Boy #1: Will

It’s the worst kind of day for me to be the new kid at school, all hot and dry with the radiator pumping even though it’s April and warm outside, and I sit here, feeling the heat in my nose, feeling the insides of my nostrils crack and waiting for it to happen, waiting and wondering how they will react, wondering how the not-new kids will see me when they see me for what they will think I am, when the brown pours out of my nose and over my chin and onto my shirt and down my legs and puddles by my feet on the floor. At every new school, I never know what to say, how to prepare them, or whether I should just wait, wait until it starts, and then, if I can get them to taste it, to see how sweet it tastes, to see how sweet someone like me tastes, then things might be different—I might be something other than what they think I am—but sitting here, sitting here and feeling it start, the burning chocolate trickle, I know it will not work out that way. It never does.

Boy #2: Frankie

I don’t know why I’ve always got to be the one to go get him. Ain’t no good reason at all why it’s got to be me. Everybody watches me ’cause they know where I’m goin’ with my apron and hair net still on. Of course, I don’t make no secret about it, no sneakin’ around or nothin’. That’s not the way I am. What you see is what you get. But it’s not like that with him. He looks like a little boy, all right, but he’s a freak, a freak of nature plain and simple, so that’s the way they treat him.

I don’t approve of what they ask me to do, you understand, but I know where my paychecks come from, so I do it. But it sure would be better if they sent me during recess. That way I could catch him by the monkey bars or in one of those four-square games, just give him a little sign or something. Instead, they always send me out about now, when the lunchroom is full of kids during second lunch period, because that’s when they run out and that’s when they need it, like those kids are a bunch of crackheads.

I keep on doin’ it, but I can’t keep on forever, paycheck or no paycheck. I mean, it’s just plain wrong. A boy ain’t no cow. That’s just the way it is.

Boy # 3: Juan

Juan was the coolest kid in school because he was an accident, which meant that he had a brother who was ten years older than he was, and his parents were really old, too. This was a totally killer combination seeing as how his parents were completely clueless about everything we did, and his brother was off at college, so his room was like our room, except the stuff in his room was a whole lot cooler.

There was the stuff in there that Juan’s parents thought we were playing with—old GI Joes, hot wheels, board games, and crap like that—and then there was the stuff that sometimes we actually played with—dice, darts, and piles and piles of old Penthouse magazines. But most of all there was one item that obsessed us. We knew it was the coolest because we could only guess what to do with it. It was a beer funnel.

We spent hours locked in that room, sucking on that thing. One day early on, I think I may have gotten a buzz from sucking on it. Or it may just be I got light-headed from sucking too hard. Because the sucking was the thing. We were boys, and if nothing else we knew, we somehow knew, that one end was made to be sucked, even if we had no idea what to do with the other end.

But then one day Juan came to school, and he had figured it out. The moment he walked into the classroom, I knew that he knew. Everyone turned to look at him. He had the funnel with him. Or, I should say, he had the funnel on him. The big end, I didn’t know why, but the big end was taped right over the middle of his face. His voice came muffled, echoing from behind the plastic and masking tape. “Anybody thirsty?” he said.

Boy #4: Neil

It never happens when I want it to happen. I want to do it at will. I’ve got one friend who can fart on command and one who can belch at the snap of your fingers, but everybody’s got friends like that. I know that if I can think about it hard enough, pure enough, I can make it happen. My mind, my nose, my milk, will be one, and it will pour. Then I will be cooler than any of those farters and belchers. I will be one of a kind. I will be the coolest.

So I’m training myself. Every day, when I get home from school, I go into my room and lock the door. I get the chair from my desk, and I sit in front of the mirror that hangs on my closet door. Sometimes I stare just at my nose. I focus all my energy on my nostrils, not thinking about anything else, not school, not practice, not even the Garver twins, who have breasts. Sometimes I close my eyes and I imagine. I see the fountains at the Metropolitan Museum of Art shoot gorgeous chocolate arcs. I see the Mississippi River churned all muddy—only it isn’t mud. I see Niagara Falls turn brown, and I see men in barrels tumbling out of my nose.

I know it will happen soon.

Boy #5: Sedgwick

When Father sees me come into the room, my nose plugged with a handkerchief, he calls at once for Mrs. Brumby. He strides from the room and Mother follows after him.

Mrs. Brumby appears in the doorway.

“Master Atherton?” she says, her voice uncertain.

“Yes?” I do not look at the door but stare up at the ceiling and try to imagine God up there, somewhere, watching over us, as Vicar Bainbridge likes to say, loving us despite our imperfections.

She slides in, closes the door, and crosses the room. Cutting my eyes downward, I see that she carries a book.

“Good heavens, Mrs. Brumby, what is it?” I say. “Can you not see that I am busy?”

“Yes, Master Atherton,” says Mrs. Brumby. “But that is why I am here. This has always been the duty of the Brumbys, my mother and hers before her and hers before her.”

I must be a dreadful sight with my wet hanky hanging from my nose, but she does not look at me. She looks instead at the old leather-bound book in her hands. It is open now, and she offers it to me.

“What does this mean?” I ask.

“This is your destiny,” she says. “Go on, lad. Look.”

The first date I see is April 11, 1674. Beside it there is a blotch and the signature of my ancestor, James Chesterton Atherton. Mrs. Brumby turns the pages, and I see dates upon dates, blotches upon blotches, Athertons upon Athertons.

When we reach a blank page, she points to the white parchment. “Drip here,” she says. “Then you sign.”

Boy #6: Ralph

It’s not my fault I was born like this, but they don’t care. They just want to make fun of me and make up songs about me and chase me around the halls and see if they can punch me in the nose. This used to bother me, but after today it won’t.

When I get on the bus they let me hear it for a few minutes, but when we start going around the curves up from my house they turn around and grab the seatbacks in front of them and lean into each other, back and forth, like they’re on a roller coaster. But then the road straightens out and they’re yammering at me again, calling me Hershey Head and Nestle Nose and all sorts of things. They treat me worse than the retards.

After the bus gets to school, I’ll hear people shouting “Yoo-hoo!” at me in hall while I’m walking to homeroom. But after that I won’t hear it any more. After that it will all be over.

Boy #7: Latrell

Reverend Judkins took the Lord’s name in vain first time he saw it. It was after youth group was over and all the other kids had gone home and we were waiting for my mother to pick me up. We had been playing softball, but now we were sitting in the shade on the back stairs of the church. Reverend Judkins was a fat man, so he was breathing hard and heavy, even after we’d been done for a while.

“Lord A’mighty, boy,” he said between puffs, “what’s wrong with your nose?”

I could feel it trickling down through the mustache I was trying to grow.

“It’s chocolate milk,” I said.

He took the Lord’s name in vain again. “Good God A’mighty,” he said. He leaned close and peered at me. He was still breathing heavy, but he was licking his lips like he wanted a taste.

I could feel it running around the corners of my mouth now. It was really starting to go. I leaned forward and let it splash onto the first stair.

The reverend slid closer to me. “What’s it—what’s it taste like, son?”

I looked at him. “Chocolate milk,” I said.

“Huh,” he said, and he sat there looking at me, running his hand over his face, looking like he was thinking hard. He blinked several times. “Well, I’ll be,” he said softly. “Well, I’ll be.” His lips moved, but he didn’t say anything. Maybe he was praying. Maybe he was thinking about burning bushes and pillars of salt and loaves and fishes.

“Boy,” he said.

“Yessir?” I said.

“Boy, you ever think about giving your life to the Lord?”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“You got a powerful testimony of—of—”

The milk was really gushing now, and it was running like a river down the concrete steps. I felt a little faint.

Reverend Judkins stood up and raised his hands high, like he does during a sermon sometimes when he says he’s trying to get a hold of God, so God can explain things to him. He threw back his head and shouted, “You got a Holy Baptism of Chocolate Milk! Behold the Righteousness of Chocolate Milk!”

§ § §

Kurtis Davidson is the penname of Kurt Jose Ayau and David Rachels. Their work has appeared (or will soon appear) in The North American Review, The Portland Review, and The Southeast Review. Their first novel, What the Shadow Told Me, won the 2003 William Faulkner Creative Writing Competition.

This piece was first published in INK POT #4- 2004, a literary journal.