FISH

Four kids in the Krogers parking lot at one a.m., standing around in the lingering heat, launching (stolen) fluorescent light tubes into the air one at a time, watching them descend, end over end, exploding into blooms of glass dust. Then the sword fighting begins. One kid named Earl picks up a tube and dashes it against the fender of a car, owned by a kid named Stanley, who in turn gives Earl a hard kick in the ass, not a light playful nudge but a solid boot in the crotch, coming up between the legs, catching the scrotum with the toe. All drama and tragic flourish, to get kicked in the balls. He clutches himself, emits a long, low moan, and falls to the pavement. Meanwhile, alongside this action, another kid is shoving shopping carts into a cement pylon. Then he tips one over, climbs it, and begins stomping. All this is accompanied by the car radio. (Could be any metal band of that time, most likely local talent, Iggy Pop, or Ted Nugent.) Earl is hunched over, drooling silently. Then the shopping cart kid rights a cart and shoves it at a blue Impala, colorless in the nonspectral light, catching the front headlight. This in turn inspires the kid named Stanley to pick up another tube and go toward the shopping cart kid. (Remember, these guys are all good friends and only trying to orchestrate some way deeper into the boredom, uniquely Michigan in quality, and to serve themselves up a dose of testosterone to go with the speed they ingested. Earlier that evening they went on a rampage to the fish hatchery, dumped yellow cartons of rat poison into a holding tank, and waited for the fish to float to the top, which they did, turning wide-eyed, betrayed, on their sides until the top of the tank—in the soft gentle starlight—was a sequined quilt of dead scales.) So when the kid who owns the car (Stanley) goes at the kid who pushed the cart, it is not only with the determined manner of someone bent on vengeance, but also with the extra zest of a common bond, of selfsame love, of approaching yourself in the mirror. He gives his friend one hard, swift, wide, arching swing into his face with the tube, which breaks against a cheekbone and somehow opens up like a blade and cuts deep into his neck, down at an angle into his aorta, unleashing a spume of blood. So when the kid hits the pavement—with a soft, doughy thump—he has already lost a large amount of blood and is succumbing to death the way you might fall into a soft pillow after a laborious day in the paint booth at Fisher Body Plant, or minding the rollers at the Parchment paper mill, or attaching door handles at Checker Cab.