Savaging the Dark

by Christopher Conlon

  They crash into the house, all giggles and fun, as I’m pushing Connor into his coat. I introduce him to Bill, show Bill the good work he did out back. I pay the boy and lead him to the front door. “Bye, Connor!” I say loudly. “Thanks! Have a nice snow day!”

  He stumbles down the walkway. He says nothing, looking back at me for a moment and then toward the street. He walks away very quickly, almost running.

  After Gracie calms down she grows sleepy and I lay her down in her room. Then I go to Bill, and with no preamble at all kiss him deeply, press against him, pull him toward the bedroom.

  12

  Things are different between Connor and me after that. I can see it in his eyes. He’ll stare at me for a long time in class and then suddenly look down, blushing. He still comes for movies at lunchtime but says little, rarely makes eye contact. When he does speak I can feel the effort he’s making to sound as if everything is normal.

  Of course everything is normal, I tell myself over and over. We’ve done nothing that couldn’t be easily explained. Even the touching, the quick kiss—Ms. Straw felt sorry for her young student, that’s all. She was being supportive, caring. After all, he doesn’t have a mother. Yes, it’s possible that for just a moment she got a little too friendly with the boy, in a way that wasn’t wise, a way he might, in his innocence, misinterpret. A gentle reprimand might be called for: Ms. Straw, we know how much you care about your students, and you’re a wonderful teacher. But in the future be just a little more careful about the signals you may be inadvertently sending. Young boys are very impressionable.

  Connor lingers in my classroom now, more so than before. He seems reluctant to leave it at the end of lunch and at the end of the day. I can feel his eyes on me even when I’m not looking at him, even when I have Lauren Holloway or Richard Broad or Kylie McCloud with me at my desk, carefully going over their homework with them or trying to draw them out on how they’re doing, how they’re feeling. Ms. Straw the great teacher has reappeared, organized, professional, compassionate, caring, one of the stars of the staff of the Cutts School, liked and admired by students, teachers, administration, parents.

  One day when Connor comes into the room and takes off his sweater I see that he has a big bruise on his left bicep, an ugly purple splotch. “Hey,” I say casually, as the other students shuffle loudly in, “what happened to you?”

  “This?” He looks at it as if he’s never noticed it before. “Nothin’. Walked into a door.”

  This is the second time something like this has happened, with the same excuse. And the second time I don’t believe him.

  After class, as I’m putting the cassette of Saboteur into the machine, I say: “Hey, Connor?”

  “Yeah?” He’s drawing something on a piece of paper at his desk, doesn’t glance up.

  I sit next to him. “Hey,” I say gently. “Can you look at me?”

  He does.

  “Is everything okay at home, Connor?”

  “Sure it is,” he says, scowling, returning to his sketching.

  “Sure?”

  He doesn’t say anything, just moves the pencil on the paper. Circles, spiraling this way and that. We sit there for a moment.

  “Can I come over again?” he asks finally, staring at the circles.

  “Over?”

  “To your house?”

  I smile. “It hasn’t snowed, Connor.”

  “I know. I can do other work. I’m pretty strong.” He looks up again and, smiling, flexing his little bicep for me. “See?”

  “I’m sure you are,” I say. I look at him, at his crystalline green eyes, his pixie nose, the nasty bruise on his arm. “But…” Yet I can think of nothing to come after this word. I’m suddenly speechless. I look at him, aware of my breathing. Again the dominoes fall in my mind.

  “We have a half-day on Friday,” I say.

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe you could come then.”

  “Yeah, that’d be good.” He smiles. “You’ll pay me, right?”

  I laugh. “Of course I’ll pay you. I wouldn’t ask you to work for free.”

  What I don’t tell him is that Bill will be gone then, at a convention in Philadelphia, an overnight. And that while Gracie has an abbreviated schedule too as long as I call ahead I can have them hold onto her through the mid-afternoon.

  “I’ll have some projects for you to work on,” I say casually. “And maybe when you’re done we’ll watch a movie. Sound good?”

  “Sure!” His face is open, bright. I want to hug him then, this pretty boy with the bruised arm, tell him things will be all right. But of course I don’t. I smile, get up and go to the VCR, turn on the movie.

  The next two days I alternate between euphoria and low-grade panic. I cannot get Connor out of my mind no matter what I try. He’s taken up residence and pushed virtually everything else out. I make my way through my classes well enough—I’m professional enough for that—but mentally I’m in another place. Gracie gets only a highly distracted mother, Bill a distant wife. I wonder if he’ll start to think I’m crazy. Maybe I am, I think. But that doesn’t stop the excitement, the beating heart, followed by the awful dread, the feeling of doom heading straight at me as unstoppably as a freight train. Yet I can’t get off the tracks. Every time I try to move I only seem to get locked more tightly onto them.

  I kiss Bill goodbye that morning, wish him a happy convention, see him off with his briefcase and overnight bag. I hustle Gracie into the car, drive her to pre-school, remind the teacher that I won’t be back for her until three today. She assures me this is fine and that the after-school kids will have plenty of fun. “Yes, good,” I say, or think that I say, jumping into the car again, driving too fast to Cutts, teaching my classes in a rushed and breathless way. Connor says nothing in class, seemingly just waiting, like the other kids, for the bell to ring and the half-day to begin. It does. He lingers after the others.

  “See you at one, Connor,” I smile. It’s the time we’ve arranged.

  He grins brightly. “Okay. ’Bye!”

  The day has turned gray, cold, wet. Rain is slamming down by the time I get to my car, toss in my things, pull out of the parking lot and try to control myself, try to keep from pressing the gas pedal to the floor to get home. Or to get away, far away, any place except where I’m going. But my hands steer the wheel competently through the rain and soon enough I’m in the driveway, I’m home, I’m changing into a bright yellow blouse and short white skirt, I’m fixing my hair. My hands are covered in cold sweat. At any moment I expect to see Bill pull into the driveway, shaking his head in the self-effacing way he’s developed over the years, since he grew staid and conventional, saying as I open the door: You know what? I just realized I got the date wrong. The convention isn’t until next week! In a way I hope he does. I hope his familiar car pulls up behind mine in the driveway and I open the door and he comes in and we have coffee and he suggests we pick up Gracie and go for a drive or for lunch somewhere or dinner.

  But he doesn’t. Instead Connor comes walking along the street. He has no umbrella, no hat, just his big coat. He looks up through the heavy rain, double-checking that he’s got the right house, and moves up the walkway. I force myself to wait until he rings the bell—not once, but twice. Then I walk to the hall and open the door.

  “Connor! My gosh, you’re soaked!”

  “Yeah.” He smiles, rain dripping from his nose. “Kinda wet.”

  “Why didn’t you bring an umbrella?”

  He laughs. “I don’t have one!”

  “Well, come in, come in,” I say, clearing the way for him. “Take off your shoes, okay?” He does, leaves them near the door. “And give me your coat.” He does. “Connor, this thing is soaked all the way through! You should have called. I could have picked you up or we just could have postponed or something.”

  He shrugs. “It’s okay.” But I can see that he’s cold. Now that his coat is off I notice that he’s shivering.

  “Connor, it�
��s not.”

  “I wanted to come,” he says as I hang up his coat. “I need the money.”

  “Of course,” I say.

  “So what’s the job? Is it outside?”

  I look at him. “Connor, you’re in no shape to work. You’re too cold. Let me get you something hot to drink.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Connor, you’re going to drink something hot.”

  He shrugs again. “Okay. I wouldn’t mind.”

  I seat him at the kitchen table. “Do you like hot tea?”

  “Sure. Okay.”

  I microwave two cups of water, drops bags of mint tea into them, keep up some sort of line of chatter as I do so. I bring the hot tea and then go back for the sugar bowl. “I don’t know how sweet you like it,” I say. “Put in however much you want.”

  He puts in quite a lot. Finally he sips.

  “Good?”

  “Yeah.” He smiles, still quivering. We don’t talk for a minute or two. The house suddenly strikes me as extremely quiet, shockingly quiet. There is no sound but the rain and that seems far away.

  Finally he says, “What’s the job, Ms. Straw?”

  “Connor,” I say, my breath short, “you need to get out of those wet things. You’ll catch cold.”

  He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t look at me. After a moment he sips his tea again.

  “I’m okay,” he says at last.

  “Don’t be silly. You’re shivering.” I stand finally. “You can use our bathroom. I can give you a robe. We’ll put your things in the dryer. They’ll only take a few minutes.”

  He stands, slowly, looking down at the table.

  “C’mon,” I say, taking him by the hand. “Use this bathroom.” I open the door for him, switch on the light. “Just take off your stuff and I’ll get you a robe. We can’t have you getting sick,” I say brightly.

  I close the door, stand there breathing fast. My stomach hurts suddenly. I feel as if I’m going to vomit. But it passes. I move off to the bedroom, grab a robe of mine for him to put on. He’ll look silly in it but it’s just for a few minutes, until his clothes are dry. I return to the bathroom. I stare at the doorknob. Has he locked it? If he has, I decide, I’ll just knock gently, say, “Connor, I have your robe, just open the door a crack so I can pass it to you,” and that will be that. He’ll put it on, come out complaining that he looks stupid in this thing, we’ll dry his clothes and I’ll start him on his job. (What job? I haven’t even thought.) He’ll work, I’ll give him a snack, the clothes will dry and he’ll go back into the bathroom and lock the door behind him to put them on, he’ll come out again, we’ll watch a movie. All innocent, a comedy of errors, nothing important, just Ms. Straw hiring that Connor Blue kid to do some more work, that’s all.

  The door is unlocked.

  I open it.

  He’s standing in the middle of the bathroom floor, facing away from me. He’s taken off his pants, which are heaped next to him. His socks are gone, too. He’s wearing his red-and-white striped shirt and a pair of white shorts.

  “Here’s your robe, Connor,” I say, my voice oddly husky.

  He doesn’t move, just stands there with his hands at his sides as if he doesn’t know what to do. I place the robe on the counter.

  “C’mon,” I say, moving to him. “Let’s have your shirt too.” I take it at its hem in both hands, as I do with Gracie’s, pull it up as briskly and efficiently as a nurse would. I stand staring at his narrow white shoulders, the little freckles dotting it. He’s so skinny. I drop the shirt, try to control my breathing.

  “You’re still shivering,” I say quietly, touching his shoulders. “You should take a hot shower. Or do you take baths?”

  “I don’t take baths,” he says, his voice small, strange. “I’m not a little kid.”

  I push my lips to his wet hair. He’s shorter than I am; I have to lean down. “I know. I know you’re not, Connor.”

  My hands, practically outside my conscious control, move to his shorts and slide them down. The shorts are at his feet now. I notice that they’re not completely clean. For some reason this charms me, fills my heart. I stroke his shoulders, his back, his bottom, all of them covered in goose bumps.

  “You are cold,” I say.

  He has virtually no hair on his body anywhere. What little he does have is sparse and so white against his white skin as to be nearly invisible. He has no pubic hair at all yet his erection is surprisingly big, like a man’s. I reach around him slowly and touch it, stroke it gently.

  “What are you doing?” he says, his voice shaking.

  “Nothing,” I whisper.

  It takes only a few moments and he suddenly cries out as if in pain. His hips sway, his body shakes. He ejaculates wildly, spraying the floor and spattering the side of the bathtub. His knees buckle, he starts to collapse, I hold him closely, tightly. His legs quiver. His balance seems uncertain. I support him. We stand there together a long time as he regains his strength, his equilibrium.

  Then, to my amazement, he begins to cry. His face contorts and big tears run down his cheeks and snot trickles from his nose. I turn him around then, press his face to me, kiss him, stroke his hair, say, “It’s all right, Connor, shh, it’s all right, sweetheart.” It takes several minutes of gentle words and touching and reassurance for him to begin to calm. Finally I pull his head away from me and look at him, into his eyes. He glances back, looks away, sniffs, laughs a little.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  He nods, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

  “How do you feel?”

  His voice shakes. “I never did that before.”

  “With a girl, you mean?”

  “No. Like, ever.”

  I study him. “You’ve never masturbated, Connor?”

  He shakes his head, looks away. “Some guys talk about it,” he says. “They call it jacking off.”

  I laugh a little, gently. “Well, did you like it?”

  He laughs too. “Yes.”

  “You should take a shower now, sweetheart,” I say, smiling. “You’re kinda messy.”

  “Okay.” He glances shyly at me.

  I let him go and he turns, stares at what’s on the floor. I can see that he’s astounded at what’s come out of his body. He leans down and touches it with his fingers, studies it. Then he looks back up at me, grinning, blushing.

  “Go on,” I say, patting his bare bottom. “Get in. Don’t worry, I’ll clean up the mess. Do you know how the shower works?”

  “Yeah,” he says, stepping over the tub’s edge.

  I smile at this little naked boy and pull the shower curtain closed. After a moment he starts the water. I use toilet paper to clean things. Steam rises in the room. I step out for a moment to throw his things into the dryer, switch it on. When I come back I hear him turning the water off.

  I pull a fresh fluffy towel from the drawer and open the shower curtain. “C’mere,” I say. “Be careful.” He steps out and into the waiting towel. I rub him. He giggles. “Am I tickling you?” I ask.

  “A little.”

  “Well, let’s see if I can tickle you a little more!” I goose him in his sides, run my fingers over his belly and thighs while he shrieks and tries to escape.

  Finally we stop, breathless.

  “Come in here,” I say. Leaving the towel behind I take his hand and lead him into the guest bedroom. Smiling, I pull back the sheets on the double bed. “Sit.”

  He sits carefully at the edge of the bed. I drop down next to him. I lean him back, our heads touch the pillows. He blushes, giggles nervously. I kiss him, at first gently. After a while my tongue touches his and he draws back, eyes wide, a shocked expression on his face.

  “It feels funny,” he whispers.

  “C’mere.” I pull him to me. He doesn’t move away again. I open my blouse with my free hand, lead his fingers to my breasts, my nipples. He stops kissing me to look down, to gaze at my body. His erection has already returned
and he’s tugging at it, making odd whimpering sounds. I take his hand, stop him, whisper into his ear, “Let me do it, Connor,” and I do. This time when he comes he does it with more of a groan than a shriek. I carefully aim him away from me and he shoots it mostly onto the spare blanket at the foot of the bed.

  He kneads at my breasts then, sucks my nipples, whimpers again, until finally his movements slow and stop. I realize that, cheek against my breast, lips on my nipple, he’s fallen asleep.

  I cuddle him for a time. My hands move between my legs, press, stroke for a while, not very long, and I come gently, gently but overwhelmingly, a huge wave cresting over me. I hold him, gasp, my hips quiver. But I don’t wake him. He sleeps through it, like a baby. After a time I sleep too, sweetly, peacefully, my perfect darling boy in my arms.

  ***

  Later I jostle him, push his shoulder gently. “Hey Connor, wake up,” I whisper, kissing his temple.

  It takes him a long time to come to consciousness. He’s bleary-eyed, vague.

  “C’mon, sweetheart,” I say. “Up and at ’em.”

  He looks at me, then at himself. It’s probably the first time he’s ever awakened naked in his life. He nestles again my breasts. “I don’t want to get up,” he mumbles.

  “You have to, baby. You have to put your clothes on. You need to go soon.”

  “I don’t want to go.”

  I laugh a little. “I don’t want you to go either. But you have to.”

  “Why?” His fingers toy with my nipple.

  “Well, I have to pick up Gracie, for one thing.”

  He hugs me suddenly. His grip is strong, tight. I stroke his back, his bottom. Then, reluctantly, I start to pull gently away from him.

  “C’mon, Connor,” I say. “Time to start moving.”

  “I want to stay here forever.”

  “I’ll bet you do. But you can’t.”

  “Can we do it again?” Sure enough, his erection is starting to grow. He pulls my hand down to it.

  “No.” I pull back, take both his hands in my own, look seriously at him.

  “Just once more?” he whines.