Feral Boy Meets Girl

by William Jablonsky

  “You old dog,” Jeremy says, punching Bob in the shoulder.

  Bob merely winks and whispers, “Shhh.”

  It takes Cayla a moment to comprehend the meaning of it, but when she does she cups her hand over her mouth like she’s holding in vomit.

  Bob actually looks good, better than before he died: eyes full, skin bright and peachy, posture straight and tall. Even his clothes are better: a form-fitting charcoal blazer and smoky gray slacks in place of his usual sagging Henley and khakis. For most of the morning he softly whistles the synthesizer line from Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,” which gets stuck in our heads for the rest of the day. We should be annoyed, but Bob has never seemed so happy—no, alive—and we feel strangely elated. Even Charlotte is in a good mood, slapping Bob’s flat ass whenever he passes.

  Just after ten, Cayla sends Bob a form meant for Roger. Bob gets up, shuffles over to her little gray cubby near Marlene’s office, taps her on the shoulder. When she realizes it’s him she pulls back so hard she falls out of her chair and knocks over a cubicle wall. Bob reaches out to help her up, but she grunts like a frightened animal and does a sort of crabwalk out of the cubicle, all the way to the ladies’ room. We hear her mad scrubbing under the faucet, her voice murmuring a prayer in tongues.

  Bob finally knocks on Marlene’s door. “I think something’s wrong with Cayla,” he says, and she glides across the office floor to the restroom.

  We can’t make out what they’re saying, other than, “Are you all right?” and Cayla’s tearful, “I can’t work with that thing around here. You have to fire him.” The rest is a low mumble. Finally Cayla bursts out in tears, and before we know it she is out the front door.

  Marlene emerges a few seconds later, her face red but expressionless. “Let’s get back to work,” she says. “Everything’s fine.”

  Over lunch, Bob tells us what he plans to do with the hefty settlement check from the hospital—we are awed that he still comes to work, but he says it gives him a reason to get up in the morning—when Cayla returns with a tall gray-skinned old man in a black camp shirt and white collar, Bible clutched under one arm, cane in the other. He moves slowly, the thin cane barely enough to support him, and she practically drags him to the break room.

  “That’s him, Reverend,” she says, pointing at Bob.

  “All right,” the old man says. “Let’s get this over with.” He looks around the at all of us. “If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like everyone to join hands.” We look to Bob, not knowing what to do. He nods, and we go along with it.

  The old pastor sets down his cane, draws from his breast pocket a small plastic crucifix, and holds it and the Bible at arm’s length, inches from Bob’s face. “Everybody repeat after me.” His voice is a crackly whisper. “Away, undead thing! Back to the grave!”

  We repeat his words. Nothing happens.

  The old man sighs. “I said, away!” He lunges a little too far the second time and drops his Bible at Bob’s feet. Bob leans over, picks it up, dusts it off, and hands it back.

  “Thank you, my boy,” the old man says. Then he turns to Cayla. “I don’t think it’s working, dear. You might need a Catholic.”

  Cayla grunts. “You’re the only one who’d agree to do this.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, sweetie,” he says as Bob helps him into a chair. “Guess I don’t have it like I used to.”

  Bob hands the old pastor a cup of coffee. “Here you go, Reverend,” he says. “Guys,” he says to all of us, “Can you give us a minute? Cayla, you stay.”

  We file out, though those whose desks are near enough listen for any tidbit we can pick up.

  After about ten minutes, Bob and the reverend emerge. The old man reaches out and shakes Bob’s hand. “You’re truly a miracle, son,” he says. “Best of luck in your new life.”

  Bob asks Jeremy to drive the old man back to his retirement home, then turns back to the break room. Cayla is sitting in a corner, hands tightly folded in her lap. She stands when Bob enters.

  “Stay away.” Her voice is mousey.

  He approaches her like a monster in a bad movie. For a minute we think he’s regressed and might just dig his teeth into her skull and eat her brain. Not that she’d be much of a meal. Bob stops a few feet from her, just out of arm’s reach. She goes rigid.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, Cayla. I promise.” Bob’s voice is soft. Tender.

  “You’re a monster.”

  This is too much; a few of us shout back at her, “You’re the monster!” But Bob raises his left hand and we fall silent.

  “No, Cayla. I’m just Bob. Same as ever. Maybe a little better.” He holds his hand out to her, and her face seems to soften. “How ‘bout we start over?”

  “Okay.” She reaches out slowly, shakes his hand, but quickly pulls it back.

  “Your hand’s cold.”

  “Cayla...” Bob starts to say, and steps closer.

  Cayla screams like she’s being stabbed in the liver, so loud it echoes in the metal beams of the building.

  Marlene rushes in to save the day, of course. She points to Cayla and summons her into her office, then closes the door.

  Five minutes later Cayla comes out sobbing, walking in slow motion to her desk and clearing off the crucifixes and Jesus statuettes. On her way out she stops before Bob’s desk and glares.

  “I’m sorry, Cayla,” Bob says.

  She pulls a book of matches from the box, lights one, throws it at Bob. It goes out before touching him.

  She lights another, flings it. He catches it gracefully, snuffs it out in his closed palm. Then Max, the security guard, steps up behind her and ushers her out.

  Cayla stops once more at the door. “You people are in league with the devil!” she shouts, just as Max gives her a little shove, and then she’s gone.

  Monday

  The air smells faintly of smoke as we pull into the parking lot. It is early May, too soon to burn leaves, but we think nothing of it.

  When Bob arrives with Charlotte on his arm, he looks like a movie star: electric blue pinstripe suit with a black button-up shirt and no tie, hair trimmed neatly up around his ears, handlebar mustache close-cropped and sleek, bags gone from under his eyes. There is no sign of the Y-incision scar beneath his collar, as if his rebirth is complete. Charlotte is giddy as she clings to his arm, the smile practically glued in place—a rarity that usually causes us unease, but this time it’s...nice. Comforting.

  By 9:30, we hear chanting in the parking lot. We pay no attention, fixated as we are on Charlotte using her phone-sex voice on sales calls, until Roger finally gets up to investigate.

  “Um, guys,” he says, peering out the glass door. “You’d better take a look.” Outside on the sidewalk is a crowd of fifty or more, holding homemade signs that read, GOD HATES THE UNDEAD, and ZOMBIE, GO BACK TO THE GRAVE. A few hold makeshift torches—broom handles and baseball bats with flaming rags attached to them. When Bob comes over to see, they shrink back a little, point their torches like spears.

  Marlene locks the door. “I’m calling the police.” She calls from Roger’s phone, then waits.

  “I don’t think it is a peaceful protest,” she says. Another pause. “No, I don’t think it can wait until later.” She sighs, slams the phone down. “They’ll send someone when they can.”

  A shrill, familiar voice outside echoes through a megaphone. “You know what we want,” Cayla shrieks. “Send out the zombie or we torch the building.”

  Stupid Cayla, we think. This building is made of brick.

  Then two of her minions lay torches in front of the glass door. The clear pane blackens, then cracks, and black smoke starts seeping in under the door. The old gold-diamond carpet begins to singe.

  “Okay,” Marlene says. “Everyone out the back. Calmly.”

  We rush en masse to the back exit, a metal double-door with a rusty frame and peeling brown paint, nearly trampling one another. All but Bob and Charlotte, that is, who calml
y follow Marlene. But when we get there the door is hot, the smell of smoke and kerosene hanging in the air.

  We panic. Anyone would.

  Our eyes wander to Bob, hanging back behind the throng, holding Charlotte’s hand.

  Marlene notices. “Absolutely not,” she says, voice raised just enough to cut through the noise. “We’re not sending Bob out there.”

  Our shaky chatter stops. Of course not. We have a genuine miracle in our presence.

  “I’m calling 911,” Marlene says, and runs to her office.

  This, we know, will solve the problem. Sooner or later the firemen and cops will arrive, douse the flames, disperse the mob.

  Five minutes later, they have yet to arrive—one of the drawbacks to working in a business park fifteen minutes outside of town.

  “Maybe I should go out and talk to them,” Bob says.

  “That sounds like a very bad idea, Bob,” Marlene says. She is, of course, correct.

  Then someone lays a couple more torches by the front door, and the glass goes completely black. In a minute it will shatter, the carpet will go up like tinder, and the whole place will burn.

  Because of the smoke and the panic, it’s not clear who is the first to seize Bob. But someone does, and then we all grab hold, and we hoist him over our shoulders and begin to carry him toward the window. He does not struggle or even object. Charlotte does, screaming and swatting at us from behind. “Stop!” Marlene shouts over and over. We barely hear her.

  Someone opens the window and pops the screen, and out he goes.

  We close the window and watch.

  Bob picks himself up off the ground and limps around to the front of the building, creeping toward the mob with his arms raised, and for a few seconds they just stare. He says something to them. We can’t hear, but it’s working—people lower their torches and signs, and we swear a few of them smile. Then Cayla grabs a torch from someone. His suit goes up like flash paper.

  Only Jeremy has the fortitude to watch further, reporting what he sees: the rest of the mob, horrified, like they didn’t really expect her to do it; Cayla staring blankly as Bob writhes on the asphalt, as if she doesn’t understand what’s happened; a state trooper tackling her. The rest is chaos: the parking lot full of squad cars, fire engines, and flashing lights.

  Bob isn’t moving by the time they put him out. We stare at the smoldering heap until the EMTs zip him into a plastic sack and drive away. Then, we think, when Bob comes back tomorrow he’ll have quite the story to tell.

  Tuesday

  We show up to work uneasy and fretting, though we make no mention of the reason.

  Marlene is locked in her office, lights out, head in hands in the shadow of her computer screen. The contractors have already put in a new glass door, and by the time we step over the threshold, two men from Karpet King have almost finished laying down the new rug, a dark jewel-blue number with a bubble pattern. It is, we agree, one hell of a nice carpet. This is what we discuss as we pour our coffee and prepare for the day.

  At 7:55, we all look up at the clock. No Bob. No Charlotte, either, though she usually takes her sweet time. For all we know they’ll come in together, Charlotte laughing as she drapes her arm over Bob’s, singed bits peeling off as they go. We will take comfort in this and forget yesterday’s unpleasantness.

  By a quarter after, we are still waiting. It is unlike him to be late. Our eyes drift toward the new glass door that Bob will eventually walk through, then down to the new carpet, glistening like a sapphire in the morning sun. We have to remind ourselves to exhale. And we keep thinking, as the seconds tick away, it really is a fine carpet.

  Feral Boy Meets Girl

  Mum has exiled me from the kitchen while she is cooking, to keep me from pilfering raw meat from the cutting board again. I have come far in acclimating to the demands of polite society but am not yet immune to temptation. I slink out the doorway and slump into the papa-san chair in the sunroom, the rich cow-blood smell still tickling my nostrils.

  With nothing else to do, my eyes drift toward the sparrows’ nest just under the awning, the little pointed beaks emerging from the bound mass of twigs and grass. It is a perfect spot, the baby birds snug and safe from the sun and wind. Mum has made me promise not to eat them this year; out of my emerging sense of familial obligation, I’ve given my word. It would be so easy to climb up the gutter and pop each soft, juicy thing into my mouth, silence the desperate wiggling with a little crunch, and slide it down my throat. But a promise is a promise.

  “Sweetie?” Mum calls from the kitchen, as if anticipating my temptation. “Could you go water the bushes while I’m cooking?”

  My trance breaks. I swear the woman is psychic. “Sure,” I call back, and head for the front door.

  I have reached the point in my rehabilitation at which I am allowed outside unsupervised. Gone are the days when I would bolt across the street for the elms at the edge of the country club or urinate on the tricolor beech in full view of the neighbors. I can be trusted. Just a normal thirteen-year-old boy doing normal thirteen-year-old boy things.

  I unwind the hose from its roller, kick off my buckskin slides—a compromise between my contempt for shoes and my occasional need to wear them—and begin misting the newly-planted rosemary and sand cherries along the front walkway. Since I was “civilized,” my feet have become soft, uncalloused, the nails trimmed and pink, and I feel every groove in the walkway beneath them. It feels good.

  Then I look up and see a girl about my age running down the sidewalk past our house—tall for her age, with round, soft features and sandy-blonde hair done up in a long braid. She is wearing a lavender sundress and white sandals that hug her toes and clutching a long black case to her chest.

  About half a block behind her are two more girls: one plump with straight, greasy black hair, in a ripped black T-shirt and holey jeans, the other a tall freckled redhead in tight black jeans and an equally tight camisole. They are running after her, shouting names omitted from my education, but clearly not complimentary. The blond girl’s lips are scrunched, her eyes wet and shimmery. The big plump girl runs up behind her and tries to snatch the case from her arms. None of them seem to notice me.

  “Why can’t you just leave me alone?” the blonde girl pleads.

  “Because this is too much fun,” the plump one says, and grabs the case.

  “Stop it!” says the blonde girl, pulling back.

  “Make me,” the fat one says, and she and her accomplice try to wrestle it away.

  Mum and Dad have warned me to avoid confrontations with other children, lest the neighbors see me as a threat. So though I recognize the injustice, I pretend not to notice. The blonde girl crumples to the sidewalk in a fetal position trying to protect her parcel. But in moments she will lose, and its contents will be ruined. She looks up, stares me right in the eye. “Please help,” she pleads through tears.

  And that is all I require.

  I turn the hose to its fiercest, sharpest setting and blast the fat girl in the face. Hair and clothes soaked, she screams and falls to the pavement. I blast her again. The freckled redhead opens her mouth to shout at me and receives a mouthful of cold water.

  “You little fuckwad!” the fat one shouts, picking herself up from the sidewalk. “I’ll...”

  I blast her once more. “Go away now,” I say softly, resisting the urge to bare my teeth, “or I’ll shoot you in the eyes. It will hurt.”

  She spits out a mouthful of water. “When I tell my brother, you’re fucking dead.”

  I raise the hose once more, as threateningly as I can. They flee, shrieking epithets as they run. I recognize a few—Dad is an angry driver.

  I approach the blonde girl but leave plenty of space. I have never been so close to a girl my own age. Even a few feet away I can smell the strawberry shampoo in her hair. “Are you okay?”

  She nods, picks herself up off the sidewalk, wipes her wet eyes. “Thank you.” For a second or two she stares at me as i
f she recognizes me. “I haven’t seen you at school. Do you go to St. Joseph’s?”

  “No,” I say. “Homeschooled.” I have never had a proper conversation with a girl before.

  She dusts herself off, picks up her case. “Oh. Well, thanks for helping me. Those girls are such bitches. I’m Katie, by the way.”

  “Jeremy.” It still feels strange bending my mouth to say my own name.

  I watch her smooth calves tense and relax as she runs home.

  I slip my slides back on, go back inside, wipe my feet on the rug in the breezeway. Mum has lost her tolerance for dirty footprints on the laminate.

  “Hi sweetie,” Mum calls from the kitchen. I can still hear her chopping, smell the cooked bacon. “What took you so long?”

  “I just saved a girl from a couple of bitches.”

  The chopping stops, and Mum comes charging out of the kitchen, seizes my arm, drags me to the sink. I dutifully swish with soapy water, and once I’ve spit it down the drain, she stands behind me, arms folded, face scrunched as if she’s just eaten a lemon.

  “Young man, where did you ever hear that word?”

  I tell her about everything but the hose—she might not understand. Her hand goes to her mouth, and in a moment, she is hugging me so tight I can barely breathe, her black Kiss-The-Chef apron pressed over my nose and mouth. She stops smothering me but holds me out at arm’s length. “Never say that word again. Understand?”

  I nod.

  Mum switches gears in an instant. “Set the table, will you? Your father will be home in a few minutes.”

  I gather up the silverware and plates, and as I am laying them out on the table, I catch a glimpse of Katie out the dining room window, pedaling her bicycle along the sidewalk. She has changed from her sundress into a pink camisole with spaghetti straps and white shorts. She looks toward our house and smiles.

  Though she can’t possibly see me, I smile back.

  The next morning, after helping Mum plant petunias along the walkway, I am stuck going over my endless math and reading homework while the stereo plays muffled Mendelssohn in the living room. Surely a real school must be more stimulating than this. Soon, with Dr. Zbryski’s blessing, I might find out. I wonder if Katie and I will be in the same class.