by Jeff Strand
“I could be a scarecrow.”
“Or go as a kitten. A harmless little kitten. We could get you some pink yarn to play with, and you could purr and roll around to have your tummy rubbed, and you could make squeaky mewing sounds. I don’t think you understand Halloween.”
* * *
When Penny picked him up from school, she smiled, even though she didn’t seem happy. “Did you have a good day?”
“It was all right. I got invited to a Halloween party.”
“That’s nice. Mary and I always enjoyed carving jack-o-lanterns.”
“Will Mary be home tonight?”
“She said she’ll stop by to tuck you in bed and give you a kiss.”
“Will Sharon be with her?”
“I suppose so. Do you like Sharon?”
Nathan nodded. “Yes. She’s always very nice. Don’t you like her?”
“Oh, I like her very much. She makes my sister very happy. But she doesn’t live around here. She won’t stay forever. She may not stay much longer at all.”
“That would be sad for Mary.”
“No, not for Mary.”
“What do you mean?”
Penny just shook her head. “So what are you going to dress up as for Halloween?”
“I don’t know.”
* * *
Mary did come home, by herself, and she and Nathan put together part of a puzzle they’d almost completed. She tucked him in bed and kissed him on the forehead and left.
* * *
Nathan opened his eyes, and Penny was sitting at the foot of his bed.
The room was mostly dark. Penny held a half-full glass of wine and stared silently out the window. It was sort of creepy, and Nathan tried not to move or make a sound.
“I’m sorry, did I wake you up?” she asked, a few moments later.
“No.”
“Of course I did. It’s okay, you can tell me when I did something wrong.” She took a sip from her glass and swished the liquid around in her mouth before she swallowed. “The moon is beautiful, isn’t it?”
Nathan looked out the window. The moon, a quarter-moon, didn’t look any different from any other night. “Yes.”
“I shouldn’t have woken you. You have school tomorrow. I bet you have a test. Do you have a test?”
“Just a quiz.”
“Well, quizzes are important, too. You need your sleep.”
She drank up the rest of the wine but made no move to leave.
“Penny…?”
“It’s odd that you call me Penny, isn’t it? From now on you should call me Aunt Penny. Would you like that?”
“Yes.”
“Or mother. Would it really be so wrong to call me mother?”
“No.”
“You won’t leave me, will you, Nathan?”
“I won’t leave you.”
“Not ever, right?”
Nathan didn’t know what to say. He was torn between wanting to give her a great big hug and wanting to pull the blanket up over his head.
“I should adopt you. Properly adopt you. I don’t know why I haven’t.”
She looked out at the moon for a few more moments, then patted his leg.
“I’m going to let you get back to sleep,” said Penny. “You need your sleep.”
And then she was gone.
* * *
Nathan thought about this all day at school, which meant that he had trouble concentrating on what Mrs. Calmon was saying, which meant that he was sent to the corner twice. He had trouble concentrating there, too. Jamison tried to talk to him about the Halloween party, but Nathan wasn’t interested in discussing it.
It was Mary’s turn to pick him up from school, and when she did, he decided to be blunt. “Are you leaving us?”
“Nathan,” said Mary, “it is considered polite to ask somebody how their day was before jumping into a question like that.”
“How was your day?”
“It was tiring but otherwise not too bad. How was yours?”
“Awful. Are you moving away?”
“This may be difficult for a boy your age to understand, but sometimes people feel a certain way about each other and they want to spend the rest of their lives together. Loving one person that way doesn’t mean you love other people any less. Sharon’s perfect, don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t say that she’s perfect.”
“Don’t be a rascal. I think she’s perfect. Just like I think you’re perfect.”
“But are you moving away?”
“Yes.”
“Penny doesn’t want you to leave.”
“I know that.”
“I don’t want you to leave, either.”
“You should. You’ll have a bigger room.”
“Will I ever see you again?”
“What? Of course you…” She let out a loud, sharp laugh. “Nathan, I’m only moving out of the house. Sharon and I are buying a small home in the valley. We’ll be twenty minutes away. You can visit whenever you want.”
“Really? Then…then why is Penny so sad?”
“It can still be a sad thing. But I’ll always take care of you. You’ll just have to help take care of Penny.”
“I can do that. I promise.”
* * *
Nathan decided to go to the Halloween party as the Pied Piper of Hamelin, He carried Mary’s flute and dragged along a long line of rats he’d made out of brown paper and fur that had been shed by a dog in the neighborhood. Jamison had insisted that this wasn’t a scary costume, but Nathan argued that the Pied Piper had lured an entire village worth of children to their demise and was in fact a figure of great terror and evil. Jamison went as a wolfman.
The first thing they did was bob for apples. Nathan felt that there were many downsides to his teeth and very few upsides, but one positive aspect is that they made him extremely adept at bobbing for apples. He came up with an apple on his very first try, and the other children applauded, except for one boy, Will, who just sat there, looking annoyed and angry. He was in Nathan’s class, but they’d never spoken except once when Will had tried to copy his homework.
Then Ronald turned out the lights, shone a flashlight on his face, and told them a story about a killer with a metal hook for a hand. The killer snuck up on some unsuspecting kids who were listening to music in their car, and just as he was about to open their door the kids started the engine and drove away, popping the hook-hand right off. The killer ran around screaming and bleeding from his hand, and just when it seemed that he might bleed to death, the kids remembered that they’d forgotten something and accidentally ran him over.
Everybody loved the story except for Will, who just sat there and glared at Nathan. Nathan wished he would quit doing that. It was Halloween—shouldn’t this be the one night that people didn’t stare at his teeth?
“What do you want?” Nathan finally asked. He was having a fantastic time, and didn’t want Will to spoil it.
“I want you to leave.”
“Hey, knock it off,” said Ronald. “This is my party and you won’t ruin it for me. Nathan was invited fair and square.”
“Oh, yeah?” Will stood up. He was the biggest child in Mrs. Calmon’s class, which made him much larger than Nathan. “I think he should be uninvited.”
“Why?” asked Nathan.
“Because your mom is disgusting.”
Nathan stiffened and clenched his fists. “My mother died.”
“You know who I mean. My dad said that one of your moms goes around doing the most disgusting things, right out there in public. He said he saw her down by the lake, walking with another woman, holding her hand where anybody could see!”
“So what? Sharon is very nice. Why shouldn’t Mary hold her hand?”
“Because it makes people sick is why!”
Nathan couldn’t remember ever having felt such rage, not even toward Bernard Steamspell. “Take it back.”
“I won’t. My dad said that he can’t even i
magine what horrible things they do when they’re done holding hands! Your mom is a nasty beast.”
“Take it back!”
“Nasty beast!”
And then Nathan was upon him, tackling Will to the floor and raining punches on the larger boy’s chest. Ronald ran upstairs for his mother while the other boys cheered. Some shouted “Go, Nathan, shut him up!” while others shouted in favor of Will.
“Take it back!” Nathan was so furious that he thought his eyes might be glowing red, but he also knew that Penny, Mary, and Sharon wouldn’t be happy about him fighting like this, even in their defense. Four or five more punches and he’d stop.
“I’ll never take it back!” Will punched him in the jaw, so hard that Nathan felt something give way behind his lip. He spat out some blood and a pointed tooth. “Nasty vulgar beast!”
“Don’t say that about her!”
“That’s what she is!”
“She is not!”
Will punched Nathan in the chin. His vision went completely white for a second, and as Will’s fist slid past him, Nathan bit him on the arm.
Will screamed as his teeth sunk in, then pulled away so quickly that a small piece of arm came off in Nathan’s mouth.
“Nathan!” Ronald’s mother ran down the stairs. “What have you done?”
“He bit me!” Will wailed. “He bit me on the arm!”
Nathan didn’t know what to do with the (small) piece of Will’s arm that was in his mouth. Spitting it out would seem to call much more attention to it than he wanted, while the idea of swallowing it was stomach-churning and cannibalistic. He gagged and spat it onto the floor.
“I didn’t mean to—!”
“Look at the blood!” Ronald’s mother screamed. “I’ve never seen such a horror show!”
“I’m a goner!” said Will. “He’s murdered me. I just know it!”
Ronald’s mother scooped the boy into her arms. “Henry!” she called upstairs. “Call an ambulance! And the police!”
The police? She wasn’t really going to call the police on him, was she?
She looked back at her son. “Ronald! Get away from him! Come with me! Now! All of you, follow me upstairs!”
Ronald’s mother ran up the stairs with Will. All of the other boys except Jamison followed her. A couple of them were also screaming, though none as loud as Will.
Nathan plopped down into his chair. “I didn’t mean to do it. We were just fighting and he made me so angry. If he hadn’t pulled his arm away nothing would have come off. I wasn’t trying to hurt him like that.”
“I’m glad you did it,” said Jamison. “He deserved it, saying those things.”
“But what if I go to jail?”
“They don’t send kids to jail.” Jamison rolled his eyes at the foolishness of that statement, but then began to look quite concerned. “Do they?”
TWELVE
“Little boys fight all the time,” said Officer Danbury. “It’s what they do. If they didn’t fight, they’d be girls.”
There were a lot of them crowded into the police station. Officer Danbury, Nathan, Penny, Mary, Sharon, Ronald’s mom, Will (with his arm bandaged up), and Will’s parents.
“However,” Officer Danbury continued, “this was no ordinary fight, because one of them was armed, the same as if he’d been carrying a knife or a gun.” He looked at Will’s mother. “If your son were wandering around town with a gun and he went and shot another boy, you’d expect him to suffer some consequences, wouldn’t you?”
“I certainly would!”
“And if he had a knife, and he went around stabbing people just as freely as you please, you’d want to see justice served, right?”
“Indeed!”
“Then it’s settled.” Officer Danbury turned his attention to Nathan. “You’re going to jail, young man.”
“But that’s not fair!” said Penny.
“Not fair? The law hasn’t got anything to do with what’s fair. Your boy is a danger to society. Truth be told, I’m uncomfortable standing this close to him even with all of you around to serve as a barrier between us. What if he’d torn out that poor boy’s throat? That little bandage Will has on wouldn’t do much good toward treating a gaping throat wound. Will, do you really think you’d be standing here right now if he’d torn out your throat?”
“I bet he wanted to!” said Will.
“Of course he did. I know a menace when I see one. That is to say, now that he’s committed an act of violence I see him for the menace that he is. Jail will straighten him out, or at least give him a good place to rot.”
“No!” shouted Mary. “He was defending my honor!”
“Clearly it was not honor he should have defended,” said Officer Danbury. “Ten days in jail for the boy. That’s my sentence.”
“But you’re not a judge!” Penny protested.
“Fourteen days! And if you’re not careful you’ll join him in his cell!”
“I want to join him!”
“Then fourteen days and he’ll have no visitors! Except, of course, for the guard who brings him bread and water, but that guard will not offer him any human comfort!”
Jail! Nathan couldn’t believe it. Only scoundrels went to jail!
“Jail is too good for him!” declared Will’s mother. “He should be banished!”
“Now, now, some jails may indeed be too good for him, but I assure you that ours is not.”
“He should be executed!” said Will.
“Oh, now, don’t be goofy, we’re not going to execute a seven-year-old boy for biting somebody. Because of your ridiculous comment I’m knocking a day off his sentence.” Officer Danbury pointed his index finger at Nathan and rotated it in a circle. “Turn around so I can handcuff you.”
“Too bad you don’t have fang-cuffs,” said Will.
“He’s down to twelve! Are you trying to suspend his sentence entirely?”
Nathan turned around and Officer Danbury snapped the handcuffs on him. As Will laughed and the sisters cried, Nathan was led to his cell.
* * *
The cell was cold and dark and smelled bad, but Nathan felt certain that he would still be alive at the end of his sentence. He’d survived all by himself in the forest, and he’d been a year younger then, so he expected to be fine.
It wasn’t his fault. If he’d been born with normal teeth, he could have bitten Will for saying those mean things and nobody would have cared.
But he shouldn’t have bitten him.
He shouldn’t have gone to the party at all.
Nathan lay on his pile of hay (“No cot for you!” Officer Danbury had said) and alternated poking his tongue between his freshly knocked-out tooth and the one he’d lost naturally. His new tooth hadn’t started to grow in yet. He wondered when he’d be able to feel the point.
* * *
Penny and Mary went home and cried in each other’s arms. “I would have bitten the little worm’s arm myself if I’d been so equipped!” said Penny. “I hope he fails to keep the wound adequately cleaned!”
Mary told Sharon that she couldn’t move away to live with her, not until Nathan got out of jail, because Penny needed the company. Sharon told Mary that she understood completely, but that she’d decided to move back to where she’d grown up, far from there.
“I can’t go with you!” said Mary. “Not that far! Won’t you please stay?”
Sharon shook her head sadly and said that she wanted to stay, but that she just couldn’t. She left the next morning.
Will poked at his bandage and thought about Nathan sitting in jail. Though it was a happy thought for him, it didn’t make him any less angry. He’d been bitten by somebody who’d been beaten up by a girl! “I hope he dies in there,” he’d say to anybody who would listen, and a lot of people were interested in what he had to say. “He deserves awful things to happen! Him and his disgusting, vulgar mother!”
Three times a day, Penny and Mary would ask how Nathan was doing, and Officer Dan
bury would assure them that Nathan had not perished. The guard only checked on Nathan once a day, but Officer Danbury was reasonably confident that he wasn’t lying to the sisters the other two times each day he answered their question.
Will was sent to the Corner of Ridicule every day, but he didn’t care. He loved to talk about how much he disliked Nathan. He did nothing else at recess, even when the teeter-totter was available. “Somebody should burn down their house!” he said, often.
Nathan’s classmate Peter liked the idea of setting fire to a house, though he only ever burned small things, and his father had taught him “If it’s alive, don’t burn it.” He could envision the flames dancing all over the roof, but would never, ever do something so cruel.
It was never officially proven who did do it. Peter’s father had heard his son talk about it, and thought it sounded like an excellent way to spend an evening, and spoke of it in a purely hypothetical sense to several of his co-workers at the factory.
They shared this idea with still more people, in a purely “We would never do this, but it would serve them right for having a vicious boy like that!” manner. It took less than one full day for the idea to reach nearly everybody in town, and almost all of them agreed that they would never do it.
On the eighth day of Nathan’s sentence, while Penny worked at the library and Mary managed her restaurant, somebody broke into their home with matches and gasoline. Or perhaps it was two people, working together—nobody ever knew for sure except for the guilty parties, who were never caught and never confessed.
Penny was helping a little girl find a book about dead clowns when her employer frantically beckoned for her to take a phone call.
“Hello?”
“Penny!” It was her next-door neighbor, Eunice. “It’s a shocking thing! I’m looking out the window at your house right now and it’s a raging inferno!”
