How They Were Found by Matt Bell Page B

I never question the necessity of lugging the vacuum everywhere I go. It is the only rule and so I follow it.
    Once beneath the trees, I drag the vacuum over the blanketing floor of pine needles. Heading deeper into the woods, I find a tight bunch of pines whose boughs create a natural shelter into which I tuck myself and my vacuum. I expect to be hidden, to be safe, but I am not alone.
    On the ground at my feet is a wounded deer, surrounded by a bloody halo of snow originating from the bullet hole tunneled through its chest. Rather than let go of the vacuum, I transfer its handle to my right hand as I kneel beside the deer. There is a knife in the snow, and because I don't know what else to do, I pick it up and hold it, looking over at the deer’s still form, at the steam still rising from its blood. I think I know what I am supposed to do, but I don’t know if I can do it.
    I place the knife against the breastbone but can't bring myself to make the cut. I try again and fail again. This is why I never went hunting with my father or my brothers, at least not after the first time. I turn away, leaving the deer and the knife where I found them. When I step out from the press of the tree branches, Teacher’s waiting for me, a thin smile on his face.
    He says, You weren't able to do it before either, so nothing to feel bad about.
    Then there is the drill. Then there is the end of my turn.
     
    A new turn begins, in a high school locker room where I'm surrounded by other players, three boys in nothing but boxer shorts with vacuums of their own, giant shop vacs, low and squat on squeaky wheels. I'm naked before them, one hand on my vacuum and one on my crotch.
    The biggest of the boys says, Want to get to your locker, don’t you?
    Probably pretty ashamed of that little prick. Needs to put his panties on.
    Show us what you’ve got and I’ll let you pass. I promise.
    This boy, his vacuum is bigger than the others, and also an unmistakable hue of pink.
    I know he’s not telling the truth. Whatever happens, someone is definitely going to get hurt.
    The boys continue to taunt me, and right before I know I’m about to give in, to just get it over with, the door to the locker room slams open, and in comes Teacher. He smiles, all his little crowded teeth gleaming victorious in the fluorescence.
    We scatter, but he's too fast, the scene too disorienting. The drill enters the bullies first, but eventually it comes for me too.
     
    There is a turn where my father bails me out of jail and then there is the drill. Where my mother finds my slim pornography stash, the drill coming as she tells me who it was that molested her and how she’s afraid I’m going to grow up to be like him. I call a boy in the second grade a nigger even though I don’t know what the word means. The drill enters through my cheek so that I can feel it spinning inside my mouth before it angles upward toward my brain. These turns I never hear Teacher coming, never see him except as a hand holding a weapon.
    The line between voyeur and participant blurs. I open a bathroom door and see my babysitter partially naked, squatting with her pants around her ankles, changing her tampon. This is years before I even know what that is. I back out quickly, yelling apologies, my vacuum clunking against the doorframe. Later I will reenact an early masturbation attempt, one hand on myself and the other on the vacuum's handle as I picture the triangle of pubic hair between her legs. The drill bit finds me right before I orgasm. It is a long time before I see another player again, and when I do I can’t help wondering if I'm playing against them or beside them, if we are rivals or on the same team. It’s hard to know. My only companion comes via the one rule: Hold on to your vacuum . It goes everywhere with me, a conjoined twin or else a tumor made of Chinese plastic and rubber belts.
     
    I grow calmer, more accepting of the drill, like a child who learns to take his medicine no