The Boys of the Midwest 1 through 5

The Boys of the Midwest 1

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The Boys of the Midwest grow up dirty, covered in earth like recently dug up root vegetables. They don’t have eyes until they reach 12 years of age, and even so they run the cul-de-sacs of their neighborhoods in groups of twenty like blind puppies. They are covered in hundreds of fine cilia. Their boyhood is porous and lunglike, branched and gooey, tender to the touch. On weekends after church they disappear into uncultivated strips of prairie to tend their silent wounds. To inflict still more wounds upon each other. They call this happiness. At dusk they file back home to their mothers’ Cloroxed hands, their fathers’ too-small polo shirts. The charcoal briquettes are ashy gray in the grill and the trampoline is the most treacherous fun their homes are capable of. So they fling themselves onto it, again and again until they have forgotten what it means to be a boy. And again, until they are winged creatures. And still more, until they are planets in space. The lucky ones hang there, in orbit. The unlucky ones must always come back down for dinner and submit themselves to questioning. They call this another kind of happiness.

The Boys of the Midwest 2

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The Boys of the Midwest prefer to move about the house underneath the carpets. They move as fluid furry mounds. They call this mode of transportation the Rug Node. It is a form of protection, though it is not without its own kind of danger. On chore days their mothers’ Cloroxed hands push the vacuum cleaner through the house. The Boys of the Midwest tell a story of a boy who once got caught by the vacuum as he ran his circuit on the Rug Node. His delicate fur came off first, then his cilia, then his flesh like fine wet silk. How was the mother supposed to know, her boy a warm secret under the rug. The Boys of the Midwest tell this story each year in a secret meeting out in the strip of prairie behind the golf course. It is a cautionary tale, complete with ritual weeping. Secretly, some have lost faith that the story is true. An alternate story springs up, in whispers, with a happy ending. In it, the mother’s hands come upon the true, uncarpeted Boy just in time. In it, the mother discovers her hands had forgotten to turn the vacuum on all along. That her hands led the mute vacuum through the house silently. The Boys of the Midwest call this a great joke. The two factions of Boys, the believers and the unbelievers, become contentious. They take to the prairie with sticks to decide, once and for all, which story is true.

The Boys of the Midwest 3

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After a long day of school, the Boys of the Midwest retire to the strip of prairie to yell swears. They take off their shirts and walk into the waist high grass, grab handfuls of whatever barbed plant they can find and chew great mouthfuls of them until the plants become milk in their mouths. Whoever blooms with disease first wins. Then they form factions and curse each other out. They say all the bad words they’ve ever known and invent worse names. Eventually a Boy begins to cry from sickness and they crowd around him, gather him into their arms and carry him home. The sick one is delivered to the father, who sits obscured in a great mountain of pristine papers. The sick one is crying, and the father is scared. The father slaps him. This Boy has won the game.

The Boys of the Midwest 4

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One day, the Boys of the Midwest pick a Boy whose ribs smile prettily from beneath his skin. They feed him ants, one earwig, a slug. This Boy is hugged until he glows with health. He is now their King.

The Boys of the Midwest 5

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The Boys of the Midwest court me. We leave the restaurant, where they sat uncomfortable and did not know where to put their elbows. Shyly they take my hand to help me into the car. Shyly they part the sea of empty Mountain Dew cans in the backseat and reach for me, leave their bites all over me. The Boys of the Midwest are unwashed and smell like food—as if they have been lightly battered and fried in their own grease. The Boys of the Midwest hold my hands in theirs until they begin to ache. The parking lot empties, leaving a vast ocean of tar under yellow light. It is five in the morning. A wild red fox streaks past the car, something—anything—wriggling in his mouth. Even in the dark, it is easy to tell who consumes who.