He regained consciousness on the hot sand of an unknown shore. Coming to a sitting position with his back to land, the ocean in front of him and the beach to either side had a quality of endlessness, like the deepness of space. His throat was dry and there was a taste of sea water in his mouth, or of the way he thought that sea water tasted like, since he had never been outside of the small town in Ohio where he’d been born. His legs wobbled under him when he got to his feet and turned away from the water. In front of him now was what looked like the fairway of the fourteenth hole at the country club where his father once tried to encourage him to learn how to play golf. He didn’t have time to dwell on this mystery because coming up the fairway was a contingent of about a dozen people, all females of varying ages and appearances, all talking at once, led by a girl dressed like a beachcomber and pointing in his direction all the while.
He stood waiting until they arrived and stood in a bunch in front of him except for one who was trailing a few steps behind trying to keep up. The girl who had led them up to him said, “You’re awake! Can you talk? Can you understand me?”
He said, “Yes, I can talk! I can understand you fine!”
She said, “Who are you?”
He said, “I’m Xaviér . Who are you?” He pronounced his name in the Spanish way, with the “X” pronounced as an “H.”
Someone in the group said, “We’re asking the questions here!”
A girl dressed like Tinkerbell said, “What are you?”
He said, “I’m a boy! Are you blind?”
An astonished murmur went through the group, and here and there could be heard, "What did he say?” and “It can’t be!” and “There’s no such thing!” and “What’s a boy?” all in girl voices.
They parted to allow the one who had fallen behind to come through. She was dressed in black and white like Mother Ophelia at St. Ignatius, and she went all the way around him-as if she were inspecting him for clues-before she stopped in front of him, puzzled, catching her breath. She said, “Where did you come from?”
He said, “From my house!”
Excitement rose through the bunch again and the nun had to quiet them down, but a girl dressed like Annie Oakley came up and said, “He says he’s a boy.”
The nun rubbed her chin and said, “Yeees! I heard about one a long time ago! It could be! It just could be! Let’s take him to the queen.”
Xavier was tired and thirsty. The prospects of walking back across the golf course were discouraging: the fourteenth hole alone was a par five, but it was as if just having heard what was said made it so, because he blinked his eyes and they were all standing in front of a woman who was dressed like Dame Edna.
Morgan, the girl who had found him, said, “Magical, wasn‘t it?” smiling at him.
The queen (as they all called her) said, “My, my! What have we here? A boy, you say! What’s your name, boy?”
Xavier said, “The same as it was the last time somebody asked me!”
“And impertinent! How do you spell that?”
“With an ‘X’!”
The crowd—larger now with girls in all kinds of brightly colored costumes and dresses, including one in a wedding dress trailed by four bridesmaids and two flower girls—rose indignant saying, “Oh, no! Never! An ‘X’ is an ‘X’. The nerve! What planet is he from? And what is that smell?”
The bride said, “You strange, smelly little creature! You have a lot to learn!”
Xavier said, “No more than you! You need a groom! My dad says it takes two to tango!”
The bride broke up in tears and ran to the queen. The crowd shrieked, saying, “The cheek! Eek! A mouse! What’s a mouse? What’s a groom? How do you tango? Who’s his dad?”
The queen said, “He’s too radical! Morgan, take him back where you found him!”
Just wishing didn’t get them all the way across this time, so they had to cross the eighteenth hole, but it was only a par three. Morgan said, “Do you feel different?”
Xavier said, “Different from what?”
She said, “How do you be a boy?”
“I just am.”
“Show me what it feels like to be a boy.”
He takes a piece of string out of his pocket and asks her for her chewing gum. At the same time that he leads her off the fairway into the rough, he pastes the gum to the end of the string. Getting down to a crouch, he goes along brushing tall grasses away with his hand until he finds what he’s looking for. He drops the gum ball into a hole and releases the string a little at a time until he feels a slight tug on the end of it and he starts to pull the string back up. Soon, the gum appears at the mouth of the hole with a giant, black tarantula following it. He says, “Put your hand on the ground palm up.”
She reluctantly bends down and does what he told her, and when he pulls the gum up onto her palm, the tarantula follows. She does not move. Her face turns pale, then green, then beet red, almost the match of her hair, but she is too paralyzed to pull it away. She gasps, “I’m scared!”
He takes the tarantula and puts it back close to its hole, and says, “That’s a large part of being a boy. When you learn to live with it, you become something else.”
She says, “You’re an asshole!” and punches him in the stomach.
And it has to be the heat and the thirst and the pain in his belly that makes him faint away and slowly come to again—and when he opens his eyes, he’s in his bedroom lying on his bed with all his clothes and his shoes on, and he heads for the outdoors thinking, That’s the last time I have pizza for lunch with jalapéňo peppers on it!” It’s the first day of summer.
The new kid next door is taking practice swings at a ball on a tether, and Xavier goes up and says, “Hey, butch! Wanna go to the park and play ball with the other guys?”
And the kid turns and says, “My name isn’t ‘butch,’ and I’m not a guy, and you’re an asshole!” and she slaps him upside the head, and in doing so, her baseball cap falls off and her firehouse-red hair streams out around her shoulders and she snorts off toward the swing almost invisible under the cascading willow tree.
And he picks the cap up and follows, only because he has just turned eleven, and he can’t tie himself to the mast by himself.
Noe.
