Indelicacy

The boy named Heston pierced the skin of the apple 

with his strong, healthy teeth and the ripe fruit's juices 

slid from the asymmetrical indentation upon his wicked 

hand and he smiled approvingly at the sun that 

posted in the sky like a deathgod and burned 

reflexively, unemotionally for all the things great 

and infinitesimal including Heston and his apple. 

He'd been turning over the "wisdom" of that morning's rally/lecture 

and he was familiar with the terminology and examples the 

speaker'd used and Heston's memory sparkled with the raw 

sensation of the words and in the promise of war 

the speaker had detailed Heston witnessed the purpose of his muscle, 

the thought of the sniper rifle set along his arm where 

one hand cuddled the trigger and the other hand supported the body 

and his trained eye discovering the confined world in the targeting-scope 

and he thought how similar these things would be to the manner 

in which he now studied the apple he was consuming. 

The boy named Tyler a had frail, coquettish way about him 

where he emerged from the rural dust and light and his scout- 

partner recognized him approximately 200 feet away 

in the distance of the street, the street that Heston called home. 

Of the two boys, Tyler was far more curious and excited about sex. 

He routinely said wild, spontaneous things to the teenage prostitutes 

that wandered about their village like so many shiftless ice cream 

peddlers or living-dolls wondering where their souls had flown to. 

He was, in fact, a year younger than Heston but had more bodyhair 

and the aroma of a young man in his 20s and Heston sometimes 

envied him for his sense of detachment although Tyler's general 

lack of concern equally extended to itself. His simple face and clothes 

of poverty shaped by the austerity of constant war cast a figure 

and its shadow before the older boy consuming his apple, and 

the simple face spoke, "Good morning, friend." Tyler was 

immeasurably naive. Both his parents had been killed in a mining 

accident when Tyler was only an infant and he was raised by 

his Irish grandmother who was herself a widow and although 

Tyler demonstrated competency in his survival skills both defensive 

and offensive, the old woman's love for the foreign world of 

yesteryears surely cast a spell in his strange and lustful heart. 

"Finding the day suitable to the habits and training of a killer?" 

Heston looked watchfully at his scout-partner offering pleasantries. 

While the full-thrust of puberty had yet to reduce the timbre 

of his voice to match his father's and other men, he had 

long ago been divided from the innocence and ease of which 

the younger boy had seemingly infinite possession and familiarity with.

He took another bite of the apple. He chewed it with frightfully solemn 

maturity. Nowhere on that street was there a soul to identify 

the human or humane in that nearly-android visage that 

consumed the things of life and was indeed fueled by them 

and yet maintained devotion to its sociopathic ishvara. 

"Find yourself a girlfriend yet?" he asked Tyler. 

Tyler bashfully turned away. See the modesty shielding his 

desperate hunger and the way his supple limbs dance 

with the sad bravery of his feelings. 

The tension of the small bones in his hands enduring 

the tempting ruminations of $2 kisses shared 

with the lonely girls selling their bodies, their 

only true possession, before departing back into the night, 

like rogues, like sirens. "Nothing more than last time," 

he reported. His eyes turned toward a different sun than 

his friend's did, tasting the breath of the girls in his 

nostrils along with that of their perfume and their private parts. 

"You should do what I told you," said Heston. "You're not supposed 

to marry these chicks, idiot. They're receptacles. Equipment. 

You're making the whole thing too complicated."

For the past year, Tyler had paid visit to various brothels, parlors 
and clubs, put the query to dozens of "professionals" and escorts 
as to which would relieve him of his virginity. Since his 

very first ejaculation -- and with every video, magazine and 

fantasy culled from a pair of legs, sight of cleavage 

or the fat and happy outline of an ass -- he wanted 

nothing more on Earth (and could settle for virtually 
nothing less) than to feel himself inside a woman 

when the timeless and venerable act was expressed. 

But for all his feral appetites there were lines he 

refused to cross. He wouldn't journey elsewhere for 

the privilege; he wouldn't rape any girl against her will; 

and, most decidedly, he wasn't going to slay a prostitute 

with a rock and have his way with her corpse, as 

Heston had suggested more than once. 

He caught sight of a girl making her a.m. rounds. 

She was small, no older than sixteen years. 

Heston noticed her, too, and took a final bite of the apple 

before winging it rudely in her direction. She was 

absorbed in thoughts that had very little to do with them 

but the proximity of the fruit's core to her feet found 

her attention where she turned in her ugly sandals and 

her blue polyester dress that her tan brassiere and 

pale flesh shone through. She looked with doleful perplexity 

at Heston and his empty hand. She looked at Tyler and 

he thought he felt her smile. None of them remarked on the 

quantum strings that guided their interactions and the various 

mechanisms maintained by politics and culture and personal 

behavior: people rarely, if ever, did. 

Science played a role in their sorrowful world but its export 

was oppression and domination over the weak and was frequently 

disconcerned if not fully enraged by the notion that science was 

best used for discovery and enrichment of the populations who 

toiled for the sake of the species' enlightenment. She looked about 

the street for whatever might come next and nothing consequential 

did and the young girl walked forward, away from them. 

Later, the two boys would walk to the orchard, making banter 

and dreaming of the future, where like some cavepainting of 

hunters possessed by satisfaction, the words of their fathers and 

uncles would trail away like poisoned insects, soon to be digested 

by the flowers. 

****