by David Wiltse
Still, she had to ask the question.
“What were you doing?”
Becker was silent for a long time. Karen watched him absorb the question and its implication and the pain that it caused him.
“Working.” he said at last.
When he did not elaborate she asked, “Did you go outside?”
“Yes.”
“Dressed like that?”
Becker looked at himself as if assessing his costume.
“Yeah.”
She saw his jaw was set; he would be volunteering nothing.
“I don’t want to interrogate you, John.”
“Fine.”
“But I don’t understand.”
“You wouldn’t if I explained, either,” he said.
“You were working?”
“Uh-huh.”
She found it hard to look him in the face. He looked like a boy accused of lying by his parents for the first time, pained by the accusation, outraged by the injustice, stunned that his record of honesty was not sufficient to carry the issue, resigned that he would not be believed, and saddened by the loss of innocence. What was lacking was the recognition that he had come within a breath of having been shot. He was, she concluded, the strangest man she had ever loved; maybe the strangest she had ever known, but also the most interesting.
“I’d like to go back to bed,” she said.
They both lay awake the rest of the night, side by side but not touching, each pretending to be asleep.
As dawn approached Karen asked softly, “What did you learn?”
Becker answered as readily as if they had been talking for hours.
“He loves them,” he said. “Lamont loves those boys.”
Chapter 16
They drove in a different direction again. It was their fifth trip away from the motel and Dee had chosen a different route each time, leaving Bobby confused and without a mental map of where they were or where they were going. In time, of course, usually within a half hour or forty-five minutes, they would come to an area whose dimensions were familiar even if the particulars were not. They were still in America, after all, and the fast-food chains and the franchised shops were the same everywhere.
Ash coaxed Bobby into taking one more bite. The boy had had no appetite for days and Ash ministered to him like a nurse, trying to keep his delinquency from Dee’s attention.
“You have to eat some,” Ash said.
“I did,” Bobby said.
“That wasn’t even a bite. Eat this much, just this much.” Ash tore off a small portion of the burger, removed the bun and lettuce, scraped off the condiments with his finger. He held the piece of meat before Bobby’s mouth like a mother bird with a nestling.
Bobby shook his head, his lips closed. Ash glanced anxiously through the car window. Dee had found a single mother inside the hamburger restaurant and had struck up a conversation by admiring the woman’s two children. Now she was pointing outside, toward Bobby, her face gleaming with pride. The other mother looked out politely.
“Wave,” Ash said, lifting Bobby’s arm. “Smile.”
The boy managed an ugly grimace, trying to smile while battling the onset of tears. Bobby wept all the time now, often with no provocation, and it was all Ash could do to keep him from doing it in Dee’s presence. Ash waggled the boy’s arm at the elbow and his hand flapped loosely. There was nothing he could do about the smile, but from the distance Dee seemed not to notice. She sat in the booth with the other woman, her head tossed back in laughter. She reached across the table and tousled the hair of the children while the mother regarded her uncertainly.
“You know how she’ll be if you don’t eat,” Ash said, putting the morsel to Bobby’s lips once more.
The boy opened his mouth and chewed weakly. At least he still cares. Ash thought. At least he can still be frightened. When he stopped caring at all, it would all be over. Ash would help him then. He had tried to help the boy all along, but he was never able to do enough. Only at the end could he really help.
Ash put the rest of the burger in his own mouth and ate it so that Dee would not know how little Bobby had consumed. He slurped at the milk in Bobby’s cup, draining most of it, then carefully wiped the boy’s face clean. Dee did not tolerate messiness. Not with Tommy. She would abide it with Ash, but Tommy reflected on her personally.
“Be sure to tell her how much fun you’re having,” Ash said.
Inside the restaurant. Dee had stood up. She looked again toward the car, then bent and hugged both of the children, who submitted reluctantly. With a smile and a gesture of the hand she left the mother and the children. Ash could see the mother looking at her children, then following Dee out of the restaurant with her eyes. She said something to the children and they responded animatedly.
Dee strode across the parking lot joyfully, rising up on the balls of her feet with every step as if on springs. Her eyes were alight and her smile split her face from ear to ear. She started talking as soon as she made eye contact with Ash, while she was still in the lot, before he could hear her through the closed windows.
Ash nudged Bobby, making him turn to face her.
“Be happy,” Ash said.
Dee swept into the car like a wind, smelling of mint and excitement. “She liked you, so did her kids, she said you were so cute.” She kissed Bobby on the cheek and Ash noted with relief that the boy did not pull away or resist her at all.
“Did you eat your supper?”
“He ate it all. Dee,” Ash said.
“What a good boy!”
“I’m having a wonderful time,” Bobby said.
“Are you, darling? Is my sweet boy having a good time?”
“I like coming here with you.”
“Oh, and I like coming here with you.” She embraced him, squeezing him against her so hard Ash heard him grunt.
“I tell you what. I think you deserve a treat. Would you like that? Would you like a treat?”
“Yes, please.”
“Then here we go, one treat coming up for my angel boy.” She hugged him again. Her face was turned toward Ash, but her eyes did not focus on him. She had not looked at Ash since she entered the car.
“Who do you love?” she asked.
“I love you, Dee.”
She started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. “And I love you. Tommy,” she said. “I love you so much.”
She put her hand on Bobby’s knee and left it there as she drove. Ash watched the boy carefully. He was not smiling, he was not weeping. He seemed to be somewhere else entirely.
The clerk’s name was Carelle and she worked evenings and hated it because she wanted to be home with her own children instead of selling clothes to other people’s. Her two sons were at home now with Carelle’s mother, who fed them and talked to them and put them to bed the way her mother had done with Carelle. Being raised by a grandmother did not seem unusual to Carelle, but nonetheless she resented it for her sons because it deprived her of the pleasure of seeing those two fine boys as much as she wanted to. Still, working evenings allowed her to be home to get them off to school at an hour when her mother had already left for her day job, and her mother was home in time so they weren’t alone more than an hour after school. The family needed the two salaries to get by, but not leaving the boys alone was the main thing. She didn’t want them just sitting there staring at the television the way so many did, or, far worse, she didn’t want them out on the street where you could learn so many ways to shorten your life.
She didn’t see her own boys as much as she wanted, but she certainly knew what a healthy boy looked like, and this boy wasn’t it. He stood about fifteen feet away by the rack of short-sleeve shirts that were marked down by twenty percent, standing with a man who looked to Carelle like her idea of a caveman that somebody had stuck into jeans and given a quick shave and haircut. The boy was pale in a way no white boy should be in mid-summer. There were black bags under his eyes and even the areas above the
eyes looked as if they’d been daubed with coal. The eyes themselves were dead. They weren’t staring, they weren’t looking around the way any normal boy’s eyes would be doing, they were just-there. Stuck in his head as if somebody had placed them on the face but forgot to turn them on. The boy stood there like it was all he had the strength for, like some creature Carelle had seen in the movies, one of the living dead or one of Dracula’s victims. As if all his blood had been drained out, she thought. And skinny? The boy was not healthy.
His mother, on the other hand, would not hold still. The woman jabbered like she was on the hustle, she talked so fast Carelle would have held on to her purse with both hands if it wasn’t locked away in the back room. Or like she was on speed, more like it. Carelle didn’t much like looking the customers directly in the eye, but she didn’t miss much, either. This woman’s pupils weren’t dilated, but her eyes had a gleam in them that looked weird to Carelle.
And she didn’t know anything about kids’ sizes, either. She was trying to dress the boy in clothes that would ride him like a tent. Asking for a ten-twelve for that poor little thing.
“You talking about that boy?” Carelle asked, moving her head toward the boy.
“That’s him, that’s my Tommy. Isn’t he beautiful?”
“He’s a beautiful boy.” Carelle said without enthusiasm.
“Isn’t he beautiful?”
The woman waved at the boy as if he was all the way across the store, not just a few steps away. The boy waved back and put some kind of look on his face that was maybe a smile. The caveman just stood there with his paw on the boy’s shoulder, like he was holding him upright.
“Yes, ma’am. He sure is.” Carelle thought of her own boys with their bouncing energy, their eager eyes. “But he can’t wear no size ten-twelve.”
“Of course he can,” the woman said. “I measured him myself.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sure you did, but I can tell without measuring him he ain’t no ten. He too skinny for a ten.”
“Skinny? My boy is not skinny.” The woman sounded horrified, as if the thought had never occurred to her. Carelle wondered what the woman saw when she looked at the boy. Couldn’t be the same thing Carelle saw.
“Didn’t mean skinny.” she said. “Just thin. He be thin.”
The woman was studying the boy now, looking at him as if she had never seen him before. Carelle could see her face twisting all up in a dangerous-looking way.
“He’s only as thin as he should be,” the woman said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“He’s thin the way a boy ought to be.” Her face did not look as if she were convinced.
“That’s probably it,” Carelle said.
The woman took a step toward the boy, who jerked backwards as if he were about to be hit. When she turned to face Carelle again the woman’s face was blushing red. It wasn’t shame, Carelle thought. It was pure anger, but it wasn’t directed at Carelle. It seemed to Carelle that the woman was mad at the boy.
“I’ll just see if we have a ten in that color,” Carelle said.
Her supervisor was behind the woman, suddenly. Carelle had noticed Ellen moving in her direction a while ago, then she had lost track of her while watching the woman and the boy. Normally Carelle knew exactly where her supervisor was at all times, because most of the time it was right behind her, peering over her shoulder as if she couldn’t be trusted. This time, however, Carelle was glad to see her, let her take a little heat off the crazy woman who looked like she was about to explode. Ellen was good at dealing with the white customers; they seemed to think she understood them better than Carelle did.
“Is there a problem?” Ellen asked, folding her hands together in front of her, the way she did, like she was holding on to a knife that was sticking out of her chest. Like it pained her but she was going to go right on ahead and do a good job anyway, just keep smiling, never mind her.
“Wants a ten-twelve for that boy,” Carelle said, her voice falling into a mumble the way it did when there was trouble coming. “Getting her a ten-twelve, that what she wants, but he ain’t no ten.”
The supervisor was about to speak sharply to Carelle when she noticed the boy.
“I think I should know his size, after all,” the customer was saying. She talked on and on, an edge of something to her voice, a franticness, something close to hysteria, but Ellen listened with only half an ear. She stepped closer to the boy and the huge man with him stepped away from her. This went beyond business, this wasn’t about selling another shirt. This boy was deathly ill, and anyone could see it.
Ellen looked from the boy to Carelle, who was watching her from under her brows, then to the customer, who had stopped talking abruptly.
“This boy needs a doctor,” Ellen said, surprising herself with the effrontery but feeling compelled to speak.
The man and the boy had already turned and were walking away swiftly, the man’s big hand in the middle of the boy’s back, propelling him.
“Oh, really?” the customer said. “Thank you so much for your opinion, but I think I know what my boy needs.”
The customer stormed off, a look on her face that was ready to kill. Ellen watched them go, sensing Carelle moving up beside her.
“You right about that much,” Carelle said.
It was the first moment of solidarity Ellen could remember having felt with the clerk.
“Well, any fool could see it,” Ellen said.
“That’s what I mean,” Carelle said.
Reggie saw the headlights hit her ceiling, then vanish, then heard the crunch of tires on gravel. She lifted herself to her elbow and peered out the window in time to see the darkened car, wraithlike, come to a halt outside cabin six. The monster with the legs of a man and the body of two people hurried from the car and into the cabin, his form lighted briefly by the flicker from the television set.
Reggie watched the cabin for several minutes before easing herself back down on the bed, trying to divine its secret from the noises of the night. She was feeling better. Tomorrow she would be able to get out of bed, she was sure of it. There would be so much work to do, so much that George had left undone, or done wrong, but she had never minded hard work, thank goodness. And when her work was done, she would pay another visit to cabin six, but this time when someone was there. Whatever their dirty secret was, she would find it out and clean it up.
Dee moved in her sleep and touched Bobby and he was immediately wide awake. Almost as soon as he was aware of where he was he was weeping. Dee liked to fall asleep on her side with Bobby spooned in behind her, one of his arms over her body. Later, when she slept, he could roll away and try to find sleep in his own position, a pillow clutched to his chest, his legs tucked into it, but if she stirred in the night or became aware of his absence, she would moan and reach out for him, demanding some touch and reassurance of his closeness before drifting into unconsciousness once more.
He wept silently, the pillow pressed against his face. Moving as slowly as he could, he rolled to his other side, away from Dee, so that he could face Ash, who sat against the door, watching television with the volume turned down. Just seeing his big friend was a comfort to Bobby and sometimes they whispered to each other in the night while Dee slept. Sometimes they would giggle at the sounds she made in her sleep, the little puffs and snorts and sighs that made it seem as if she were having a conversation with her dreams. Occasionally she would emit anguished cries and sit up, startled and sweating, eyes rolling in terror. She would cling to Bobby then as he clung to his pillow until the terror passed. He would have to tell her again and again that he loved her and that he would never let anyone hurt her, never, never, never.
But mostly she slept through the night as if exhausted by the ebullience of her days. Bobby and Ash could whisper together then and the big man would tell him the stories from the television. Bobby could not get out of bed to watch with him because that was not allowed, but he could listen to Ash’s stumbling, garble
d versions and construct his own movies in his mind to distract him from his life. Eventually, holding very still so as not to awaken the pain, Bobby would fall asleep again, lulled by his friend’s voice.
This night Bobby saw something he had never seen before. Ash sat in his usual position facing the television, back against the door, but his head had fallen forward onto his chest and to one side. The big man was asleep. “Ash,” Bobby whispered. “Ash.”
The sight of his sleeping friend frightened him. Ash was his one constant, a presence he could rely on to be there at any time, day or night. Dee came and went, capricious and willful as a storm, but Ash was always there, always the same, friendly, solicitous, concerned. Loving. Even when Dee savaged Bobby, purging her furious demons on his back and legs, it was Ash who held him still so he would not squirm. Ash who spoke into his ear as the lashes fell, telling him to be brave, be strong, hang on, hang on, hang on, and when the beatings stopped it was Ash’s arms Bobby collapsed into. Ash who soothed him, bathed him, fed him, cared for him. Seeing him asleep was seeing him transmogrified into a different creature, a person with failings and weaknesses. A man whose strength was gone.
“Ash,” he hissed. “Wake up. You said you’d kill people if you went to sleep. Ash! Ash!”
The big man slept on, his head rising and falling with each surge of his chest. Bobby watched him, fighting back the fear. If Ash killed someone because he slept, who would it be? Would he kill Dee? The thought thrilled him. Dee dead. His tormentor gone, her body still and rolled under the bed, out of sight. No longer touching him, embracing him, kissing him, hurting him, hurting him, hurting him. And then the guilt swept over him. Dee loved him, she said so. Ash said so. At times Bobby believed it himself. It was like wishing his mother dead.
He had not thought of his mother in some time now; it was almost as if she had ceased to exist. He had long since given up the hope that his father would burst through the door, that his mother would take him in her arms and make the pain subside. He had a new family now, strange and more violent than his first one, but still his. He depended on them as he had on the other for food, shelter, identity. Without them, he was alone.
