The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

Meet the Larsons

Previously: "Mickey Martin Makes Her Debut" 

Jared's arm rests heavily on your shoulder, loosely clasping your neck in the crook of his elbow. He pulls himself close to you, even as he raises his beer can in a kind of salute to the approaching Micah.

The calculation in your head blazes so quickly you are hardly aware of it, and only after you have nestled a little closer to Jared do you realize what you've decided. Better to let someone from Eastman flirt with me than someone from Westside. It will be easier to keep my distance.

(At least, that's what you seem to have thought. Only much later, when you're turning it all over in your head with a sense of puzzlement, do you realize how little sense that reasoning made.)

"Bruh!" Jared calls out to Micah. "Where's the fuckin' brews you were supposed to bring?"

"I need your ID, man!" Micah shouts back. "And a coupl'a twenties!"

"Shit." Jared wobbles on his feet, bumping you as he digs inside his hip pocket to bring out a wallet. Without dropping his arm from around you, flips one-handed through it.

You feel yourself freeze a little as Micah shifts his gaze onto you. There's no surprise, disappointment, or anger in his glance. Just an open-faced look.

He's dressed more or less as he was at school, in a sleeveless hoodie, jeans, boots, and a backward-turned ball cap. His hoodie is unzipped, though, exposing a naked torso with a shallow seam that runs almost from his throat down to his belly button. His chest and stomach are the same nutty-brown tan as his arms and face.

"Yo, Cody!" Jared shouts. You shudder a little as his voice echoes in your ear. "You got our ID? Michah-man says he needs it!"

Micah's gaze shifts, and he holds up one hand to scoop the wallet out of mid-air as it comes flying at him. Then, with a jerk of his chin, he says to you, "You coming?"

Now your guts do freeze, and your eyes fall as you murmur something like, "I'll see you when I get back."

"Hey Cody," Jared calls again, in a more civilized voice. "How about you and her go with Micah. You can pick up some stuff on the way back. You want cupcakes?" he asks—almost murmuringly—in your ear. You nod, uncertainly. "Cupcakes and chips. And those brews," he tells Micah.

The latter, with the same cool indifference as he showed walking up to you, turns to lead Cody and Jenny back to his car.

"I'll get the coals going," Jared says, and only now, as you look around, do you see that he's put his other hand onto the small of Maria's back. He pulls and guides you and her toward the shed. "Come help me get them hot."

* * * * *

It turns out that this shed—not the house, which belongs to a different property—is the party site. Or, more specifically, this square mile of open countryside is.

Also, you and your friends are the only guests.

It belongs to the Larsons—these Larsons, the parents of Jared and Cody—and there used to be a house here to go with the shed, but it burned down twenty or thirty years ago. ("You can see the old foundation," Jared tells you, pointing with one finger while clutching a beer can, "over there in that stand of bushes.") It belonged to the boys' grandparents before descending to their father, but their family had their own house, so they just kept the field after the house burned down. They rent it out to horse breeders. They're between renters now, though, so it's empty.

And the cookout isn't a party, exactly, it's an afterwork special thrown by the Larsons.

"That's Micah's brother and one of his friends, out there on the tractors," Jared explains to you and Maria and Linda as he's prepping the coals in one of the biggest grills you've ever seen outside a restaurant. "We all come out here once a month to do clean up. Part of our chores, but we get paid for it, 'cos Josh gets paid for it. Anyway, Trask and Josh mow the field, and me and Cody clean up the shed."

You glance inside the shed, under whose eaves the grill is set up. It is a long, squat building, built of blackened, weather-warped boards under a corrugated roof. There's no panes in the windows, or doors on the entrance. The inside is dark, and a scent of damp earth and mildew floats faintly out from it.

"What kind of stuff needs cleaning up?" Maria asks. She is resting her weight on one leg, her hands on her hips, and you can't help noticing (with a mix of pique and amusement) that she is pushing her breasts out in Jared's general direction. "It's just a dirty old shed, right?"

"We clean out the trash. Wind and stuff blows all kinds of shit inside," Jared says. "We also clean out the spiders nests and empty the rat traps."

"Rat traps!" you gasp. "Ewww!"

Jared grins at you.

"Rats attract snakes," he says. "Wanna see the bull snake we killed this afternoon? We threw it out over there." You gape and shudder as he points. "Cody cut its head off with a shovel."

You and Maria both wail in disgust. But there's a glint in Maria's eye. Gawd dam! you think. She's actually kind of turned on!

Anyway, Jared goes on to explain, they do this every month, and afterward they blow part of what they earned the previous month by grilling chops and ribs. He points to a second ice chest (the first, which is open, holds the beers) and tells you that's got the meat in it. Also, a quart of homemade potato salad and a quart of homemade coleslaw. The paper sack next to the ice chests has the paper plates and plasticware.

You and Maria get him to tell you a little more about their family, the gist of which is that they own Larson Landscaping, which is a garden/nursery/lawn care/exterior design company. He's telling you a little about Micah's side of the family—they own an HVAC company—when the roar of tractor motors starts to get deafeningly loud. Jared keeps talking, but you stop paying attention.

Especially when the tractors themselves and their drivers come roaring around the corner of the shed, and drive into it.

Jesus, I can't believe I'm gawping like a teenage girl, you tell yourself as you edge to the side to boggle at the broad backsides of the drivers as they pull to stop and kill the motors. They jump off and briefly inspect the motor housings of the tractors, and the wheels, before turning to come trudging toward the exit. You don't even try to tear your eyes off them.

They are both dressed in work jeans and work boots, and they are both broad of chest, and strong looking. This is particularly true of the one in the blue muscle shirt, whose arms, though slack, boast bulging shoulders and biceps. His shirt, which is sopping with sweat, clings tightly to his plate-like pecs, and sticks to his flat stomach. His blonde hair is long and straight and flows down the side his neck to drape below his shoulders, except at the top and back, where he has pulled his long bangs back into a thin ponytail. His face is hard and regular and handsome, with strong cheekbones, chin and jaw. His eyes are small, and lodged under a powerful brow. He only lacks a hammer—and a beard; he is shaved very smooth—to complete the impression of a young Thor.

The other is much less prepossessing, though his torso, which is wrapped tight in a grayish-green short-sleeved shirt, looks equally as powerful as his friend's. He's not nearly as handsome, as his face is kind of squashed up on one side in a kind of squint, and it is spattered with a spray of brown freckles like buckshot. His hair isn't nearly as impressive, either. He wears it in a mullet (for a start) with bangs sweeping low across his brow while in the back a tangled bush of split ends bunches up in curls against the back of his neck. His lips are badly chapped.

And yet, though he may be uglier than his friend, he has a much more powerful gaze and confident stride, and you have the impression, from the way he walks in front of the other, that he is the dominant personality of the pair.

Certainly he's the one who gives you the boldest and most direct look, and he saunters right up to you until he's almost touching you, to stare down into your face with a smile that is just short of a disgusting leer.

"Hey, you the girls m'bruh 'vited over?" he asks. His eye roves briefly over to Maria before settling again more firmly on you. "Glad t'ave ya anyway," he says when you don't answer.

"Yeah," Jared answers for you from behind. "This's Maria, 'n that's Mickey 'n Lindsey. This's Trask, my cousin, 'n that's his friend Josh."

"Hey Mickey," Trask growls down at you with a gleaming eye. Only slowly does it dawn on you that he's noticed you can't stop silently staring up into his face. "I gotta go hose down, or I'm gonna stink up everything. You wanna help?"

"Bruh," says Jared. "She's helping me with the coals."

"Sure you wanna help me," Trask says, ignoring his cousin. He catches you about the waist with a brawny arm and half-drags, half-carries you toward the corner of the shed. "Faucet's around this way."

You cast a brief, terrified glance back at Maria, but she's too busy stifling a wave of laughter to help you out.

Trask propels you around the corner, to where a metal pipe and faucet sticks out of the ground. He attaches a length of hose to it, and hands you the other end.

"Just spray me down all over," he says as he pulls his shirt off over his head and tosses it away. "You can get yourself wet too, if you want."

Next: "The Meat Counter" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 5)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)"