

  “What?” I ask. There’s something he’s remembering that wasn’t so grisly.

  He looks over at me, kind of like to see if I can handle it. I’m not sure what face to make that would convince him I’m trustworthy, so I nod with my eyes wide, like I’m open-minded. It works because Beau continues.

  “It was the first time I recognized who I am. . . .”

  “We’ll pitch the tents before it gets dark, Scouts, so hurry.” Scoutie Jeff was uncharacteristically terse. “We need to dig a latrine too, and we have to make up for lost time, so let’s focus!”

  They were almost two hours late, due to an unanticipated occurrence of unhappy happenstance. The bus had gotten not one, but two flats, both on the same side, going over some unseen jagged metal whatnot somewhere on the shoulder of the road. After that uproar was over, they were on the road, again, but two hours late. Hence the grimness. Hence the hurry.

  So they scurried to do the stuff, getting everything pitched and sorted and thrown into appropriate piles. In an impressive amount of time, for them anyway, the latrine was dug and the campfire started, very quickly and in total darkness. Pretty good.

  Dinner was delicious because they were starved from all the intensity. Then, later, after the assorted campfire songs and stories were sung and told, after the scoutmasters had retired to their distant tents, later still when the farts, both real and handmade, had subsided, the exhausted Hurt Patrol fell asleep in their camping bags. And as they slept their warm and weary Boy Scout breath began to heat the snow beneath them, but they were sound asleep and didn’t notice. That is, until the previously unnoticed tear in the tent floor became obvious, as the bottom of the tent started to become soaked in icy cold wetness.

  “OMG! It’s WET!” It was Hunter, the weirdest one, howling in the dark. Everyone was jolted awake, which is how Hunter came to be with them in the first place. For a minute, they thought he’d just peed in his sleeping bag again, but then they felt it too.

  “OMG! We sprung a LEAK!” Rob screamed. He shot upright to a standing position, still in his bag, and started hopping around like a giant panicked chrysalis. Everyone tried to scoot away and stay dry, but it was too dark, and they fell over each other trying to get out of the wet. Half of the tent was already sopped.

  “What a mess! Jesus! Okay, listen UP!” It was Pete, taking control. “We have to squeeze to the far end and everyone has to smash together where it’s still dry. Okay? So just do it and don’t be weird.”

  They ended up smashed together up at the high end of the tent, though they hadn’t noticed any slope in the ground when they pitched it. This ended up actually being much better. They were warmer immediately due to their shared body heat. It had been so cold, it was hard to get to sleep, but now they could finally rest.

  Beau had ended up crushed in the middle, spooning Rob, with Pete spooning him, but they were too tired to laugh. As they dropped off to sleep again, Beau felt Pete slump and start to snore gently. Pete snored whistley, like a cartoon. Beau felt himself drowsing off. At one point he started awake briefly in the unfamiliar surroundings, and as he came back to himself, he realized the weight across his back was not the sleeping bag. It was Pete, sound asleep, who had thrown his arm across Beau for warmth. In fact, he was hugging him, and as Beau comprehended the situation, he froze—and not from the cold.

  And just like that it dawned on Beau that his school chums were accurate. He was gay. Beau did want to wake up with a guy’s arm thrown across him, forever.

  Beau was gay. It had never been clear before. Not like this.

  Motionlessly, he watched the sky lighten through the patch of plastic tent window as Pete snort/whistled softly. Slowly, the cloud cover turned gray, then molten red gold, and then white.

  Beau had always known something was different with him, but in spite of everything, he had never been sure it was because he was gay. He just thought he felt different from other guys because he was intelligent. But now he knew. It was true. He was smart....

  . . . And gay.

  He didn’t want to wake Pete up, because then he’d pull his arm back, so Beau silently reveled in the moment, exhaling deeply to keep his breathing measured. Because as he realized his truth, he also cried.

  Revelations can do that.

  “Omg, Beau,” I say, and then stop talking because I don’t know what I was planning on saying next.

  “I know.” He nods. “Imagine how weird that was, for me, after that. At that point, I decided the only thing I could do was never let them find out.”

  “You decided not to tell them you were gay? Why, if they were your friends?”

  “Because! I was worried. They were too important to me. If I lost Pete and Jewels, or those other guys in the Hurt Patrol, I would be lost. I’d be hosed! They were the only reason the other guys at school backed off.”

  “Yeah . . . I can see that. How is this a good memory, though?”

  “Don’t you get it? I discovered that I was just gay! Before that, I didn’t know if I was like a psychopath or something, like a freak of nature or whatever, and now I saw I was just gay . . . no big deal! I was so relieved! I thought I was mentally ill because everyone else was talking about touching boobs ALL the time, and I sooooo couldn’t care less . . . seriously! I thought I was insane.” He shakes his head, remembering.

  Just the way he says it makes me smile. He looks over sharply and is reassured by the recognition in my face. We shrug. It’s awesome to realize that you are just one of many, having a very normal crisis, and not some terrible mutant who should go live in a bat cave.

  “So, yeah, after that, I weirdly felt better about myself, but also worse about the next stage, because I knew, sooner or later, I was either going to have to figure out to how to be straight or come out.”

  The patrols returned from snow camping, and now Beau knew his own secret. And that was huge. It was good to know his classmates were correct in their assessment. He was a “big ol’ queer” and a “homo” and a “gaylord”! It evoked a weirdly inexplicable sense of relief. Because now Beau felt he could work on fixing it and becoming the real boy his dad always wanted. And if his dad could calm down, maybe his mom would too, and they could patch things up, and everything could finally get good.

  All Beau had to do was like girls. His dad had been right all along: girls! Problem solved. Beau daydreamed incessantly. All he had to do was figure out a way to feel straight now.

  So he resolutely started holding Jewels’s hand in the halls, between classes, and before school. Pete would wander the halls with them frequently, like a bigger shark in shark-infested waters. It helped remind the more snarky of the sharks who Beau’s friends were.

  When he wasn’t guarding freshmen, Pete hung out with his friends from the upper classes. He was popular with classmates and teachers both, though male teachers were always on the receiving end of his smartassery. He was unfailingly sweet to the female teachers, however. He said they had enough crap to deal with, so he’d give ’em a pass. He always had a crush on his grade-school teachers, Jewels said, till like sixth grade. Pete just really liked women. Like, liked them . . . like, left to his own devices, he’d totally prefer their company. And they realized that about him from a very young age and responded in kind.

  Thus, Pete had millions of candidates for a girlfriend. But Pete did not vary. He remained steadfast to Bonnie, his love. When he wasn’t walking the halls with Beau, he would sit in the inside courtyard with her, sometimes holding hands
but always nattering intently, both engrossed in the other. They could be seen outside in good weather, wandering together to the school benches, and then sitting, sometimes kissing, enthralled in each other. Beau noticed that when they sat, they were much closer to the same height.

  Bonnie was unusual. She had been born with a strange twist in her genes, in that her fingers and legs were very short; though most everything else about her was nearly normal sized and unremarkable. But her legs were defying her. They had just stopped growing, though the rest of her developed more normally. She was the same height she had been in fourth grade, approximately.

  But she wasn’t having it. She wasn’t going to just accept her fate. Nor was her family. When she got her full growth, they were going to start making her be taller. By way of a gigantic operation.

  Pete explained they were going to break her legs in two places—

  “BREAK?! Break her LEGS?! OMG!!!” I shout, before I remember to be quiet.

  Leonie, sprawled sleeping in the backseat, opens her eyes and murmurs, then closes them again.

  “Shhhh—be quiet,” Beau whispers.

  “Sorry . . . BREAK?!” I repeat, this time a hiss of dismay. “Break her legs! Both legs? How awful!”

  “Well, that’s how I felt too, but Pete was all, ‘No, it’s better this way. She will live an easier life. She will fit into society, ’ ” Beau replies. “So I’m all, omg, is this to save her life, or could she just not?”

  I get such a deep feeling in my heart, of sadness.... That feeling that you’d do anything—no matter how painful, just to be accepted and thus more comfortable in your own mind.

  Beau sees my mournful expression. He touches my arm, briefly. “I know, right? I’m like, really? You’d go to such extremes, just to get along? But Pete goes, ‘no—she really wants to! She’s stoked! Like, to be tall!’ So, I figured I just met her and I didn’t know what I’m talking about, so they were probably right. It was such a gross, horrible, mental idea; it must work, right?”