American University Library

GRAYBOY

Pierre Beauregard

Submitted to the

Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences

of American University

in Partial Fulfillment of

the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Fine Arts

Creative Writing

Chair:

Harvey Grossinger

Denise Orenstein

Dateate- '

2006

American University

Washington, D.C. 20016 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 1434424

INFORMATION TO USERS

The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion.

® UMI

UMI Microform 1434424 Copyright 2006 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. © COPYRIGHT

Pierre Beauregard

2006

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. GRAYBOY

Pierre Beauregard

ABSTRACT

Grayboy, more or less, is a novel about the nature of good and evil, and the ambiguity

therein. The novel’s four main characters - Toby Shepard, a thirteen year old New

England boy who is undergoing some strange and magnificent changes; Lucien

Delacroix, an estranged, ex-priest who has defected to the US Virgin Islands; Kitty, a

homicidal and powerful young drifter hell-bent on finding the “dark man” of her dreams;

and Mr. Curtis Black, a shadowy and luminous force borne from the turbulent waters of

the Pacific Ocean - represent different areas of the spectrum of good and evil. As the

novel progresses, however, the lines of this spectrum are blurred, until nothing is left but

destruction, loss, and questions of fate, faith, love, and God.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT...... ii

Chapter

1. FOUR CHRISTMASES...... 1

2. THE GRAY...... 38

3. AWAKENING ...... 80

4. REPUDIATION ...... 126

5. ACCIDENTAL GRACE...... 177

6. CREATION’S RAINBOW...... 220

7. STATESIDE...... 255

8. FULL BLOOM...... 298

9. THE WHITE...... 363

EPILOGUE...... 437

iii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1

Four Christmases

Mr. Black

December 25, 2004

6:30 PM Middle Eastern ST (9:30 AM ET)

He (It) was bom into the world in a fashion strikingly and horrifyingly similar to

the way that we all are, only on a larger scale; he was shot up along the underwater

mountains that compose the Mid-Indian Ridge and jet-lined three miles up through the

water, quivering arms molded to his sides, lips pulled back against the flow of the water,

bearing his teeth at the dim hint of light above, until he broke the surface in a high arc of

white caps and approaching thunder and the first few vicious gasps of air.

Hurricanes rocked the Perth Basin and Australia’s West coast, perplexing

meteorologists, causing enough damage for the Australian leaders to refer to the sudden

inundation of weather as “the most devastating flux of natural phenomenon to have

reached our coasts in one hundred years.” One Aborigine tribe committed mass-suicide,

guided by their ninety-six year old elder, who held that with the new moon, the darkness

will begin. Dogs and cats grew feral, clawing at and scrambling up the legs and arms of

their owners in mad attempts to gain higher ground. Birds littered the skies, darting and

swooping, gliding in hectic unison, unable to find solace in the trees or rest on the lines of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2

telephone poles. The supervisors of mental health institutions in and around Sydney

called in employees who had the day off, doubling, tripling their staffs, in a frantic effort

to maintain some sort of order in the face of whatever was affecting the patients.

Things, some people said, were going crazy.

In the first few weeks of the New Year, the African, Australian, and Indian coasts

would host the largest amount of whales washed up dead on their shores in recorded

history. With the whales came other large fish; Tuna, Swordfish, Sharks, Snapper,

Dolphin, Australian Tarpon, three Giant Squid (one of which was the largest to have ever

been laid eyes upon by any air-breathing being, a massive thing three school buses-long

that was discovered by a twelve year-old girl on the very Southern tip of Madagascar,) as

well as millions of pounds of perch, shrimp, and seaweed that had browned as if dried up.

Scientists blamed the storm, declaring that the sudden change in pressure had somehow

affected the temperature of the deeper waters of the Indian Ocean. This was enough for

those who watched the news or read the paper; it was the kind of incident that caused one

to shake one’s head, smirk, or grunt about global warming - or all three, maybe.

But before the whales and the shrimp and the giant squid, before the barking dogs

and the shitting birds, just as the air began to turn in on itself and conceive the beginnings

of a true rager, just as the true center of the strange few weeks to follow, afloat on his

back, cleared the water from his lungs with hacking coughs of blood and mucus and salt

and tried to adjust his eyes to the blinding radiance that was daylight, an English

pleasurecraft called Seascraper carved its course through the lush waters of the Indian

Ocean towards Thailand.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3

The owner of the yacht was Thomas Eldridge III, a graying aristocrat of enormous

wealth and mentionable descent, who loved his wife and children and grandchildren and

prepubescent Asian boys. The latter was the purpose of this month-long voyage, which

marked the thirteenth anniversary of Thomas’s annual December-January pilgrimage to

Bangkok.

His eight-man crew were aware of Eldridge’s behaviors - in fact, it was the

captain, Jon Upshaw, who made all the arrangements, who turned his eyes downward and

saw to it that their sheets were changed each morning, who paid the hard, toothless

woman the twenty dollars a day apiece she demanded upfront for the boys. The crew

made few comments about Eldridge’s eccentric fancies, reserving them exclusively for

nights when Eldridge had retired with his boy of choice and they had cracked into the

ship’s extensive supply of liquor, and even then, talked of it in no more than a word or

two at a time. There was something unspoken between them all, something deep below

the water upon which they drifted, something sealed by a six-figure salary for a month’s

work, that never came up save for the few moments between the closing of one’s eyes

and sleep.

Jon Upshaw, if anyone, was the exception. Long ago he had been a captain in the

British navy, and because of a heart murmur had retired at the sea-weathered age of

thirty-six. Upshaw had been with Thomas Eldridge since the beginning, thirteen years,

and had recently spent each night in the head, crouched over the toilet with a lurching

stomach and a swimming sensation that cocked his vision as if from rough seas. He’d not

been seasick a day in his life, though, and he new better that to think that it was

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4

seasickness now. Things were catching up to him. Jon thought that they had been a long

time coming.

So when from the navigation room, a twenty-by-sixteen windowed booth atop the

towering mass of Seascraper, he spotted what looked like a man floating on his back in

the swollen, rolling heart of the Indian Ocean, Jon immediately felt a gush of emotion

come into his stomach, the sense of something returning, an idea that God Works In

Mysterious Ways, an idea that something good was about to happen, something

glorious...like he was being called on, the murmur-swish of the sea and the song of the

Sirens, the sensation of mattering, the pure will to help.

Breaching his course, he switched off the twin computers that flanked the helm

and sat as captain, guiding the two hundred foot vessel in delicate, familiar turns to the

floating man - who was breathing, yes, he was breathing - coughing, this man may be

sick, possibly sick beyond restoration, but he is alive, he is alive.

As he drew closer, however, shrinking the gap between the massive boat and the

floating man to less than 300 meters, the feeling in his stomach began to sink. His mind

misted over, and murky, random visions filled his thoughts with all the suddenness of a

major stroke: a large, dark weasel breaking into a chicken coup and tearing into a sitting

hen; earthworms squirming and digging under soaked earth, burrowing into and through

one another in the search for topsoil; an aborted fetus; dark wine; a sopping wad of

chewing tobacco on the sidewalk.

Jon doubled over and shook his head, gripping the wheel to keep upright. In a

moment, however, the images were gone, fading quickly from all but his unconscious

memory like a lost dream.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5

Righted, he stood up, clicking off all engines but one, and glided towards the man,

who had now begun to wave. He squinted and saw that the man looked European or

possibly American, light skin and dark hair. He was a hundred meters away now, and the

boat had come to almost a complete halt. Jon felt his eyes drawn to the man in the ocean,

felt that to blink would be to die. He was looking at something important. Jon, the

compass; the Man, Polar North.

Footsteps behind him broke his concentration. Red in the face and frowning

emerged Albert, his first mate, from the steps that led to the crew’s galley downstairs.

“What are you doing?” asked Albert. His eyes were worn, and Jon thought that he

had been sleeping, or drinking, or both. One of the crew had probably observed the

change in course and had woken him rather than confront Jon. The crew had been on

edge lately; Thailand was approaching.

“Where’s Eldridge?” asked Jon, mustering a look on his face that reminded Albert

who, indeed, was in charge here.

Albert squinted, shook his head. “I don’t know. Sleeping, I suppose. He hasn’t

bothered us all day.” Albert glanced at the navigational computers and frowned. “What

are you up to? What’s going on?”

Jon pointed to where the man struggled and waived. “Holy shit,” Albert said,

almost inaudibly. He pressed a hand against the window, as if to touch the man in the

water and prove to himself that he was real. “Good bloody shit,” he said, louder now, and

then he was out the door to the aft of the boat, pulling the tarps off the twelve-foot

Whaler reserved for emergencies (Little Scraper, it was called,) shouting, “Did you radio

it in? Good fucking Jesus, I hope you radioed it in!”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 6

Jon shook his head, attempting to clear his mind - had he been getting enough

sleep? Probably not - and looked at the radio that hung from a finished beam that ran the

length of the room.

You 11 radio nothing, his mind spoke.

“Nothing,” he breathed, dismissing the radio, returning his gaze to the man at sea,

turning the ship so to edge it in 20 meters away - a safe enough distance, he thought.

Towards the aft, Albert was banging on a hatch that led directly to the crew quarters, and

after a few moments, Fredrick, the cook, popped out and, following a brief deliberation,

helped Albert lower Little Scraper into the water.

Fredrick’s already drunk, Jon thought. H e’s been drinking eggnog and brandy

and he’s drunk and maybe he 11 get a piece o f whatever Eldridge leaves over when we get

to Thailand. Fredrick doesn ’t mind the young boys. Doesn’t mind them at all.

Jon had another vision, this one of Fredrick crumpled up like origami, legs bent

behind his back at an unnatural angle, his black and twisted tongue lolling out of his

mouth, eyes rolled back to the whites, floating in the sea, bobbing there, gulls circling

lazily overhead..J ’m going crazy, he thought. I think Fm losing it. Merry Christmas.

Albert and Fredrick were now motoring towards the man, not seven meters from

him, Albert at the wheel and Fredrick hanging over the aft of the Whaler, his arms

outstretched like an expectant lover.

Jon watched as they muscled the man into the boat and started back to the yacht.

The man was sitting up on his own, talking to Fredrick - were they laughing? Yes, it

appeared that they were. A man drifting face-up in the middle of the Indian Ocean

without a floatation device or any indication of a wreck, no debris to be seen, no

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 7

transmitions from shore about any lost ship, and now he was sitting up and getting jovial

with his crew. With Jon’s crew. Jon’s crew and the floating man.

The sun moved behind the clouds as the whaler drew up to the yacht, casting a

shadow over the body of Seascraper. The brooding waves grew dark. Jon stepped out

onto the deck and zipped his parker against the breeze that had gone quickly from

pleasant to biting. His mind came and went. Coming and going. Gone...

...Coasting now, lowering the rope ladder to where the Whaler idled in the

increasingly choppy seas, the eagerness to help, the wanting, watching as this man {thing)

climbed the ladder, such elegance, the tidiness of his movements, these slender hands that

advanced expertly up the ladder, as if without gravity, so light against the breeze, like a

monkey, like a dark little monkey, scrambling up the side of the boat, teeth bared, the

widening smile, his eyes.. .his eyes - they were -

“Black,” Jon said, and his voice seemed to come from somewhere behind him.

“Curtis Black, none other,” the man said, and Jon, losing the feeling in his legs, as

if he’d never learned to use them, as if he’d never had them in the first place, fell to his

knees.

“Get up, Jonathan,” Black said. “We’ve got work to do.” His voice was without

any accent, flat, and though he spoke English, it wasn’t quite like anything that Jon had

ever heard. It was just talk, like there was nothing behind it, little pieces of vibrating

atmosphere rammed through the air from the empty void of Curtis Black’s mouth.

Jon nodded and struggled to his feet. He peered around, unfamiliar now with this

boat, this boat he’d captained for so long, such a long time, and now it would be so much

longer, now it was forever...

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8

A small part of his mind was screaming somewhere, almost inaudible, and Jon

strained to hear what it was saying. He couldn’t hear it, couldn’t make it out, a radio

station that was just on the outside of reception.

Instead, he fixed his attention on this man, on Curtis Black. His features were

pure, smooth, carved, and gave the impression of a man who paid a certain degree of care

to his skin, a man like the men in the magazines. Black’s was a profound face, a gentle

slope of a nose that recalled to Jon statues he’d seen in Italy back when he was still in the

service, a small mouth that, when drawn back into a smile, made Jon feel like he could

fly. His hair was an impossible shade of black, a full black that spoke of thickly wooded

forests and dreamless sleep. Jon noticed that Black’s hair had already dried, and it settled

into plump curls tucked carelessly behind his ears. He didn’t stand tall, not nearly as tall

as Jon, but seemed to loom nevertheless, every gesture coming with this degree of

confidence and practice, as if this man had mastered his body and could use it far beyond

its capacities.

The texture of Curtis Black, the efficiency with which he carried himself, the

sheer vigor that emitted from his pores like the warm, quiet hum of a new engine,

somehow told Jon that he was twenty or so. But Jon’s mind told him he was more like a

thousand. Or older. Infinity, his mind chanted; he thought he had seen something in his

eyes, something so old...

But Jon didn’t care to look at his eyes. He’d had enough of those eyes. Those

were the bad parts of Curtis Black. His eyes were -

crew

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 9

It had come from inside him, somewhere deep from the bowels of his stomach; it

had echoed through him, just a shiver, a tiny vibration of thought that held the essence of

strong wind upon thick glass or the flutters of a subsiding orgasm.

“My crew,” he spoke.

As if expecting this question, Black gestured to the edge of the boat from where

he had climbed aboard, extending one long arm toward the sea as if in offering. “Have a

look for yourself, Jon.”

Black smiled as Jon walked past him and looked over the railing.

The Whaler was drifting forty or so meters out, unmanned, nodding and dipping

with the ocean’s lulling breath. Then there was a glint of flesh as someone - Albert or

Fredrick, it was too quick to tell - surfaced, took a breath, and dove back down.

“What are.. .what are they...”

Jon felt a hand on his shoulder and let out a breath. It was ice on him, cold like

he’d never felt. His breath was gone. When the hand finally parted from him, he was left

shaking.

“They think that there’s something great down there. Something that they can’t

just leave there.”

Jon watched as both Albert and Fredrick once again ascended for air, exchanged a

few blows, and dove back down. “They’re fighting,” he said.

“Of course they are.” Black’s voice was warm, amused. “I told you, there’s

something that they really want down there. Well, they think there is, anyway.”

“What...what is it?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 10

“Oh, who cares?” Black laid a hand on Jon again, and this time the feeling wasn’t

quite as devastating.I ’m adapting, Jon thought, and shuddered. He turned to face Black,

and found that he was still smiling.

“The rest of my crew?” Jon asked, regaining himself in fractions, starting to feel

his legs beneath his body again.

“They’ll be joining those two in a few moments, I suppose. Except for your Mr.

Eldridge. Not such a nice guy, is he, Jon?”

Jon shook his head, looked away.

“Yes, I’ve got something special planned for Thomas Eldridge III.” Black looked

up, as if gauging the sky, as if he were getting ready to talk to someone up there.

“Weather’s going to get pretty bad, I think,” he said. “It’s going to be a rough time. And

long, and boring, I’m afraid. I hate being bored, don’t you, Jonathan?”

Jon looked up. “Where are we going?” he asked.

“America,” Black said, and with that, walked to the hatch and disappeared into it,

presumably to deal with the rest of the crew.

Jon walked back to the railing. There was no sign of either Albert or Fredrick.

Only waves, rolling, cold, and black. The dark sea. Above, the sky, looming now, so

close. It had gone a deep shade of purple, and the clouds seemed to pound into each

other, thrashing, echoing the sea below them.

But he smelled the salt on the air and it reminded him that he had a job to do. He

made his way back to the navigation booth and, once inside, flipped on the course-

plotting computers. America it would be.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 11

Occasionally, he looked up from his work, and every so often, one of his crew

would pop up through the hatch and dive overboard. After a while, Jon stopped looking.

Mr. Shepard

4:00 PM EST

Every one of them had died, Toby’s uncles, and they had died in order: Uncle

Richard died in a car accident, Uncle Milton got it in Vietnam, Uncle Andrew got colon

cancer, Uncle Bill got colon cancer, Uncle Raymond had a heart attack, and Uncle Miles

got colon cancer, too. Toby lied awake at night sometimes, hoping that his dad wouldn’t

get cancer. Every now and then, his dad joked that his family was cursed with “butt rot,”

and Toby would laugh. Lying up in his bed, though, it didn’t seem that funny at all.

Toby’s dad didn’t have any sisters and, incidentally, none of Toby’s uncles had

had any boys. This left Toby and Toby’s six brothers to carry on the Shepard family

name. Somehow, it had all come down to Toby’s dad, and Toby thought that was pretty

cool. Still, though, he felt terrible that his dad had lost all his brothers. He couldn’t

imagine it: one day you wake up and realize it’s just you. No one to remember stuff with,

like how bad your mom’s liver and onions were or that time you got it from your parents

for shooting your older brother in the ass with an air rifle (these two were the most

profound recollections imparted upon Toby by his dad.)

At dinner - Christmas Dinner always came early and always came strong, with a

duck and lamb and creamed onions and the cheesy mashed potatoes that Toby liked and

white and brown gravy - Toby’s dad had raised his glass to his dead brothers and then to

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 12

his own family. They’d all responded by raising their own glasses and looked on in a rare

hush as Toby’s dad teared up a little. Then he had dabbed at the comers of his eyes with

his napkin, smiled, and said let’s eat.

Only four of Toby’s brothers had been able to make it this year. His oldest

brother, Andon, had taken a job in Florida and had decided to spend this year in the

Sunshine state with his own budding family (he’d be home for next Thanksgiving,

Toby’s mother had said.) Bret, the third oldest, was skiing in Canada with some of his

college friends.

Toby was the youngest of them all; lucky number seven, just like his father.

Hutch - number five, and they called him Hutch because his parents said that he looked

like some TV character that Toby had never heard of - constantly referred to Toby as the

precious accident, because he was five years younger than Jimmy (number six.) Other

than Toby, all the boys were spaced apart by almost exactly two years. Summer

birthdays, every one of them - all except for Toby.

Toby’s birthday, of course, was today. Christmas: the most miserable day for any

boy or girl to have as a birthday. You get gypped on the presents, because every year

they’re combined, it doesn’t matter what they say, it doesn’t matter that you get a few

more than everyone else. The fact remains that those damn presents are combined.

Presently, Toby was shivering in his bed, covers pulled up to his ears, sweating

against the flannel sheets with which his mother equipped his bed every year in

preparation for the New England winter, trying to wipe away the image of the bad dream

he’d just had. Recently, the dreams had been getting worse.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 13

Also, he was dealing with the first hangover of his young life. His father had

given him a glass of champagne before dinner and, using the booming laughter and

hollering from the living room as cover (it was a Sunday and the Patriots were on TV

against the Jets), Toby had snuck into the kitchen and refilled his glass three or four times

before his mother had caught him. During dinner, his brothers had seemed more

interesting and the food had tasted better, and the nap that ensued had come quicker and

more pleasantly than he could have before fathomed. And then, the dream.

He had been flying over the ocean. The sun had been just coming up over the

horizon, spreading a lush, pink glow over the distant water and providing the clouds with

a cheery fluffmess that had reminded him of cotton candy. The wind had felt good

against his skin. As he twisted through the air, he realized that he was naked, and behind

him, he felt the thump and whoosh of giant wings beating against the mellow ocean

breeze. He didn’t know where he was, what ocean he was flying over, but it didn’t seem

to matter. What mattered were the blue depths of the ocean below him and the tickle of

water across his skin as he dove down and skimmed the sea.

At some point, though, it had become harder to fly; his wings had become heavy,

and, as he felt the first few beads of sweat mingle with the mist of salted air on his face,

he realized that he was going down. He struggled to maintain the thrusting motion of his

wings, tried to beat his arms in their place; he grimaced up at the sky and the sun that had

begun its slow, decadent rise over this revolving egg called Earth; a few tears squeezed

out of the comers of his eyes, the muscles in his stomach flexing with his efforts to reach

a little further into himself to propel him up, up, but he only continued down.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 14

Looking down, receding, he tried to reconcile with the sea, to gain some kind of

peace with this water that would soon envelop him like a tired but exhilarated mother

accepting her newborn for the first time and forever. It occurred to him how old this

ocean was, how old the water was, how much time it must have known and withstood

and even outlasted, because as time marched on and changed and became something

philosophical with Socrates and something relative with Einstein, the ocean remained

simply itself, the draw and push of tides, the dark and secret pits far below its surface, the

life sprung from it and, sometimes, taken back in. Ocean the parent, who’ll accept you

back without judgment or resentment, and here he came, here came Toby, back home,

back to Mother. He came to accept it as one accepts inevitable defeat, how the addict

accepts his addiction or how the brain cancer patient accepts death. It ’s just inevitable,

Toby thought, his feet now inches away from the water, his arms and wings beating a

hysterical frenzy despite his thoughts, as if in revolt against the rest of his body that had

prepared itself for immersion, for this cold cocoon of boundless sea. It’s just something

that’s going to happen, he thought, and as he felt his ankles submerge into the cold water,

he stopped flapping his wings. It might not be so bad after all, this water.

He removed his gaze from the sky and shifted it to the mirrored surface of the sea,

where his knees were now sinking, sinking, giving way to his thighs, but so slowly. At

first it wasn’t unpleasant, this gradual immersion, but as the water passed his waist and

his chest and began its slow, thick ascent to his neck, Toby was filled with a sense of

panic so intense that he would have screamed had he any voice with which to do it; the

fact was, however, that he didn’t have any voice at all. As he tried to scream for help, he

felt a hollow rasp where his throat was, a sort of subdued mechanical grind, a windy

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 15

feeling that fluttered and threatened certain collapse. He tore a hand out of the water - it

was like trying to move in quicksand now, and his descent had slowed even more to a

heavy, slurred crawl - and brought it to his neck. His hand came away washed with

blood. His neck had felt like nothing, like it wasn’t there. He stared at the blood on his

hand, watching one glutinous bead slowly drip down his pinkie onto his wrist, so thick,

everything so thick now, thick and slow and horrible. He found that he couldn’t breath.

He could no longer make out his legs beneath the surface of the water. He felt

things swimming around down there, attaching themselves to him, grazing and sucking

and scratching.

The sun made a quick dash behind the clouds, like a video in fast forward, Toby

thought, and then all was dark. He felt the water drawing past his mouth and then his

nose, filling his nostrils with an icy sludge; he couldn’t breathe at all now, he was

suffocating, he was going to die, and as he slid under, a pair of eyes were staring at him,

these eyes that were filled with darkness that seemed to shine blacker than the black that

encased and choked him, eyes that belonged to someone who was real - Toby knew that

he was real because he’d dreamed him before - and he was smiling, he could tell by the

way those eyes gleamed and curved upward and he was sinking and the man was rising,

up and out, up above the surface.

Toby had awakened with a jolt, gasping for air, his chest burning and heaving.

His sheets were soaked, his pillow a soggy mess sharply indented with the shape of his

head. He had doubled over, hands clasped in his lap, and rocked there, rocking away the

dream, silently crying, a widow without friends or family with which to mourn.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 16

So there he was, Toby Shepard, crying in his room on Christmas, his birthday, a

day that was supposed to be good and filled with food and laughter and music and the

pleasant glow of soft light from the Christmas tree, and all he could think about was the

black, the pungent, decaying black of his dreams.

Hunched and sweating in his bed, Toby also thought about the day that he had

made Hutch’s nose bleed, and thinking about that was never productive, never got him

anywhere except back in that stinking hole of his dreams that he’d been finding it harder

and harder to climb out of.

He sat up. Something hurt, and he noticed that he had been pinching his thigh; he

removed his hand as if from a burning stove and saw that the skin there had already

begun to welt, a blue semicircle rising from the redness where he had unknowingly

mutilated the innocent flesh above one of his knees. He laughed and it came out as more

of a wail, his breath huffing, still getting used to the oxygen from which he had been

denied in his dream.

As he regained his breath, however, the dream slowly lost its shape, folding in on

itself like newspaper in the fireplace, until it was just a floating inclination, ashes drifting

up and out of the flue. He was left instead thinking about Hutch and his nosebleed - he

couldn’t chase that recollection away, couldn’t toss it in the fireplace of his mind, no, that

memory was there to stay - and he cried for a while longer until the tears were all out of

him.

He was tired, and he thought about going back to sleep, but it was Christmas, and

his brothers were downstairs. This was the first year that he was alone in the house with

his parents (if you didn’t count the dogs.) In August, his mother and father had packed

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 17

the van full of Jimmy’s stuff and driven him to Amherst, where he’d be spending the next

four years of his life (five if he was anything like Bret or Hutch.) It was nice to see his

brothers; they liked to gang up on him and give him a hard time, but there was something

about their ribbing that Toby cherished, some masochistic side to him that enjoyed the

nuggies and the wedgies and the monkey bites. To a certain point, anyway.

Plus, for God’s sake, he was thirteen today. He didn’t want to waste the day

sleeping; he wanted to walk around and be a teenager. Test it out. Maybe lock the door to

the second floor bathroom and check how the pubes were coming along.

But first, he decided, he’d bundle up and take the dogs for a walk. It had snowed

four or five inches the night before, and he loved to watch the dogs in the snow. Lilly

would run around like she was walking on hot coals, never letting her little paws remain

in the fluffy snow for too long, jumping straight up here and there at the ghosts that haunt

a dog’s outside world. Daisy, on the other hand, liked to roll, and this was just as

entertaining to watch. Toby felt a little better now.

Just as he was willing himself out from under his covers, the scrambling and

scratching of dogs’ claws on carpet came from the narrow stairway that led to the third

floor where his bedroom was (it had formerly been Andon’s bedroom, and he’d claimed

it a few years back when it had been clear that Andon was definitively on his own.) The

dogs came belting up the stairs and jumped onto his bed, licking and moving in frenetic

circles and whapping his face in a convulsion of wagging tails. Following the dogs came

Cliff - Cliff was right in the middle, number four - and, as Toby wrestled into a lying

position the wagging, thumping thicket of fat and hair that was Daisy, he took a seat on

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 18

the edge of Toby’s bed. He looked at Toby, studying him, and a grin spread across his

face.

“Mom said you got drunk,” he said.

Toby sneered. “That’s mom, I guess.”

“Did you? Were you drunk?” Cliff asked, pulling Lilly over to him and propping

her in his lap. “Are you drunk now?”

“No. Not really, I don’t think. I’m pretty thirsty, though. I need some water.”

Cliff ran a hand through his brown grove of hair, the other hand buried deep in the

fur around Lilly’s neck. Lilly’s leg pumped the air as if she were trying to kick start a

motorcycle. “You know, you’re too smart to go and get drunk like that. Mom says a few

colleges are already calling for you. She tell you that?”

Toby nodded. “State schools.”

“You’re not even in high school yet, shithead,” Cliff said, grinning. He looked up,

studying the ceiling “Well, if the family genius can get drunk on Christmas, than you can

bet your ass I should be able to, too.” He squinted, returning his eyes to Toby, and his

grin disappeared. “Were you sweating? What are you, sick?”

Toby shook his head. “I just got hot while I was sleeping, that’s all.” Toby winced

as the dream attempted a quick assault on his conscious. He pushed it back, trying to

focus on Cliff, who was dressed in a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up and an

expensive looking tie — that was so Cliff, he loved to dress up and hated to admit it. Once,

a few years back when Cliff still lived at home (he’d gone to college for a year and then

decided to take a year off; it had been a little more than three years since then, and last

year he had taken an apartment across town with his friend Stu) Toby had gone into

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 19

Cliffs room to borrow a CD and had found Cliff meticulously going through his hair

with a comb and a handful of wax. None of the Shepard boys had ever used a hair

product except for Cliff, and when Toby had told Jimmy and Hutch, they had let him take

part in making fun of Cliff for the remainder of the day. Toby had felt a sense of joyous

camaraderie mixed with guilt for giving up the precious ammo on his older brother, but

being on the other end of the prodding had been such a relief that he’d quickly lost his

remorse and had concentrated purely on getting in as many jabs as possible while he still

had the support. When you were the youngest of seven, you had to take what you could

get.

“You are drunk,” Cliff said, laughing. “You should have seen your face just now.

It was all screwed up like you were taking a dump. What were you just thinking about?”

Toby considered telling Cliff about the dream, then thought better. Instead, he

said, “That time that you waxed your hair. Remember that?”

“You’re wasted,” Cliff said. He nudged Lilly and she plopped off his lap onto the

floor. She circled a few times and cozied into a comer where the sun made a dim, yellow

frame against the painted wooden walls of Toby’s room. “I have no idea what you’re

talking about, waxing my hair and shit...” Cliff trailed off, smiling and rising from the

bed. “Why don’t you come downstairs now? Mom’s putting out desert.”

“Yeah, I’m coming. I think I’m going to take the dogs for a walk.” Daisy’s ears

twitched at this last comment, and she cocked her head, locking eyes with Toby. She was

a border collie, a rough coat, and she was Toby’s. She’d been a Christmas present when

he was seven. Sometimes, Toby thought that she understood English. That’s how smart

she was. “Yeah, Daisy. Want to go for a run? Want to go outside?” Toby said, and Daisy

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 20

leapt from the bed, Lilly in tow, and wobbled to the threshold of his room, looking

eagerly back at him with huge, black eyes. “I’m coming, hold your horses,” he said, and,

stretching, got out of bed.

He had to promise his mother that he’d be short with the dogs - dessert would be

in fifteen minutes, she told him, and he had a feeling that she’d planned a grand rendition

of happy birthday for him. Over the last few years, Jimmy had taken to replacing the

name “Jesus” for Toby’s, and, while the brothers thought this was hilarious, Toby’s

mother usually frowned. Toby thought it was kind of funny, but hearing Jesus substituted

for his name usually just reminded him the undeniable fact that having your birthday on

Christmas was anything but a blessing.

All this was nothing new, really, but he smiled as he stepped out into the cold

winter air and the dogs dashed out from behind him, sprinting at nothing - chasing those

outside ghosts - gliding through and making a mess of the untouched snow that covered

his sizeable backyard.

Westport, Massachusetts was three-fourths country and a quarter not-quite city.

The Shepard castle split the suburbs and urban (if you could call it that) Westport, with

quaint one-level houses and a strip mall a few miles East, and to the West the rolling,

wooded fields and long stone walls that screamed New England. The house itself was a

towering, five-bedroom mass of brick and stone with a wrap-around porch and a stream

running along the property’s eastern border. The stream - which Toby’s father had

named “Babbling Brook” years before Toby had been bom - was a favorite play spot for

the dogs. Currently, they made a beeline for the sound of the rushing water, and Toby

followed, picking up a stick along the way and tossing it in the air a few times. His breath

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 21

puffed out visible in front of him as he chugged through the snow. The air was cold on

his face, and what remained of his hangover faded quickly with the stinging chill of the

coming evening.

For now, his dream was forgotten, and the thoughts to which it had led - to that

day that Hutch had made him angry and Toby had made his nose bleed - were quiet in

his mind, just an echo, the faded pink of a scar that had once been a deep, bleeding

wound.

A few minutes later, his mother called him inside, and he stepped into the kitchen

to a full-on chorus of Happy Birthday, with Jimmy saying Jesus instead of Toby.

Mr. DeLacroix

8:15 PM EST

What a grand, grand island St. Thomas was. On the map it was a fingernail away

from Puerto Rico, and while it shared the larger island’s gracious, mellow climate, oh the

difference there was between them! “Think of the word thick, what the word means to

you. Think oflush,” Lucien had told Anna a week after moving there. “That’s what this

island is. It is thick and lush, it justswells with something.. .it swells with peace and with

goodness.”

“You still talk like a priest, anyway,” his sister had said. Lucien remembered her

tone; it had been shaded with the weary gray of remorse, and though Lucien knew she

hadn’t meant for it to, it had bitten into him. It had taken him away from the island for a

instant, transferred him somehow back to Rhode Island, back to Tiverton, and it all

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 22

seemed very miniature to him, like the green soldiers he had played with as a boy. Lucien

had had to take the phone away from his ear for a moment and fix his eyes on the view

that practically exploded outside the French doors that lead to his humble but well-used

porch. He had let his gaze drop from the efflorescent spread of treetops, down the

mountain and past the cluster of stone houses at its base to the sea, which today was a

shade of green just this side of blue, but tomorrow might be lavender, and the next

turquoise, all depending on how the sun felt like hitting it that day. In the near distance,

small islands spiked up from the ocean in clusters like the knuckles of stony giants. He

had breathed, having reoriented himself, and returned the phone to his ear to finish his

conversation with Anna.

The remainder of their discourse had been polite and short.

Now, strolling rather loose-jointedly up the sharp slope that led back from Red

Hook to his villa at the top of Lot Hill, he tried to picture his sister’s face. It wasn’t as

easy as he would have liked, and as her features tried to carve themselves into the eye of

his mind, he found that her eyes were lost somewhere in the amber twilight’s first few

stars; after a while, he was looking not inward but merely left and right and all around, at

the scenery, this panorama, this tropic luxury that he now called home. This had

happened before.

He had left Red Hook shortly before sunset, glazed from rum, his ears still ringing * with the sounds of laughter, and beginning his six-mile hike home (Lucien was a walker)

he had felt the familiar detachment that came with leaving a party just before it peaked,

the indiscriminate deterioration of happy feelings and tranquil moods; while at O ff The

Hook (Red Hook’s current choice watering hole for the wandering, free spirited

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 23

population of St. Thomas’s second largest town) he had accrued a feeling of utter softness

- it was The Holiday, after all - the first few steps of his walk along Tin Street had left

him feeling more tired than anything else. His sandaled feet clopped along the pavement,

and he could smell himself as he began to sweat out the punch he’d dipped into with

more interest as the day had started to break. His shadow cast double and dim into the

flowered ditch that flanked the road. The day was receding quickly, as it did here. It was

a high-strung climate and a low-strung existence in St. Thomas; the sun was probably the

most temperamental thing about the place, aside maybe from the occasional tourist or

hurricane (he had trouble deciding which he appreciated less), and that’s just the way

Lucien DeLacroix liked it.

It was his second Christmas on the island. Last year, he had not yet acquainted

himself enough with the island to know that Red Hook hosted one of the island’s only

Catholic Churches, so he had spent Christmas - as well as the New Year - at home,

reading. At the duty-free shop at the airport, he’d purchased his first cigar, and had taken

a quick but firm liking to the sweet taste of Dominican tobacco; so there he had been, his

first New Christmas Eve, sitting on his porch with a Christopher Moore paperback face

down across his lap, watching the cruise ships puff chalky smoke over Charlotte Amalie,

smoking a huge faux-Cuban and waiting for the green flash the locals had told him

occurs across the sprawling Gulf of Mexico just after sunset. He had yet to see it, the

green flash, but he’d later been told that the phenomenon was quicker than lightening and

just as short-lived, and most people just missed it.

This year’s Christmas, of course, had been remarkably different. It had been

similar in that he hadn’t gone to Church - he hadn’t been in a church since Rhode Island

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 24

- but that is where the similarities had ended. This year he’d had people to celebrate with,

people like himself, people in their early thirties (everyone here was in their early

thirties), people who didn’t mind if you got up in the middle of a discussion to get

another drink or go talk to someone else, people who didn’t mind if you left the party

early without explanation. These people didn’t watch the news and they didn’t talk about

the weather. These people didn’t like to wear shoes. They were tanned and happy,

genuinely happy, and they said what they meant, and they were all like Lucien, because

they had found this place and had had enough sense to stay there.

And Mila. Mila, Mila, Mila. She had found this place, too, and she had stayed

here; no one was ever bom here, Lucien thought, quickening his pace up the steeper part

of Tin Street, pumping his arms in time with the heartbeat that echoed in his temples.

People come here, that’s all. They just come. Come. Come.

He could feel the beginnings of an erection, and he let it grow as he gritted his

teeth and picked up his pace again. He was almost jogging now, his feet sweaty against

the worn leather of his sandals, and his erection was pressing against his thigh down one

leg of his shorts, and sure, he let it be, why not? Why the fuck not? There’s nothing

wrong with a good erection.

He’d learned that there was nothing wrong with a lot of things in the last year. For

instance, there was nothing wrong with fishing for breakfast off the bridge with a laid-

back friend and a blooming tequila buzz. That’s what naps were for, and now that you

mentioned it, there wasn’t anything wrong with a nap, either. There was nothing wrong

with letting your lawn run wild, along with your hair or your beard, for that matter,

because when you were down here, you weren’t selling anything. You couldn’t. There

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 25

just weren’t any buyers. There certainly wasn’t anything wrong with carbohydrates. If

you’ve ever had plantains fried in honey with sesame seeds, you’d know that. And there

wasn’t anything wrong with falling asleep in the sun and getting yourself burned, because

after time, the bum just goes tan. Everything, he had found, goes to tan down here.

As his tanned legs moved him up the hill, he decided that he would take up Mila

on her offer. She’d shown up looking for him the day before at Bumpy’s - Bumpy’s was

the marina where Lucien buffed and fiberglassed million dollar boats for twelve dollars

an hour (but all the beer and conch fritters he could ingest after they closed up on

Fridays) - and she’d been wearing that white linen sundress with which he’d become

especially familiar over the three or four months he’d known her. Now that he thought

about it, he had always known her, or women like her, anyway; anywhere you went, there

was always one. The kind of woman who sees things like they are and calls them that

way; the kind of woman who’ll cut her hair short on a dare, who will adopt dogs, who

will drink you under the table then pay your bar tab. The kind of woman with the soft

glow in her eyes, the kind of woman who gets songs written about her.

“She’s graceful,” Lucien breathed, bearing right off Tin Street and onto Lime

Alley, a beautiful little shoreline drive that ended up in a dead end where, a mile or so

down, Mila lived with her four adopted dogs.

Graceful. She’s got grace, like God grace, and that’s about as close as I’ll come.

I’ll give her that and I’ll stop there, and I’ll say hello and close my eyes, and whatever

happens, okay. Not Graceful but graceful, I think she’sgraceful, full of grace, the way

she holds her chin in the air, and the way she cocks her hip when she’s standing at rest. I

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 26

wonder how God cocks his hip when he’s standing at rest. I’m drunk, I think. Two years

ago today I was somewhere else. Now I’m here, and I’m tan.

“Everything’s tan,” he said, cutting across to the road’s shore side and passing a

yard full of goats. The yard was fenced in, and half of the goats were sleeping, curled in

on themselves like breathing, furry little croissants. One hungry looking goat bleated at

him, it’s eyes turned up in a maniac grin, and Lucien stuck his tongue out. “Hey, buddy,”

he said, and the goat strained against the fence, his lips mashing through wired squares,

his tongue coming halfway out in a comic reflection of Lucien’s gesture. He laughed.

“You’re a pretty guy,” he said. “Pretty, pretty.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets and slowed his pace, moving closer to the shore

and kicking sand up with his feet. Yes, he was drunk, that punch had gone a pretty long

way. Shit, Dave had told him it would, but hey, it was Christmas. “Christmas,” he

enunciated. “Christ-mass.” He laughed, taking his sandals off and moving further down

the beach, where the waves lapped his feet in little pulses. “Fucking Christmas, huh?” Up

ahead, he could just see the light of Mila’s porch, and he thought that he heard her dogs

barking up there. Could have been anyone’s dogs, though, because everyone down here

owned at least one. That was St. Thomas, that’s all. Tanned folks and their dogs. It was

nice.

He had owned a dog once. Sparky - such a dog name, but he’d got him that way -

had been a pound dog, a mutt, and he had shared Lucien’s bed for six years, because

Sparky hated sleeping on the floor and Lucien was a sucker. The hardest thing about

taking the rectory had been giving up Sparky. He was too big, would have shed too

much, and Christ, did that dog slobber. Lucien swore that he had some St. Bernard in

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 27

him, from the size of him and how much he slobbered. You’d get home and he’d wobble

over to you (hip dysplasia (sp?) since he was three) with his tail thumping a heart attack

against the floor and plaster his face right into the back of your knee, and by the time you

got him off (if you managed to escape getting tripped up in the process), you’d have to

change your pants on account of the Frisbee-sized drool stain there.

And then he’d had to give him up. At the time there had been no question about it,

and as much as it had saddened Lucien to just up and ditch his companion - his buddy,

his Sparky - all it had taken was a simple weighing of his options. Career comes first;

sorry, Sparky, you’ll do well with the Fitzgeralds, they’ve got a lot of land and three great

kids, they might not let you sleep on the furniture, but you’ve got to understand, I’ve got

mycareer to think about. Mycalling.

Lucien found now that he thought more about Sparky than about anything else

he’d ever left behind. Funny how things work out sometimes.

To the west the sky had darkened, and though it was now pushing 8:30, Lucien

thought that sunset had come prematurely today, and judging by the clouds that had

gathered across the horizon, St. Thomas might be in for a little winter squall. October

through December, normally stormy months, had hosted day after day of clear, gentle

skies, hot afternoons and mild nights, and water that was so clear that when you

snorkeled in it you wondered what the hell business you ever had hanging out above the

surface in the first place. We’re overdue, Lucien thought.

As if in answer to this thought, a long, crooked stroke of lightening touched down

to the sea on the western horizon, illuminating the clouds so that they appeared to glow

and coloring the sky a phosphorescent green for a moment before going back to a deep,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 28

starlit blue. You wouldn’t know it by how calm the water is tonight, Lucien thought, but

something pretty bad’s coming in from the West. Yep, you could count on that.

His feet felt cumbersome as he approached Mila’s villa, and his mouth had gone

dry. He wondered how his breath was, and in doing so, realized he couldn’t remember

ever having been concerned about his breath before, could literally not recall a single

time when the thought had ever crossed his mind. It was vanity, he supposed, but then, it

was respectful to others to wonder how your breath was, because they, not you, would be

the ones having to smell it. He’d been on the other side of a great deal of foul-breathed

people, and knew that, in some of the worst instances, a case of bad breath could be

physically nauseating. He paused, now twenty yards away from the side of Mila’s small

house with the outdoor shower and the fire pit, and cupped his hand over his mouth and

breathed. His breath smelled remarkably like his hand.

“Oh, hell,” Lucien said, and jogged toward the light on Mila’s porch.

He paused when he arrived at the steps leading up to her porch and peered

through the screen door. Mila was just inside, bent over at the oven, fishing around in

there with a hot-mitt. She’d told him to come over for Christmas cookies around nine

and, looking at his watch, Lucien realized that this entire time he had been on a schedule.

What Lucien had thought had been a little too much drink and way to much to eat to stay

at Off The Hook had turned out to be the ringing of some internal clock, some unknown

part of him that had been working on its own agenda. Meeting with Mila, it seemed, had

been on the program, only Lucien hadn’t had the opportunity to read it. He smiled,

checked his breath again, and knocked on the screen door. Mila jumped, and for a

moment Lucien was afraid that he’d scared her and she’d burned herself on the oven, but

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 29

she popped up with not a third-degree bum but a tray of cookies and a wide, inviting

smile. She gestured for him to come in, and as he opened the door and stepped inside, the

sound of paws scurrying on hardwood echoed in from the hallway. “Oh boy,” he said,

and then the dogs were on him, barking, tongues lolling, standing on their hind legs and

pawing at his stomach for a scratch.

“Come on, guys,” Mila said, brushing some hair from her face and setting the tray

down on the counter, but otherwise doing nothing to obstruct the dogs from their jubilant

congregation. She smiled at Lucien, and he returned it, minding his groin, where the paws

were landing unnervingly close.

“Okay, okay,” he said, gently prodding Tiger, the largest of the trio, in attempt to

get him down until at least he could say hello to Mila.

“Alright, guys,” Mila said, and, waving a hand, ushered the dogs (which,

apparently, were selectively obedient) back into the living room. When she came back in,

she cocked an eyebrow, and said, “Drink?”

“Sure,” Lucien said.

“You came,” she said, turning her back to him. “How’s ginger beer and Cruzan?”

“Sounds good,” he said.

He sat at the kitchen table and let his eyes take her in as she made the drinks. Her

hair was balled up - it was a hot night for December - and a few of the loose, amber

strands fell across her neck. Her shorts looked like Dockers, and they were slightly

fringed at the bottom and a little more than slightly worn thin around the back pockets

(Lucien felt a little blood rise into his cheeks as he observed this). Her shirt was a plain,

dark green button-down, and the sheer material hung lightly over her shoulder blades,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 30

which, because she was an avid swimmer, worked like high-powered pistons even as she

did something so simple as prepare a couple of drinks.

And man, what swimming could do to a woman’s legs.

Lucien had had a girlfriend for two years during his sophomore and junior years

of high school, and he’d always admired her legs. He’d never got a close look at those

legs - by the time he had gotten a car she’d ditched him for a soccer player, and that was

where you did it, in the car - but oh, had he imagined. He’d lie up in bed and think about

his girlfriend’s strong legs (she ran track), like cables, like taught, metallic cables,

wrapped around his waist, not permitting him room to move, barely allowing him to

breath, and though he’d never been one for self-gratification - not in that sense, anyway

- he’d come pretty close a few times thinking about his girlfriend’s legs.

And now Mila was setting down the dark, iced drinks on the table and pulling up

a chair across from him. He laughed as she pushed the plate of cookies in front of him;

they were shaped like dog bones. “That’s a nice touch,” he said, sipping the drink, tasting

the mint she’d crushed and garnished it with, thinking that it might take care of his

breath, that is if it had been an issue in the first place, and she watched him drink,

twirling a finger in her drink, shifting the ice around the glass so it clinked against the

sides. “It’s good,” he said. “Cookie?”

“Why don’t we wait on the cookies?” she said, and, unbuttoning the top few

buttons of her shirt, got up and walked over to where he sat.

His face flushed and he felt the rise in him again, the excitement that left his head

feeling empty and his hands and legs full of fire, and come on, Lucien, you knew this was

what she was thinking, this is what you’ve been thinking, and she doesn’t bullshit, not at

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 31

all, that’s what attracts you to her, so why don’t you stop thinking and just do something?

Stand up or stay right where you are, justdo something and stop being such a schmuck.

She sat on his lap, not straddling him, but with one arm slung around his neck and

the other bracing herself on his knee, with her legs swinging perpendicular to his, with

her bottom (with the worn-thin back pockets) pressing smack onto his erection. Well

that’s that, he thought. She knows I’m here. Then she was kissing him, and now he could

taste his bad breath, how’s that for irony, and he didn’t know what to do with his hands

so he settled for one on her hand on his leg and the other on one of her legs. Her legs

parted and his hand slipped between them, and he noticed that she had been sweating; the

insides of her legs were damp, and hot. He jerked his hand back and broke off the kiss. “I,

I don’t know,” he began, and she smiled at him, cocking her head. Her eyes looked like

they had begun to tear, not like she was crying, but as if she had just yawned. God, she

was beautiful.

“Come on, Luke,” she said. She was the only one to have ever called him that,

and he smiled.

“Mila, you know, I don’t really...well, I’m pretty much a rookie here,” he said,

and she was nodding and standing up, and at first he thought that she was done with him,

that he’d said something wrong, but then she had him by the hand and was leading him

up the back stairway, and he found that he was crying, silently, so that she wouldn’t

notice and think that any of this was her fault, and he was quiet enough as he cried that he

thought that she hadn’t noticed, but after it was over, and they were sharing a cigarette,

she informed him that she had.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 32

Kitty

10:52 PM MST

Her eyes opened and the breath fell out of her, her hands grasping at the sheets,

clenching into themselves, and if she’d had nails, she’d have cut herself. She’d have to

watch out for that, because she was growing them. She’d had the idea in the last few

weeks that they would grow quite strong now. And sharp.

Waking up had taken a different quality lately. What had once been a gradual,

yawning practice in the recollection of consciousness had become abrupt and somewhat

painful, a minor explosion of awareness from whatever void she’d previously inhabited.

There were no longer dreams - none she could remember, anyway - as there had been in

the beginning. She no longer had use for them. She knew what she was for now.

And as she awoke, she’d expect him to be there. The dark man. He was supposed

to be there, not sleeping, because she didn’t think that he slept, but watching over her as

she slept, maybe laid out in the hotel bed with her, curling around her to feel her

breathing or maybe playing with her hair, waiting for her to rise out of the dreamless

oblivion that may or may not have actually been sleep.

But so far, he hadn’t been there. All that had been there were the dark coolness of

the hotel room, the low murmur of the television from the room over, the whirring of the

ceiling fan that she kept at full blast, and the delicate but persistent grind of her thoughts,

which, when she awoke, were already at a full run. The thoughts told her to get up and

get out, to go do something, to keep herself busy, to prepare, to get herself ready, to

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 33

harness and take control of that with which she had been blessed. They were heady

thoughts, got her jaw working.

Then the pain. She sat up, bolt upright, yanking the sheets up from under her in a

deathgrip, and somewhere she heard them tear, but the sound was far away, muffled like

the television next door. “My head,” she said, gnashing her teeth, and she felt the blood

trickling down now from one nostril, running over her upper lip and settling in the comer

of her mouth. “Fuck, fucking...” Slowly she let go of the sheets, willing open hands that

seemed to want nothing more than to stay balled into stiff, hermetic claws.

The pain came from her head, from inside it, not the dull throb that she used to

experience just before menstmation (which, it seemed, had altogether stopped since she’d

evolved), but like something was in there trying to get out. She took it as well as she

could, and dismissed it simply as one nasty side effect to the slew of benefits her body

had achieved over the past several months. It usually subsided within a couple of minutes

anyway, and she figured that a headache is a headache, whatever the form, and it wasn’t

much to fret over.

Slowly, Kitty moved across the bed to the table with the phone and dialed room

service. She was starving, so she ordered two cheeseburgers, rare, and a two-liter bottle

of soda. When she hung up, she fell back to the bed and looked up at the ceiling.

She could see fine despite the darkness of the room. When she’d checked in, she

had pulled the blinds, and they hadn’t moved since then. She didn’t mind a sunny day; in

fact, some of her fondest memories were of the summer a few years back when her

family had rented a house at Gully Lake, a glorified pond in the mountains just outside of

Boulder, and she and her father had spent days fishing off a rented canoe on the outskirts

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 34

of the lake. She couldn’t remember a rainy day that whole vacation, and she’d gotten

herself a nice tan with which to start the school year. Kitty smiled; had that only been two

years ago? Christ, what she hadn’t known then, what she’d been missing. Still, for all of

her ignorance, it had been a great vacation.

But for whatever reason, whatever it was that had given her her new found talents

told her that the time to sleep was the daytime, and she’d never been able to nap or sleep

late because of the light, so thus the shades were drawn. And what’s the point of opening

the blinds at night? Apache Springs, Colorado, wasn’t much to look at, anyway.

And it was cool being able to see in the dark. It made her feel a step ahead of

everyone else, superior, somehow. She liked to go to the movie theaters and watch the

people when they thought that no one could see them; this was the essence of human

nature, their almost self-automated actions when they thought that they were truly alone.

Lots of people picked there nose and then, when faced with the dilemma of having

nowhere to dispose of their findings, simply licked their fingers, smacking their lips and

enjoying it as if it were some truffle or cookie batter instead of a booger. Then,

sometimes, she’d go to the adult movie shows, and just as someone was getting

comfortable with himself, maybe undoing his belt buckle or slipping a hand down his

sweatpants, she’d squeal or yell an obscenity loud enough to startle everyone in the

theatre. The looks on the faces of the guilty. It was enough to keep her going for hours.

She reached a hand up to her face and ran a finger under her nose. The blood had

dried. Good. The headaches were one thing, but the nosebleeds, sometimes, made her

nervous.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 35

She flipped onto her stomach and felt under the bed. The duffle bag was there - of

course it was there - and she brought it out, unzipping it and taking a handful of the

money inside. She came out with something like four hundred dollars without making a

dent in the lot of it, and she figured that that was enough to get her started for the night.

She’d undoubtedly come home with ten or twenty times that, anyway, and something told

her - that something that told her to sleep at night - that at some point soon, she’d need a

lot of money.

Just as she was zipping up the bag and replacing it under the bed, there was a

knock on the door. She sat up, tucking the money into one side of her panties, and got off

the bed. She was dressed only in her underwear, and a year ago she’d have put something

on, but things had changed. Her body had changed. Her before-slender hips had gained a

curve that she found quite pleasant; now, when she walked, she allowed them to sway,

feeling the natural dip and strut of them, and when men looked - which they almost

always did - she would smile and play it out a little, and why not? She had it to give, and

they lapped it up. Before long, she’d see them again. She’d see them all again.

She opened the door to a man in his forties, a few days unshaven, hair combed

over what looked like a head that was halfway to bare. His eyes widened for a moment,

dipping briefly for a glance at the length of her, but she cupped a hand under his chin and

raised it up, and when he met her gaze, she had him. Getting good at this, she thought,

and as his jaw unhinged and a spot of drool began to collect in one comer of his mouth,

she said, “My food, please.”

His head went down slowly, his hands absently straightening the wrinkled shirt of

his hotel uniform, and he smiled when he found the rolling tray to his left. He gave it a

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 36

little push, as if testing the way it moved, as if it was entirely new to him, and the drool at

the comer of his mouth fell out in a long, thick line, touching down on the covered plate

of one of her hamburgers. She wheeled in the tray, placing it behind her, and turned back

to him. Lifting his chin again so she could look at him, she smiled, and said, “Does

something hurt a little?”

The man winced then doubled over, taking a knee, one hand curled against his

stomach. “Uh,” he groaned, spitting a dab of blood onto the hotel carpet. She placed a

hand on his combover and concentrated, feeling the warm, liquid rush throughout her

body as she imagined the man’s stomach. In his stomach, she imagined, there was a large

rodent, a rat, maybe, and it was gnawing its way out in a frenzy, ripping the lining,

clawing and biting and rupturing...

“Jesus,” the man muttered, and he began to whimper, coughing up more blood.

Soon he would start to scream, so Kitty stopped, removing a hand from his head. “Clean

this up,” she said, “and then leave.” He had already removed a rag from his back pocket

and had started dry-scrubbing the small, darkening spot where he had bled, when she

closed the door.

She ran to the bathroom - the food would wait - and, without bothering to turn on

the light (she never bothered to turn on the light anymore) positioned herself in front of

the mirror. Brushing a few stray strands of hair from her face, she opened her eyes wide,

and frowning, said, “Shit.” At first they had only become bloodshot, like they used to

after long nights of drinking or when she’d go to visit her Aunt Dahlia and the cats would

get her allergies going. Now, however, her eyes were almost entirely red, as if under the

thin membrane of her cornea they had filled with blood. And her nose had redoubled its

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 37

flow, both nostrils now, not stopping at her mouth but gushing down her chin and falling

onto the sink in dime-sized drops.

But there was no pain. No headache, no thudding heartbeat in her ears as there

had initially been, and using one of the complimentary towels to wipe off her chin, she

said to the figure in the mirror, “I’m getting better.”

And that, certainly, was something.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 2

The Gray

Short Days

Toby wanted the short days to bother him. He wanted to feel like feeling dreary

was a bad thing, like winter was just a waiting period between autumn and spring, useless

hours that fell into dark days that fell into cold, humorless months, just a bleak interlude,

like intermission at a chop-shop movie house where, when then lights flicker on between

features, you’re left with the stench and the sticky floors and decaying felt wallpaper

you’d forgotten about in the darkness.

Nate - if Toby had a best friend, it was Nate - who kept his hair cropped short

year round and never seemed to lose the handsome tan that mercifully hid his budding

blemishes, complained pretty much on a daily basis about the winter, about the short

days. Nate’s quintessential outfit was a pair of loose fitting shorts and a tee-shirt, and

winter got in the way of that, impeding on his comfort, so Nate, consequently, didn’t care

much for the winter, and boy, did he let Toby know. Day after day, in some fashion, he

let Toby know. And Toby - intellectually Nate’s superior (and the other students’, for

that matter, and sometimes, Toby thought, his teachers’, as well) but as far as everything

else went - body hair, athletics, popularity, sheer size, everything that mattered to an

seventh grader - surely his disciple - had gotten into the habit of smiling and nodding.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 39

Shit yeah, Nate. Winter totally sucks. It’s like running into a brick wall with a boner,

man. It’s that bad.

“Seriously, dude, these short days are gonna kill me,” Nate said, squinting at the

snow-glare that moved away with heartbeat quickness each step they took. Like winter’s

quicksilver, Toby thought. A little like that, anyway.

“Yeah, winter totally sucks,” Toby said, frowning because Nate was huffing a

little bit now, while Toby himself felt fine, like he could go at this pace in this weather

with this fragile shell of a body forever. “Can’t wait for summer,” he added, looking at

Nate to gauge his reaction.

“I hear that, good buddy,” Nate crackled through his hands, and Toby laughed.

Over the break, they’d watched Top Gun at Jon’s house, and Nate had mastered,

somehow, the art of talking through his hands to achieve a staticky radio kind of voice,

and he sounded chillingly like Tom Cruise. Since, Toby sometimes thought of himself as

Goose to Nate’s Maverick, but that was okay.

The walk home from school wasn’t a long one, and since Nate lived a few houses

down, they made the hike together, almost piously, and, being that Nate had recently

been forced to stay after for detention - every day since school had started back up,

actually - Toby had chosen to wait it out in the library with a book while Nate washed

boards or swept floors or did whatever you did when you were in detention

So today - a bleak and average Wednesday - the sun had begun to set as they

chugged home through the snow. This did not go over well with Nate. “Damn short

days,” he said again.

Toby, shaking his head, echoed, “Short days.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 40

But really, short days were fine by Toby. It’s not that he somehow avoided the

gloominess that affects everyone to some or other degree after months of snow and

freezing rain and frozen, muddy entryways and stiffened pantlegs and windbumed

nostrils; no, these things upset Toby’s biological wiring just like anyone else, more,

maybe, because Toby was a special boy - Christ, he knew that - and he was prone to

sensitivity, he was afeeler, and he could feel the season and he could feel himself

wanting to get a little down on this or that, but the fact was, he didn’t. He didn’t suffer the

gloominess; he embraced it.

He embraced it sort of because he likened it to getting sick. He’d been sick once

that he could remember, and that had been years ago, with the chicken pocks, and

chicken pocks wasn’t really sick anyway. But he’dseen more than his share of illness -

you’re going to with six brothers - and, in a strange way, he craved the aching head, the

stuffy nose, the hacking cough. He wanted to know what it felt like to have to puke up

your lunch. He wanted to feel bone tired, to not have to concentrate to get to sleep, to be

able to just flutter away because, for the life of you, you couldn’t keep your eyes open,

not if someone paid you a million dollars. One lid at a time, drooping, head swimming,

sinking down into the pillows mom had arranged for you on the couch because you were

ill, vaguely (and somewhat nauseatingly) aware of the remnants of the tomato soup and

broken crackers just in your reach at the table next to you with the snot rags and T.V.

remote controls, and then falling out of consciousness, sleeping the sleep of the sick. He

wanted all of these things, simply because he’d never had them, and was beginning to

think that he never would. That he couldn’t. Last April, after Mom had coerced a

miserably sick Jimmy to get off the couch and allow himself some “real sleep” in his

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 41

bedroom, Toby had wolfed down the half of a piece of toast Jimmy had left over, hoping

to get some of those precious germs, hoping he’d finally be the center of the pampering

his mother seemed to administer with such expert poise. But no go. No sick, not for Toby

Shepard. Not even after he’d run around in the stream with no shoes on (it had been early

April and the water was running cold and hard), not after he’d intentionally dismissed

orange juice and any other source of vitamin C that he could think of from his diet for

almost a month. Nothing.

So feeling lousy - emotionally - would have to cut it. He found that, after a

particularly gloomy day, he felt a little tired, and this, he thought, was as close he’d get to

sick. But he was never really physically exhausted - only tired in his head, kind of

woozy, like he’d been given a very small dose of some poison, like he’d come out of a

darkened movie theatre into the bright shine of day, and that was enough, that was a

feeling to shut his eyes and sleep to.

It wasn’t like he hated himself or anything. He didn’t want to be really sick, God

forbid that he got cancer or something, boy, then he’d really be sorry that he ever got

jealous of his brothers for getting a little run down once in a while. Plus, he liked that

normally he had a lot of energy, that he didn’t seem bothered by things that bothered

other people. It was just that he needed a break from it, something to distance himself

from the feeling that he was so damned different than any of his brothers.

For this, if for nothing else, he treasured winter and its short days.

“Cut through the woods?”

Toby looked up. He’d been lost again. It had been happening more and more.

Like the dreams. Something would come over him, something heavy, and kind of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 42

swallow him, and he’d get lost. Lost in his head. He usually came out shaky, kind of

floating, with a head full of thoughts and a stomach full of wasps. Today was no

different. “What?” he asked, blinking against the dying day, trying to straighten out his

vision (whenever he came up from being under, he’d noticed that, for a few moments,

things would appear unnaturally sharp; this tree is a cardboard cutout, that rock over there

seems to be glowing. I can see everything so well, so precisely).

“That’s your ADD, man,” Nate said, as if reading his mind. Actually, Toby had

been diagnosed with ADD - but then, so had half of his class. Nate picked up a rock and

threw it into the woods. “I said, do you want to cut through the woods? It’s getting dark,

kind of.” Nate frowned a little, and Toby thought that he might have been a little scared

to cut through the woods tonight. It was getting dark early; maybe on account of the

clouds that had gathered overhead - big, menacing billows of stormy gray. It would start

snowing soon.

“Well, it’s getting pretty late, and my mom’s gonna start wondering. So yeah,

maybe we should go through the woods.”

Nate nodded, frowning, but after a moment, his mouth twisted into a horrible grin.

“Hey,” he said. “Why don’t we make a stop at the Stash?”

Toby kicked a chunk of snow that had frozen at the base of a tree, sending it

rocketing into the woods. “I don’t know, Nate,” he said.

“Oh, come on, Tobe. Your mom can wait an extra half hour, right?”

“Okay, but just a half hour. I’m starving, and my mom’s making perogies

tonight.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 43

“You’re always hungry,” Nate said, starting along the path that led into the

woods. “You’re gonna end up being a fat fuck like Andon.” At this, Nate took off

running, knowing Toby would give chase in honor of his oldest brother.

“Oh, you’re gonna eat snow for that,” Toby said, and ran after his buddy, dodging

the branches that whipped back at him from Nate’s wake with dexterity that bordered on

paranormal.

The Stash

The woods, tonight, felt like a tight-fitting pair of pants. The tress craned in over

them, reaching in with their branches, like they were starving and maybe looking for a

handout. But the ground was snowless and soft for the winter, and when they reached the

stash, Toby was able to get pretty comfortable in the mossy crook of a giant Spruce that

was his seat. Nate took his customary place on a nearby root, toes tapping in anticipation,

and said, “Alright, guy, whataya got, guy?” He was using his Billy Pinot voice - Billy

Pinot was a klutzy sixth grader who was known for his nasal, whining voice, not to

mention his complete and utter ignorance to the fact that he was a nerd, and as a result,

had no problem chatting it up with the cooler guys in the hallways - and, such was Nate,

he’d mastered this impression to the point of perfection. Toby laughed and, reaching into

the hollowed groove that he and Nate had found at the base of the tree two summers ago,

produced a modest stack of cologne-scented magazines. “Oh, shit, I can still smell ‘em,”

Nate said, rubbing his hands together and rising slightly from his root to get a better look.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 44

The Stash had formerly been known to the boys as the Silly Branches, on account

of the massive gathering of intertwining boughs and limbs stretching into each other from

flanking trees and bushes. The Silly Branches had been enough to hold a couple hundred-

pound boys without so much as folding the slightest bit, and for years the boys had used

it as their fort. They’d been visiting this place since third grade, but at a point, the Silly

Branches had been deemed (by Nate) simply “The Hideout,” and when even that became

a little too childish - and after they had found the secret aperture in the towering old

Spruce - it had become the Stash, complete with Playboys, the occasional pack of

cigarettes and a beer or two smuggled from one of the boys’ father’s garage.

“Hold on, man,” Toby said, drawing the magazines back. He smiled, sticking his

palm out to halt Nate in his tracks, and slowly, Nate sat, narrowing his eyes.

“You fucker,” he said, once again letting his legs get the better of him - they were

twitching and jerking in their place, as if it were all that he could do to keep them

attached to his hips. Toby grinned and handed a magazine over to Nate, who, inspecting

the magazine, frowned. “Had this one last time. Gimmie another one.” Toby picked out

another - he found a good one, one that wasn’t a Playboy but had a lot more pictures and

a hell of a lot more going on in them - and handed it over to Nate.

“There,” he said. “Happy?”

“Oh God, yes,” Nate said. “ I don’t think I can ever get enough of this one.

Cherry,” he read, beaming at the oiled, almost-swollen woman gracing the cover.

Toby was always in charge of the disbursement of the magazines. In fact, Toby

governed the majority of their activities outside of school. It was as if Nate were aware

that he got too much attention at school, that Toby was just a sidekick, that his buddy was

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 45

overlooked and it was his job to compensate. Toby, to a certain extent, knew that Nate let

him take over after school was out, and that, maybe, Nate felt a little sorry for him,

maybe even a little guilty about being more popular. But there was another side of Toby

that knew the other reason that Nate let him dictate their afternoons; it was the same

reason that his teachers always insisted on meeting with him after class to discuss trivial

things such as how he’d come up with an idea for a paper or how his older brothers were

doing, the same reason that, whenever he rode his bike along Division Road, drivers

made sure to slow down and make an extra wide birth for him, the same reason that

Daisy and Lilly somehow, no matter in whose room they began the night, by morning

made their way up to Toby’s room, Lilly at the foot of the bed and Daisy sometimes

practically sharing a pillow with him; the reason was that he was Toby Shepard. He had a

distinct charisma about him, a draw, almost, and some part of him knew it.

“Might as well have a beer while we’re here,” Toby said. Nate cocked an eyebrow

- it was one thing to look at some girlie magazines after school, but a different thing

altogether to come home smelling like Budweiser. Toby nodded, putting aside his

magazine, and reached back into the gap. There were two beers back there, chilly to the

touch on account of the weather, and he brought out one. “We’ll share one, okay?” he

said, twisting off the top and taking a furtive swig. Toby hated the taste of beer - he

didn’t understand how his brothers could drink so much of it in one sitting - but he was

sure as hell willing to try to get used to it.

“Give it here, guy.” It was Billy Pinot talking to him again, and Toby snorted,

feeling the beer tickle his nose, and as he passed the beer over to Nate, everything

external just kind of washed away, and it was just Nate and him now, hanging at the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 46

Stash, enjoying the silence that the woods gave them, and he felt warm despite the

weather. Settling back into the moss, he opened the Playboy to the centerfold. Ah, Gina.

An old favorite.

Dead Birds

They remained silent a while, walking home, and Toby felt the ground beneath

him and it was firm, and his legs felt like they were working on their own agenda, in a

good way, and it wasn’t ten minutes until someone spoke. It was Nate. “What’s eating

you lately, anyway?”

“Huh?”

“I said, what’s eating you? You’re all, like, weird lately, kind of. What are you,

depressed or something?” Nate walked ahead of Toby and spoke without turning, his

arms swinging by his sides, and Toby noticed that he had started to huff and puff again,

so his words kind of forced their way out of his mouth in between slightly labored inhales

and exhales. He continued, “I mean, you’re not depressed, are you?”

Toby considered this. He wasn’t depressed, per-se, but he knew that he hadn’t

quite been a joy to be around lately, because yes, something had been bothering him - the

dreams, namely - and he hadn’t said anything to Nate (or to anyone else, for that matter)

because he just hadn’t had the energy. And what did Nate know, anyway? Nate was just a

kid. “I don’t know,” Toby said. “Well, I mean - 1 don’t know.”

“You’ve been an asshole at school.”

“Hey, thanks a lot.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 47

Nate stopped, not turning, hands on his hips, and looked up to the treetops, where

all but modest patches of the sky was blocked out by the imposing evergreens. His breath

came out from in front of him like the thinning smoke of a smoldering chimney fire. He

spoke, his head still bent upward, the breath coming out of him with more pressure now

as he raised his voice. “I’m sick of it,” he said. “You’re makingme feel shitty now. All

you do is mope around and sigh all the time. It’s hard to be your friend when you’re like

this.”

Toby blinked. Ten minutes ago he and Nate had been splitting a beer in the alcove

of forest that they had shared and kept secret for almost five years now, happy as pigs in

a yard full of mud. Nate hadn’t indicated that he’d been mad at Toby at tall - not

recently, not ever. It wasn’t in his nature. He had a way of letting things flutter by, and a

distinct knack for not collecting any debris in the process. But now he was almost yelling,

halted on his trek home, puffing icy breath into the tinny January air. “Nate, what are you

yelling for?”

Nate turned and Toby, despite himself, backed up a few steps. This was a new

expression for Nate: mouth all bunched up like he was about to say a word beginning

with the letter p, poof, maybe, or punch; eyebrows cocked distinctly downward, his eyes

little half-circles so only a hint of their color remained; a high shade in his cheeks, but not

from the cold - the red patches spread up toward his ears, and where his throat was

exposed just above his jacket, Toby could see a small patch of red there, too. His hands

were balled up at his sides into twitching pink squares, and he stood slightly hunched

over with his shoulders pointed at an aberrant, almost twisted angle. It made Toby think

of the jaguars or female lions on the Discovery Channel, the sleek, muscled bulk of them,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 48

and the pose they assumed before the strike. Nate was a big boy, and if he had chosen this

moment to pummel Toby - how in the hell had this upheaval come to hand? They’d just

been looking at Playboys and drinking a beer, for Christ’s sake - it would be quite a

physical undertaking to stop him.

Nate panted, but now the breath was coming out of his nose, two silvery jets like

the twin exhausts of Toby’s father’s Dodge. Toby felt sweat trickle down his armpit, over

his ribs, tickling his hips and settling there. And his stomach, it felt like he was sweating

in there, too, like it had kicked suddenly into overdrive and right there, in the woods with

his best friend in a standoff that would have laid goosebumps across the skin of even the

best Western filmmakers and probably old Clint Eastwood himself, Toby felt like he had

to, of all things, take a dump.

“What?” Toby tried, attempting to get the word out evenly and, for the most part,

succeeding. But a full sentence right now wouldn’t be so easy. Nope, not now, not when

he was facing this startlingly old-looking veritable giant of a boy who for all intensive

purposes had gone rabid, and for what? Because he thought Toby had been “acting like

an asshole at school?” Because Toby had been a little mucky lately, and that had been

getting his good old buddy Nate a little down, the poor guy? What the fuck did Nate

know? He didn’t know shit from shit, that’s what. Maybe he’d like to trade places with

Toby for a day, maybe try his hand at sleeping at night when you can pretty much

guarantee dreams where the setting was a black, pungent cave, the soundtrack not the

quiet of a secluded meadow or the sanctified silence of a church at daybreak but the

screaming, piercing nothingness of a battlefield at the end of some long, terrible war, of

death and remorse and the horrible purity of a clean, quick death, where the supporting

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 49

cast was hands groping from the darkness and fingernails tracing the veins that bulged

just beneath your searing, sweat-soaked skin, and the main character was - guess who -

you. “ Whatl” Toby repeated, taking a step toward Nate, his voice steadier this time, and

certainly louder - not quite yelling, but matching the tone and pitch of Nate’s previous

accusations.

Nate remained exactly as he was, barely opening his mouth to speak so the words

came flat and restrained from his gritted teeth. “You think you’re so smart,” he said,

almost shaking now. “With your straight A’s and your high test scores and colleges

calling your mom about you. You think that everybody cares about you so much. You

think that you’re the only person who matters in the world.”

“Fuck you,” Toby said, and now the calm had washed over him, filling his ears

and nostrils and his mouth so he was complete with the air, and he could no longer feel

the cold; he was just in the moment, just there, and from this point on, nothing mattered,

just that he was there and he was so sweetly whole.

Nate’s face broke into an amused smile, and his hands fell further to his sides,

relaxing for a moment, his fists uncurling before tightening back up, but the smile

remaining fixed like some strange, daunting clown. “Fuck me?” he said, edging closer to

Toby, close enough so Toby could feel his breath now - he felt it on his forehead,

because that’s how much bigger his friend was than he, but that didn’t matter, not now

that Toby was so cool from the cold outside and hot from the heat inside and anesthetized

from the core of this increasingly interesting situation, this darling little situation in which

Nate had decided to get a load off his mind and dump it all on Toby, and uh-oh, maybe

he’d picked the wrong guy to unload on today, because Toby was, regardless of his

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 50

distinct detachment and his nasty, trilling numbness, starting himself to shake. Nate

looked him up and down and sideways, that unfading, screwed-up smile saying

everything, and he repeated, “Fuck me, huh?” Then he shook his head, slowly, settling

his gaze on Toby’s eyes, squinting again with his blue-white, crescent slits, and he said,

“Fuck you, Toby. Don’t forget that.” Pointing now, an elbow cocked back with a hand in

Toby’s face performing a one-finger salute. “Fuckyow.”

“Get your hand out of my face.”

“No.”

“Get your hand out of my face.”

“No.”

He slapped Nate’s hand away and Nate came back hard, landing his lull weight

via his shoulder into Toby’s chest and sending him jerking backwards. Toby’s knees

buckled and he sat down hard, right on his rump, hands behind him to brace his fall. He

felt a cold sting light up one of his hands - he must have landed on a rock - followed by

the warm trickle of blood between the webbing of his fingers. Then Nate was on top of

him, driving him back against the ground and pinning his arms with his knees. Nate

grabbed a handful of Toby’s face, squishing his cheeks so his lips assumed a kissing

gesture, and said, “What was that? Are you so tough all of a sudden? Look at you now,

you asshole.”

Toby tried to move his face to the side, but Nate had him in a deathgrip. “Get off

me,” Toby mumbled, straining his shoulders against the weight of Nate, kicking his legs,

one at a time, in the forest’s dirt. He felt his face flush and his vision gained that clarity

that it got when he came out of his walking dreams, and for a moment the very pores of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 51

Nate’s skin were apparent to him, the transfixion of his young skin against the trees, the

dark, hovering greenish hue outlined by sliver streaks of sky, and then the world snapped

shut. He felt his breath rush up and out of him, his chest swelling with it then collapsing

as he screamed, and with his scream there were other screams, shrill and stabbing over

his own, and then there was a symphony of the maddening shrieking and Nate, suddenly

deflated, removed himself from Toby’s chest. Toby sat up, now quiet, but the screaming

continued. It was all around them - above them, actually, in the trees - and Nate, his

grievance now forgotten, stared at Toby, his eyes widening and his mouth shrinking into

a small, defeated oh. For a moment the screeching subsided and all was quiet but for the

thudding ba-bump ba-bump-bump in Toby’s ears. Then, as the boys looked on, they

started falling, like pinecones, just one here and another there at first, then some more and

then a torrent of them: black-feathered, lifeless clumps from the trees, falling like rocks

or pinecones, hitting the soil quietly but surely, and one fell close to Toby and, without

hesitating, he picked it up.

Its eyes were just little, black beads. The eyes were so small. They seemed to look

everywhere and nowhere. Little black orbs that saw everything and nothing at once. The

bird wasn’t moving, but it was warm against Toby’s hands.

“What are you doing? Put that down, Toby!” Nate’s voice was pleading, and

Toby looked up, still sitting on the dirt floor of the forest, his hands in his lap, cradling

the dead, black bird. Nate looked on the verge of tears, and his posture was a testament of

indecision, his hips twisted toward the path that led home but his head and shoulders

facing Toby. One of his legs was shaking, and each time another bird dropped - they

were tapering off now, coming in erratic spurts like the last few kernels of popcorn - his

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 52

head flew in the direction of the soft thud of the bird reaching ground. “Tobe, please,” he

said. “Make it stop, please.”

Toby looked back down at the bird, from which the warmth was now subsiding.

“I can’t. What makes you think I can make it stop?”

“I don’t know, I just want it to stop ,” Nate said, and now he was crying, and Toby

felt all the resentment and anger fall out of him - bleeding out of his hands with the bird’s

heat, maybe - and along with the anger went the sense of detachment he’d gained, the

extrication that had allowed him, somehow, to get face to face with Nate, his best friend,

and tell him fuck you.

The calm, however, remained. “Jesus,” he muttered. “What is this?”

“Are you talking?” Nate shrieked, apparently frozen where he was. “Stop

touching that thing! Please!” Nate fell to his knees, bending over and touching his head to

the ground, interlacing his hands over the back of his head and rocking there, quietly

crying. His back shook with miniature, vacillating spasms. Nate placed the bird back

where it had fallen and pushed himself up. For a moment the world was wobbly, the trees

swimming into each other and around his field of vision, but as he walked over to Nate

and laid a hand on his shoulder, everything began to steady itself. Nate didn’t look up,

but his sobs quieted, and the tremendous shuddering of his back eased into small,

quivering ripples.

Dead birds littered the ground everywhere. Hundreds of them.

“Come on, Nate,” Toby said. “Let’s go home.”

“What did you do?” Nate removed his hands from around his head and looked up.

His eyes were swollen and bloodshot. “Why did you do that?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 53

Toby’s mouth opened but he found that his voice was lost somewhere, and all he

could do was tighten his grip on Nate’s shoulder. Nate began to cry again, and Toby took

him under the armpits, putting his back into it, hoisting him up, and for a while, as they

walked home, Toby braced him with an arm over his shoulder, until Nate had stopped

crying and could walk on his own.

They were friends again, Toby could feel it, but in a way, everything was

different now. Nate had officially joined Toby’s club - well, he’d been initiated, anyway

- and when they didn’t talk the rest of the way home, the silence was different than the

silence that they were used to. It was a silence so thick and satiated that it weighed down

on them.

Toby, Child Genius

When it came time, he and Nate split paths, silent still, Nate with a furtive nod

and Toby half a wave. Toby watched as his friend, hands stuffed in pockets, turned and

walked up Division Road. Finally around a bend and out of sight. It looked like he’d

started running there at the end.

He felt like his mind had fallen apart, just given up and come to pieces. Years

ago, Cliff had broken one of his mother’s vases with a lacrosse ball, and had managed,

somehow, to paste it back together with airplane glue before she’d come home. Cliffs

fear of grounding had made his work meticulous, and he’d done a hell of a job; he’d even

found a small amount of acrylic paint with which to go over the cracks, and unless you

got right up next to it and concentrated your eyes until they watered, you’d be hard

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 54

pressed to find anything wrong with it. Unfortunately, Cliff had forgotten to check the

expiration date on the glue - later (much later), laughing about it at dinner one night,

Toby’s father had revealed that the tube of glue Cliff had found buried in the utility

drawer in the garage had been left over from Andon’s childhood passion for model race

cars - and within a day’s time, the vase had come undone and crumbled in a heap of

dried glue and jagged terracotta. Toby - probably five at the time - found the pile of

rubble the next morning and, in a standard little-brother maneuver, scrambled pajama-

pad-footed up the stairs to his parents room with a handful of shattered ceramic evidence

leading the way. Now he’d found something broken again, something that had been

precariously patched together, something fractured and mended again and again, and it

had now crumbled, his mind, like his mother’s vase, and here he was with a handful of it

but unable to run and yell about it. Can’t alert the press when your mind comes apart,

can’t tell your mother. Just put it back together and hope the glue holds. Lately, Toby had

been spending a lot of time hoping the glue would hold. Rarely did.

Toby, the good student, the smart-ass, did his share of independent reading, and

he now identified whatever was going on with him as a defense mechanism. The term had

shined out at him from one of his mother’s mid-seventies black bound psychology books

- initially selected as worthwhile reading because of the substantial chapter on sexuality

(put together with a hearty assortment of pictures) - and now, walking home through the

muddy snow banks along the edge of the woods, Toby thought, this is it. “This is it,” he

said out loud. Dead birds and defense mechanisms. “This is it,” he repeated, the three

words that would become a mantra with which to measure his pace over the five minutes

it took to get from woods-edge to front door.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 55

Two more words, which he certainly did not say out loud, came to him as he

walked home. These words were The Gray. They came from somewhere within the

scattered pieces of his broken-vase mind, and he wasn’t able - didn’t necessarily want -

to make much of it, but what hedid make of it had everything to do with the color: Gray:

it wasn’t hot or cold to him, but it seethed with something, the layered and manufactured

scheme of it, the suggestion of a certain malleability lingering just above and below it,

side to side, something. To extract from or introduce to it could create the far boundaries

of gray, and there was the hitch; no limits to it. Like the dirty snow on the side of the

road; extract the impurities and you’re left with the essential element, for instance, wash

away the mud and you’ve got your pristine snow, feathery crystals of water frozen, and

then your dirt over there, brown grains. Or maybe you wash away the snow. Extracting

impurities and being left with purities. But that was impossible, because it was all gray,

anyway, and even the uncorrupted, fresh snow was really only a far-west shade of the

acquiescent hue, the black soil of his father’s vegetable garden long to the east. And

Toby, as his foot found earth through the exhaust-splattered crunch of a snowdrift, was

right in the middle, completely and neatly the Gray. Only he wondered which way it was

that he had leaned that day with the birds falling dead out of the treetops. What had he

done to shade himself this afternoon? Well, fuck it, because it was all Gray anyway. All

of it.

Toby’s house came into view, the chimney soiling the air with fat puffs of gray

(ha! Gray!) smoke. The Chimney was on the North side of the roof, and when Toby lay

in his bed, he could see it from the skylight (his room’s only entry for natural light). He

imagined that it was warm in his bedroom, and he pictured his bed, the scarlet flannel

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 56

covers turned down and last night’s book somewhere abandoned on the floor, maybe

Daisy taking a break from the day at the edge of the bed, curled into herself, breathing,

lip twitching and revealing occasionally the large, benign canines that stretched far back

into her mouth. Dog dreams. The thought brightened him.

The walkway to the front door was rimmed with full, green bushes with red

berries, and as he started up it, it occurred to Toby that he was too smart for his own

good. Coincidence: we’ll leave it at that. Like Hutch’s nosebleed. It was no good to link

things, to ponder and philosophize and let your thoughts run around like a child lost in

the woods, because you end up deaf to all but the grind of your own thoughts; you end up

likening yourself to the color gray. But you are Gray, Toby. Yes, I am, but you should

still shut up about it. As long as you and I know that you are Gray. All right, I’m gray.

No, no, I said Gray. Say it: Gray.

Gray. Okay. I’m Gray.

The still-lucid part of him wondered if he was going nutty. Wondered if he had

colon cancer and it had spread to his brain, malignified an important lump of him, if his

head was a ticking time bomb ready to blow and hemorrhage out his ears.

He placed his hand on the brass handle and pulled lightly, unfastening the door

from its latch. He paused and thought of his brothers. They were good people, all of

them. They were rough with him and they loved him. Last year, Jimmy had come home

drunk one night, and told Toby that he’d take a bullet for him. This had stuck with Toby.

Jimmy hadn’t been able to remember it the next day, but it had stuck. Sometimes when

things stuck, it was a good thing. It was un-Gray, or pretty far from it, anyway.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 57

As he pushed open the door, unslinging his backpack from his shoulder and

letting it fall into his left hand, he saw, beyond the foyer, in the sunroom, his mother

bending over to water some plants. She wore a light purple skirt with white hemming,

and as she turned toward him the hemming fluttered around her pale and chubby ankles.

The sunroom was Toby’s favorite room in the house; freesias and ivy hung in pots from

the ceiling, and between various annuals and purple, red, and orange assortments of other

plants Toby’s father had arranged a small army of bird cages with lovebirds, canaries,

and pheasants. Over all of this large panes of glass - though now covered over with

weeks of snow - normally allowed the day’s light to cover it all in full, yellow tones. For

as long as Toby could remember, the sunroom was where his father and mother had sit-

down talks about the kids, and it was from this foyer, where he now stood, that he had

once overheard, amidst the hushed mutterings of exchange that accompanied one of his

parents’ “no children” sessions, the two then-glorious words, child genius. They had been

talking about Toby, of course - surely not Hutch or Jimmy - and now, as his mother bent

back over to water another plant and gave him a backwards, inverted waive, as if

swatting at a fly near her behind, Toby wondered at this child genius business, if this was

what it all came to, if, in the end, it all just went to gray.

Hutch’s Nosebleed

The first thing he did upon entering the house was throw down his bag and run the

three flights of beige-carpeted, creaky backstairs to his bathroom, because even in a

clear-cut state of unrest, even when forced with the contemplation of one’s very nature, in

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 58

the middle of this catharsis one must still remember, being a thirteen-year old boy, to

brush one’s teeth after having a beer with a friend in the woods. Sure, if you’re going

nuts or falling apart or having a breakdown or whatever, a beer in the woods wouldn’t

matter, would merely trickle down the drain, insignificant when compared to the bigger

stuff that did matter, the stuff that didn’t wash away. But the fact was that the issue of

Toby’s sanity was still debatable, and just in case he wasn’t cracking up, he wanted to

preserve the good standing he’d established with his parents. After giving his teeth a

good two-minute scrub, he took a mouthful of Listerine and held it for another

excruciating half-minute, deciding finally to swallow it so to get that hard-to-reach

esophagus. He took a hard look at himself in the small, tiled bathroom, his mouth tingling

and stomach murmuring from the Listerine, and found that the mirror offered nothing at

all out of the ordinary. He was the same exact Toby he’d been that morning, yesterday, a

month ago...same old features and solemn expression, the mirror-gazing expression

where the eyes dull over and the mouth shuts itself in an almost-nonexistent purse, where

the ears cock just so, where the face is intent on itself and it’s own manifestation so much

that it becomes something a fraction different, but it’s the same, though, because it’s the

mirror-gazing expression, and that’s what you know. “This is me,” Toby said, blinking,

interlacing hands around the back of his neck, expelling a lungful of warm air through his

nose - mouth closed now, pursed again, chin quivering, all right, “I’m all right, I’m

okay,” he said. He turned from the mirror and pulled open the window. Faint smells of

cooking drifted in with the winter air - his mother must have had the window open

downstairs in the kitchen - and Toby remembered that she was cooking perogies tonight.

Good. Perogies were good. He took a seat on the lip of the tub and focused his attention

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 59

on the north part of the yard. It was time - high time - to take a personal inventory, and

the bathroom was as good a place as any to do it; it had become, over the last year, a

sanctuary for him, a nest within a nest, it’s compact confines not constrictive but cozy for

him. The bathtub was tall and wide with old, brass handles and individual hot and cold

faucets. The lip curved over and made a comfortable seat. A place to think.

“So what happened,” he said. “Something happened, that’s for sure.” He rested a

hand on the windowsill, which was littered with paint chips from the old, heavy window

at the foot of the tub. “Oh boy,” he said. “Oh boy, it’s all it is, is shit. Take it easy, Tobe.

A bunch of crap.” Gently, he kicked a heel back against the tub; felt the cool of the iron,

the lack of give. “Settle, and think. Think now.” He closed his eyes, his shoulders fell, his

head bent down, and he said, outright, loud enough so it reverberated against the walls

and the vibrations traveled down his arms and against the lip of the tub where his hands

were curled tightly over the edge, “I made the birds fall out of the sky. I screamed, I

freaked, I was angry, and I killed those birds. It was me that did it. Me.” He began to nod,

agreeing with his own voice - such a strong voice, how could you not? - and continued,

not raising his voice but speaking much faster now, “Lied to myself forever about

Hutch’s nosebleed. That was my fault, too. Now I know that. Things like this don’t

happen twice. Not to the same person. Like, how could I have.. .Like, it’s like I was lying

to myself. But that’s okay. It was a defense mechanism. But I’m over it.” He raised his

head, found a spot on the wall (tiled, like the floor,) and stared at it. “I’m magic or

something. Huh. Magic. Because twice I’ve gotten pissed off and made something

happen. Once I made Hutch’s nose bleed and now I made a bunch of birds die and fall

out of the sky. I got pissed at Nate and killed a bunch of birds.” Maybe, he thought - he

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 60

didn’t vocalize this part, couldn’t - he’d hurt Nate, too. Ruptured something inside him,

like he’d obviously done to Hutch, maybe caused internal bleeding, because what had

happened today in the woods was a lot bigger, a lot more powerful, than what happened

with Hutch all those years ago. A nosebleed opposed to a hundred, two hundred, a

thousand dead birds. So what had happened to Nate? He’d looked all right, kind of, but

he was shaken, he couldn’t walk on his own there for a while after, and Toby had thought

it had been because he was just so damn scared. But what if he’d done something to

Nate? What if Toby had exploded some arteries in his leg, and that’s what made Nate

limp? What if Nate didn’t show up to school tomorrow, then what? “Then I’ll kill

myself,” Toby said, and now the tears came, tilting his vision, running down the angles of

his nose and into the comers of his mouth, off his chin, down to the tiled floor; tears; this

was self-pity. It was sickening. “I feel sick. I’m sick, fuckingsick.” And that was it; he

was sick. His head was sick. He’d read about child-onset schizophrenia in his mother’s

psychology book. When you got it, sometimes you thought that you were special, a little

bit more than everyone else, that you could control things, that you had magic powers.

They were called delusions, and they got you utterly convinced, beyond a doubt, that you

were Spiderman or Batman or the damn Prince of Persia. They convinced you, say, that

because you never really got sick, that because you were so smart, that because you got

pissed at your buddy in the woods and birds fell out of the sky, that it was all part of what

you were, that you made these things happen somehow, that you were magic. But then, it

had all started so early; he made Hutch’s nose bleed (you watched Hutch’s nose bleed,

you sick fuck, you didn’t makeit bleed) when he was so young. “Yeah, whatever,” Toby

said, half-sniffling half-laughing, raising a hand from around the lip of the tub and pulling

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 61

up his shirt to wipe off his face. “I made Hutch’s nose bleed. Or that’s my delusion,

anyway.”

It was one of his earliest memories (it had stuck). Labor Day, 1997. Toby had

been seven. Autumn came early that year, he remembered, and as the sun was setting, the

wind picked up and brought with it a biting preview of the coming months’ chill. Toby,

Jimmy, and Hutch had been out all day, bottling crickets and fishing the brook with their

findings. After dinner, Hutch and Jimmy had been able to convince Cliff to call his

friends over for a night-game of Manhunt. Cliff was getting old for this stuff, he’d told

them, but on nights like this, when the early stars shone fat in the dimming sky and the

scent of grilled hotdogs lingered around your nostrils and the parents were out on the

porch drinking mojitos and smiling easy at you, Toby and his brothers found that Cliff

was quickly convinced. The game was set up on the field behind the house; the traditional

boundaries, set way back when by Andon and Erik, were Babbling Brook to the east, the

house to the south, the western rock wall (which divided the Shepards' and Mr.

Addington’s property) and the forest to the north. Nine altogether, the boys stood

shirtless, bathed in twilight, 20 yards north of the house, swatting mosquitoes and

stretching their legs, ready for flight. The captains - Cliff and his friend, Kurt - chose

their teams, and, since he was looked at as more of a handicap than a capable participant

and the teams were already even anyway, Toby was ushered by his brothers (who all

happened to land on the same team) to the porch, which would serve (and had

traditionally served) as “jail.” Toby was to be the “jail guard,” and was instructed

thoroughly by Jimmy to stay his place, “keep an eye out for bad guys,” and “make sure

none of the monkeys get out of their cage.” Toby gave Jimmy a double thumbs up, even

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 62

then astute to his predisposition of being the little kid but nonetheless an enthusiastic

participant, and as Jimmy jogged back to the group of laughing teenagers, he paced

around the porch in a semicircle, diagramming possible escape routes and counteractions

to intercept any cheating partakers. After a minute or so of deliberation, his brothers and

Mike Mariotti, the fourth team member (and the last to be picked other than Toby), came

trotting back to the porch, all taking a knee and turning their backs to the other team.

Hutch placed himself right next to Toby and whispered, not looking at him, “Watch

them. Where they go, I mean.” Hutch bossed him around constantly, but nevertheless he

was Toby’s favorite brother. As much grief as he gave him, no one let him hang around

more than Hutch. Cliff was always off with his friends, especially now that he could

drive. And Jimmy was just a jerk. Everyone else was at college or beyond. So it was

Hutch; Hutch was the man.

Cliff began to count down from fifty, but was interrupted by Donnie Santos, who,

standing with his team, was yelling from the field and looking in the direction of the

house. “Hey,” he hollered, cupping his hands around his mouth for amplification, “tell

Toby to turn around too!”

“Toby’s neutral!” Hutch yelled back, not turning, but already with a hand on

Toby’s shoulder.

“Yeah right,” came an unidentified voice from the field. “Neutral like a goddamn

fox!” Light laughter came collectively from the other team but died out quickly, and

Donnie Santos yelled, “Just turn him around, Hutch!”

“Fine, you faggots,” Hutch muttered, and yanked Toby’s shirt so he spun and was

down on a knee like his brothers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 63

Cliff immediately began to count, shouting, “Fifty, forty-nine, forty-eight...”

“Turn when I say,” whispered Hutch, one hand still on Toby’s shoulder. “Wait,

wait...now, Toby. Look where they’re going.” Toby hesitated, keeping a knee, and

looked at his brother.

“Oh, come on,” Jimmy murmured from next to Hutch, an arm across his eyes and

his head bent to the earth. “They’re gonna see him and call redo.”

“Shut up. They won’t see him. He’s small.” Toby felt Hutch’s grip on his

shoulder tighten. “Do it softly,” he said. “Turn around softly. Go. Go.”

He thought for a moment for a cool response. He settled on “Whatever,” and,

swiveling on his knee and turning toward the field, tried his best to take a mental picture

of the other team in mid-run. The four boys had essentially spilt as if from the center of a

small explosion, each rocketing off in one direction perpendicular to the next. “Kurt’s

running around the shed.”

“Probably gonna try to hide behind the mulch pile,” Hutch said. “How about

Donnie?”

Toby squinted. Donnie was fast, and Toby barely caught a glimpse of him as he

disappeared behind the rock wall along Mr. Addington’s property. “Behind the rock

wall,” Toby said.

“That faggot!” Hutch said. “He’s going out of bounds. Cliff, Toby said Donnie

Santos’s going out of bounds.”

Cliff shrugged and continued to count. Low-twenties now.

“Whatever,” said Hutch. “What about Stu?”

“Which one’s Stu?

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 64

“Tall ugly guy,” Jimmy said, laughing but cut off by an elbow from Cliff.

“I don’t know. He was running over to the rock wall too, but then he started

running up.”

“Up?”

“Up to the woods.”

Hutch nodded. “That leaves Carl, and Carl’s easy. We’ll leave him to last. He

won’t get past Toby if he tries to spring the jail.” It was simply impossible for Toby to

contain his smile after this comment. Hutch continued, “Jimmy, you take Stu, I’ll take

Donnie, that cheating faggot. Mike, you come with me, in case we need to comer him.”

Cliff finished counting, rose from his knees, and turned to the field. “I’ll take

Stu,” he said.

“Fine,” Hutch said, jumping up and removing his hand from Toby’s shoulder.

“That means Jimmy’s got Kurt. Remember, mulch pile. Get him from behind it, if you

can. Wade over through Babbling Brook then circle around him.”

“Yup.” Jimmy began jogging to the brook. Cliff took off straight up the field to

the woods.

Toby looked at Hutch, who now had his hands on Mike’s shoulders, no doubt

instructing him on his plan to capture Donnie Santos, and though Mike was probably a

junior in high school and Hutch was only a freshman, Hutch had him nodding, eyes wide,

concentrated, hands stiff at his sides like a soldier. Hutch stood an inch or so shorter than

Mike, but still seemed to tower over him. “Hey,” Toby said. “I can get the other guy.”

Hutch turned. “Who? You mean Carl?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 65

“Yeah, I can get him. You said he was easy. I’m the fastest runner in my grade,

you know.” This was a lie, but Toby let none of it spill over onto his face.

“No,” Hutch said, turning again to Mike. And, his back now to Toby, “You’re too

young. You’ll get hurt and Mom’ll have my balls.” After talking a few more seconds to

Mike, Hutch bent to tie a shoe, winked at Toby, and said, “Just guard the jail. Don’t let

anybody out. Got it?”

Toby nodded.

“Stay to the porch. You got that?”

Toby nodded again and watched as Hutch and Mike ran along the edge of the

house, down the stone steps that led to Dad’s vegetable garden, then split up at the tall

grass between the house and the western border of the property. There were ticks in that

grass. Toby wanted to yell but couldn’t find a voice to do it with.

The game raged. Bruises and cuts happened, as they always did; early into round

three, Jimmy came back with the tall boy - Stu - by the arm. Crisscrossed over Jimmy’s

legs were long, blackened scrapes, dirt mixing with blood down his knee to the tops of

his shins. “Had to run right through a briar patch to get him,” Jimmy panted. “But I got

him. Faster than he looks, Tobe. Keep an eye on him, all right?” Stu plunked down on the

porch next to Carl, who Hutch had caught almost immediately. Jimmy gave a mock

salute and, starting out across the lawn, said, “You’re doing great, Tobe. Keep an eye on

these guys. I’ll be back soon with Donnie, I’ll betcha. Thought I saw him run off earlier

down by the brook. Just keep an eye out.” Jimmy was gone within a matter of seconds. A

diligent jail guard, holding thus far a perfect record (two completed games, no jail

breaks), Toby crossed his arms, turning away from his captives, and scanned the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 66

surrounding area for Donnie and Kurt. The shadows were beginning to concentrate into

real dark, and as the night pressed on, Toby’s job had become more difficult. His was no

longer a sit-down job; he had to be alert, focused, to no longer trust that the rustling

leaves of the holly bush near the comer of the house was just the wind or the shifting

shadow at the base of one of the yard’s many elms a trick of the day’s fading light. So

when from the vegetable garden Toby heard what very well could have been the too-

eager footsteps of an adrenaline-laced teenager creeping up on the porch to spring a jail

that contained half of his beaten team, he made the calculated decision to leave his post

and investigate. Cool, with a hunched stance and silent feet, he inched across the stone

wall of the house, and his job had now gone from a token, medial task to the territory of

hero-of-the-game, and if the invader was Donnie Santos, so be it, because Toby, for

God’s sake, was ready for him. His calves throbbed with anticipation, and, rounding the

comer of the house, leaping from the shadows, arms spread and fingers clutching at

imaginary necks of the evil fugitives who’s intents it were to spring his jail, Toby’s jail,

he let fly an inflamed, almost rabid war-cry, which tonight his tongue crafted into a

strange, Arabic-sounding hybrid of “Aha!” and “Gotcha!” And of course, the garden was

empty, save for Daisy, who for a moment perked up her ears but ultimately ignored the

virtual bombshell of Toby’s surprise attack, and behind him, now, Toby heard the cackles

and whoops of a jailbreak, and his heart stopped right then and there, he was convinced

of it, and though his knees wanted to bend and buckle and sink down into the soft soil of

the vegetable garden, Toby found himself running, no breath now, toward the porch, and

when his eyes confirmed what his ears had told him, that yes, the jail had been sprung,

then he allowed himself to melt and hunker down to his knees, the vision of three

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 67

rampant boys sprinting as if for their very lives diminishing then fading altogether as he

closed his eyes and buried his fists in the grass. He had failed.

A minute later, his team reconvened around the lump of Toby, hands on hips,

forming a circle around him. Toby was now sitting cross-legged - “Indian Style,” his

Kindergarten teacher used to call it - and picking at the grass. “I don’t want to play

anymore,” he said.

“Good,” said Hutch.

Cliff gave Hutch a shove. “Leave him be.” He looked at Toby. “It’s okay, Toby.

They were too fast for you.”

Toby picked out a hunk of sod and threw it. “No they weren’t.”

“Yes they were,” said Hutch.

“Hutch, enough. We’ve got to get back out there.”

“Yeah, we’ve got to start over, cause of him,” Jimmy chimed in, pointing a dirt-

caked fingernail at Toby.

“Jesus, enough, leave him alone.” Cliff started off to the brook. “Stick it out,

Tobe. We still need a jailkeeper.”

“Really,” said Mike, trailing Cliff, both lagging now, as if their strength had left

them with the light of day. “You guys should ease up on him. He’s your brother.”

“Obviously Mike’s an only-child,” said Hutch, scowling.

“Whatever,” Jimmy said, and he left then, too, trotting down the length of the

house to the garden and the grass beyond. Toby was left with Hutch, starting down at

him, and from where he sat in the grass, Hutch was mountainous, a scowling, looming

force of childhood muscle.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 68

“Geez, sorry,” Toby muttered, choosing to look at the grass he was picking at

instead of his brother.

“You should be. Get up.” Toby felt a hand curl under his armpit, and he

swallowed a yelp as he was hoisted off his butt and onto his feet.

“Hey!”

“Shut up,” Hutch said. He grabbed Toby’s jaw and raised it up so their eyes met.

“I’m gonna tell mom,” Toby said, and felt the grasp on his jaw tighten.

“Shut up and listen. I’m not mad because I have to go and catch all those guys

again. It’ll take me a minute to get those two again, anyway. I’m mad because you didn’t

listen to me. Do you remember what I told you?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me. You’re being a faggot. Only faggots lie.”

“I’m not a faggot.”

“You’re not a faggot if you don’t lie to me. So what did I tell you at the beginning

of the game?”

“I don’t know,” Toby said, almost wailing. He could feel his heart now; it was

really going, like Thumper fromBambi was caught in his chest and beating a drumline

against his ribcage.

“You know, faggot. You little faggot.” Hutch squeezed and Toby felt his cheeks

rubbing against his teeth, his upper lip squishing against the bridge of his nose. He knew

what Hutch had told him - he’d told him to stay to the porch, to keep his station and not

let the guys get out - but he couldn’t admit to it. He wouldn’t vocalize it, wouldn’t give

that to Hutch. He wanted to run upstairs and get under his covers with a few action

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 69

figures, set up a game of war that was all his own, something he could control and

manipulate to the inclusive satisfaction of his own whims. But Hutch’s hold on him was

an iron clamp.

“Get off, Hutch,” Toby managed, his tongue getting in the way of the words as his

brother squeezed harder, harder.

“Not until you admit that the reason those guys broke jail is ‘cause you didn’t

listen to me.”

“No.”

“Just say it, faggot.”

“No! Mom!”

Toby having played his trump card, Hutch let go, thrusting Toby’s jaw and head

to the side, and, turning his back and starting up the field, said, “Figures a little lying

faggot like you would just call Mom. You’re a real shithead, Toby, you know that?” He

turned around mid-run, facing Toby now and jogging backwards, hands working at his

sides. His grin was a crescent of taunting teeth, his eyes furrowed in a line under creases

of hate-wrinkles along his forehead. “Little Toby shit-eater,” he said, his smile spreading

like deranged ivy over the suntanned bulk of his face.

“Quit it,” Toby whispered.

“Toby shit-eater faggot,” matching Toby’s whisper, growling, almost, and in a

second, the night became engorged, Toby’s senses hauling and foaming over and

bringing with it a volley of high sounds and feelings; the murmur-hiss-whistle of crickets

on the wind; the sick melody of scattered and random notes, hollow from the wooden

windchimes hanging among pots brimming with hanging vines; and the vines themselves

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 70

were alive, horribly so - pumping, pulsing like veins, expanding and dilating,

phosphorescent green and all twisted up into themselves, snakelike, the spitting cobras of

Medusa’s coiled locks; Toby’s tongue running along his teeth, the apertures of each

crown a cavern, hot and damp, his mouth, his breath a stinking geyser of it as he exhaled

and smelled his own breath, saturated with hotdogs and the taste of the very epinephrine

that now coursed through him; arms shaking, legs, muscles quivering, quickening, and

here it came now, the distention and then the release and then, as his hands uncurled from

their fists, as his mind trembled and came undone and then slammed back shut like a door

in heavy wind, Toby watched Hutch tack and keel and stumble backwards, one hand to

his stomach and the other behind him to brace his fall, the blood coming fast now, his

shirtless chest tainted by it, and in a queasy moment Toby - part of him - knew that it

was his fault, that he’d done it, and though in the years to come it would worry his

dreams and had even now started to borrow into and create a home in an untold part of

his mind, Toby was glad, because Hutch had deserved it, whatever it was. So he stood

there, an extension now of the grass beneath him - boy, could he feel it, nuzzling

between his toes, cool, soft, comforting like a good blanket - and heard the shouts of

chase from across the field; the game was still going on, but Toby and Hutch were no

longer part of it. Toby remained motionless as Hutch, aloof and vacant looking, like he’d

just woken from some long, dreamless sleep, brought a hand to his nose and then looked

at it, returned it to his nose, wiping along his upper-lip this time, and inspected it again,

finally wiping the blood on one of his short-legs. He hawked and spat a small, pinkish,

gelatinous lump of something into the grass. Looked at Toby, ignorant-eyed, mouth

unhinged, and said, “Wha.” His teeth were maroon from the blood. As far as Toby could

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 71

tell, the flow had stopped, but geez, there was a lot of it - enough for his parents, when

Hutch was finally able to get up, braced by Cliff and Stu and woozy like a drunk, to be

concerned enough to take him to the ER at St. Luke’s in New Bedford. But Hutch had

been all right. Just a nosebleed, Toby’s parents had told him the next day. These things

happen sometimes, sometimes for no reason at all.

“Just happen,” Toby said, looking now from his bathroom window at the field

where it had all transpired. What really got him is that these two isolated incidents were

linked in a very bad way - and he now knew that they were linked, because with the re

flooding of memories and the impassive and dejected but pure mind with which he’d

been able to go over them, Toby had been able to rekindle particulars about that day all

those years ago with a kind of obscure precision, incarnate to his current state, probably,

like one of those women who lift cars off a trapped child. Only instead of a car, Toby was

lifting the boulders from in front of his mind’s most inner keepings; breaking down, as it

were, his defense mechanisms. And this was something that had to be done; no more

denial, because, let’s face it, something had to come of this. One way or the other -

whether he really had magical powers ( Christ, man, why are you even considering that?)

or he was going crazy or if all of this in fact was a coincidence - he had to make

something of it; otherwise, he’d go crazy in a different way, the way where they take you

away and you never come back. “They’re linked,” he breathed, now reaching across the

tub and turning on the faucet marked H. “First,” he said, the water pouring out, a steady

stream of running water to think to, “first I’m cool. Whatever. Just fine. Then I get pissed

- or, no, something happens that should piss me off.” And he hadn’t really gotten pissed

either time, had he? He hadn’t had time. “Because I just go.. .1 go out.” Out was right, or

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 72

close enough; it was the flight of his senses, the swelling of the world around him; both

times, he’d become so aware of everything, so intensely alive and turbulent with this

almost transcendent vigor that it was all he could do to keep himself anchored to the

ground. It was detachment but at the same time complete connection - with the air

around him, with his body, his mind. Grandeur, Toby. Delusions o Grandeur, f remember

the book? “Maybe,” he said, stripping off his shirt and pants, touching a foot to the

steaming water, wincing, trying again and this time succeeding, dipping in a foot

followed by his leg followed by another foot, dipping, to the waist now, hunching,

reclining, arms in along his sides. “But maybe not. Grandeur doesn’t make birds fall out

of the sky.”You imagined that, his mind spat. Toby smiled, laughing, splashing some

water over the top of his stomach. “Yeah, maybe I imagined it. But I don’t think Nate

did. Nate’s not that imaginative of a guy, really.” No response to that one. He’d quieted

the skeptic. Well, for now, anyway.

Thinking of Nate, however, brought up similarity number two. Both incidents had

involved Toby (obviously) and someone close to him. Not someone he hated; rather, both

had been with someone who he considered his best friend - Hutch when he was seven,

and now Nate. Toby wasn’t the most popular boy in school, and over the years, he’d had

plenty of chances to pop; school bullies, the older kids, particularly vicious teachers, hell,

even Mrs. Johnston, the principal, had had him boiling a couple of times. But nothing had

ever come of these episodes; no, it had only been with individuals very close to him. It

was something, Toby feared, he could not control, or at least something he couldn’t bring

on. “Or can I?” Toby said, the wind from the open window tickling the back of his neck

and the water giving rise to a thick drift of fog in the bathroom. It occurred to him, as he

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 73

sunk beneath the water to wet his hair, that if he could indeed get control over whatever

was going on with him - and if he wasn’t imagining it or losing his mind - how cool it

would be, how much he could do with it.

There was no time like the present for a test, so Toby rose from the water, sitting

up, laying his hands flat against the bottom of the tub, and looked at the handle that

controlled the hot water valve. “Okay. Turn on,” he said, squinting, eyebrows set, jaw

working. He picked a hand out of the water and, coking back his elbow, curled it into a

knotted, rigid claw. He pointed two arched fingers at the faucet. “Go,” strained, through

gritted teeth, holding his breath now. The handle - and faucet - remained still. He felt his

heart in his temples, the blood pounding there from the strain. This was a good way to

pass out, sitting in a hot tub, holding your breath, straining all your muscles until the

veins in your neck bulged and your ears turned red. And still, the faucet would not turn

on.

Toby stopped, tears returning, and sank back into the tub.

Abstersion

The hot bath and the tears left him drained. He pulled on a pair of pants and fell

into bed, legs heavy and hair wet against the pillow. It came to him that this was the

feeling he’d been going for; this diminishment of spirit and utter collapse of physical

energy; if this was sick, he wanted nothing to do with it. Any of the day’s lingering light

had now vanished, and with only his reading light - “The Snake,” a coiled, flexible mini-

flashlight attached to the head of his bed - Toby flipped through a crime thriller he’d

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 74

been half-reading over the last week. The black letters seemed thrown aimlessly together

on the thin yellowing pages; the words, tonight, were without verse or substance, and

groaning, Toby flung the book across the room where it hit a wall and fell open-faced to

the floor. He turned his head right, facing the wall, and tried to sleep.

He hadn’t had success by the time his father, holding Toby’s book bag in one

hand and a newspaper in the other, came upstairs with the dogs. Toby figured that this is

what he had been waiting for, what he had wanted, really, because to isolate in times like

this was just feeding more fuel to whatever it was inside of you that had caught fire. And

for Toby, the thing which had been smoldering over the last few months had finally come

ablaze. So Toby smiled at his father, who was now standing over him, fixing his glasses

on his nose and tapping him on the head with the newspaper. “What goes, sonnyboy?”

His father was sixty but looked fifty. Still somewhat muscular - he swam every

day at East Beach, a rocky stretch of brown-sanded ocean that stretched a mile or so

across the elbow of Westport Point - he stood 5’8” or so, with tufts of untamable gray

hair and weathered, almost auburn skin. He didn’t look like an attorney and certainly

didn’t dress like one; he hadn’t changed from work today, and the beige corduroys and

shirt that read “100% Mud” were for him fairly typical attire. His beard was starting to

come in - he only shaved for trial - and the white hair, Toby noticed, had recently started

overtaking the black. “Hi, Pop,” Toby said.

“You took a bath?” A stem but somewhat pleasant look, a look that said what the

hell were you doing taking a bath and I think I could go for a bath right about now at the

same time.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 75

“Yeah.” Toby nodded at Daisy, who had been looking at him intent and black

eyed from the side of the bed. She jumped up and onto the bed, taking her spot at Toby’s

feet. Lilly, meanwhile, was busy making her nest in a comer of the room, circling and

circling, as if with each revolution encountering new territory for a possible nap. “Look,

Pop. Look at Lilly,” Toby said, starting to laugh now.

“Jesus,” his father said. “She’s pretty stupid, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Toby said. His father snorted.

“Your mom’s got dinner just about done,” he said, unfolding the newspaper and

creasing it back to a page somewhere in the middle. “I’ve got an article for you to read.

Here.” He handed the newspaper to Toby, pointing to a headline that read, New Bedford

Attorney Completes Second Courtroom Thriller. “I know that guy,” his father said.

“How’d you like an introduction? I could hook you up with him, we could have lunch or

something. You know, he could probably tell you a lot about writing novels and all that

stuff.”

Toby heard himself say, “That’s awesome. Heck yeah, that sounds great.”

“Good,” his father said. “I guess he’s already written one book, and it was like a

huge success around here. This is the type of thing...”

Toby watched his father’s lips move and nodded in the right places, but his mind

was now gone. He’d had enough for today, enough sensory input to last him the week,

probably, and for now, he wanted to just be. Not to think, just to breathe, to be a boy on

his bed, maybe with the top sheet pulled over him, looking at the chimney outside the

skylight. And though he liked that his father was here, standing over him, talking -

talking a lullaby, really, because now Toby was beginning to feel the strings that had

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 76

been keeping open his eyes sever, the mist of sleep beginning to roll over his weary mind

- Toby couldn’t help that he wanted to tell his father to leave, to just let him alone for the

night, that his mere presence had somehow put him at ease, at least to a certain extent,

and that now he was the only thing keeping him from the sorely needed sleep that he felt

coming like some midnight militia.

But sleep would have to be put on hold, because it was dinnertime - keep up

those familial relations, Toby, go to dinner, sit and eat and answer the questions when

you’re asked and raise some questions of your own, make them think that there’s nothing

wrong, nod and smile at your father when he tries to network you with one of his novelist

buddies even though it’s been months since you’ve even written anything and you’ve

stopped giving a shit anyway, because he doesn’t know that, Toby, he doesn’t know, he

has no idea...

Toby snapped to and his father was still talking, motioning with his hands,

pausing every now and then to adjust his glasses. “.. .so I told her so, and she says to me,

she says.. .you know what she said?”

“What?” Toby said, propping himself on an elbow and trying to look attentive,

involved, sane. His jaw was beginning to tremble and it was getting hard to keep his eyes

focused on his father’s eyes as he talked, because those eyes were so pure, so unknowing,

so good and decent. His father went on.

“So she said to me, she says - ” now with a high-pitched, nasal tone of voice,

Toby was pretty sure he was impersonating his secretary here, but he wasn’t sure, he

hadn’t caught the name of the woman in question, “Edward,” his father continued, “how

many times have I told you that I’m allergic to dust and dust mites are all over this thing,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 77

I can’t do this like it is.” Dropping the impersonation, an exasperated look about him,

shaking his head now, “Can you believe that? This woman was truly, completely nuts, I’d

say.”

“I’d say,” Toby agreed, rolling his eyes for emphasis. Maybe he’d missed a good

story. Maybe if he’d been able to read lips, maybe he would have been able to follow the

story then. “Completely nuts,” Toby said.

“Yeah, well, don’t tell your mother I told you that story.”

“I won’t.”

His ruffled a hand through Toby’s hair and brought his hand down to his cheek,

patted it a few times - like grandpa used to do, Toby thought. “You’re a good boy,” he

said. “Dinner should be done now, so I’ll see you down there?”

“Yeah, couple minutes.”

“Want me to leave the dogs?”

Toby nodded. “Sure.”

“Okay. See you downstairs.” His father turned and walked toward the door. Toby

looked at Daisy, who of course was looking back at him from the edge of the bed, her

muzzle stretched back in a comical frown, her little brow creased, sort of, as if to say,

Come on, Toby, sack up. So, heaving a breath, closing his eyes, Toby spoke.

“Pop?”

Toby opened his eyes and his father was turning now, an about face of mock

impatience, stamping down one foot mid-turn and then the other, arms folded across his

chest. “Yes?”

“Pop, I think that I need a psychiatrist.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 78

His father’s arms fell and the angles of his smirk melted into an even, tight-lipped

line. “What?” he said.

“I think I’m going crazy.”

“You do?”

“Yes. I do.” Toby felt awkward laying in his bed, like he couldn’t get his arms

and legs in the right position, like his posture was all wrong, but he couldn’t move from

the bed because here he was crying again, just a little, but to move would make it all

come out in a downpour. His father came back into the room, all of a sudden moving

gracefully - not usual for Pop, but he was surely capable of it - and with a skilled and

casual hand brushed aside Daisy, who plopped down onto the floor, miffed, and toddled

out the room and downstairs. He put a hand on Toby’s leg.

“What, do you feel depressed or something?”

“Oh God,” Toby said. “I don’t know.” This, the tears, his father’s hand on his leg,

all felt good. This was the right thing to do, and as Toby spoke, every word came out

quicker and more sincere than the last, and though he didn’t tell him about Hutch’s

nosebleed or what had happened today in the woods, he told about how it all made him

feel, how he was feeling, how sometimes thoughts got all stuck up in his mind, and his

father smiled and cracked an occasional joke the whole way through, which just made it

that much easier. By the end of it, he was Toby again, plain old Toby, and over dinner,

over Perogies, he recounted everything (minus the nosebleed dead birds delusions of

grandeur magical powers dreams of the dark man) to his mother, and it was her

professional opinion - she being a retired social worker herself - that yes, it was a good

idea that Toby get into some kind of therapy, and not to worry, because it was normal for

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 79

a boy his age to feel the way he was feeling, that Erik and, more recently, Cliff, had gone

through similar things themselves, and just don’t worry, Toby, you’re just getting into

puberty now, this is all completely, totally normal. You’re normal. A normal young man.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 3

Awakening

Negotiation

One thing that Kitty had retained throughout the entirety of her little makeover

was a fixed and indomitable distaste for all things dirty. For weeks she’d been somehow

coming to from under the black sheet of unconsciousness she now knew as sleep and

answering the door, keyed up, bewildered, and expecting Him, but would find instead a

sole Hispanic woman with an overloaded cart of fresh towels and rolls of toilet paper,

grinning foolish and spot-toothed, asking her if she wanted her room cleaned. Always the

same woman - Matilda, according to the name embroidered on her gray, soiled shirt -

and always somewhere around 10:30 in the morning, which was reasonable enough but

for Kitty not reasonable at all, because for Kitty, 10:30 in the morning was the middle of

the night. Slamming the door on Matilda, the feeling would always swarm in her, this

desire to punish, to penalize the woman - but preservation was key, and Kitty was a

smart girl; she knew not to shit where she ate. But the fact remained that she had had to

get up every single night (morning) to answer the door and tell Matilda no, no, I don’t

want my room cleaned right now, right now I’m actually sleeping, thank you, because

Matilda had a master key, and if Kitty didn’t get up to tell her no, Matilda would simply

let herself in. God knows what this might have led to; God knows what Kitty looked like

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 81

while she slept now, what throws of mutation or convulsion her body might be in, and

what Kitty did not need was for Matilda to freak and alert the manager and the manager

to freak and alert the police. Her Dark Man would not be impressed by such

incompetence, not at all.

But after a month having subsisted in a small, dark room, taking nearly all of her

meals on the bed or the small, lacquered table next to it, cleaning herself in the neon glow

of the claustrophobic bathroom, and occasionally bleeding all over the carpet (always

cleaning it up immediately - or as soon as she could, anyway - but the carpet

nevertheless gaining darkened trapezoidal- and quadrilateral-shaped stains), she had had

enough of the filth. The dishes had begun to pile up, not to mention stink (only after a

few weeks had it occurred to her to begin washing them in the tub), her towels seemed

always to be wet, and after using them Kitty now noticed a filmy residue that lingered on

her skin for hours after, and the off-white carpet (more off than white now) was in

desperate need of a few gallons of bleach. Growing up, she’d always kept a clean room;

she wasn’t fanatical about it or anything, but she remembered times when she’d go into

her brother’s room to borrow a book or just to talk, and the state of shambles her brother

kept as if morally would just disgust her.

She would have cleaned the room herself, but she didn’t have the supplies that

were called for in order to really make the place shine. For a while she continued to

tolerate the mess, walking with her hands as blinders to the bathroom as soon as she

woke and, after showering and getting herself together for the night, slipping directly

from the bathroom and out the door. When she felt up to it - that is, sitting among the

herd and listening to their sick chatter and tar-laden lungs wheeze and their manicured

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 82

nails thrum against the tops of tables - she’d have dinner out. But more often than not,

doing her thing - making that cash - was all she could take, and when she woke one day

to the sight of fruit flies setting down and lifting off from the plate of yesterday’s

hamburger and potato salad, she’d decided it was time to address the problem.

Her first instinct had been, in order to avoid letting the hotel staff breach the

refuge of her room, to attempt to make it all just go away herself. She hadn’t been

confident that she’d be able to do it, but she’d been developing lately at such a rapid pace

that she’d said to hell with it. She had set today as the day to give it a try - not such a

great idea, it had turned out; it had been a protracted and backbreaking night - and, after

arriving to her room bone-tired and only wanting to fall into bed and close her eyes, she

instead pushed aside some mess and sat herself in the middle of the room, concentrating,

getting a good float going (this was a relatively new trick, and she’d been able to get

herself six or seven inches off the ground), and pictured the dishes, the forks crusted over

with dried Shepard’s Pie, the glasses with stained rims, and she pictured the bathroom

floor and the crust and hair collected around the rim and at the base of the toilet, and she

pictured the blood, where it had pooled on one of her pillows while she was sleeping and

now lay hidden in the closet where she kept her winter coat, and, combing her hands

through her hair, front to back, down her neck to her back, then again and again, making

a meditation of it, letting it purge all thoughts but the dirt, the filth, she said, “Disappear.”

She felt the blood coming up her throat and into her nose, warm and somehow also

bubbly-cold, and when her eyes flew open it seemed that the walls of the room sparkled,

contracting, almost, like a house of cards teetering under too much weight, and the dishes

and dirty towels and the marks on the carpet flickered, too. But now she was drifting

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 83

slowly back to the floor, and at once the walls regained their substance and everything

else did as well, losing the current with which they were glimmering with a red-blinking

set of sparks across her line of vision and a sucking, belching sound, like a final amount

of water tearing down some huge drain. She licked the blood from her lips - the blood

was no longer a big deal; He had told her so in a dream - and got up, shaking a bit

because she had tried hard that time, that time it had hurt a little, and, as usual, she

walked to the bathroom to look at her eyes. No whites were visible now; coated like oil in

a pan, her eyes were brimming with blood - or something red, anyway - and this, like the

nosebleeds, she had begun to enjoy. It was the mark of something wonderful that had

been and still was happening to her. Her transformation; no; her ripening.

It didn’t matter that she hadn’t been able to rid her room of the grime through her

new abilities; she hadn’t set herself up to think that she could. Making things disappear

altogether, after all, was something so far-fetched...something not having at all to do

with the complete mastery of her own facilities, something so external, so out of the

question. Maybe He could do it, probably He could do it. But not Kitty. It had been worth

a shot, though, and she had come close, at least to a certain extent. She’d certainly had

the room buzzing for a moment there, hadn’t she? The walls kind of caving in on

themselves, the plates and dishes vibrating to the point where she could almost hear them

ringing? Yes, she’d done a good job with it.

But there was still the state of her room to deal with. Not bothering to wipe the

blood from her mouth and chin, she left the bathroom and crawled into bed, setting a few

pillows against the bed’s headboard and melting into it - so tired now, just wanting to

turn on the TV and drift off to its prattle, but no, she had decided to take care of the room

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 84

thing tonight (today) and that’s how it would go down, right now, because enough was

enough. Flipping through a boundless anthology of channels - the sign outside the hotel

advertised 10 different HBO’s, but she had found four of them weren’t even in English -

she considered checking into another room, possibly even another hotel, but quickly

dismissed the idea; this would involve moving all of her things, and she’d set up pretty

nicely here; she felt settled here, like it was home. And she didn’t want to deal with the

question, “What’s wrong with the room you’re in now?” What do you tell someone?

Sorry, sir, I bled all over the carpet after I tried some new mind-tricks and now I need

another room, one without the bloody carpet, thanks. Of course, if anyone got too

interested in her and her strange case she could simply bend him, like she’d done so long

ago to that poor room service schmuck, the one with the bad combover and drifty eyes,

but she’d made the decision to leave the staff here alone, that to meddle too much with

their inner workings may give rise to suspicions, questions, and eventual

investigation...again, something that He had warned her to avoid at all costs. Keep low,

Kitty, He’d told her in a dream. Be discrete, and keep bringing in that cash, baby, cause

you and me, we ’re gonna paint the town then paint each other. But ‘till I get there, you

just gotta keep low. And one thing Kitty had learned was that when He speaks, you damn

well listen.

So here was her dilemma. She needed her sleep, she didn’t need Him to tell her

that, so letting the maid come in every day and rummage around while she was knocked

off was a definite no. But maybe, she thought, turning off the television and sitting up,

maybe once a week wouldn’t be so bad. Get the maids in here once a week, skip town for

a few hours while they worked on the room. Sure, she’d have to take a few things with

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 85

her - the money, for one, can’t trust a maid with all that money in a duffle bag just

waiting to get snatched up under the bed, and of course, she’d have to take the teeth, there

was no question about that, talk about raising questions! - but she thought it was doable.

That way, she’d be losing sleep, but only once a week compared to the few minutes every

day when Matilda came knocking and the half-hour or so it took to edge back into

slumber. Now that she thought about it, it was a fair trade off, a small sacrifice for a clean

room, and she cursed herself for not thinking of it a long time ago. She picked up the

phone and dialed zero.

The voice came tinny and bored, “Apache Springs Comfort, this is Danny.”

“Hi Danny,” Kitty said, lighting a cigarette and dragging deep. “How’s life?”

A pause. Then, “Uh, can I help you?”

“Oh yeah, I think you can. First off, my room’s a disaster. Disgusting.”

“Okay, just a second.” Another pause, ruffling from the other line. Sounded like

Danny was going through some papers. “Room 423?” he said, not really a question, more

like filler, something to keep her patient while he did whatever he did downstairs at the

desk in the hotel’s shitty little lobby. Kitty didn’t respond; only dragged again on her

cigarette. Patience was no longer something that mattered to her; she was a woman of

now, who demanded and accepted immediate consideration; if she wasn’t given it, there

would be problems. Simple as that. She had no need for patience, not anymore. Patience

was for suckers, for the untalented. Danny’s voice came from the other line, confidant

now, but still bored, “Okay, Miss. H , I’ve arranged for the maids to come to your

room as soon as they’re done on the one they’re doing right now, so - ”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 86

“Nope,” Kitty said. She wondered, if Danny became a problem, if she could bend

him over the phone. If the situation presented itself, it may be worth breaking her little

rule of letting the hotel staff alone to try. Just this once, just to see if she could do it.

“Listen, Danny, you sound like a pretty levelheaded guy.”

Danny cleared his throat. “Uh - ”

“So, anyway, I’m not sure if this is possible, or anything,” using her sexy Kitty

voice now, her Kitten voice, “but I just work a night job, you know? So I sleep during the

day, pretty much all day, you know? You know how long I’ve been staying here?”

“Uh,” Danny said, and Kitty heard the papers ruffling again, followed by the

clicking of a computer keyboard.

“Never mind, Danny. Don’t worry about it. The point is, I’ve been here a while,

and since I work this night job, every time the maids have come I’ve been sleeping, you

know?”

“Yeah,” Danny said. “That sucks, I hear you.” He didn’t sound bored anymore.

Kitty could picture him downstairs: mid-twenties, maybe some acne still hanging around

from the teenage years, hair uncombed and flaky with dandruff. Danny probably drifted

through high school with straight C’s - she remembered the type, the guys who wouldn’t

even look at you because they knew that you were way out of their league, so far

separated from goings on that even they recognized themselves as the ghosts that they

were, floating along the hallways with these mystified, almost comatose expressions.

Backups, extras in the life-play, like the utter lack of verve and animation simply came

second nature to them; like they were bom into it. So when you spent the time to talk to

them for five minutes in biology lab, they got these stars in their eyes and lead in their

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 87

peckers like they’d just won the lottery, like they were in the midst of a particularly vivid

early-morning wet dream but didn’t give a fuck, only wanting to ride it out, see it to its

finish. He probably hated his job, hated his parents (who he undoubtedly still lived with)

and now she was leveling with him, talking to him like he was a real person, and it was

just like biology lab all over again. This, she thought, was how she’d get him; some men

- most men - didn’t even need to be bent. She would have felt bad for him, but sympathy

was another thing she had no need for anymore. “Your room must be pretty dirty by now

I guess, huh?” he said. Probably with the phone set between his shoulder and cheek now,

maybe drumming his fingers dreamily on the desk.

“Oh, so gross, Danny.” Danny laughed, snorting, an ugly laugh, more like a bray.

He liked it when she used his name, probably. “Yeah, pretty gross,” she said. “Don’t

laugh!” She was really playing it up now. Oh, she had him good.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said.

Stubbing out her cigarette onto an old dish of spaghetti, she lay back on the bed,

falling into a pillow, and remembered how tired she was. Time to wrap this thing up.

“Okay, so anyway, I’m wondering if I can arrange, like, I don’t know, maybe the maids

can come in once a week and clean the hell out of my room, you know? I mean, not just,

like, doing the bed sheets or whatever, but really cleaning the whole thing, top to

bottom.”

“Hmm,” Danny said. “I don’t know, usually they’re supposed to do every room

every day. You know, unless a customer - er, a guest - doesn’t want them to do it that

day.” Danny’s voice was approaching flat again; she’d gotten down to business too fast,

probably. Bring him back up, Kitty. Give him something to think about. Get him on your

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 88

side, no matter what. She didn’t want to have to bend him, but pretty soon, if this didn’t

work out, she would. Or try, anyway - over the phone, that was something she hadn’t

done yet.

“Oh, crap,” she said. “Like, when I take a shower, I mean, it’s so dirty. I can’t

enjoy it, not the way it’s so dirty. I like taking showers, Danny. Don’t you like to be

clean, you know? Take a good, hot shower?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Showers are great.” Mission accomplished; he was back on

her team. All the enthusiasm was back in his voice. She could almost hear him sweating.

Don’t laugh, Kitty. Not now, when you’ve almost got him.

“So what do you think?” she said. “I mean, I know you’re not the manager or

anything...”

“Actually, I’m the assistant manager. So yeah, I guess I could arrange something,

if I wanted to.”

“Are you serious?” she said.

“Sure.”

“Well, what do you think, Danny?”

“How messy is the room?”

“Filthy,” she said.

“Mmm.”

“Yeah.”

“How’s Wednesdays sound?” he said.

“Wednesdays,” she said, eyelids so sweet so heavy, beginning to drift now, she’d

done it without bending him. “Wednesdays are fine.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 89

Riding Dreary

Wednesday morning, around eight-thirty. Another long night. So incredibly tired.

Purse heavy with cash. Left-breast shirt pocket, small and meant only for decoration,

clinking with teeth. She’d collected four of them tonight; this tied her record.

She walked into the lobby, empty save for the concierge, an enormous specimen

who was currently picking a zit at the front desk. She wondered, briefly, if this was her

Danny. She could smell him; he was dying. He looked young for cancer, but this was the

cancer smell. She’d come to know it.

Oh, it had been a long night.

Once in the elevator, she pushed the button for the fourth floor and removed her

heels, bracing herself against a wall as she did so lest she fall on her ass. She throbbed,

the whole sum of her, and had half a mind to lock the door of the room, brace it with a

chair, and sleep until dark. But she couldn’t. Today was cleaning day. Today, she had to

beat it for a few hours - 9:30 until noon, to be precise - and if she wanted to shower and

collect her necessaries before she left, she’d have to hurry.

With a chime the elevator door opened, and stepping out, heels dangling in one

hand and her purse in the other, she made her way silently to the room. It had been the

holiday season when she’d first checked in to the Apache Springs Comfort, and the place

had actually been bustling; now, it was seldom that she saw another guest in the lobby or

on the her way to her room. It was peaceful now, a great spot to sleep away the day. A

hidden gem among the cold and lost hills of wild Colorado.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 90

She unlocked the door and slipped inside. The tepid coolness of the room

embraced her. She glanced at the clock radio on the bedstand. 8:48. She had a little over

half an hour to shower and get her shit and be out.

She stripped, tossing her clothes on the bed - let the maids take care of them -

and glided into the bathroom. She turned on the shower, thought a minute, and then

flipped the temperature dial from hot to cold. This was not to be a relaxing shower; this

was to get her ready for more walking. She’d sleep at noon. Until then, she needed to

remain aware, especially carrying around a bag filled with close to a hundred thousand

dollars in cash.

The water removed from her her breath, tiny needles pricking her skin, and

gasping, almost retching, she reached for the soap. Wash hard and wash fast, Kitty;

you’re down to a handful of minutes. As it were, the minutes blinked by. No time and no

rest and no peace, not now.

Stepping out of the shower, she wondered why she just hadn’t bent old Danny

yesterday, bent him good and hard, crippled his insides and crushed his conscious - why

she hadn’t, in fact, bent the whole lot of them here at Apache Springs Comfort, let them

work around her, have them clean this place up and down then manicure her toes and

feed her fucking caviar until she fell asleep. Why she hadn’t bent this entire miserable

fucking town, this shit town in these shit mountains in the middle of shit-nowhere. Bend

‘em all, watch ‘em writhe, set ‘em on fire and head east. That’s where he wanted her

anyway, wasn’t it? So why was she putting herself up in this fucking dump? Why not a

penthouse at the Four Seasons in LA, maybe take a day off now and then to catch a

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 91

premier movie or skip town for a weekend in Vegas? Because she had to keep low.

That’s all he ever told her; to keep low. Well, she was plenty low, all right.

She tugged on a pair of jeans, whatever energy that had been supplied to her by

the shower now retreating to wherever it had come from. Gravity pulled at her eyelids

and the comers of her mouth. She sucked at her lips - chapped - and reached under the

bed. Opened the bag, transferred the money from purse to bag, all automated by now, so

familiar to her; she’d stopped counting the cash weeks ago. Stacks of leafy green paper

going from one bag to another. Nothing. Nothing at all.

The clock read 9:22. She could be sleeping right now.

She went to the closet and found a shirt that smelled all right. She pulled it on,

followed by her winter parka, and reached a hand to the top shelf, where she kept a few

bags filled with things she’d never got around to unpacking. She felt around for a while

and found what she was looking for. It chinked and clinked as she brought it out - a

washed-out jar of Mama Ferrell’s Alfredo Sauce that she used to hold the teeth - and put

it in the bag along with the cash. She paused, then walked over to the bed, picked up the

shirt she’d stripped off earlier, dug two fingers into the breast pocket and produced the

four teeth, all molars - she liked the big ones, there was a certain structural integrity to

them that the front teeth lacked - placed them in the jar with the rest of the teeth - must

be a hundred of them by now, she thought - and zipped the bag shut. She hoisted the

strap over her shoulder, feeling the weight of it against her hip, and, grabbing her keys

from the nightstand, left the room.

Walking through the Lobby, Kitty noticed that her fat concierge was gone,

replaced now by a younger looking guy, late-twenties, acne scars like cracked earth

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 92

scattered over his face. He grinned when he saw Kitty, starved eyes, smile all teeth; it

was Danny, Kitty was sure of it. And he knew it was her. The woman with the messy

room; the woman who enjoyed her long, hot showers. She felt sick. She wasn’t supposed

to be one for compromise. Compromise no longer existed. Kitty bent her head and

continued out the doors into the diffused sunshine of a Colorado late-winter day.

She took a lungful of the cold air and began almost instantly to feel better. The air

in that hotel - it was cracker-stale, salty, almost, sterilized by ammonia and bleach and

the comings and goings of the blank, cheerless masses glazed over by routine. She could

smell it all so well; everything had its own smell now, like a tag, and she thanked Him for

it. She owed him so much, and she knew what He wanted, and she would gladly give it to

Him. Soon, Kitty. Soon.

At least the day smells nice, she thought, starting down the cracked concrete of

the Apache Springs Comfort’s very own parking lot. For all of its shortcomings - and

there were a lot of them, starting with the people who inhabited it - Apache Springs,

Colorado was an unassuming, if not sweet town. To the north and west hovered the

Rocky mountains, the highest reaches of them poking through the clouds like upside-

down ice-cream cones, the brown of the mountaintops and the puffy white of the clouds

so sharp against each other, such contrast, and the blue of the sky outshining everything,

fucking endless, that sky, no boundaries to it, just on and on and perpetual and deep like

the ocean, only deeper.

To the east - the way she was headed now, a thumb cocked to the highway and a

cotton hat pulled down tight over her head so her hair came out in tufts, wild and brown

with careless, easy curls - was, for lack of a better term, Apache Springs’s business

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 93

district, a shabby and not-quite-charming strip of cheap eateries and chain restaurants,

guitar shops, cell phone outfitters, video stores, secondhand bookshops, the occasional

massage parlor (Kitty knew what went on in those places, she could see it in their sway as

men walked in and smell it on them as they walked out), and countless gas stations, many

of which advertised in black, uneven lettering, We now sell beer on Sundays! Starting at

noon! And east, of course, was the way Kitty was headed today, because to the west was

nothing, only the mountains, and south would take her along a plain that probably

stretched hundreds of miles, a dark-yellow stain on the map which led the to lighter-

yellow stain of New Mexico, and sure, if she went to to New Mexico and then moved

West to Nevada or California, she’d probably be a lot more productive, a lot happier, too,

but for now, unfortunately, it was Apache Springs. Had to be Apache Springs. He’d said

so. So east to town it would be. May as well get some work done while she had time to

kill.

Her legs on the verge of mutiny, Kitty bent the first guy she saw, an black-

bearded older man driving a black Dodge pickup with a pine tree air-freshener hanging

from the rearview. The car, probably doing fifty, shook as it wailed to a halt, tires fixed

and trembling and leaving short, thick skidmarks against the blacktop. As Kitty

approached the driver’s side, the window rolled down and old-guy stuck out a hand, as if

in salutation, but the arm at once bent over the lip of the window and plunked down

against the side of the Dodge’s rusting door, dangling, lifeless, and observing the

considerable patch of calluses spread out across the man’s palm, Kitty knew that he

would not do for today’s catch, that this man was worth nothing to her but a quick ride

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 94

into town. He had a poor look about him, a check-to-table dissimilarity that, as rough as it

was, had an admitted elegance to it.

She got in the passenger side and he shifted the truck into gear, movements dulled

and twitching, his hand around the gearshift unfamiliar yet vivacious, like he’d

rediscovered some purpose to the actions of driving and now owned a distinct sympathy

he’d overlooked for years of operating what was really an extremely complex machine.

His eyes were on the road, locked, but Kitty felt him feeling the truck, some part of him

knowing and loving what was happening to him, and she wondered at that, how it was to

be bent, whether it hurt or actually provided the party with some autonomy, some

frankness of the mind’s real purpose and utter nakedness, like a child being carried to bed

or a lover in the pitches of a peaking climax. To just let yourself go completely - whether

you like it or not, or course, because youare being bent - was the one thing Kitty was not

capable of; her actions had purpose, always carefully crafted and maintained by the

dictation of Him, and though she had some liberty regarding how and when she acted -

some room to move - she was pointed incontrovertibly in a fixed direction. But not like a

puppet - no, she liked this, all of this; wanted it; the wind in her hair and not caring

whether it was hot or cold out because it didn’t really mean anything anymore, the

temperature of things, these peripheral measurements that used to mean so much, the

smell of the Dodge’s exhaust accosting her, everything becoming so available to her, just

there, in her hip pocket, accessible, acquiescent, soft, frail at the tips of her fingers. As

nasty or fine as she wanted to be. All of it twisting and bending for her.

A landscape of browns and whites and hard greens became the distended

backdrop for her to think, with the trees, unsubstantial now in the wintertime, hanging

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 95

dead and weighted with snow over the two-lane highway, and as old-guy (Gus, his name

is Gus) started to whistle, with his automaton-tongue clicking here and there for

emphasis, for the rhythm of her thoughts, she realized how good life was. He was

whistling Daisy, her favorite song of a long time ago, and Jesus she was tired; she could

knock off right there, keep old Gus on autopilot and get a few hours of sleep right here,

that would be nice. The wind whipping through her hair and tucking right up into her hat,

her scalp tingling with the joy of bending Gus, good old Gus with the pine tree air-

freshener hanging from his rearview mirror, smells like chemicals but Gus doesn’t know

that and never will. Good old Gus. Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true. I ’m half

crazy, all for the love o f you. Such a sweet song, and Gus was one of those guys who can

just whistle, wow, must have some good lips to whistle like that. A girl could fall asleep

to a guy whistling like that...

She had only been dozing a minute or so when she felt the velvety glide of tires

on blacktop turn into the rumble of off-road trucking. Startled, she forced her drooping

eyes open, and sure enough, the truck was lumbering half-off the road, favoring the

breakdown lane in a mild but disconcerting angle. Teetering, swaying as if with the

breeze, left and right, on and off the grassy embankment. Ten feet to the right, trees flew

by, drawing closer now; now, the wheels had left the blacktop altogether, and as the truck

bumped and held it’s course, Kitty said, “Gus.” She felt the weight of adrenaline against

her abdomen and she turned to him, meaning to bend him until she couldn’t take it back,

to make him stop the truck and then burst his eyes inside his sockets, but Gus, though still

holding the steering wheel in one tightened fist and the gearshift in the other, was as gone

from the shell of his body as the moon was from the daytime sky. There was simply

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 96

nothing left of him. His eyes bulged, hanging just so, suspended from the hollows of his

head like a roller coaster gone off its tracks; staring vacantly at the road in front of them.

His jaw hung slack, pink froth gathering at the comers of his mouth. His hair had gone

completely white.

The trees were drawing ever closer and the truck was losing none of its speed -

Gus’s foot was undoubtedly fixed like the rest of his body, rigid and unyielding. It was

most likely this very stringency that had saved the truck from crashing into the trees or an

oncoming car in the first place. Thank you god that he didn’t just pass out at the wheel,

because I was sleeping, I wasn’t sharp, I need to stay sharp, but Gus stayed sharp for me,

thanks, Gus, you old fucker. Kitty smiled as she closed her eyes, almost frantic now but

not quite, picturing Gus’s foot, let’s get some details now Kitty, but quickly: small foot,

he has small features, booted, cheap-imitation leather, steel-toed work boot, move, now,

move left, get off that accelerator...

The car lurched and began to decelerate, a straight enough course now, and Kitty

opened her eyes; the trees were still a few feet away, and yes, the car was coming to a

halt, and, peering over the gear shift and down to where Gus’s feet were, she saw that

she’d not only removed Gus’s foot from the gas but broken it off entirely. The boot - it

actually looked like real leather, but you could never tell - was bent off at a nauseating

angle from his right leg, foot presumably inside it, because blood was now spraying

against the rubber foot-mat and making a pool in the crease between the floor and the

door. A fragment of bone jutted branch-like from his tom pant-leg.

As the truck came to its final rest, Kitty leaned back and lit a cigarette. This had

almost been a catastrophe; if the car had struck one of the old, thick trees that lined the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 97

highway, going as fast as it was, she’d have been killed. Can’t bend a tree when you’re

doing fifty and headed right for it. But she was completely at ease. She’d taken hold of

the situation - a situation she hadn’t predicted - and she’d done what had to be done. Just

like that. Broke off Gus’s foot at the ankle and sat back to enjoy the remainder of the ride.

Poise. The French called it sang-froid. We Americans like to call it nerves-of-fucking-

steel.

Smiling wide - the nap had been refreshing, as short and with as quick a finish as

it had been - she looked over at her late driver. “So, Gus, what’s with the white hair?”

Gus smiled at the road, eyes like frozen teardrops drooping over his eyelashes.

“Hmm,” Kitty said, opening the passenger door, grabbing her bag, getting out.

They’d come to a halt almost smack in the middle of the embankment, and at the top of a

hill no less - a little further and stopping would have been a much bigger problem.

Walking around the front of the truck, Kitty stretched - wow, that sleep had done her

good - and looked at the town, a mile or so away down the road, cars just visible and in

late-morning transit. Puffs of smoke from the paper mill just beyond the town’s border.

From here to town, the road retained a downward grade, easy hiking, and pleasant, really,

with the flanking evergreens and the occasional hawk on the wing for food. She could

walk it from here. She had the energy now.

First, though, she wanted a look at her friend Gus. Something had happened back

there - something she hadn’t done on purpose — and she was interested. She opened the

driver-side door and blood poured out, first in a flood then trickling out slowly, running

the length of and hanging in crimson drips from the side of the truck. She chose not to

look at his foot - grisly, after all, was grisly - and settled instead on his face. His

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 98

expression, now that she paid it attention, was frightened, like he’d seen something

horrible and just tensed up and died. And his hair had gone white. You heard about it in

campfire stories, read about it in Reader’s Digest, but holy shit if it didn’t really happen.

His beard was only peppered now with the black hue that had been actually striking when

he’d first picked her up. Almost all white. Even his eyebrows had turned white.

She laid a hand on his cheek - still warm - then flicked one of his eyeballs,

disturbing it from its position and recoiling as it dropped lower on his cheek, suspended

by surprisingly thin ligaments and other strange, thread-like chords. “What happened to

you?” she said. She made to go for his wallet but stopped, thought better of it. She didn’t

want this to look like a robbery. She had to leave them alive when she robbed them - in

fact, she hadn’t killed anyone yet, not really - and she wasn’t about to ruin all of this

work for a few dollars from a guy who probably didn’t clear a thousand dollars a month.

She closed the door, leaving Gus to stare at the road (only with one eye now; the other

eye appeared as if it were looking down - in appropriate horror - at his mangled right

foot), and started towards town.

As far as she could tell, it had happened because she’d fallen asleep. She’d had a

good, strong hold on him, totally in control of the bend, not meaning to do him any harm

at all, not even fucking with his thoughts or anything; he’d just been a driver. But then

she’d fallen asleep. And from the look of Gus’s hair, and from that expression on his

face, Kitty figured that wherever she went when she was sleeping - well, Gus had

probably gone with her. Only he hadn’t come back.

She wondered what he’d seen while he was there, because hell if she could

remember.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 99

Apache Springs, Part 1

Her first instinct was to try her hand at The Red Keg, Apache Springs’s prominent

watering hole, because this is where she’d spent most of her time finding people to bend.

At first, when it had all started, she’d found it easier to bend people who’d been drinking;

so much easier to get into their heads. They were like tired fighters, like they’d gone 12

rounds and were just so much more open to whatever it was that you wanted to spring on

them. Lately, however, as she’d matured - grown, blossomed, whatever - it was just as

easy to bend anyone, whether they’d been drinking or not, and it was her guess that at

this time of day The Red Keg wouldn’t be too lively. And whoever was there probably

wouldn’t be worth their weight in shit. Guys like Gus, probably. Hell, maybe he’d been

headed there himself. Before.

So on the threshold of town, as the woods began to give way to shabby one-level

houses and nameless shops with wood-carved Indians or second-hand riding mowers

placed indiscriminately outside their grimy windows, Kitty chose not to turn down

Archer Court, which led to the the ‘Keg, and instead continued down the highway to

where Apache Springs really began to flourish. Here was a McDonalds, high reds and

yellows under a thatched brown roof, vacant “Playland” caged out front like a forgotten,

elaborate kennel, and there a Radio Shack, Help Wanted painted in red letters on the

window, the perpetual turnover of employees apparently necessitating an eternal plea for

work. In all her time at Apache Springs, she’d never ventured this far into town, at least

not on foot. The Red Keg had just been too easy to neglect.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 100

She stopped when the road ended its downward incline and started back up to the

woods and paper mill beyond. She was probably three quarters into town, and her feet

had started talking again. Her legs were warm despite the cold, and she could feel her

shirt beginning to dampen at the armpits. Hungry and tired. Sick of this now. This town

had nothing to offer, just repeating itself like a record skipping over a significant patch of

music, a little variety interspersed but in the end just the same thirty seconds of verse and

guitar licks. It chipped at you, this reverberation of space and street and shops.

She stood on the sidewalk, the bag of cash strung now over her shoulder and

across her chest, strap chafing her neck, wind burning her eyes, and the sun - it had been

so long since she’d seen the sun at this height, and she found that she didn’t appreciate it

like she used to, found that it was actually obnoxious, not as subtle as the moon, not as

refined. Where the fuck was she in this town? What was she doing right now? And what

time was it already?

She turned back and began to hike up the slope of the highway, adjusting the strap

of the bag and concentrating on her feet, lifting them and placing them down on the

cracked sidewalk one after another, and there, to the left, was a bank, the clock jutting out

from its brick wall like an amputated appendage, stumpy and abrupt and rounded on one

side. It was 9:59, and Kitty wondered how it was possible that only a half-hour had

passed since she’d left her room. She stopped and turned into the bank.

It was a dusky alcove, the bank, tall and narrow, rafters high up, high windows,

dark wooden walls scratched in places from years of wear; lamps hung low from the

ceilings, green-shaded glass with etchings of antelope and bobcats at play carved into

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 101

them, all giving off low light, yellowy gold and mellow, soft on the hardwood floors. A

dry heat from the antiquated heating vents that made Kitty want to cough.

The place was practically empty. No guard that she could see, two tellers, both

women, one of them assisting an elderly customer, a woman as well, and an additional

woman sitting on a bench near the exit with her purse in her lap, looking down at her

hands, which were folded over the purse. Sure, cameras everywhere, but she could handle

those. She could do this. She was ready for this.

She’d known that there was a bank in town the day she’d arrived in Apache

Springs. She’d seen it out the window of the bus, half-nodding off, and had perked up for

a moment, thought, Maybe I ’ll see the inside of that bank, maybe get familiar with it. It

had been a confusing thought - she’d had no idea, then, what she was doing, why she’d

felt the need to pack her bags in the middle of a late autumn night and just ditch, screw

the family and the obligations and the summer job and all of that, just hitch it down to the

bus station and let fly - but it had also been a warm thought, something glittering among

the dull, what-the-hell-am-I-doing-am-I-going-crazy thoughts, because it had some sense

of order to it, a purpose, an outward rationale that she couldn’t quite wrap her mind

around. And now here she was, standing in the lobby, weeks, months later, Kitty now, no

longer K , drastically different and just terribly shapely and miles smarter than she’d

ever thought possible. Evolved, motherfucker. Right on. Rob that bank.

Yes, I’m going to rob this bank.

First, I’ll take out those security cameras.

She removed her jacket and placed it on a hook near the door. This was going to

get messy.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 102

Thinking now of the cameras, looking at them, hearing the lenses crack, the

echoing miniature shatters of telescopic lenses, like cereal when you add the milk, like

stepping on a particularly engorged mosquito. Thinking of the tapes in the back room,

which of course held images of her, Kitty, standing, breathing near the doorway, five-foot

whatever with her cap pulled down over her hair and her parka buttoned up halfway, her

shirt flayed open too, at the chest, her breasts curved into the material of her shirt,

corduroys set low on her hips, sexy Kitty, so sexy but for the blood now starting its

familiar course down her chin, sexy but for her eyes pooling with blood (like the cab of

Gus’s truck), sexy but for the black that seemed, now, if one were to really focus those

cameras - and if the cameras were still working - to work and hum and crackle around

her like a translucent electric shroud. Sexy Kitty broke the cameras and then broke the

tapes in their slots in the room over, VCRs spitting reels of tape, fizzling and buzzing,

sending sparks from the metallic tongues that plugged them into the wall.

Now, I’ll take out the patrons.

First the woman on the bench, who was now staring at her, and with due reason;

Kitty was probably quite a spectacle, standing eyes-shut with a duffle bag slung like a

rifle across her back, bleeding from the nose, fat drops staining the hardwood floor of the

bank, drip, drip. Kitty got in her mind efficiently and mercifully, let her just slip into

sleep, you won’t remember at all, woman (Helen), you’ll remember sitting on the bench

and then you felt faint, you hadn’t had breakfast this morning, had you? No, you hadn’t.

Helen collapsed, hitting her head on the oak armrest; the noise like a mallet driving

lightly into a melon, squishy, wet, whoops. The other woman turned, a pen in one hand,

slip of paper in the other, turned to Helen who’d fallen and cracked her skull on the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 103

armrest of the oak bench, starting toward her to help, hey, not so fast, woman (Gretchen).

Gretchen stopped - whoo, the blood was coming out now, streaming steadily so Kitty

could taste it, metallic and hot - and the pen fell from her hand, then the slip of paper,

slowly to the floor, drifting, featherlike, dreamily, and one of the tellers said, “Excuse

me,” and why don’t you just sit down, Gretchen, there’s a good spot, right where you are.

Gretchen sat, bewildered, her face a sheet of paper, pale, blank, but tight, complacent.

Perfectly happy sitting there.

Now, the tellers.

Hey, you, Mrs.Excuse me, time for a bathroom break. Ooh, you’re a tough nut to

crack, you’ve got some walls, don’t you? Daddy saw to that, I guess - Rachael, is it?

Daddy was nasty to you when you were little, wasn’t he? Taught you some tricks he’d

learned back in the war, didn’t he? After the lights were out, after mommy was sleeping.

I’ll tell you what, you go take your bathroom break and I’ll see to it that you’ve got the

motive to go and give him back a little. Few weeks from now, you’ll take off a week,

you’ll go back to him, see him back in Tulsa, take a rock hammer to his skull. I’m giving

this to you as a gift. You should thank me. (Blood thumping out, pulsing like her

heartbeat, nothing to get nervous about, but she was pushing it, gotta remember not to get

caught up in it, just do what you’ve got to do...) Rachael made her way across the row of

mostly-closed teller desks and exited the room through a back door that Kitty hadn’t

noticed when she’d entered the bank. So that was the bathroom, not the safe. Where was

the safe in this place? Kitty looked over, left; the second teller was shaking, her head

unstable on her neck, jerking, and now that Kitty focused on her, she knew that there had

been an accident; Justine (friends called her Jussie) had pissed her pants. Jussie’s mouth

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 104

opened, an “Oh,” a “what,” a fart, now her bowels coming loose, she’d completed the

cycle. Kitty frowned, gave her a twist, a bend, and, walking around Gretchen (still sitting,

gaping at the pen, which she’d apparently retrieved in her time on the floor) made her

way to the back of the bank, where Rachael had previously entered the bathroom. A

second door flanked the one Rachael had chosen, so, bending Jussie a little more to make

her lock the front door (always covered her ass, no matter what), Kitty flung open the

door, using her hand and not her mind, because, despite what He’d told her, all the blood

was starting to cause her a little worry. And indeed, there was the safe, a small thing built

into the wall - this place certainly didn’t have safety deposit boxes, but no worry, Kitty

was only interested in cash - behind a desk topped with piles of papers. The light in the

room was off, and Kitty flipped the switch for Jussie, who she called - beckoning her,

come here, Jessie, now, I need you for a minute - and she floated into the room, a

stinking load in her pants - disgusting - and a multitude of keys jingling in one hand by

her side, and Kitty frowned, because, searching Jussie, it became evident that she didn’t

have the combination to the lock. Kitty couldn’t picture Rachael’s face, couldn’t get a

grip on her, so, leaving Jussie standing by the safe, she left the room and entered the

bathroom, where she found Rachael sitting on the toilet, skirt around her ankles, one hand

on the toilet paper and the other to her temple, rubbing there, as if nursing a bad

headache. “Shit,” Kitty said, because now that she could picture her, now that she could

bend her, she found that Rachael didn’t know the combination either. Kitty would have to

do this herself, and time (and all the blood) was becoming an issue.

She came into the safe room and looked at Jussie. “Clean the blood,” she said.

“All of it. Now.” Jussie shuffled out and Kitty pulled out the chair from the desk, having

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 105

a seat, bent over, concentrating now, hands on her knees, eyeballing the safe. Open,

dammit. Break. The blood, which had begun to trickle out, renewed its flow, doubling

now, and the safe began to crackle like her hotel room’s walls had, sparking with this

ethereal current, bending inward. Now Kitty felt something warm dribbling down the

right side of her neck. Her ears, maybe; it had been a while since her ears had bled. But it

was good, because she could feel the bend of the safe, the corruption of its locking

system, and in an instant it sprang open, wheeling on its hinges and thundering against

the wall. Kitty exhaled, her breath coming fast, and for a moment thought she was going

to pass out. This was by far the most she’d ever done; until now, she’d just bent people,

individuals, and she’d been able to cover her tracks by simply tampering with their

memories. (A lot of people in Apache Springs, Colorado, were under the impression that

they’d recently lost quite a sum of money in the stock market.) But today, she’d pushed

herself. Maybe it had been too early, maybe not. Either way, she apparently had some

more preparation to do before He arrived.

But she couldn’t help but smile when she saw the money within the safe, stacks of

cash sitting upon stacks of cash, and it could have been her imagination, but she was sure

that, at that moment, He was smiling with her. He knew exactly what his Kitty had been

up to, how well she’d done. He was proud, and happy.

Exhausted but glowing, she bagged the cash - so much of it in that little safe, who

knew? - and returned to the main room of the bank. Jussie was busy mopping the trail of

blood that had followed Kitty from where she entered the bank to the safe room, hard at

work and smiling, gritting her teeth, concentrating, probably, on this one job harder than

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 106

she’d ever concentrated on anything in her life. Kitty smiled. Jussie had been a great help

today.

Kitty put Gretchen to work as well, and in minutes the job was done. Taking

Jussie by the hand, leaving Gretchen and Rachael and the unconscious Helen to work off

the bend (however they did that, Kitty didn’t know; she’d only stuck around to observe it

a few times, and it was something gradual and maybe even painful, like coming to from

under a hefty dose of anesthesia), she grabbed her coat from the hook and stepped once

again into the daylight. She’d have Jussie drive her back to the hotel; she felt like she

could hardly walk.

When they arrived, Kitty stuck out her hand, looked at Jussie’s mouth, and Jussie,

a sudden look of horror imprinted like a stamp on her face, retched and spat out a bloody

molar into Kitty’s palm. This made five for the day, technically.

When she got out of the car, she bent Jussie one last time, making sure to raise her

head so the blood, if there was any, wouldn’t get on her jacket. Skip town, she told Jussie.

Never come back. And if they ever catch up with you, you can put up a fight, but after a

while, you’ll come clean. Yeah, it was you that robbed the bank. You knew it was the

wrong thing to do, but you really needed the money.

With that, Jussie drove away, and as the motor of the little Subaru raced and fell

over the hilly roads heading north towards Wyoming, Kitty, weighed down by the newly-

bulging duffle bag, walked silently, contentedly back through the parking lot to the hotel,

imagining newly turned sheets, the scent of industrial cleaners, a fresh towel to dry off

her aching body.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 107

Bend to Break

She searched him on her way in and found that the new guy at the desk was

indeed Danny; he watched her come in, leaning too far back in his swiveling chair,

catching himself as he caught sight of her, going to stand up but thinking better of it, and

as he peeked his misshapen head over the desk from where he sat, a runny-egg-yolk smile

splashed over his face. She saw it in his look that he wanted to talk to her; it was all in his

eyes, the momentary widening of them as he found something witty to say, something to

identify himself to her as the guy she talked to the other night, the assistant manager

who’d hooked her up with a great thing, who’d gone against hotel policy for her because

he was cool and he recognized that she recognized that he was cool. And because he was

homy; this was something else she could tell; she could smell it on him, the sudden

release of sweat and acid reflux, and as she walked - head down - to the elevator, she

tried to convince herself that that the fabricy-abrading sound she heard was not his

erection nudging against his pant leg, that her hyper-sensitive ears had just happened to

pick up a mouse scampering around in the walls or the grazing of someone’s loafer

against hotel carpet in another room. She kept her head down until the elevator doors

began to slide shut, and Danny had apparently taken the hint; he’d been able to hold his

eager tongue. Raising her head as the elevator chimed, though, she caught a glimpse of

him through the closing doors, and his gaze had not shifted; he was taking it all in, every

last drop of her - and yes, there was a certain hesitation now in his look, because, though

she’d done her best to clean the dried blood from her mouth and nose, she was probably

still an odd sight, disheveled and eyes ablaze from the morning’s work. But more than

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 108

anything in his look was that longing, that covetous ache that worked his adam’s apple up

and down and got his nostrils flaring. Kitty, just for the hell of it, winked at him as the

doors came together. Why not? He had done her a favor, and she was feeling good.

Sooner or later he’d get it anyway and go back to being a bio-lab ghost.

Riding four floors up the elevator and walking thirty feet to her room was a test of

endurance. Her body surged, warm and exhilarated, fatigue embracing and crushing her,

in a good way, and oh, man, that bed was calling her, slip off those clothes and turn the

shower to hot and just stand there, let it all cascade over her and take her in, pull the

blinds if Matilda had opened them and get naked under the sheets, discard consciousness

like a snake from its skin and just fucking sleep. Two days, if she wanted; she’d made up

for a few week’s worth of work, if not more, with her little bank heist.

It was only 11:30, but there was no maid-cart as she approached her room. They’d

finished early, as Kitty had almost known that they would; Danny would have been on

them about it. They better have done those carpets, though. Danny and Matilda and the

rest of the gang would hear about it if they hadn’t - that is, after she slept for twelve or

fifteen hours.

She slipped her card into the electric lock-slot, the light flashed green, and she

pushed open the door. She lost it pretty much immediately.

“You can’t be fucking serious,” she said, tongue numb. “Are you serious?” The

room was exactly as she had left it. Dark, the blinds still closed, plates of old food

stacked on the table and the floor next to it, last night’s clothes tossed over the bed...the

un-made bed, sheets untucked from the sides because she was a restless (apparently)

sleeper, pillows yellowed from night sweats...this bed that she’d longed for, that she

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 109

deserved, that she’d worked for. For a fraction of a second she wondered if she’d been

wrong, if today wasn’t Wednesday, but yes, it was Wednesday, this was the day she and

Danny had agreed upon, this was the day she’d had to stay out a few extra hours - and

miss sleep - so the maids, Matilda, that fucking cunt, could clean her room.

Leaving the door open, the room as it was, static, harmless, disgusting, sweetly

dark and inviting but not how she’d wanted it, she turned and ran to the elevator. Pushed

the button, down, she was going down, tired as she was, to have a chat with her salivating

Danny. Her eyes hurt from too much looking, her legs from too much walking, hustling,

hustling all fucking night and part of the day so Danny could have her room cleaned.

Danny. The blood started as she got into the elevator. Danny.

Walking into the lobby, she said it, “Danny,” pronouncing it sweetly, softly, a

lover calling a lover to bed. He looked up from the computer, now rising from his chair,

and opened his mouth to speak. Before he could, however, she closed her eyes, veins in

her neck and temples pushing out against her skin, throbbing, and this was not just

bending him; now she was breaking him, energy and rage, she was straining, and she

could feel it, the flex and release of it, like the roar of an engine kicking into ignition;

Danny was breaking. Eyes still closed, she heard the sound, wet, popping, like in the

water balloon fights she’d had when she was a kid, when someone missed her by an inch

and the balloon exploded against the concrete sidewalk, with the initial bang and then the

split-second spray of water splashing over the surrounding ground. She opened her eyes

and Danny was no longer standing behind the desk, nor was he seated; all she could see

of Danny was a spray of brains and blood splattered against the back wall, pieces of skull

and gray matter inching down the white wallpaper. She peered over the desk and there

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 110

was the rest of him, all in spasms, arms and legs jerking like a raging marionette, the back

of his head flowered out like it had taken a bullet from the inside, hollow now but for a

small amount of more gray stuff and loose fragments of bone; there he was, Danny

broken.

What shocked Kitty was that the bleeding - her bleeding - had stopped. She’d

strained herself earlier at the bank and it had been a torrent; but when she had strained

herself just now - and it had certainly been a strain; she likened it, though she had no clue

really about it, to giving birth, with the amount of stress she’d felt on the inside of her

head, her cheeks pushing out until they hurt, blood pumping in her ears - the flow from

her mouth and nose had simply halted. No big deal; a faucet turned casually to off. And

more, the incredible sense of tiredness had lifted - not like she’d had a few cups of

coffee, where you could tell that the weariness was still there but chemically postponed,

and not even a sense of rejuvenation like she’d finally had some sleep. Now it was as if

fatigue couldn’t touch her. Like testicular cancer or distemper, it didn’t even apply to her.

She had trouble imagining, right now, what it was even like to be tired.

A noise from behind her, a runty, peeping moan, brought her back to the lobby,

and turning, she found that she and Danny hadn’t been here alone; a group of pink leather

couches were gathered around a large coffee table at the far end of the wide room, and

sitting on one of them was a man holding a dog - a toy Doberman, it looked like - and he

was edging back on his seat, pressing himself against the tacky material as if to melt into

it, to disappear. He was blubbering quietly, crying, it looked like, and Kitty smiled.

“Hey,” she said, and the man sunk further into the couch, cradling the dog against his

chest like a priest would a Bible in the face of something dark and wicked. The dog

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. I l l

yelped, squirming in the man’s grasp, kicking its legs out against his ribs, tongue licking

at the air. Kitty walked toward the pair, one hand against the bag that hadn’t left her hip

all day, feeling the soft bricks of cash in there and the jar of teeth, which clicked as she

gripped it through the cloth. “Hey,” she said, nearing the man and his dog, “what’s wrong

with your dog? Look at him. Jesus.”

The man looked down and his mouth opened, teeth yellowed from years of

smoking - Brian, his name was, and he was a smoker, and now Brian thought that his dog

was melting in his hands, skin sliding off the meat of its flesh like the thin parting crust of

lava as it drifts and expands. “Oh, God,” Brian said, standing and letting the dog fall - the

dog, which actually was fine, panting and wagging the stump of its tail and looking

cockeyed at his master from the floor, but Brian didn’t know this; Brian saw the dog’s

flesh tearing, splitting open and the eruption of its lungs and heart, the dog’s still-intact

face contracting in agony, eyes bulging from its sockets, tongue slack and swollen in its

mouth, hanging over the teeth like a loose piece of ham dangling from a roast. The man

began to scream, and as the dog got on its back legs, jumping, placing its paws on Brian’s

shins, enthusiastic in this new game his master had started, he kicked the dog and sent it

flying against one of the couches. “Get away,” he screamed, crying now and falling

backwards over the coffee table, landing full-weight on it and sending it imploding to the

floor. The dog bounced up and came hopping back to him, and in one jerky motion, Brian

grabbed it and smashed it headfirst into the floor. The dog yelped and then was quiet, still

on the shattered faux-wood of the coffee table.

“Look what you did,” said Kitty, and Brian blinked at her, sitting up, and now,

looking at his dog, seeing what he had done - Kitty had taken the hallucination away,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 112

momentarily leaving Brain un-bent - he screamed again, only now the scream was not of

terror but of agony, a lamenting wail that started pitchy and high and broke down into a

gush of sobs and gasps. Wheezing - smoker’s lungs - he grabbed blindly at his coat

pockets, searching, choking, shaking, fingers probing the same pocket again and again.

He finally found what he was looking for and brought out an inhaler, turning it so it was

right side up and with two hands bringing it to his lips, closing his eyes and turning his

head from where the dead dog lay, and blew the medication into his lungs, inhaling

deeply and letting it out with a long, rickety sigh.

“Oh,” he said, and it came out as more of a croak He looked at Kitty, as if for

help. Sitting in a heap of plastic planks with his arms by his sides, resting palm up in the

mess of the broken table, legs out in front of him with his feet pointed outward at 45

degree angles, he looked like a lost child in an enormous sandbox. “I don’t know what

happened. My dog.. .Puffy. She’s - ”

“You killed her,” Kitty said, and he shook his head, violently, now surveying his

pockets once again, this time coming out with a pack of smokes. He fumbled one to his

mouth and worked at it with a lighter, but, his fingers apparently not up to the task, he let

his arm fall back down and sat there, cigarette dangling from the center of his mouth,

inert, flaccid. “Let me help you with that,” Kitty said. She bent down next to him and

took the lighter from his hand, raising it now to his cigarette, which had perked up, and

he raised his eyebrows and mouthed thank you, but it didn’t come out. His eyes were

fixed on the lighter. “You know,” she said, watching the flame grow briefly and then

come back down to size as he puffed at the butt, “you shouldn’t smoke.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 113

“Thanks,” he mumbled, and as she stood and walked out of the lobby, really

feeling it now, head humming and body tingling, picturing Brian’s face beginning to

glow and then spark and finally catch, she smelled the fire, the burning of Brian’s hair

and flesh; it was a pleasing smell, really. Like the campfires her father used to build at

Gully Lake, only sweeter, more tangible.

Apache Springs, Part 2

No more hitching rides now. Walking down a small line of cars in the Comfort’s

parking lot, she selected a black Expedition, a massive thing with oversized tires. She

looked at the lock, breaking it like she had the safe (much easier this time, though, less

thought involved), got in, laid her hands on the wheel, tightened her mind, felt the engine

roar into life beneath her, and thrusting the vehicle into gear, pulled out. She did ninety

all the way to town.

She pulled onto the curb in front of the bank, just behind an ambulance idling in

front of the bank’s twin oak doors. A pair of police cars, marked ASPF - Apache Springs

Police Force, maybe? - flanked the meat-wagon, and as she stepped out of the

Expedition, the idiot chatter of police radios assaulted her ears; a male voice, slow and

thick with drawl, squelched orders to unseen patrols: “Car 6,please report...Fred - Fred,

are you out there? Listen, Fred, get on down to Apache Springs Savings, sounds like

something’s going on down there. Helen Rock fell and hit her head, pretty bad, sounds

like. And Rachael Kruger says Justine’s gone missing now. I talked to Herb and he said

everyone down there’s just kinda going crazy. Weird stuff. Fred, do you read?’’''

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 114

Kitty walked to one of the police cars - the one marked 6 - and stuck her hand

inside, plucking the radio from its cradle. She put it to her mouth, hit the button, and said,

“Fred’s already here, jack.”

The other line was silent for a moment, then the squelch returned, filling the air

with its scratching blare. Then, “ Justine Sims, is that you? Are you messing with me?

Jussie, where’s Fred? Come on now, you shouldn ’t be messing like this. This is an open

line.'’'’

“Hold on,” Kitty said. “Let me go find him for you.” She dropped the radio and it

whipped back against the door of the cruiser. The squelch came back for a moment so she

bent it, heard the pop and fizzle of it shorting out, and gripping her duffle bag - ah, still

there, still deliciously full - walked into the bank.

Inside, the bank had a different look to it; the noontime sun brightened the place

up, gave more color to the walls and furniture, altering the hushed tones of earlier to

sophisticated beiges and ambers, moody greens and whites. Also, the bank was now

hustling with activity; two policemen and another two EMTs hovered around Helen, who,

still on the bench, was hooked up to a butterfly IV that stood pumping clear liquid into

her via a tube fixed into her left arm. A third cop had pulled a few chairs together on the

other side of the room and was sitting with Rachael, who had a bemused look about her,

as if she were watching this all from the wrong side of a mirror, an addled bystander

rather than an contributing affiliate to all of this. Gretchen - the older woman - was

nowhere to be seen.

When the door squeaked shut behind her, Rachael and the cop with her turned to

look, and as the cop rose from the chair, still looking at Rachael but with a hand pointed

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 115

in Kitty’s direction as if to shoo her away, Kitty said, almost silently, “Knees.” The

policeman grunted and buckled, hand going instinctively to his belt. He was young, Kitty

saw, with sandy curls falling over small ears, a delicate chin and nose, girlish features.

But now his face was contorted, destroying what a few moments ago had seemed almost

appealing to Kitty, and as he began to crawl open-mouthed and wild-eyed in her direction

Kitty let up, removing the bend. His face flushed and he heaved a magnificent breath, still

frowning but his eyes slackening, like his lips were on a different line of neurons than his

eyes, and at once he bounced up. He searched the floor around him, as if looking for the

coil that had sprung him to his feet. His hand went back to his belt and the gun holstered

there. “Now, now,” Kitty said, beckoning him with a finger. “Stop that. Why don’t you

just smile?” And he did, hand falling from the gun, his lips curling back over his pretty

little teeth in a wide, severe gesture. “That’s better.”

Meanwhile, the two cops with the EMTs had lost interest in the ailing Helen, and

moving forward toward Kitty, one of them touching the radio fastened to his shoulder,

dropped their hands to their belts. “Oh, stop,” Kitty said. “Christ. Why don’t you guys

just die?”

One of the cops bent over, holding his stomach with one hand and the back of his

head with the other. Began to cough, and here came the blood, at first little flecks of it in

his spit, then gobs of it, thick and not-quite liquid, and as he fell to the floor, his buddy

bent over, too, favoring one knee, and soon was on the floor in convulsions, both of them,

now, seizing and coughing blood that traveled in fast, low arcs and landed back down on

their uniforms.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 116

Kitty felt the shot before she heard it; something hot and alien tearing into the

flesh of her left arm, just above the elbow, not stinging, not like a bee sting or a shot at

the doctor, but searing, sort of, so hot, like someone had got in there with an ember and

just started adding oxygen. The shot floored her, tore her back, left arm first followed by

the twisting rest of her, and her first thought was that there was surprisingly little blood;

she’d certainly bled more than this after a good night’s bending. More surprising,

however, was when she looked up to find her young officer, the one with the angel face -

the one she had bent into a smile - standing feet apart, braced, poised, holding the gun

out with both hands at a full arm’s length. His hands were shaking, and Kitty - who’s

uncle had been a policeman - knew that they were trained to shoot the legs, and her next

thought - before she bent him until his adams apple tore out from his neck as if by an

invisible, rabid dog - was that he could have hit her in the heart or the face with those

shaking hands. He could have killed her.

She laid it on thick for angel face - who’s name she didn’t know and didn’t care

to search for, but some part of her hoped it was Fred, of car 6 - and as he squirmed on the

floor, his throat gurgling and hissing with air escaping from his lungs, Kitty did nothing

for him to put it home. Only sat there, holding her throbbing arm, wondering if the bullet

was still in there, and watched him drown slowly in his own blood. She wondered if she

could, somehow, keep his heart beating longer, let him really feel his death.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t time.

Rachael was still sitting on the chair - completely regressed now, it seemed,

almost catatonic, staring up at the ceiling and mumbling to herself, an odious melody of

lashing whispers and hiccupping snorts and giggles - and Kitty, trying to stand, rising

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 117

into the tide of her swimming vision (was this shock? She had thought that she was

beyond shock), made her choke. Rachael hunched in the chair and finally fell, gasping,

scurrying into a comer of the large room, all legs, like a rat dying slowly from poison,

and after a few final hacks and huffs came to rest.

Kitty, one hand pressing the bleeding pulse just above the fold of her bent elbow,

turned to the EMTs; one of them was still, amidst all of this, at least attempting to aid

Helen, at once calling to his partner - who had leapt behind the teller row and had been

since out of sight - and trying to manage an arm under Helen’s shoulder and lift her up.

Looking from Helen to where his partner had flung himself over the desks back to Helen

and then to Kitty, eyes frantic and huge, back to Helen, and Kitty could tell - saw it in his

gestures, the growing anxiety and indecision in his movements, the vacillation of his

arms now and then moving up into Helen’s armpit - he was considering just leaving her

and making a run for it. “Please,” he said, finally getting leverage and hoisting Helen

from the bench. “Who are you? Please.” He began to move toward the door - toward

Kitty - almost dragging Helen now, lurching, grimacing, the collar of his white shirt

sagging down with sweat. “I can help you with that,” he said, nodding at Kitty’s wound,

within five feet of her, stepping over the gagging angel-face and quickening his pace

now, almost without regard for Helen, who was dragging behind him, knees bent and toes

grazing the floor - passed out again. Then he dropped her altogether and she thumped

unresponsive to the floor, arms laid out at her sides, face down. He circled around her,

keeping his eyes locked with hers, one hand raised as if taking a pledge and the other

remaining pointed at her arm. “You need medical attention. You’ve been shot, okay?

You’re bleeding there. I’ve got stuff - ” pointing to the door - “right out there in the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 118

truck. Just right out there, okay? Come with me.” Kitty looked at Helen, like a sack of

grain on the floor, dead to the world, and, repeating a trick she’d learned with her Danny,

exploded her brain out the back of her head. The wet pop again, the maroon arc of blood,

coming to the floor like a furious and sudden rain. “Oh Jesus,” said the EMT, raising his

other hand up now - okay, you got me - and falling to his knees. “Please,” he said.

“Please.” Blinking desperately now, like something large and sharp had been lodged in

his eye. He looked back across the bank, over to the teller row, and screamed,

“Humphrey!” Spittle forming at his mouth, flicking out with every breath; blinking and

blinking, every now and then with only one eye so it was more of a wink, like Kitty had a

secret and he wanted to let her know he was in on it. “P-Please,” again with the spit,

lashing from his mouth in a tight string, flicking out and settling down against his chin in

a glistening line.

Kitty approached him and, removing it from her wound, laid her right hand on his

head. Brought it down to his cheek, held it there, and, still blinking a storm, he brought a

hand up to hers and interlaced his fingers with hers. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.” She broke

the hold of their hands and pinched the back of his neck, lightly, just so, and as he started

to scream, his blinking stopped; can’t blink, after all, when your eyes are bulging slowly

out of their sockets, expanding, almost, as if filling with gas or water, and he didn’t stop

screaming after they’d burst like overripe grapes - just kept screaming, a piercing croon,

his eyelids still pulsing over his empty sockets, still wanting to maintain their crazy,

twitching dance. Sinking until his thighs touched his calves, kneeling as if in eastem-

prayer, he brought his hands, clawlike, to his eyes, raking there, attempting to fix the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 119

ruptured tissue back into his sockets; his fingernails dug into his skin, and Kitty left him

there, scratching at the black, empty orbs of his destroyed eyes.

She found the other tech - Humphrey - quivering under a desk, gripping one of

the downed policemen’s revolvers. “Whatcha gonna do with that?” she said, squatting

down with one hand against the floor to brace her and her left arm bent up against her

breast. Humphrey, calmly, his eyes like still waters after some long, raging storm,

smiling, fixed the barrel of the gun into his mouth, and pulled the trigger. Kitty jumped at

the blast, and laughing at her own nerves, at all of this, she stood; she walked toward the

exit, good arm resting on the bag at her right hip, over the strewn bodies, the still

twitching angel-face, the bubbling, screaming EMT with the lost eyes. She stopped,

however - near the EMT, one of his arms groping her ankle, snatching at it as if one of

his eyes might be there - as the door opened. She kicked away the hand at her ankle as a

boy entered the bank, twelve, thirteen, maybe, holding in one hand a green bankbook and

in the other a slim manila envelope, followed by a frumpy man in his mid-forties - the

boy’s father, no doubt; though the older was fat, face surrounded by a layer of rippling

extra skin, and the younger’s features were fine, as if engraved, the faces were basically

the same. Piercing blue eyes, too close together, and a scrawny nose, hooked at the end,

with thin lips and a certain smirking look about them. The pair stopped as soon as they

entered the bank, the boy grabbing for his father’s hand and the man leaning over to

vomit, shooing the boy’s hand away, slapping at it absentmindedly, almost like, in the

bitter face of this bank-tumed-slaughterhouse, he’d forgotten about the boy entirely.

“Yeah, get it out,” she said, focusing on him, and the man continued to vomit, retching

and belching. The vomit began to gain substance and then he was vomiting out his

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 120

insides, purple and gray tubes and chunks of intestinal matter. The boy began to scream,

and Kitty quieted him swiftly, stopping his heart in his chest - merciful, philanthropic

Kitty. The boy and his father fell together, bankbook still gripped in the child’s hand.

Kitty stepped over them and left the bank.

Outside, it had begun to snow, fluffy flakes, sparse and thick, not merely falling

but dancing, dainty, scurrying across the air like children at play. People were walking

the streets of Apache Springs now, lunchtime strollers, a few here and there stopping to

look at the ambulance and pair of cruisers parked outside the bank but only briefly; no

indication on their faces of awareness to the atrocities within, just people, rubbernecks,

momentarily slowing their pace to drool a minute at the possibility of someone’s asthma

attack or even maybe a stroke that would later no doubt serve as dinner discourse over the

evening local news. Kitty drew a few looks as well, but again, nothing important; some

unfamiliar but pretty drifter - with an accepted if not strange way of holding her arm up

at the elbow - worthy of a pause and a lingering (but only politely so) glance. Two shots

had been fired, but from the looks on the faces of the passers-by, nothing had gone

noticed.

This first shot had been a problem for Kitty. She wasn’t worried about her injury

- the initial dizziness, which she was now sure had been shock, had worn off, and it no

longer hurt; more of a dull ache, really, like a nasty headache, nothing a few aspirins and

some sleep couldn’t take care of. Plus, she was certain that the bullet had gone straight

through, so there wasn’t that to worry about, either. She’d get it patched up a little down

the road and never have to think about it again.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 121

What worried Kitty was how she’d been shot. Again in the winter air, the

adrenaline beginning to wash off like muddy tires in a hard rain, she was able to think

about it, and it got her stomach talking and her head racing; the idea that she’d had him

bent, good and bent, angel-face. She’d left him smiling because that was how she liked

him - she was going to leave him for last, give him a quick end, a pleasant one, make it

not hurt for him - and when she’d put her attention on the other two cops she’d somehow

lost him. The two cops had been a first for her - bending two at a time, not merely

simultaneously butat once, each guy at exactly the same moment - and she’d had to

work at it a bit, but angel-face...how had it happened? She’d had him, and for Christ’s

sake, he’d snapped out of it all of a sudden and shot her. She’d have to watch herself

from now on.

“Well,” she said, wondering briefly if angel-face was still alive back in there, still

gurgling and clutching at his throat, as if that would help anything, “something to

practice, I guess.” And it was. She’d have time. She was looking, she suspected, at some

time on the road now. No need to let it bother her. She’d forget about it like she’d forget

about the hole in her left arm.

So she took one of the police cars, stopping at one of the massage parlors and the

Denny’s at the comer of Main and Garb Street, heading north, turning down Archer

Court for a final stand at the Red Keg. She didn’t collect any teeth; she felt, now, that

she’d been able to collect something different, something more applicable to her and her

sweet, blossoming condition; she collected the final breaths of twenty-two people that

day, tearing through the small town like a winter gale, lighting fires occasionally on the

way, and in the rearview mirror of the squad car, after all was done and she headed north

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 122

on the two-lane highway and out of Apache Springs, she saw that there was no hint of

blood, not from her mouth or her nose or her ears, and she smiled at herself. Gunned the

engine, felt the breeze. Felt it.

She ditched the car in a town to the north called Grendale, found a bus headed

east to Cincinnati, and finally, pressing her forehead against the bus’s window, feeling

the hum of the chugging engine against her feet, was able to get some sleep.

Him

She dreamed of Him, and later, waking up, found that she was able to remember it

all:

In the dream, she was in a towering room, vast and darkly lit. Rats scurried in the

darkness; Kitty heard their nails scratching the unfinished wooden floor, the coarse,

hollow rasp of their tails following them. Standing the right way, she could see the glint

of their yellow-red eyes peering out at her from the shadows. Interested - almost eager.

“Hello,” she called, beginning to walk to one end or other of the room - she had

no idea how large it was, because the darkness took over in every direction, a perception-

bending illusion (or was it?) of boundless space and emptiness. Her voice echoed down

the hall and petered out. A cluster of rats took off at the sound of her voice, as if

following it to wherever it went.

“Kitty, sweetie, you gone and done good, girl,” came a voice; the voice, she

thought, was like a movie star’s, and older one, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. One

of the classics, one that could get a girl to swoon simply by breathing her name, a fast-

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 123

talking old timer with infinite class and charm. Kitty herself was not entirely unaffected.

It went on: “But where you going, girl? Tell me, where have you been?”

“Apache Springs,” she said, turning and staring off into the space; this was

darkness in which she couldn’t see, and for a moment she felt naked, alone in this empty

space, her powers extinguished altogether by the thick of the black that engulfed her. She

mumbled, “I had to go.”

“I ain’t mad, sweetie,” the voice said. A laugh, deep and potent, like the rumble of

a hotrod’s motor. That laugh dominated the darkness, made it seem to flash darker and

flicker with concentration, as if the darkness were a television screen and the laugh a

power surge. “I said you done good, and I meant it.”

She brightened. “Thank you,” she said, and the two words had never escaped

more genuinely from her lips; she felt the weight of words, of language, as she spoke to

him. It was all very important.

Then she saw Him. He emerged from the darkness; or rather, the darkness gave

way for Him. He was crouching, hands on his haunches, His back neatly curled, elegant,

like a finely crafted bow; over a pair of jeans He wore a white shirt that read GAP in

bold, blue lettering. A Red Sox baseball cap. Under the cap His face was veiled in

shadow. Maybe if she moved, saw Him from a different angle...

“Oh,” she said. “It’s You. Is it really You?”

He nodded, and though she still couldn’t make out His face, there had been a flash

of white, wide teeth. “I don’t have time to talk, Kitty. I’m busy. Know what I mean,

chickadee?” His voice, almost syrupy, made her spine tingle. She couldn’t put an age to

that voice, it was smooth and boyish and deep and dark all at once.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 124

She nodded and He continued. “But I wanted you to know that you did the right

thing. You were ready. Got a little scratch, though, didn’t we?”

“What, this?” she said, holding out her left arm for his inspection. It had begun to

blister around the hole, whitish-yellow crust forming at the lip of the small, enflamed

crater of the wound. “It’s nothing.”

“Tsk, tsk,” He said. “That’s the train of thought that got you like that in the first

place. It’s infected, darling. That is, if you weren’t already clued in by all the puss and the

stink.”

She looked at her arm again and shrugged. “What should I do?” she asked.

Smiling, cocking an eyebrow, taking a step toward him, “Can you fix it, baby?”

“Would if I could, kiddo,” He said. “But I can’t, not now. We’ve go to talk and

then I’ve got to go.”

She frowned. “Okay.”

“So,” he said, propping his elbows on his knees, raising interlaced fingers to a

chin under shadows. “What we need from you now is for you to keep going east.” He

rose, and though not as tall as Kitty had initially thought, His head nevertheless

disappeared into the darkness, the shadows seeming to shift and part for Him, as if in

service to Him. Embracing Him, as if they loved Him. Rats gathered around His feet,

biting and clawing for room. Kitty felt her breath tighten. “Keep going east, baby. I’ll see

you again soon — sooner than you think, I’d imagine.” He swiveled, darting into the

darkness, and was out of sight.

“Wait,” she said.

“I told you, Kitty, I’m busy.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 125

“But - ”

Then His voice came, thundering, playing with the darkness again, blackening it,

somehow, and the tingle in her spine grew into an excruciating and luscious ache up and

down her back. “Now, Kitty,” he said. “Go east ‘till you hit the ocean. Have a party all

the way. Keep getting rich, baby. I’m coming to plug it all up for you, baby. Gonna

complete the circuit, get my drift? Make you a brand new girl. Get it?”

She closed her eyes. “Got it,” she whispered.

“Good,” he whispered back.

It was night when she woke. She shuffled down the aisle and asked the driver

where they were. “Just crossed into Kansas, darling,” he said. She smiled and returned to

her seat. All was good. First major city she went through, she’d ditch the bus and find a

back alley surgeon to fix her arm. She certainly had the money for it - not that she

needed it.

For now, though, it was time to sleep. “Plenty of time for sleep,” she murmured

and, bringing the duffle bag from the floor and settling it between her and the window,

closed her eyes. She was asleep in minutes.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 4

Repudiation

Thursday Blues

Recess just wasn’t what it used to be. In second, third, fourth, fifth, even sixth

grade, recess was what you looked forward to all morning while you sat in class for a

painstaking two and a half hours. Studying the clock, tuning in to its mechanical and

dependable movement. Gazing, as if drugged, through the window and outside, where, if

it was nice out, you’d be as soon as that damn clock stopped messing around and fixed its

hands to 10. And in the final minutes before the morning recess bell rang, tapping your

feet with anticipation, as quick as you would be all day to blurt out some ridiculous and

infantile observation about the teacher’s tie or his use of the word “homo-erectus.”

Now, however - in seventh grade - recess had become more a time to find the

right way to stand and look cool. The bell would ring and everyone would shuffle to the

playground, assuming bored looks, as if in homage to the glorious days of recesses past,

meeting with and sticking like conjoined twins to whoever was that week’s best friend.

Toby belonged to a clique, but only because of his association with Nate. And

today, Thursday, the day after their walk in the woods, Nate had been steering clear of

Toby - not with any kind of malice, like one would expect out of a temperamental and

ephemerally-hearted boy of thirteen, but more, really, out of a kind of disassociated

126

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 127

trepidation, a twitching of the lips and fluttering of the eyelids that gave away Nate’s

acquired disposition. Nate, it seemed, was scared of Toby - and maybe, probably, didn’t

even realize it. God knows what he’d told his parents, if anything, when he got home the

day before. God knows how he’d dealt with everything that had happened. Toby had

chosen not to talk to him about it - not yet, not before he figured out, at least to a certain

extent, what he thought about the whole thing himself. So when, at recess, Nate didn’t

meet up with Toby at the patch of gravel across from the little kids’ slides that had served

as their “hanging out” post over the better part of the year, he understood. Concurred,

even.

Toby picked up a handful of snow and began to shape it with his gloved hands,

packing it so it was as spherical as possible for a good flight, and whipped it at a nearby

tree. It soared left, missing the mark entirely, and, as Toby began to pack a second one,

he heard from behind him, “Hey, guy, what’s happening, guy?”

Toby turned. It was Billy Pinot, hands stuffed in his pockets, a stupid grin lighting

his face. He was holding a snowball of his own. “Hey, Billy,” Toby said.

“Nice toss, who taught you to shoot like that, guy? Stevie Wonder?”

Toby sighed. Is this what it had come to? Spending his recess listening to a sixth-

grader - an unpopular one, at that - give him garbage about his poor throwing arm?

Across the yard, Toby saw Nate slapping hands with Mike Sweeney, another seventh

grader who, until today, Toby had always thought of as Nate’s second best friend. Toby

wondered if Mike would wait for Nate to get out of detention after school. Toby looked

at Billy Pinot. “What do you want, Billy?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 128

“Well - ” he said, and tossed his snowball high into the air, high enough that

when it came down back into his hand it split in half. “Oops,” Billy said. “Plenty more of

where that came from, guy...” Billy bent over and gathered the twin fragments of his

busted snowball, packing them back together distractedly, looking out across the yard, as

if he’d suddenly become lost.

“Billy, what do you want? I’m kind of busy.” Toby looked down at his own

snowball and then around at the snow ridden (and empty) area around him, knowing

completely well that Billy knew that he had all the time in the world; people had been

talking today. Nate, who usually sat next to Toby in homeroom and talked his ear off

about this girl in the eighth grade who passed him a note saying that she liked him the

day before or that guy’s brother’s friend’s uncle who had a gun that he let the kids shoot

in the woods out back at his house if they didn’t tell their mothers, had selected a seat

today on the other side of the room, right next to Lisa Tabor (who, incidentally, had the

biggest boobs in seventh grade). And in seventh grade, kids noticed broken friendships

like a particularly astute doctor may notice a grapefruit-sized tumor on the side of your

neck.

“Oh, nothing really,” Billy said, still working at his snowball but not getting

anywhere, just shaping it and reshaping it into a near-rectangular mass with his nervous

and slender hands. “Just wanted to see if you wanted to throw some snowballs, guy.”

“No thanks.”

“We could throw them at Ellen, you know, really wallop her with ‘em. Ellen’s a

real pussy. In gym class today - ”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 129

“That’s all right, man. I don’t care about Ellen.” Toby’s eyes were glued to where

Nate was standing, just beyond the yard’s small parking lot where Principal Johnston

parked her Mazda. A group of girls - two of them eighth graders - were huddled,

bundled into their white scarves and powder-blue winter coats around Nate and Mike

Sweeney, standing hands-on-hips or blowing into their hands to keep them warm,

laughing, smiling the beautiful, day-brightening smiles of girls just beginning to test their

incredible allure to the boys around them, mock-pushing Nate occasionally, Nate

jumping back, the distant echo of his playful yelling reaction drifting along the winter

wind to Toby’s aching ears.

And then Billy Pinot, the glaring confliction of his voice, all rasp and falsetto,

“Yeah, that’s alright, guy. But seriously, Ellen pissed her pants in gym class today. It was

gross, so nasty! We could nail her, her and Marielle Biggs. None of the teachers are even

looking! Jesus!” Billy spun, pointing to a group of teachers, who themselves were

huddled around in conference, paper cups of steaming coffee wrapped in gloved hands,

passing slowly to their lips, lingering there, settling back and hovering at chest-level.

Many of them shaking their heads, unanimated almost, now and then one of them

glancing over her shoulder to monitor the play yard. But Billy was right; they seemed

distracted, utterly consumed within their own bastioned circle, tightening into each other

like birds in a nest. Mrs. O’Hanna, Toby’s Latin teacher, stood in front of them like a

conductor, arms folded into themselves across her chest, the look on her face telling the

group who’s turn it was to speak and how long that turn would last. All were frowning,

wearing the gesture like a medal, as if they’d suffered for it. The murmur of their voices

skirred the wind like debris.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 130

Normally, and especially in the winter, only one or two teachers would come

outside to watch the children at recess. Today, Toby counted nine in the huddle. “What’s

going on?” Toby said, dropping his snowball and starting toward the throng of grownups.

If it was between throwing snowballs with Billy Pinot (and further alienating himself to a

member of the opposite sex, whether she was an ostracized one or not) and finding out

what all the fuss was about with his teachers, Toby would take the latter ten times out of

ten.

“Where you going, guy?” came Billy’s voice from behind him.

“To find out what they’re all talking about.”

“Come on. What about Ellen and Marielle?”

Toby said, “Get lost, Billy,” and almost immediately a snowball whizzed by his

head, skirting left and thumping into a drift of snow. Toby turned but Billy had taken off,

running like hell in the other direction - toward nothing in particular - his cackling

propelling him over a pile of snow and around a comer of the school.

“That kid,” Toby said and, trying not to spare a glance at Nate and his gang of

ogling girls but failing miserably, began to walk toward the teachers, chest out and

shoulders back but his mulish eyes unwilling to part from the vision of his feet slogging

along the icy sidewalk.

He wanted to be walking in the exact other direction, out to the parking lot and

beyond to where Nate flirted and Mike played the air guitar and the girls giggled with

appropriate and innocuous disapproval, but how do you start that conversation? How do

you apologize for something that you didn’t even know whether or not you were

responsible for? Furthermore, how do you even acknowledge that something of that

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 131

nature - the dead birds, the biblically macabre, the downright impossible - had even

happened? The answer was, you didn’t. You found something else to do. A distraction.

Today’s would be the teachers; maybe he could sneak up on them, a snowbound surprise

attack, catch them off guard and get some information from them before they regrouped

and centered their attention on zipping up and dispersing. But what about tomorrow?

Today was Thursday, and that meant that he had one more recess in which to distract

himself this week, one more prolonged twenty-five minute void to fill before it was the

weekend and he could finally close his eyes.

He tried his best to appear invisible, to blend in with the snow (white jacket, good

thing he’d worn a white jacket), as he approached the cluster of his whispering teachers.

Their voices began to become distinguished as he drew closer, and inching himself over

now, sideways, sidestepping a little bit each time the conversation picked up, Toby could

feel the urgency in their tones, the quickness of each sentence marked with a long,

accentuated pause at each period. The younger teachers asking questions - all of this by

their tones, the lift of voice at sentence’s end - and the older answering, weary, cautious,

as if they’d had this conversation before but never thought it would come up again. Toby

caught a few words, mostly adjectives wherein the speaker raised her voice for stress -

horrible, terrible, devastating. He also heard the words terrorism and springs, but could

think of nothing to link them.

He edged a little closer, almost leaning. A little worried.

Now he was able to hear clusters of conversation, but none of them gave further

clue to what had happened - and this was obvious, something had happened; he could see

it on their faces, the wrinkle of noses as eyes drew close together, the strange, sad smiles,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 132

the smiles of people offering condolence at a funeral and trying to look genuinely

concerned. Snippets of conversation, like: How many people it takes to classify...Yes, but

it’s still so much more than...not even Jonestown, at least the people at Jonestown...

Then: “Hello, Toby.”

In order to maintain the illusion that he wasn’t listening in, he hadn’t been looking

at them, but now he turned. They stood, staring at him, looks of dismay and gloom

replaced with staunch disapproval. “Mr. Shepard,” said Miss Potvan, his biology and

gym teacher. “Were you just eavesdropping?”

“Yeah, I guess I was,” he said, and one person laughed at this. Toby couldn’t see

who it had been. “What’s going on?”

They quieted at this, even Miss Potvan receding back into the crowd, as if

stumped. “Well,” someone said, but was cut off.

“Toby,” Mrs. O’Hanna said, stepping toward him and putting a hand on his

shoulder. “You shouldn’t be listening in on other people’s conversations. It’s rude. You

know that. Come on, Toby. Act your age.” The pack was already breaking up, dissolving

into groups of two or three, all headed back indoors, empty coffee cups hanging upside-

down and dripping from their swaying hands. She looked down at him, her head bent to

one shoulder, just so. She smiled, as if to say, okay, I’ll be confidential with you, I’ll let

you in now that the rest of them are gone. “Nothing to worry about, Toby. We were just

talking about the news. What you should worry about is your test tomorrow, right?”

“Ugh,” Toby said. He’d forgotten about it altogether. Latin wasn’t hard for Toby

- to be honest, nothing was, really - but, unlike so many of his other subjects, it required

some studying. There went his afternoon.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 133

“Yeah. Ugh,” she said, her large hand firm on his shoulder.

Toby looked at her. She was a large woman with broad shoulders and a square

jaw. He noticed - probably for the first time ever - a thick, gold ring on one of her

breakfast-sausage fingers. He wondered briefly who in God’s name would ever marry a

woman who looked like she did, then silently chastised himself for being so shallow.

“Come on, Mrs. O’Hanna,” he said, and she perked up, visibly catching herself in a

smile. “Are you sure everything’s all right? What were they saying about terrorism?”

She removed her hand from his shoulder and faced him, squinting, hands folded

over her protruding belly. She stared at him, sucking in one cheek, head slightly cocked

as if in reflection. She didn’t speak.

“What,” Toby said. “Do I have chocolate on my face or something?”

She laughed outright at this one, shaking her head as if he’d told some foul joke

suitable only for the bathroom. She smirked, returning her hand to his shoulder and

leading him to the wide glass doors that led inside. “Don’t be wise, Toby.”

“Okay.”

“No, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about - like I said.” She stopped at

the doors, thought a moment, then said, “It’s just something that happened. In Colorado.

People were killed. But I don’t think it’s terrorism. That was just Miss - that was just

something that someone brought up as a possibility.” She winked at him and he knew that

she was talking about Miss Blake, one of the sixth grade teachers; Miss Blake was new

this year, and Toby had the idea that she wouldn’t be around for another. She walked the

halls with a certain stiffness, not to mention breath that could probably thwart a vampire.

As far as Toby could tell, she’d done nothing to get in with the other teachers. Toby was

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 134

well aware that cliques weren’t limited only to the students at Westport Middle, and it

surprised him that Miss Blake had somehow weaseled her way into today’s outdoor

conversation. It must have been some big news.

“Are you sure?” Toby said. He actuallywas worried now, and though he trusted

Mrs. O’Hanna, he was also in tune to the wiles of teachers. It was like they had a code:

Only let them know what they have to know, and even then, cast it in fog. Drop it in the

murk and let their parents sift it out for them. Three years ago, on the day that the

buildings had fallen, Toby - and the rest of the student body, save the more than few

students whose parents had picked them up early from school - had been in the dark until

he’d arrived home. All because of the code.

“I’m sure,” she said.

“People died?” he said.

She nodded.

“Like, they were murdered?”

“Possibly.”

“How many people?”

She sighed. “I don’t know, Toby. I’m sure we’ll the both of us know more when

we get home and watch the news, okay? But don’t let it distract you. Remember, the

test.”

“Yeah, alright,” he said. “I know. Ibi, Isti, It .”

“Very good.”

He told her see you later and started back to the playground, no particular

destination in mind. He stopped, however, when Mrs. O’Hanna called after him. “Toby?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 135

He turned. She was standing where he’d left her, only now fronting a strange

smile. He caught his mother smiling at him like that sometimes. He felt a blush creep up

his neck. “Yeah?”

“You’re a good boy, Toby.” He couldn’t think of anything to say to this, so he

nodded. Sure, I’m a good boy. Her brow gathered and her eyes shrunk. “Is everything all

right?”

“Sure,” he said. His eyes returned to his feet, wanting to stay there, but he forced

them back up. Was he that observably flustered? Raising his chin, he turned around and

walked away. Nothing more came from Mrs. O’Hanna, and when he finally turned back,

she was gone.

He spent the rest of recess trying his marksmanship against the tree he’d

previously missed, and after a while his hands learned their role and allowed him to nail

the tree fifteen times in a row. Just before the bell rang, Toby felt a sharp, surprisingly

stinging pain at the back of his head. Getting up from his knees, feeling the ice from the

snowball already melting and traveling down his scalp to the back of his neck, he saw

Billy Pinot, darting once again around the comer of the school, his laughter ringing

across the schoolyard like a cat in spring heat.

Needed, Gratefully

At least in class, the teachers showed no signs of distraction, offering the students

no indication that anything out of the norm had happened. Between health class and

algebra the idea of something bad happening in Colorado traveled from the forefront of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 136

Toby’s mind to somewhere in the back; by one o’clock, in Latin class, it was a fading

recollection, worthy of investigation later but wholly eclipsed by the fact that today Nate

had yet to make eye contact with him.

He hadn’t slept well the night before - had, in fact, stayed up reading until two,

able for the first time in weeks to read the words on the page before him, due, Toby

imagined, to the fact that he’d finally come clean (at least partially) to his parents, had

taken the problem - his problem - and in the end stared down its dark and putrid throat.

But after shutting off his light, he had drifted in and out of consciousness for what

seemed like hours, catching himself falling asleep (as if it were a bad thing) with a gasp,

sitting up in his bed then falling back onto the sheets, exhausted but his pulse drumming.

So, during Latin class, as the clock clicked on toward two (it read 1:21 and, apparently,

wasn’t in any rush) and Nate stared straight ahead as if entranced and Mrs. O’Hanna went

on about roots and the perfect past tense, it came over Toby like a large waive captures an

unqualified surfer, surging, casting its shadow and consuming him in a tidal current of

dormience: elbow stuck to the desk and cheek propped sticky by his hand, Toby fell

asleep.

And why wouldn’t he have a dream now? It was just too perfect an opportunity

for it.

The setting was what he imagined Colorado to look like: small-town mid-west,

low buildings, mountains - so perfect that they looked painted — crowding the horizon in

every direction. Houses and storefronts painted in dusty hues, oranges and yellows, ruddy

aubums and quiet reds. The snow looked whiter than it did in New England, fresher,

lighter, as if it had been fluffed out like a pillow by huge, divine hands.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 137

The streets were empty, and Toby, standing smack in the faded single white line

of the ramshackle two-lane road, faced what he knew was west; the sun was setting there,

just behind the mountains, igniting the sky above the whitened peaks in fiery reds and

oranges.

He began to walk north on the road, feeling his legs and feet working below him

but unable to take his eyes from that burning sunset to his left. The sunset beckoned him;

the West is the Best, it seemed to say.

He was walking through puddles now, his shoes splashing through them, the

wetness invading the material of his shoes and squishing between his toes, every step

coming with a swishing waterlogged sound. His feet sweated against the warmness of the

water through which he was now wading - ankle deep now, his socks soaked. To his

right, he heard water draining, probably a sewer opening, but it sounded larger; sounded

like water falling from a great height, splashing furiously into itself, like one of the

Hawaiian waterfalls he’d seen on The Travel Channel. He wanted to reach down and

remove his socks and shoes, to let the feeling of walking in the warm water take over,

embrace him, wash away - no pun intended - everything the last few weeks had brought

to him. But his legs were as inaccessible to him as the faraway mountains; all that proved

their existence was the fact that he could feel them splashing through the water below

him. His eyes worked on their own, fixed upon the blazing colors over the mountains.

The sublimity of it made his heart sick.

Finally the colors were all he could take, so he turned and began to walk toward

the sunset. When his feet stumbled over a curb and found grass, still underwater - in fact,

up to his shins now - he quickened his pace into a run, and the water did nothing to slow

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 138

him, cutting away, parting for him, it seemed (but he didn’t know, still couldn’t take his

eyes from the horizon).

As he ran faster he heard someone call his name; from behind him, from the

street, from back east. He thought about turning but the mountains were growing larger,

as if by the second, and soon the air whipped against his skin as if he were in flight, his

cheeks burning and his feet pumping piston-like through the water. Just to get to the

mountains...

.. .it came again: “Toby,” softly, like morning light across the water...

...the water, up to his knees now, but still allowing him complete movement,

bowing to him, Toby.

Then, the voice, different because now it was booming his name with all the

weight of the mountains in front of him, more, maybe, but still gentle, like the grace of a

tornado silently and easily bringing a house back down to rest. “Toby,” it said. “Look at

the water, Toby.”

The air above the mountains seemed to explode, cascading brilliant light across

the sky and over the treelines, rocketing crimson streaks against the stark blue line of

heavens.

‘Wow!” came the voice from behind him, fading from his ears as he approached

the horizon - so close, looming over him. “Toby,” the dissipating voice screamed. “It’s

blood, Toby.”

Toby tore his eyes from the horizon and looked down. Almost up to his waist

now, the liquid he’d been running through had not been water; it was blood, red and dark,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 139

like wine, thick and swirling. There was a current to it, he noticed, and that current

flowed west, toward the mountains - toward the sunset.

He turned and looked east. The town was nowhere in sight. He was alone in a

huge field, flooded with running blood. He turned west again and saw that the mountains,

too, had disappeared. Replacing them were two eyes, just pinpoints in the darkness that

now bathed the sky. Yellow eyes, then flashing red, then growing, as they had in all of

his dreams, black - blacker than the sky, blacker than anything he’d ever seen...

He looked down again - his legs were lost somewhere under the blood - and,

floating by - floating west - was a green piece of paper. Looking closer, Toby saw that it

was a bankbook; he himself had one similar to it, a small passport-like book with a glossy

green cover. Printed on this one in faux-gold-leaf lettering were the words Apache

Springs Savings. He reached out a hand and plucked it from the water, but recoiled,

withdrawing his hand from it as if it were infected with some horrible, transmittable

disease, because as it emerged from the water, coming with it - closed tight around it,

how hadn’t he seen it? - was a small hand, slender and with long fingers like his own,

only this hand wasn’t attached to anything. A shard of bone protruded from where the

wrist should have been, and as Toby pitched it back into the blood and watched it flow

west and out of sight, he began to scream.

He woke, pitching forward, and drew a breath. Class was proceeding with a full

head of steam; his peers, sleepy-eyed, looked open mouthed at the board, where Mrs.

O’Hanna was busy diagramming the word Salvos. He blinked, looking around him, then

at himself. His shirt was visibly dampened by sweat, dinner plate-sized stains growing

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 140

from his armpits and darkening his white oxford. The clock read 1:22. He’d been out for

one minute.

Before he could begin to worry, just going with what felt right, Toby flipped open

his notebook and began to write. He’d never been able to remember his dreams, but this

one was fresh in his memory; his pencil flew across the paper, and as he wrote he began

to relax, feeling his forehead cool and his muscles start to slacken. The first thing he

wrote down was the most specific part of his dream: Apache Springs Savings. Those had been

the words written on the bankbook, the bankbook with the hand attached to it. It had been

a child’s hand; Toby was sure of it.

He wrote The West is the Best.

Mountains in the west.

He thought for a moment, tapping the edge of the pencil against the desk. Bridget

Gossman looked over, scowling, her eyebrows bent up and her eyes fixed on Toby’s

pencil. Toby mouthed sorry and looked back to the notebook. He wrote: Blood in the streets

and in the field.

Thought a moment, then: A soft voice from the east. And: The Blood in the field was up to

my waist.

Shielding his notebook with one hand, hunched over the desk like an ancient

scribe, Toby peered around. All was quiet in the room, all heads to front. A lazy

Thursday afternoon.

He looked back at the notebook and brought the pencil to the page. He wrote,

Black Eyes where the sun should have been. This last thought rang a bell somewhere in the back

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 141

of his mind; he’d dreamt something like that before. He wrote: Him. Then he crossed it

out, and wrote IT.

Sitting back, he looked around once more and, when he was sure that no one was

looking, took his arm away from the page. It had started to look like a bad poem written

by one of those weird glue-sniffing guys from the 60’s:

Apache Springs Savings

the west is the best, mountains in the west

Blood in the streets and in the field

a soft voice from the East

The Blood in the field was up to my waist

Black Eyes where the sun should have been

Him IT

At the top of the page, he wrote, My Dream.

He was going for something here - trying to make it right - but couldn’t figure

out what was missing. Something to link it all together - and fast, because already the

dream was slipping from him like ice in his hands, just melting away through the cracks

where his fingers met. He needed to get something substantial down before what he had

left evaporated altogether. Something was at stake here. He could feel it.

There had been a sense of something in the dream that he hadn’t yet transcribed to

the page. Some kind of excitement, almost. He thought about writing excitement, but then

shot down the idea; later, if his current hunch that the dream would soon be lost to him

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 142

completely except for what he’d written was correct, he wouldn’t know what to make of

the word excitement. Not all by itself. He needed something more. Why couldn’t he just

hold onto this dream? Christ, he was thinking about it enough. Why was it slipping away

so quickly?

Then an idea came to him, and even as he wrote it down he though it didn’t seem

exactly right. He stopped writing and blinked, staring at the page. It would have to do. It

seemed like it was at least pointed in the right direction - not exactly the something he’d

wanted, but something nonetheless.

Mrs. O’Hanna’s voice didn’t come into focus immediately; it was gradual, his

realization that she was reading aloud to the class all that he’d written, like a Polaroid

photograph gently but steadily gaining its hues. However, he was completely and horribly

tuned in to her nasal voice - and as pink as a fresh piece of tuna - by the time she got to

the last few fragments he’d just finished writing. She spoke, “I wanted the mountains. I

needed them. I think that they wanted me, too. But he, the soft voice from the east, didn’t

want me to go there. So he told me about the blood.” Toby shrunk into the desk, face

hardening with fury at Mrs. O’Hanna. The bitch was acting like she was his friend earlier.

The fat, ugly bitch. She continued. “I think - ahem - I think that the voice saved me from

the mountains.” Stopped, placed a hand on his shoulder. “Well, Toby, that sounds pretty

good.” He felt her hand on his shoulder, squeezing there. He wanted to turn his head and

take a Tyson-sized bite out of it. “But,” she went on, “maybe you should save your poetry

for English class, eh? That is, unless you want to translate it into Latin for us.”

A wave of snickering rippled across the classroom. Toby slammed shut his

notebook and looked at Mrs. O’Hanna’s hand. She withdrew it quickly, as if she’d been

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 143

stung. For a moment she looked at Toby, as if searching for something in his eyes, then

she walked down the aisle, saying, “Now, as we were saying...” and returned to the

board with her piece of yellow chalk.

Toby focused on his breathing. His chest rose and fell with his shoulders. His eyes

felt dry, and he found that he couldn’t stop blinking. The tears were around there

somewhere, lurking, and if he didn’t stop blinking so much, he knew that this would just

turn into a mess. Nothing that he wanted to deal with at this moment.

The flush had reached his ears, and the tips of them burned as if he’d just come in

from an exceptionally cold and windy day. Sitting up, massaging the side of the desk

with one restless hand and feeling the old gum there like tumors on the wood but not

caring, not giving a flying fucking fuckwad about the stupid shitty old desks in this loser

school, Toby looked around the room.

The laughing had died down to a hush as soon as Mrs. O’Hanna had resumed her

writing on the board, but almost everyone was looking at him. Bridget Gossman frowned,

looking gape-mouthed at him as if he actually had been writing poetry and that actually

as a matter of fact yes did bother her and insult her and horrify her. He wanted to tell her

to shove it, that he hoped she choked on the stupid gum that she chewed on all day long

like she was a cow and the gum was her nasty stupid cud.

Despite himself, though, despite the overwhelming desire to turn his head to his

desk and study it until the bell rang, Toby met every glance directed at him. Headed them

off at the pass, his mother would say; let them all know you’re there and you intend to

stay. In turn, each pair of eyes with which he locked his own reverted to the board - as if

it were they who’d just been made a fool of in front of the entire class! - and when Toby

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 144

finally looked at Nate, who was sitting in the far comer of the room, second to last from

the back row, he found that Nate was shaking his head at him - and smiling. Toby smiled

back - totally natural, that smile, and he felt it just behind his ears, warm there, not like

his flush (which was receding) but more of a tingle, a tickle. Nate nodded at him, and

Toby, for God’s sake, nodded back.

He tried taking notes the for the remainder of class but gave up halfway, deciding

that he’d just get them from someone else later. His mind was tired and his notebook was

full of words he’d already forgotten, just some random (and poetic, apparently?) words

that he knew Mrs. O’Hanna had read in class but were as lost to him now as, say, his own

birth. But he had it now. He had it on paper. It would make interesting reading later.

When the bell finally played its glorious, shrilling note and the class rose in one

quick, rustlingswish, Toby jammed his things in his backpack and was out the door

before Mrs. O’Hanna could try cornering him. She’d undoubtedly have some sort of

explanation, some apology-tinged lecture on how even he, Toby, had to pay attention in

class, if not for himself then out of respect for the others. But he’d heard that song before.

It sucked.

He made a brief stop at his locker for a few things and walked quickly toward the

exit. A few faces had him marked as he marched by, but for the most part, he was once

again just regular Toby. That was the beauty of middle school - the kids were quick to

jump on you but just as quick to forget it all. But when he thought he was free,

approaching the double doors where on the other side he’d spoken with Mrs. O’Hanna

that morning, he heard a voice from behind him, standing out among the hallway’s after

school chatter. “Toby!”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 145

Toby turned, expecting some lame jokester and only hoping he wasn’t part of a

pack, but instead he saw Nate, running along the hall, bookbag flagging behind him. He

stopped a few feet short of Toby, slightly out of breath, a little red in the face himself.

“Hey,” he said. “Wanna wait for me to get out of detention?”

Toby shrugged, that feeling behind his ears returning, and dropped his backpack

from his shoulder. “Sure,” he said. “What time you get out?”

“Should be a quick one. Miss March. She’s a real fucking softy. I think she wants

to bang me.”

Toby laughed and, walking slightly behind his friend, followed Nate to Miss

March’s classroom, slapped him five and sent him in, then continued alone to the library,

where he’d wait until Nate was done washing the boards or sweeping the floors or

clapping the erasers - or whatever you did when you were in detention.

13 Year-Old Ceasefire

Nate was right. The detention didn’t take fifteen minutes, and when he marched

into the library, running his hand along the rows of books as he approached where Toby

sat in the back, he was whistling, as if he and Toby had nothing at all to talk about but the

normal stuff - what movies came out that weekend, who’s boobs got big over the winter

break, maybe a little more on how Nate was becoming sure that Miss March wanted to

have sex with him and that’s why she kept giving him these poor excuses for detentions.

“Ready, Freddy?” Nate said, pulling a random book from one shelf and turning it over in

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 146

his hands, inspecting it as if it were some cool and strange shell that had washed up on

the beach.

“Yup,” Toby said, and, gathering up his things, followed the still-whistling Nate

out of the library.

But as soon as they stepped from the school and into the cold air of another short

winter day, Toby took note of the considerable shift in Nate’s manner. He quieted almost

immediately, stuffing his hands in his pockets and walking slightly faster than was usual

for their careless trek home. Maybe, when put in a similar situation, he was finally

confronting what had happened the day before. Maybe he was wrapping his mind around

it, or trying to. Toby knew the feeling.

They walked for a while in silence, and Toby let himself smile, enjoying just

being with his friend. He kept up with Nate’s pace, joining him in telling some of the

other kids “What’s up?” as they passed them, occasionally brushing arms with each other

as they strutted along the snow banks on the side of the road. The sun, of course, had

already begun its downward slope across the western sky, the clouds there infused with a

mellow golden glow, and for a second Toby felt the feeling of having been confronted

recently with something similar to this; the western sky, something about it, the

smoldering ambience of approaching twilight. That sky made him want to keep walking,

to just hit the road and see what was out there. Something good out there, maybe.

Something for him. Strange. But these were thoughts Toby had grown used to, not just

within the last few tumultuous months, but over the span of his life as he could

remember. He’d always been a thinker, and kind of prided himself on that, whether the

thoughts were lucid or otherwise. After all, if he wanted to be a writer, he would have to

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 147

embrace these strange inklings, live by them, almost. Maybe when he got home he’d pick

up the pen, maybe do a little writing. It had been months since he’d done so.

They began to talk a little as the minutes passed, just chitchat, neither wanting to

be the first to breach the subject of what had happened the day before. Searching for

something to say, Toby asked Nate if he’d heard anything about some murders in

Colorado. “Nope,” Nate said. “Why? What happened?”

“Trying to figure that out myself,” Toby said. “But I heard a bunch of teachers

talking about it this morning. I wonder if it was terrorism.”

Nate frowned. “I doubt it.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Shit like that happens all the time,” Nate said. He walked with his head down,

tracing each wide step, planting one foot while lifting the other from the snow and

bringing it down in long strides. His backpack bulged behind him. “It’s like, all of a

sudden, one day all the TV shows just pick one murder and really think that that’s the

first murder that ever happened in the history of the world.”

“I know what you mean,” Toby said.

“Then people forget about it and it happens all over again.” He looked at Toby.

“What was that lady’s name who died, like, her husband killed her, and she was pregnant

and stuff?”

“Oh, damn, hold on.”

“Well, you know who I - ”

“Laci Peterson.”

“Right,” Nate said. “Laci Peterson. And her husband was Scott Peterson.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 148

“Yeah.”

“Well, it sucks and everything that her husband killed her, you know?” Nate was

looking at Toby now, apparently having forgotten about his feet and their long strides.

Their pace had slowed to a classic walk-home speed. “But seriously, you gotta wonder

how many people get killed in America every day. And they pick one murder case and

that’s all the TVs wanna show. Like it was the only time anybody ever got killed in

America.”

“Hmm ”

“And whatever it was that you heard the teachers talking about was probably just

like that. Something the TV shows just wanted to talk about and that’s all they wanted to

talk about because they already forgot about whatsemame - ”

“Laci Peterson - ”

“Laci Peterson, right.”

“Yeah,” Toby said, reaching out a hand and pulling some needles from a pine

growing close to the road. “And they probably lapped it up. Just like the TVs wanted

them too.”

“Exactly,” Nate said, and then he was quiet again, face pulled down, slack, as if in

concentration. They walked for a minute like that.

“Hey,” Toby said. “Sounds like you’ve given all that stuff some thought, huh?”

Nate smiled. “Heard my folks talking about it the other night. Not about

Colorado, I mean. About Laci Peterson.”

Toby laughed and looked at Nate, then said, “I didn’t think you’d be able to think

all that stuff up on your own.” This was a bold move, being that they hadn’t exactly

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 149

reestablished their friendship yet - not by word, anyway. But Nate laughed, too, and

shoved Toby.

“Watch it, asshole. Don’t forget I’m a lot bigger than you.”

This got both of them quiet, hitting, Toby imagined, a little too close to home

about their fight yesterday...and what had happened afterwards. But regardless, it felt

like they were friends again. That’s what was important.

The wind had picked up and Toby flipped the collar of his jacket so it fell smooth

against his neck. They were now approaching the pass where, if they wished, they could

cross the road and take a detour through the woods. By that route - the route they’d taken

yesterday - the stash was only a few minutes’ digression. As the dirt path at the mouth of

the woods drew near, Nate bumped Toby’s arm and said, “Hey, I’ve got a great idea.”

“What?” Toby said.

“How about we don’t go through the woods today?”

They stopped, facing each other now, each wearing his own expression of

defiance but also meeting eyes like a couple of quarreling lovers. Then - and thank God

for this, leave it to Nate to defuse a tense situation - Nate farted, and they both broke out

in laughter, cackling, and the ringing bellow of their outburst sent a flock of birds flying

from their nests, which made them both jump and got them laughing harder. Toby

grabbed Nate’s shoulder and braced himself; it was as if everything was coming out in

his laughter, tightening in the pit of his stomach and charging out through his throat, and

it was all he could do to stand upright. “It stinks, man. Ugh, even in the wind. What did

you eat?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 150

Nate grabbed Toby’s elbow, unable to breathe himself because of his laughing fit,

and squeezed, saying, “Jesus, come on, man, stop laughing. My stomach, man. Ah, it’s

killing me!” Tears from the laughter welled at Toby’s eyes and he felt the need to cry, or

to keep laughing, or both. His ears rang and his head felt too big for his body. “Oh, man,”

Nate said. “Hey, listen, dude. I’m sorry, dude. I was a dick.”

“Yeah?” Toby said, wiping with a gloved hand at the comer of one eye where a

tear was about to escape. “You mean that? I mean, seriously?”

Nate nodded, removing his hand from Toby’s elbow. “Come on, man,” he said.

“Let’s walk.”

They started up the road again. Toby said, “Through the woods, right?”

“Yeah, right.”

A few cars passed as they walked. One of them honked and someone yelled

something out the window, but Toby couldn’t make it out. Nate gave the car the bird

anyway. “Hey,” he said after a moment.

“Yeah?”

“You wanna hear something weird?”

“Sure,” Toby said.

“Yesterday, after our fight and all that...” Nate paused here, obviously not

wanting to go into the specifics. Toby could tell that he felt bad, and didn’t feel the need

to mb it in. One apology was more that enough.

“Uh-huh,” Toby said, nodding and giving Nate a look that said it wasn’t a

problem, that it was all behind them now.

“Well, afterwards, after all those birds.. .after all the birds fell out of the trees - ”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 151

Toby winced as if he’d been poked with something hard and cold. For a moment

his vision brightened, like an echo of his walking-dreams, and Nate’s face shone with this

waiflike glimmer, his mouth moving but so slowly, as if he were trying to speak

submerged in thick molasses. Stop it, Toby. No use for that, not now. Be clear now. Just

stop.

He was able to right himself - hey, not bad, Toby, not bad at all, maybe if yo u ’d

done that yesterday - and Nate continued. “You know what I thought for a little while

after that?”

Toby’s mouth had gone dry, chalky, but he managed a meek, “What?”

“I thought it was you that did it. That somehow, you made those birds die. When

you screamed, I mean - and man, I’m sorry, like I said - ”

Out of himself now, his mouth forming words and his mind and ears observing

them as he would at the movies or listening to the radio, Toby said, “Don’t sweat it, Nate.

I don’t care, you freaked and we had a fight. Big fucking deal.”

Nate was quiet for a moment, and when Toby looked at him, he was looking once

again at his sneakers, lips bunched up to one side of his mouth like he was chewing on an

outstandingly tough piece of meat. Then he said, “I know, man. All right. But - ”

“Yeah?” Toby said, stopping again in the snow, one hand gripping a shoulder

strap of his backpack and the other by his side.

Nate shook his head, as if in order to clear his thoughts after waking from a deep

sleep. “I don’t know, man. That stuff was fucking weird, right?”

Toby nodded and they started once again to walk. Neither spoke anymore of their

fight or the birds. Having dropped it, immediately the mood lightened, and almost

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 152

visibly; Toby swore that the clouds parted and the sun gave to them its last bit of light as

they walked the final stretch home. They talked about school and Toby’s “poem” in Latin

class. This momentarily and admittedly distracted Toby, and when Nate said that he

didn’t believe that Toby couldn’t remember any of it, Toby told him, civilly but with a

certain determination, to drop it. Nate said, “Hey, no problemo,” and then proceeded to

tell Toby about how, in gym class, he had noticed that Summer Hatteberg, when she

raised her arms during stretch-down, had grown some underarm hair. This got them both

incensed, as neither had anything to show for yet themselves - at least, they agreed, not

under their armpits, anyway.

So as they rounded the comer where Nate’s street ended in a T against Old

Horseneck - Toby’s street - they slapped five and said see you tomorrow in school, and

it was just like it had always been, affable and nonchalant; just like that, they’d made up,

and were once again best friends. It was a nice feeling, made Toby feel light, like he’d

gained a step.

When News Comes it Comes Hard

When he got home he found his mother in the family room, reclined with her feet

up on the glass-top coffee table, a profound look on her face as she worked the day’s

crossword puzzle with a red pen. He sat on the couch opposite to her and put his own feet

up. “Hey, Tobe,” she said. “Nine-letter word for bitter, starts with an e.”

“Envenomed?” he said.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 153

She nodded, briefly marking the paper and returning the tip of the pen to her

mouth. “Hey,” he said. “Did you hear about those murders in Colorado?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, laying the paper across her lap and looking at him over her

bifocals. “Isn’t it awful?”

“I don’t know,” he said, noticing that the impatience in his voice made it squeak,

made it sound like a little kid’s. He cleared his throat. “They didn’t tell us anything about

it at school.”

“Well,” she said, fishing around on the floor in the stack of papers there, “I don’t

know why they would. Here.” She leaned over with a groan, handed him the A-section,

and went back to her crossword.

The primary headline read, in black, bold print, Buzzard’s Bay Watershed

Meeting Comes Up Inconclusive - by N. Huff. Under this was a picture of some men

leaving a building — looked like one of the antiquated municipal buildings in New

Bedford, old stone steps, cobbled sidewalk. Further down, Toby found what he was

looking for; it took up the entire bottom half of the page, and was headlined, Massacre in

North-Eastern Colorado Said to Be a “Sign of Troubled Times” (Associated Press.)

Accompanying the article was a picture of a policeman, a beige Mounties-style hat

flipped back on his head revealing a receding line of gray, wispy hair, standing in what

looked like a fast-food restaurant over a line of white sheets - those would be the bodies,

Toby thought. A chill whipped down his spine, starting at his neck, tightening there, and

then spreading down and out across his back as if by a thousand tiny, icy fingers. He

looked back at his mother - still engaged in her puzzle - swallowed, and began to read:

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 154

Apache Springs, CO - The state of Colorado came together yesterday in a state of

horror and mourning at the possible murder of at least 22 people in Apache Springs,

Colorado, a mid-sized highway town near the state’s Northeastern border.

Police have not yet confirmed whether the deaths are related, but have assured

the town o f Apache Springs in a press conference that “town- and state-police have been

working around the clock - many of them not having slept since yesterday -to pinpoint

any possible leads and/or suspects ” for what marks the largest single-site massacre to

breach the state’s soil since the catastrophic events at Columbine High School, which

took place on April 20, 1999.

At least one o f the deaths has been estimated to be a suicide, and it has been

speculated that the deaths were the cause of a possible mass-suicide, similar - but in a

much smaller scale - to that o f the Jonestown suicides o f 1978. However, the “ferocious

and brutal nature ’’ of the Apache Springs incidents may indicate otherwise.

According to sources, o f the 22 dead, nine were found at the Apache Springs

Savings, the town’s bank, eight were found at a Denny’s, a fast-food chain restaurant,

three at a restaurant called The Red Keg and two more at the Apache Springs Comfort,

a hotel about three miles out of town. Because Apache Springs Savings was missing in

excess of nineteen thousand dollars, police have accepted the possibility of foul play. It

has yet to be established, however, if the murders at Denny’s, The Red Keg, and The

Apache Springs Comfort are related to those at the bank.

One police officer, who chose to remain unidentified, remarked that the nature o f

the murders were “nothing like [he had] ever seen. There was more blood in most o f

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 155

those places than there was floor. It was like something out o f a horrible movie, only this

is real. ”

Another officer, also unidentified, said, “People are bringing up Columbine, and

I understand why. This is something [we] had thought would never happen again, at least

not in this lifetime. And not to take anything away from Columbine - because Columbine

was so horrible in itself - but this is almost twice as many victims, and I ’m sorry to say

this, but probably twice as brutal. ”

Thus far, the FBI has yet to release comment on whether they will be joining the

Colorado State Police in their investigation. “I totally expect [the FBI to join the

investigation], and would welcome them without reservation, ” said Paul Wexler, chief of

Colorado State Police in a press conference. “A situation such as this shouldn’t be a

[expletive] contest. ” He further went on to add some “personal thoughts, ” which were

met by the press and Apache Springs residents with substantial emotion. “We’ve come

across a situation here that says something about today’s citizen. To me, the nature o f

these murders is a sign o f troubled times, not only for Apache Springs and its citizens, but

for America. ”

The Apache Springs Police Department has released the names of the victims to

their families. It is reported that two of the victims were under the age of eighteen.

Tomorrow there will be a memorial service in Apache Springs for the victims and their

families. The public is “heartily encouraged” to participate. It is estimated that at least

[Cont. on A-6, APACHE]

Toby didn’t need to see any more. “Jesus,” he said. His mother looked from her

puzzle - again returning it to her lap - and nodded.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 156

“Isn’t it just terrible?” she said. “Did you read the part about that one police

officer who talked about all the blood? Ugh! And then the chief - police chief was

cussing at the press conference? Wow.”

“Yeah,” Toby said. “I read that part.”

“It’s horrible. That police chief must have really been stirred up,” his mother said,

shaking her head and going back to her crossword puzzle.

Folding the newspaper and tossing it back into the pile from where his mother had

retrieved it, Toby got up and whistled for the dogs. “Oh, they’re still outside, Tobe.

Would you let them in?” his mother said.

“Sure.” Toby started toward the kitchen.

“Oh, wait,” his mother called after him.

Toby halted, not turning. “What?”

“I’m going to pick you up at school at noon tomorrow. I scheduled an

appointment with Dr. Weiss for you.”

Toby turned. His mother was twisted in the couch, one arm over it, looking back

at him. “Dr. Weiss is a psychologist. You said you wanted an appointment, right?”

Toby found himself nodding. “Yeah, okay.” He grinned. “That was fast.”

“Well,” his mother said, turning back and bringing her feet down from the coffee

table with a thump. “Your father’s not the only one with connections around here.”

Toby smiled. He had a feeling that his mother had always harbored a small degree

of spite toward his father for bringing home the bacon. This, he figured, was the sole

reason that she’d gone back to school once most of the kids were out of the house and

gotten that additional degree she needed to practice on her own. She had yet to put it to

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 157

use, but any day now, she said... “I know, Mom,” Toby said, trying to keep the

amusement out of his voice. “Thank you thank you thank you.”

“You’re welcome you’re welcome you’re welcome,” his mother said, then Toby

made his way through the kitchen and, opening the newly greased door beside the pantry,

hollered for the dogs. They came bounding in from the cold, coats slick with melting

snow, Lilly first and Daisy in hobbling-tow. They sat at his feet, staring up at him, Lilly

with one paw in the air. Daisy sneezed.

“God bless you,” Toby said. “Come on, girls.” He started up the back stairs, just

walking at first, then suddenly sprinting so the dogs would give chase. Their nails

scratched against the carpet, their frantic barks echoing just at his heels. He ran into his

room and tossed himself onto the bed, where the dogs followed him and continued

barking, Daisy cramming her nuzzle into the wedge between Toby’s cheek and the

pillow. “Okay, girl. Okay.” He sat up and so did the dogs, Lilly again with a paw cocked

- what now? - and Daisy panting heavily. “Alright, get down. Down.” They tumbled off

the bed and took off downstairs, their barking trailing off behind them.

Toby opened his backpack and brought out his Latin book. He wanted to get his

studying done before dinner was ready, if he could manage it. There was something about

dinner for Toby that officially ended the day, that shut down his cognitive process, or at

least his motivation to think, anyway.

What worried him the most about the test tomorrow was today’s material. He

couldn’t remember if Mrs. O’Hanna (still on his shit list) had said that it would be

included on the test; it didn’t matter either way, however, because he hadn’t taken notes

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 158

in class. He might have to suck it up tonight and go to Nate’s after dinner to look at his

own (and probably meager) set of notes.

Toby’s hand paused on his notebook; he had actually written something in class

today. He’d gotten something down, and damn if he could remember it, but he had a

feeling that it didn’t have a hell of a lot to do with Latin. He opened the notebook and

flipped to today’s page. The following was written in what for Toby was unusually neat

script:

MY DREAM

Apache Springs Savings

the west is the best, mountains in the west

Blood in the streets and in the field

a soft voice from the East

The Blood in the field was up to my waist

Black Eyes where the sun should have been

Him IT

I wanted the mountains. I needed them.

I think that they wanted me, too.

But he

the soft voice from the east

didn ’t want me to go there. So he told me about the blood

I think that the voice saved me from the mountains.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 159

Toby’s first reaction was one of awkward bewilderment and slight embarrassment for

writing such pretentious garbage and having had it read aloud in front of class. But it had

been a dream. What could he do?

When he re-read it, however, horror filled him to his very bones. It was as if a

draft had entered his room and brought with it a specter in the form of the fragments of

his dreams; everything came surging back to him, crashing into his mind like a rocket to

earth. The dream; and not only what he remembered of it - which now was a lot - but he

had it right in front of him, there in his own (if not slightly altered for the occasion)

handwriting: three words that crippled him, unfolded and set ablaze whatever repudiation

he’d been working at over the last twenty-four hours. Three tell-tale words like a bad

omen, like a rotten piece of meat sitting heavy and stinking in his stomach: Apache

Springs Savings. It had been the first thing he’d written.

It was also the name of that bank in Colorado where all the people died.

Therapy

The test went well, although Toby hadn’t studied a bit. Otherwise, the hours at

school were a blur, and when his mother came at noon to pick him up for his appointment

with Dr. Weiss, Toby was ready to talk.

The night before, he’d gone over again and again in his mind (after the initial

shock) whether or not he’d heard the words Apache Springs Savings before his dream. He

couldn’t recall having heard them from anyone - he’d been in the dark about the

Colorado murders until his mother had given him the A-Section of the Standard Times -

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 160

but he figured that it was possible that, subconsciously, he’d somehow picked up the

words and had subsequently dreamed them. It was possible.

But it wasn’t probable. So as Toby and his mother entered an old historic house in

New Bedford that had been converted into a group of offices - among them a few

psychiatrists and a dentist - he was as confused as he’d ever been about everything. He

found that he was actually looking forward to talking about all of this - or at least some

of this - to a professional, to someone who made money just to listen. Toby needed a

good listener.

Mrs. Weiss - actually Mrs. Mendoza-Weiss - fit the role. She was slim,

spectacled, tanned-looking and dressed in a light-green pantsuit. Toby put her in her mid

forties, but when she spoke his name from the threshold of her office, he reconsidered

and gave her at least another ten years. There was something in the softness of her voice

that said grandmother. Something warm and easy that spoke of age.

He left his mother in the waiting room with a magazine and the receptionist for

company. Mrs. Weiss closed the door gently behind him and said, “It’s so nice to meet

you, Toby. Here, have a seat.” She motioned vaguely to a few chairs set against the wall

on one side of the room.

“Where?” Toby said. “Which one should I sit in?”

“Whichever you like, I guess.”

Toby picked one of the chairs and plopped down, folding his hands across his lap.

He looked around the room; it wasn’t as big as he’d expected. When Toby thought of a

psychiatrist’s office he thought of huge furniture, books lining the walls, everything in

oak and muted colors. This room was cozy, with framed posters on the wall of sixties

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 161

rock bands - Jethro Tull, Jefferson Airplane, one of Mick Jagger shoving his face into the

camera and sticking out his tongue, which seemed to Toby grotesquely long - and plants

in every comer. The chair Toby sat in sunk down with his weight; this was the kind of

chair you could spend days in, just enjoying the act of sitting. Mrs. Mendoza-Weiss chose

the chair across from him. She sat and looked at him, smiling. “Well,” she said, “I’m Dr.

Mendoza-Weiss. You can call me Kate, if that’s okay with you.”

“Kate. Yeah, sure.”

Her smile widened. “What would you like me to call you?”

“Toby’s fine,” he said.

“Okay Toby. Your parents - particularly your mother - are very concerned about

some things that seem to be bothering you, and I understand that you have asked to see

somebody, because of these things that are bothering you. Is that true?”

“Uh, yeah. I’ve been feeling pretty weird lately,” Toby said.

“Now, would you mind if I took notes now and then?” she asked, holding up a

blank piece of paper attached to a clipboard.

“No, that’s fine.”

“Okay. Before we talk about what in particular brought you here, I’d like to

explain some things about what I do.” She did all of talking for the first ten or so

minutes, mostly stuff about how everything that they discussed was strictly confidential,

barring the circumstance that she thought Toby was a danger to himself or to other

people, at which point she would report him to the police. She also told him that she

would be most comfortable discussing things with his parents - if he wished so - only

when Toby was present. This relaxed Toby a bit, got him sinking even deeper into his

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 162

chair; it appeared that she was on his team, and that she in fact took him seriously. It was

a good start.

She followed this by what Toby assumed was standard psychotherapy procedure

- asked him questions about his mother and father, his brothers (starting with Andon and

all the way down to Jimmy), and his childhood. She asked about drugs and drinking (and

he neglected to tell her that he’d gotten drunk on his birthday - on Christmas - because

he figured that it didn’t make a difference one way or the other). She asked him if he’d

ever been abused, to which he responded, “No, no way,” shaking his head vehemently,

almost laughing at the possibility. She asked about his hobbies. She asked him about

school, how well he did, whether he felt isolated there. She asked about Nate. “Well,” he

told her. “I guess Nate’s part of the reason I’m here.” She nodded and continued asking

about his other friends; it seemed, throughout her questioning, that she didn’t want to get

around to the real reason he was here, to what had happened. But Toby figured that this

was standard procedure, that this was how it worked. So he answered all she asked as

well and as truthfully as he could.

“Toby,” she said, leaning closer to him now, one elbow propped on her knee with

her hand curled into a fist. “Have you ever felt suicidal? Have you ever had any thoughts

of killing yourself?”

“No,” Toby said.

“Okay. All right.” She leaned back, looked at him, studying him. “Have you ever

felt like you would like to really hurt somebody else? Like you would really like to kill

them or hurt them badly?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 163

Toby thought at this. Tread lightly, Toby. She’s trying to find out if yo u ’re nuts.

He shook his head. “No.” He thought of Hutch, of the day he made his nose bleed. Had

he wanted to kill him? No, he hadn’t. At least he didn’t think that he had. “Well,” he said,

“I told my mother once that I wished she would die. Is that what you mean?”

“Well - ”

“I didn’t really mean it.”

She laughed. The sound was light and pleasant, like raindrops. “I know, lots of

people say things that they don’t mean. Yes, I understand, though.” They looked at each

other for a moment. The office was quiet but for the constant and subdued hum of traffic

passing on Union Street, which Dr. Weiss’s office faced. Then she said, “Um, have you

ever lost time?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like you found yourself somewhere and had no idea how you got there? Or

people told you that they saw you someplace and you don’t remember being there at all?”

“What, you mean like schizophrenia or something?”

“What?” She looked, for the moment, taken aback, like she’d lost her role as

psychiatrist. Like she’d been briefly derailed. “What, Toby?”

“You mean, like schizophrenia? That sounds schizophrenic, or something.”

She winced, her brow collected so furiously into her forehead that it looked like it

was trying to move down between her eyes. “Well, yes and no. Have you ever

experienced anything like that?”

“Not really, um, one time...this is where it gets hard.” Here it came; time to be

out with it. He was here, she seemed like a nice enough lady, and she’d gone on and on

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 164

about confidentiality. He had nothing to lose, everything to gain. Maybe she’d believe

him. Maybe she’d even seen something like this before. And hell, maybe he was sick,

and if he was, he had no wish to just sit on it. He wanted to get better. He continued,

“Um, sometimes I feel like I’m not myself.”

“Okay.” She picked up her clipboard and scribbled something at this, not looking

at what she was writing, instead keeping her eyes locked with Toby’s.

“Um, not like my personality changes. But sometimes I feel like I go outside of

my own body, like everything gets really loud...” This was harder to describe than he

thought it would be. Then, he’d never vocalized it to another human being. Most of it he

hadn’t vocalized to himself. In his mind, it was always just wrapped up in a neat little

word, likespecial, he was special, he was something different.

You ’re Gray, Toby.

Yes, I’m Gray.

He went on. “And then sometimes things happen.”

“Okay,” she said, now looking at her notes. “Have you ever felt that you were

hearing things that weren’t really there? Outside of your head, not really in your head,

like voices?”

“No, I never heard voices. Well, sometimes in dreams.”

“Sounds?”

“No, not really. Sometimes when I’m dreaming.”

“When you’re dreaming.”

“Yeah.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 165

“Okay, what about seeing things that you think are not there, but you think might

be. I’m talking about things called hallucinations. They will seem very real. Other people

will call them hallucinations, but to you they’re not. They’re real. They’re happening.”

“No, I don’t hallucinate.” Toby laughed, shook his head. “I thought I did for a

while, but I don’t.”

“Alright. Well, why don’t we just talk about why you’re here. What has happened

recently to make you feel that there’s something wrong.”

“Okay.” Toby took a breath, crossed a leg in the chair, hoisting himself out of it a

bit, trying his best to sit up straight. Here it went. “Are you ready for this?” he said.

“Yeah, I think I am.”

“Well, we were walking home from school - me and Nate - and we got into a

fig h t-”

“What was it over?”

“Nothing really, just kinda got into a fight for no reason. Well, then he kinda

jumped on me. And he kinda pinned me down, and I started to get angry, and all of a

sudden, everything started to slow down, and - ”

“What do you mean by ‘slowed down’, Toby?”

“It’s just like, I just could really hear everything and see everything really well,

and it’s like time slowed down. For me. I started to scream, and, um, all of a sudden there

were birds falling out of the sky.” He hadn’t known if he was going to include this part —

actually, going into it, had thought that there was no way - but it came out as naturally as

if he were telling her his name. Just like that. He felt momentarily lightheaded, like he’d

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 166

just finished sprinting his front yard, but this feeling receded into a kind of fiill-body

warmth. He had gotten it out, had finally come clean.

“Birds fell out of the sky?”

“Yeah,” he said. “A lot of birds. And they were all dead.”

There was a pause, both of them looking at each other, eyes met like two players

in the middle of an intense match of chess. It seemed to Toby that she was trying to

figure out whether or not he was serious. “Okay,” she said. She cocked an eyebrow. “Did

Nate see this?”

“Yeah.” Immediately, without hesitation. “Don’t tell anybody. Please.”

She shifted back in her chair, her notes now forgotten. “I’m not going to tell

anybody. I promised you that I wouldn’t tell anybody this. This is just between you and

me.”

“Okay. This feels weird to say to somebody that I don’t even know. But it feels

good to say it, too.”

“Okay, so you and your best friend, coming home - ”

“Yeah.”

“Got into an argument.”

“Yeah.”

“But it was over nothing.”

“Yeah.”

“Can you tell me a little more about that?” She had picked up her clipboard again,

was holding it in front of her like a shield.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 167

“Well, Nate said that I was being a jerk in school. He said that I was different

lately. And yeah, I guess I’ve been a little different lately.”

“How?”

“Well, I just feel like - 1 never get sick - 1 read about it in a psychology book, and

it said, ‘Delusions of Granduer.’ I don’t know, I don’t think that I’m having delusions,

it’s just... I just feel different than everybody.”

“Different how? When you say delusions of grandeur, do you mean that you

looked this up in the psychology book because you’re smarter and better and that you

could do things that other people can’t do?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, like what, Toby?”

“Like make birds fall out of the sky.”

“Oh, okay. So you think that you can make things happen like that.”

“Apparently.” He felt warmth creeping up along his neck. Everything seemed so

surreal, so not-right. “That’s why I’m here, I guess.” When he said this, he felt crazy.

Like he didn’t even believe himself now.

“Okay, how long have you been feeling this way?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I just recently put my finger down on it, but, I

think that I’ve been feeling like this my whole life.” Toby put his hands up in the air, as if

to say, I surrender. He smiled, and the smile felt frantic, like a last attempt at sanity. He

felt like laughing - laughing and not stopping.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 168

“Okay,” she said, smiling and waving a hand as if to tell him to put his arms

down. Like she’d seen it before. “You have been feeling different your whole life, and

you’re just starting to realize that you are.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I’m going to kind of skip back and forth here, so bear with me.”

“Okay.”

She looked over her notes, then raised her head and met his eyes once again.

“Toby, you’re thirteen. Uh, have you hit puberty yet?”

The flush seemed to move at once from his neck to his cheeks, settling there and

burning bright. “Oh, what do you mean?”

“Okay, do you have any signs of puberty? Ah, do you have, ah.. .black hair?”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said. “I have black hair. And my voice cracks a lot,

sometimes.” This was not going the way he would have thought. But again, she was the

doctor. It had become his mantra: She’s the doctor.

“Okay, have you had any sexual feelings lately?”

“Sometimes.” He thought of Lisa Tabor, and how much her boobs had grown

over the break.

“Okay, do you have erections?”

Hesitative: “Yeah.”

“Okay, I know this may be uncomfortable talking about in front of a lady, but I’m

a doctor too, okay? So if you can just try to relax a little bit. How about, ah, what they

call nocturnal emissions?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 169

It was hard not to laugh. Toby had heard all of these terms, exactly as Mrs.

Mendoza-Weiss was presenting them, in health class last year. “You mean wet dreams?”

he said.

“Yes.”

“Uh, yeah...”

“Okay, so you’re entering into that period. You’re coming into all sorts of

hormonal changes.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, let’s get back to - ”

“Do you think I’m crazy?” It had been on his mind, and he hadn’t known he

would ask it until he did. But it seemed, now, the right thing to say. To establish exactly

where they were at right now.

“What?” she said, that look back on her face as if she were a train derailed.

“Do you think I’m crazy?” he said again.

“No,” she said, frowning. “I don’t think you’re crazy, Toby.”

“Do you think I imagined it?” he said. “The birds?”

“I don’t know, Toby. I think that we need to talk more, okay?”

“Well,” he said, rubbing his hands on his thighs - he sure felt crazy. “There was

something else that happened, once.”

“Alright,” she said, nodding, her composure once again gained. “Let’s back up to

the birds first though, okay?”

“Yeah, alright.”

“Have you been having - has your sleep been disrupted lately, Toby?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 170

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “I’ve been having bad dreams.”

“You’ve been having bad dreams. How long has this been going on?”

“Um,” Toby tried to calculate. He’d been having nightmares ever since he could

remember, but they’d really picked up a little before his birthday. “Since - since

Christmas, I think. Christmas was the first time that I had one of the bad ones. But I can’t

remember what it was.” She nodded, not saying anything. He looked at her; she looked

sincerely interested - again, as if she were on his team. Rooting for him. “I have a

question for you,” he said.

“Okay.”

“Did you hear about those murders in Colorado?”

“Yes, I’m familiar with that.”

“Well, the thing about that...I - before I knew where it happened, I dreamed

about it.” Now she was writing furiously in her book; he’d hit a mark: dreams.

Apparently she liked dreams. Not for the first time during the session, Toby felt like

laughing. “And I dreamed about the Apache Springs Savings. And - and now, and then I

went home, and that’s when I found out that that’s where it happened. At that bank. And

I know that I might have heard it at some point, like, and I dreamed about it because it

was in my subconscious. But I don’t know. I know I’d never heard those three words, but

then I dreamt it. Apache Springs Savings,” he said, and the words seemed to linger in the

atmosphere of the office, ricocheting off the walls and thrumming like a pesky insect

around them. He said, “I don’t know how I could have known that.”

“Okay, Toby. What other unusual experiences have you had?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 171

“The only other think that I can think of, is when I was real young, I got mad at

my brother, Hutch.”

“Okay. Hutch is the one whom you consider yourself closest to.”

“Yeah,” he said, dropping his leg back to the floor and leaning back a bit in the

chair. “And I remember the same thing kind of happened - the thing that happened before

the birds fell out of the sky - 1 had this really vivid feeling of everything becoming really

intense. I could hear everything and see everything so well, and it was like time slowed

down. And then, and then I was looking at Hutch, and all of a sudden he bent over and

started bleeding out of his nose. Violently. God, I know how this must sound.”

“Okay, with that one, Toby, you know, you can just feel angry,so that it actually

causes a body change that everything does feel like its slowing down and senses become

heightened, and it becomes a fight or flight response.”

“You mean like adrenaline?”

“Yeah. Yeah,” she said. Her eyebrows were up. She was really a nice person. She

really was trying to help him. But it was at that second that Toby knew that she would

never believe him. And why would she? How could she? Toby almost didn’t believe it

coming out of his own mouth. Almost. “And it could be circumstantial, you know. Your

brother got a nose bleed...”

“I’ve been through that,” Toby said, and shut his eyes. He should have known

coming into this. Should have known. “I’ve considered that. Could be a coincidence.”

“But that doesn’t explain the birds, though, does it?”

Toby opened his eyes. She was looking straight at him, her face sheet rock. “No!”

he said. “No, it doesn’t. That’s the thing.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 172

“Okay, the birds. Let’s get back to the birds.” Her clipboard was again by her

side. She’d also returned the pen to behind her ear. She crossed her legs, smoothing out

her skirt on one of her legs, and said, “So you’ve felt different lately, you’ve had bad

dreams. You’ve had premonitions, almost, of things that will happen. And you know that

they’ll happen before they actually happen.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. That’s never really happened before - ”

“But that’s lately. Lately that’s happening.”

“I did dream about the Apache Springs Savings.”

“Yeah, alright. Okay. Now, the dead birds. How many birds fell - how many

birds did you see dead?”

“There must have been hundreds.”

“Hundreds.”

“Yeah.”

“Wha - how did your friend Nate react?”

“He was really scared. He told me the other day - he said, Toby, he said, ‘You

wanna hear something weird’ and I said, ‘yeah.’ And he said, ‘For a minute there, I

thought that it was you that made that happen.’ That made me feel sick to my stomach I

just have really been struggling with this.” Toby felt for the first time like he wanted to

cry. Everything was swelling up again, everything coming back to him in droves. He

wanted to be out of this office, in his bed, just a regular kid who was doing regular stuff

that a regular kid should do on his weekend. Not cooped up with a head shrinker who

obviously - it was so obvious, wasn’t it? - thought he was completely insane.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 173

“You know, Toby, that can also be circumstantial. There are events where there

will be something that can happen that can cause that phenomenon.”

“Yeah, I thought of that. And I hope - I don’t know.” He was beginning to cry

now. He didn’t know if Dr. Weiss could tell, but the tears were there, sitting just in the

comers of his eyes. Waiting to drop.

“Alright, Toby, so you’re really worried.”

“You’re not going to tell anyone all this, are you?”

“No, I’m not.” She looked astonished, as if he’d propositioned that they skip town

and go to Vegas or something. “But, okay, Toby...”

“Yeah?” The tears ready, so ready to drop. He knew what was coming.

“Is it possible, though, that you hallucinated that event, that you thought it

happened but it didn’t really?”

“No. I thought that. I really thought that, and I considered that. That’s when I

really thought that I was going crazy.” His voice was raised now; and it felt right. He felt

like yelling at her. When was she going to get this?

“That would be frightening also. To think that you were hallucinating.”

Toby sighed. “Yeah,” he said. The tears felt like they were receding now, and

giving way to anger at the comer of his eyes. He found himself squinting, clenching his

jaw. He felt the flare of his nostrils. He was getting angry at this, at all of this. “But when

Nate talked about it to me, I knew that it really happened.”

Dr. Weiss looked at her watch and sighed. “Well,” she said, picking up her

clipboard and placing it almost out of reach, as if to affirm to Toby that their time was up.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 174

“We’re going to need to talk a lot more, because whatever is happening is great concern

to you. And it should be, because you don’t feel like things are right for you right now.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you be honest?”

“Sure,” she said. She had been sitting up, as if to rise, but she settled back in now.

He fixed his gaze on her. He tried his sanest look.

“What do you think?”

She answered immediately. “I’m not sure. I’m not sure, Toby, because the things

that you’re describing could have happened. And they could be very normal - 1 mean, not

normal, I mean, dead birds - ” she motioned with her hand, almost as if confirming and

dismissing it at the same time - “birds falling out of the sky, that’s not normal. But you

might feel that you’re responsible for that - ”

“Y e a h -”

“And you’re not.”

“Okay.”

“That’s one possibility. The other possibility,” she said, drawing back a bit,

placing one hand on her clipboard, “is that you’re hallucinating. And if you’re delusional,

Toby, you’re not going to accept that from me. You’re going to be delusional and think

that it’s all real.”

“Oh God,” Toby said, and it hit him now like it hadn’t hit him before. There was a

very real possibility that, yes, he had imagined all of this. Or at least he’d misinterpreted

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 175

everything. It hurt him in his throat and in the pit of his stomach. “What does that mean?”

he said. “Does it mean I’m sick?”

“Well,” she said, rising now, on her feet, and yes, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Adults seemed to favor that gesture. “That means that you might have a body chemistry

imbalance. So we’re going to need to talk about this a lot more. Okay? But that doesn’t

mean that what you’re experiencing is hopeless, either. Alright?”

“Yeah.”

“But what I’d like to do is work more on this with you. Because you do need

some assistance with this. And I don’t know what’s going on yet, okay?”

“Okay.”

“How does that make you feel?”

“Pretty much how I did when I got here.”

“Do you think that I can help you, Toby?”

“I knew you wouldn’t believe me.” Now Toby stood, almost as tall as Dr. Weiss.

They stood eye to eye. Both frowning. Concerned frowns, miles away from the fake-

frowns of Toby’s teacher the morning before. Frowns of those in futile deliberation.

“I do believe you, Toby,” she said. “I believe that you believe that you killed

those birds, and that you made your brother’s nose bleed. And I believe that you’re

terrified. But I also believe that you hallucinated it - but you’re still here for a reason. Do

you really feel just as bad as you did before?”

“Yeah.”

She looked down, hands clasped across her stomach. “Okay, Toby. Nate was with

you when the birds fell from the sky?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 176

“Yeah.”

“But I also believe we’re going to get to the bottom of this. And I believe that

you’re going to be fine. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“So cheer up, Toby, okay?”

“Okay.”

And that was that.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 5

Accidental Grace

Floating

The fire flickered and popped, roaring orange from the white sand and sun-

bleached rocks set in a circle like miniature Mayan Ruins. Shadows grew and receded

across Mila’s face, for a moment masking her eyes in dark before bringing them

delightfully to life, the witch-hazel green of them surrounding black pits where the fire’s

hectic dance was reflected. Lucien felt like he was in school, and his course was her.

Majoring in Mila.

It was the first clear night in days; the storms had started a few days after

Christmas and had raged steady and severe for weeks after, setting them back close to a

month’s work at Bumpy’s. Bumpy had grumbled and given them the storm off. No use

paying them, he’d said, to sit and collect dust like the goddamn boats under their

goddamn tarps. Lucien figured he’d be clocking back in tomorrow, the day after at the

latest, and he was ready; but damn, he’d had quite a vacation-within-a-vacation, hadn’t

he? He and Mila. Just like school kids.

(Mila-101.)

Studying her, making her his project. Coming to know her. Like no one he’d ever

known. Likenothing he’d ever known.

177

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 178

It got him thinking about things, about Rhode Island. Lately he’d felt this urge -

this pull - to book a flight and go home. Just for a while, just to check on things, to see

how things were getting on without him. But that would mean leaving Mila - even for a

week - and that, at this point, didn’t even seem possible.

Feeling the width of his grin, he stretched, falling back into the sand. It was cold

against his naked back, and as he let his hands dig into it, he felt Mila touching his toes

with her own, trying to interlace them together as she might have done with his hands had

they been in her reach. The fire licked at the sky and he felt the warmth of it against the

soles of his feet. Mila yawned.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “It’s going to make me tired.”

“Sorry,” she said, still in the act of yawning, “can’t help it. My brain needed

oxygen, I think.”

He sat up, propping himself on his elbows. Her feet were still working his own,

the tips of her toes now digging into the sand under his heels. She sat with a hand behind

her and one on her lap, her stomach pushed out, her skin brown against the white of her

bikini. Her breasts curved just below the bottom of the suit, seemingly defying gravity

and the very material of the suit itself. Looking, knowing that she knew that he was

looking, he reached and found his drink, white rum and soda with crushed mint and a

lime - a Mojito, according to Mila - and he drank deep, feeling the tingle of the soda and

the heat of the rum reach his stomach. “Want to hear a long burp?” he said.

“Do it.”

He belched, stretching it out, and as she mock-clapped and put on a disgusted face

he rose, standing into the warm night. “Whoa,” he said. The stars, for a moment, shook

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 179

and danced around the sky, twisting the night into a merry-go-round of icy-bright chips

and swirling black.

“What?” she said. “Stand up too fast?”

“Yeah, I think,” he said. She produced two cigarettes and lit them both, then

offered one to him. He took it, had a drag, and then tossed it into the fire.

“Hey! That’s a waste, you know.”

“Sorry,” he said. “That blue sea’s calling my name. Care for a swim?” He

grabbed one of her arms and pulled lightly.

“Hey,” she said, shaking the hand with the cigarette. He watched the ember of its

tip trace a cherry-colored trail in the night air. “I’m smoking here.”

“Come on, Mila. Come hither and bathe with your beau.”

She dragged on her cigarette and blew out a plume of smoke. “I’ll meet you in

there. Go ahead.” She tossed her head toward the ocean and then he was off, losing his

sandals along the way, then splashing ankles and shins into the lukewarm water. He heard

her call from behind him, “Look out for rays!” and he dove in, feeling the salt invade his

nostrils as he went under. He came up and turned, floating on his back under a seemingly

endless blanket of stars. It occurred to him - as it had countless times before - that

swimming while under the influence of significant quantities of alcohol may not be the

best idea, and especially at night, but the call of the sea was too much. It was all too

much; the spread of the starlit sky and the murmur of the rippling waves, the dim outline

of trees just around the shore’s bend where sand gave promptly to lush forest, the snap

and flare of the fire onshore, not to mention the good and beautiful and intelligent woman

waiting there for him. So he floated and felt the strange new suck of the sea - the recent

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 180

storms had blown in from the west, which was irregular for St. Thomas, and the sea had

gained an unfamiliar yank, a current that seemed to flow shoreward and seaward at once,

like a little cyclone in the water. And whatever currents the storm had brought with it,

whatever changes of atmospheric or oceanic pressure it had caused, one thing was for

sure: the storms from the West had brought something out in the waters of the little island

of St. Thomas. For one, it seemed warmer now, and there had been reports of some pretty

big fish washing up dead to shore (the government had already stated, though, that fish

caught in the surrounding waters were perfectly safe for consumption). Lucien had heard

that warnings had been issued to unsuspecting tourists not to go in the water without a

companion, and even then to swim at their own risk. But he was seasoned now, albeit a

little drunk, and after all, he had Mila to rescue him if he went under. Mila was a

swimmer.

“You’re missing something out here,” he said, still floating, propelling himself

gently with small and easy movements of his hands beside him.

“Here I come,” he heard her yell, and he wanted to look, wanted to watch her run

into the water with her hair flagging in its ponytail behind her and her legs working

mechanical under her, but he stayed on his back, looking up at the sky. There were so

many stars up there. Millions of them.

He heard the light splash of her slipping into the water and then felt the

underwater vibrations of her approach. Soon a hand coursed up his ankle to his shin and

then his thigh, settling there. She grabbed his suit and pulled herself to him, and then he

felt her breasts pressing lightly against his ribs and their lips met. “Hi Luke,” she said.

“Hi Mila,” he answered.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 181

Later they showered under the outside faucet. The fire was turning to embers and

the water was cold against their skin. Lucien left his sandals on the porch and, with Mila

in his wake, went inside. The dogs barked hello and the screen door banged shut behind

them and they ran giggling upstairs to the bedroom.

A Shared Dream

Everybody has a “thing,” and Mila’s was that she always fell asleep directly after

they made love. Mila’s “thing” was that she wasn’t one for Smalltalk. Lucien had begun

to use this period of time - between when Mila fell asleep and he settled into a few

pillows with whatever paperback would serve as that night’s reading - to go to the small

bathroom that flanked the bedroom, close the door, and perform his nightly prayers.

Despite the fact that Lucien hadn’t seen the inside of a church in more than a year and a

half - never mind give a sermon in one - he still felt the desire - the need, really - to talk

to his Father before he retired for the night. Old habits, he figured. But then, he hadn’t

lost the Love; he’d only lost the desire to serve, to represent. Somehow. Best, he’d found,

not to think too much about it.

But he’d learned a lot in the last few weeks. He’d learned that Love was a thing

that was not only reserved for God, that one can give oneself completely away to another

human being in a word or even a breath. He’d also learned a blissful - practically divine

- sexual position called “Reverse Cowgirl.”

But most importantly, he’d learned that there was nothing more beautiful in the

world than watching the woman you love while she slept. In sleep, Mila’s usually impish

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 182

and smiling mouth was pulled into an oblong O, her teeth just peeking over her twitching

lips. Sometimes, when she rolled over, she’d talk your ear off, muttering and sputtering

strange words, and sometimes - Lucien particularly loved this - in French (which she

spoke fluently). Her feet always warm; his always cold. In sleep she would curl her legs

into her stomach, just like a child, and rest her cheek on one hand atop the pillow.

Sometimes she kicked or punched him; always she woke up and apologized, hugging him

close to her and wrapping a leg around his waist (so he couldn’t get away, maybe?) She

slept in her cotton underwear and usually a baggy tee-shirt, and, looking down from his

book at her in the dim glow of his reading light, he would watch her breath, the hypnotic

rise and fall of her breasts under the delicate material of this or that thin-worn tee-shirt,

sometimes her shirt pulled up and exposing the small amount of chub gathered as if

magnetized around her waist, her navel with the tiny risen hole where in her twenties she

used to sport a belly-ring.

It was this hypnosis that tonight put Lucien to sleep; as he had so many times in

recent weeks, he felt his mind charging towards darkness, his eyelids so heavy they

seemed to drip, and as he turned off the light, flipped the book to the oak planks of the

floor, and pulled his portion of the sheet over his body, he felt part of her rhythm,

immersed in her soft inhales and exhales, and then it was sleep, breath slowing and body

sucking down into the bed, sleep, the breeze fluttering in with the shades, crossing the

lumps of their bodies, jangling the wind chimes she hung from her porch; sleep.

Coming into the dream felt like waking, only he was no longer lying next to Mila

in her small, oceanfront house in St. Thomas. He was now lying looking up at a sky from

which large flakes of snow fell feverishly, a sky parted only by the seldom break of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 183

clouds, a sky grayed and without sun or the instinct-betraying vision of the moon in

daylight. He sat up and found that he was immersed in a snowy landscape, what looked

like a deserted town

a ghost town

with rustic-looking stores and houses lining it streets, with no sound but the occasional

call of a crow on the wing and the ba-da-thump of his own beating heart.

He stood and looked around. The street upon which he had awoke was a two-lane

deal, the kind you’d see back in Rhode Island, with cracks in the middle where, in the

summer months, weeds would sprout and grow like unwanted body hair. The road rose at

a steady grade, seeming to go on for miles before twinkling out with the far horizon.

There, mountains stood tall, and Lucien glanced to his left - West, it would have been,

since that’s where it looked like the sun was setting. That way - West - the mountains

were a lot closer, looming, almost, like they were on the brink of falling over and

squashing the small town under their incredible mass.

He knew he was dreaming; he knew that, somewhere way beyond all of this, he

was wrapped (hopefully not drooling) in a tangle of sheets with an arm splayed across his

sleeping Mila, cooled by the breeze coming in from the Gulf of Mexico. But still,

everything was so real, so crisp, and there was a strange but incredibly powerful feeling

that if he fell here and hit his knee, he’d wake up later in St. Thomas with a bruise. He

began to walk up the narrow, snowy road. The wind bit at him, and his hands went down

to where the zipper of a coat should have been, but nothing was there; when he looked

down at himself, he saw that he was not dressed for winter like he would have been on a

cold day in Tiverton. Rather, he was dressed in the Cloth, and only now did he feel the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 184

awkward but familiar constriction of the stole around his neck, the weight of the thick

material pulling at his shoulders and hanging about his waist; and the weight of

something else, of something he had shed and left on the mainland, like a boy casting off

his shirt before diving into the water and swimming as if for his life to an offshore raft.

He felt the weight of that now, and it might have been good weight, weight like that of a

child hoisted on your hip or a beautiful woman with her legs draped over your waist as

you both pretend to watch television, but something had corrupted it. Something else was

in the atmosphere of this chilly and abandoned town, something forsaken, something

wrong. Some weight that mixed with the weight of the Cloth and made it all bad.

When he felt something wet at his ankles he stopped walking and looked down;

the street was beginning to flood with red liquid - it looked to Lucien like a good

Burgundy, something you’d put away and drink when you win the Pulitzer(or when your

kid gets married, his mind chimed in, and he smiled). The source of the flood was not

evident; the liquid just seemed to have all of a sudden appeared, and was now running in

a mild current to the west, to those mountains. Lucien squinted and saw that the liquid

was slowly rising - or maybe not so slowly, because, as he looked, he could actually see

it rise against his pant leg, as it would in a large bathtub with the faucets set to full blast.

He bent and dipped a hand into the liquid - God, it was warm! - and brought the

hand to his lips. He tasted his fingers and knew right away that it was blood; he

recognized the tinny taste of it from cut lips, nose bleeds, sucking a cut on his finger after

getting a little careless cutting potatoes. This town was filling with blood. The snow

melted in its flow. This is my blood, his mind chanted, drink o f me and be saved.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 185

But not this blood. This blood would save nothing. This was blood of - or

manufactured by - the damned. And there was so much of it.

He closed his eyes and concentrated; I need to be out of this dream. Wake up,

Lucien. Open your eyes, dammit.

But there was a feeling of something unfinished; the feeling that this was only Act

I. And more, the feeling that this wasn’t in fact Lucien’s play, that he was merely a

member of the supporting cast. This wasn’t even his dream. So who was he to say when

he could or could not awake from it?

He began to walk again, his legs sloshing through the blood, which felt more like

molasses for the effort he had to put forth to get a leg up and down in it. The blood

swished around his legs, playing with the black material of his pants, and after a few

more steps his feet were lost in it, swallowed by the murky, crimson tide running toward

the mountains.

It was getting near impossible to move when he saw the boy. He was like a

beacon, the western sun glinting off him, lighting his light brown hair so it shone golden,

and he was moving with delicate ease through the waves of blood, which looked to be

approaching knee-high on him. The boy’s name was Toby, and this was his dream. This

was something that Lucien knew, justknew, like he knew to eat when he was hungry and

to take a piss when his bladder was full.

The boy (Toby) was traveling west, probably thirty yards off the road, and walked

like a person scared shitless, his arms pumping by his sides and his body slightly bent

forward as if about to break into a full-out run. Lucien found himself wishing that he

could look at Toby’s face, that the boy would just turn around for a moment, just long

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 186

enough so Lucien could drink him in, get a good look at him and all he was about. But he

chugged through that blood toward the mountains like someone without a second to

spare.

It took a few seconds for Lucien to realize that the boy was walking to his death.

The hard part was getting his eyes off of Toby; he physically had to turn his head with his

hands to stop looking at him, but when he did, it all became horribly and vibrantly clear:

the mountains were going to open up and swallow Toby, just spilt open and melt and take

him in with giant rocky teeth and crush his child’s bones within their wicked clutch. The

sky above the mountains had opened and then darkened, and above were two points of

light - too big to be stars - yellow and low in the sky, and when Lucien looked at them

he swore that the mountains were smiling at him, wicked with a jutting line of sharpened

stone teeth, under the pair of luminous starry eyes, those yellow, iniquitous eyes of the

sky. And the boy, Toby, was not running away from them but right at them. Knee deep in

blood now, and still running strong.

If this boy was lost - and the possibility was very real, real as this dream; this was

all real, he knew this now - it would be the world that suffered, that would shake on its

foundation; something would perish along with the boy if he reached those mountains,

something sacred and needed, something necessary to keep this grand old egg spinning

on its fragile axis. This boy was important; hell, he was vital. And he was sprinting as if

for his life toward those mountains.

Fighting the flow of the blood - though it ran west it somehow ran against Lucien

as well, and he remembered one of his childhood friends who had a small aboveground

pool where in the summer they’d create whirlpools by moving around, hugging the sides

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 187

in one direction. Walking through this blood now was like trying to move against that

tide they’d made all those years ago in the little pool; for every step you took forward you

were thrust back three, fighting to maintain your balance and avoid being swept off your

feet and taken away with the fierce current.

“Toby,” Lucien said, and he found that the air was as thick as the blood in which

he was trying to walk; his voice came out dull, muted, as if he were hearing himself yell

from the other side of a wall. Toby ran west, oblivious, his legs kicking up curtains of

blood behind him. His features were now obscured by the distance; soon he’d be out of

earshot.

“Toby,” Lucien said, raising his voice now, frowning at the lack of reverberation

his call carried with it. The sound seemed to die as it floated over the blood, seemed to

become entangled within it and sucked down like a bird caught in quicksand.

“Toby!” Lucien screamed. Toby growing ever distant, not yet a speck on the

horizon but approaching it fast. “Look at the water, Toby!” He was thigh high in blood,

and though Lucien knew that it was only the awareness of this blood that would stop him,

his mind told him in a hissing voice that was not his own that the boy was doomed, that

he cared for nothing but the mountains, the sunset there, the eyes. And when he got there,

when he locked eyes with the yellow eyes - no, not yellow, black, they were turning

black now, withering like an uprooted flower left out in the sun - well, something would

happen. Lucien didn’t know what it was, but it would be something. Something bad.

But Lucien’s voice would not carry. He tried crying the boy’s name again and this

time nothing came out, nothing, and he put his hands to his throat and felt nothing there,

like he didn’t have a throat, or like it was translucent, only vapor, the mist of his throat

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 188

and the flow of this blood at his thighs, pushing him further back, back, away from the

mountains and away from the special little boy running as if mesmerized toward them.

Lucien closed his eyes and strained until bright red sparks shot across the black of

his eyelids. He returned his hands to his throat, and yes, there it was; he was real, this was

all real, his throat was not vaporous or nonexistent, it was right there, and he could make

a sound if he wanted to. His hand moved down his throat, over his adam’s apple and then

stopped at the cool touch of metal against his fingertips. He wasn’t one to wear a

necklace, never had been - but when he’d accepted the Holy Ghost and entered the

Priesthood, the ordaining Priest had presented him with a small golden crucifix, and

although he’d left it back in Rhode Island in a box in his sister’s attic, there it was, strung

across his neck as if it had never left its place there. As Lucien moved his hand along the

chain to where it converged with another he felt the grooves and angles of the cross, of

the small Jesus figurine eternally crucified thereon. He gripped it and bowed his head,

and as he did a hot gust of air blew westward toward him, over him, wanting to drive him

back, but he stood his ground, lifted his head and fixed his gaze on the eyes over the

mountain, then taking it away and returning to the boy, who now was just a speck on the

horizon, soon to be gone; and so close to those mountains, to that sunset, to the eyes, to

the Black. Gripping the crucifix, Lucien inhaled and let out the breath in a word; it

boomed across the blood, causing it to ripple as the sound traveled westward as if from

the wake of a boat. “NOW,” he said, and the boy seemed to pause - maybe it was just

Lucien’s imagination, Toby was so far away now, it was hard to tell what he was doing

out there, but regardless Lucien felt something, just as he’d felt the boy’s name and the

idea that this wasn’t his dream, that it was a shared dream, and the boy was at the helm.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 189

“Toby,” he cried, gripping the cross in his hand until it hurt, feeling blood start to squeeze

out of his fist like the stigmata from where the crucifix was cutting into his skin.“It ’s

blood, Tobyl ”

The air around him, the blood at his waist, the mountains, the eyes in the sky, they

all seemed to hiss, and he was reminded of a movie he’d seen - some cheesy vampire

flick with Bella Ligosi, maybe, or one of those old guys, and when the hero had

brandished his crucifix the vampire had hissed at it, fangs bared, recoiling with its entire

body, and this was like the landscape around him now. Everything seemed to withdraw,

fold into itself, but in horror, like Lucien was that hero flailing the cross wildly at the

monstrosity of those mountains. He couldn’t tell if Toby had heeded his call, couldn’t

visibly confirm it, but he had a feeling that he had. I ’ve saved him, Lucien thought.

Then the pain. It was tremendous, starting in his ears, traveling down his neck to

his back and legs and lighting like a brush fire all the neurons and nerve endings along

the way. It was a whole-body ache, similar in some ways to a nasty flu, but worse, far

worse; crippling. Lucien couldn’t move from the pain, felt it begin to buckle his knees

and pull at his neck and ribs. A piercing, thunderous scream emerged from the West, and

now Lucien was being sucked down into the blood. It engulfed him, filling his mouth and

nostrils, thrashing him above the surface for a moment and then pulling him back in, and

all Lucien could do was grip the crucifix, feel his hand closing tighter and tighter around

it, feel its sharp edges break further into his skin.

His last thought before he woke was that there was a great power in those eyes

above the mountains, some crushing force that came from the west like the storms, and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 190

he’d done something to upset that force. He’d saved the boy, and someone - something -

was pretty pissed off about it.

He came to in the bedroom with the sheets stuck to his body, his neck and chest

and forehead bathed in a slick sheen of cold sweat. His right hand felt like it was on fire,

but when he raised it to his face he couldn’t make it out. Mila had drawn the shades

before they made love that night and the room was as dark as it was hot. He pulled the

sheets off and sat up. Mila stirred, spoke a few words in French, and then was silent.

Heart pounding, he made his way to the bathroom, bumping his knee into

something along the way and trying to muffle his grunt so as not to wake Mila. Once

there, he turned on the light and looked at his hand. Fresh blood dribbled from one deep

cut, and a few others that had just broken the surface of his skin had already begun to clot

over. The marks made the crude shape of a crucifix - the golden crucifix that he’d been

given by Father Jacob. He looked in the mirror, expecting to see it hanging from his neck

as it had all those years in Tiverton, but all he saw was a harrowed version of himself,

eyes sunken and mouth quivering, chest bare but for the small patch of brown hair he’d

had since he was in his early twenties.

He washed his hand and treated it with some hydrogen peroxide, then turned off

the light and got back into bed. His racing heart had steadied to a light trot, and already

the idea of his hand retaining the injury he’d suffered from the crucifix in his dream was

fading like the embers in Mila’s firepit outside. The mind, Lucien knew, was a powerful

thing; so powerful that, if one really wanted to believe it, the cuts inflicted during a dream

so frightening that it caused one to dig one’s nails into one’s hands could seem like

something else entirely, could, in the clock’s smallest hours, resemble a crucifix...I ’ve

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 191

got to cut those nails, Lucien thought. But not tonight. Tomorrow. Now all he wanted

was some sleep.

He was out within minutes, and his sleep was dreamless and uneventful, and

when he woke in the morning he felt fine, just fine - apart from a sore and itchy right

hand.

The first thing he did after rolling out of bed was find Mila’s toenail clippers and

go to work on his nails, which were admittedly long and dirty. It was disgusting, really, to

let them get like that.

The Wreck

The day he returned to work ended up being the day after the events of what the

press was now referring to as “The Massacre at Apache Springs.” That morning, he and

Mila sat with the dogs and watched the morning news, he reclined on the couch with his

hands folded across his chest and she sitting cross-legged with a bowl of cereal in her lap,

crunching away and occasionally tossing a chocolate puff to one of the dogs. It was the

silent, puffy-eyed, pre-coffee time of the morning, where conversation was minimal not

because of a lack of things to say but because of the concrete knowledge that whatever

you said would unquestionably come out wrong, get caught in your throat or tangled on

your tongue. They communicated with monosyllabic grunts and relied heavily on

gestures, and the grunts, today, were tinged with a certain sadness, the gestures keyed

down to the slow shaking of a head or an extended blink accompanied by a sigh.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 192

After coffee, a quick dip and a shower, they said goodbye at the foot of Mila’s

gravel driveway, she idling in her Honda and he on his bicycle using one leg as a

kickstand. He bent over and kissed her, and waived as he took off down Lime Alley,

glancing back at the little humming car, where it looked like Mila was applying some

lipstick with the help of the rearview mirror. She worked in Charlotte Amalie, over on the

south side of the island, in a one-hour photo shop just inside the fenced-in area where the

cruise ships docked. She had told him that at one time, while she was still in Idaho, she’d

wanted to be a professional photographer. She had been on vacation with her parents

when she’d passed the help-wanted sign in the window of “Mick’s Clicks” and had

wandered inside; by the end of the week she’d secured a job there, and with the clothes

on her back and the money in her wallet she’d made a new life here in St. Thomas. The

parents had put up a fight, she’d told him, but in the end understood; earlier that year in

Idaho she’d been raped and stabbed, and the trip had been intended to wipe some of that

clean, to invigorate her, to lend her some of the trepidation she’d lost after the attack. But

St. Thomas had done more; it had mystified her, enamored her, and now here she was, six

years later, working at a one-hour photo shop (second best, she’d told Lucien, to actually

being a photographer, and a hell of a lot less frustrating).

Three-quarters of the way down Lime Alley, he heard the rumble of her car

approaching him, and she blew a kiss as she passed him, which Lucien reached out and

pretended to grab from midair. The Honda kicked up dust as it crested a hill and sped out

of sight. He’d told her to watch the speed on Lime Alley because of the goats that

wandered the dirt road like nomads, but that was Mila. She was set, that was for sure.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 193

And what was a little dust up your nose before work? Nothing a lunchtime dip couldn’t

take care of.

He turned left onto Tin Street and thought of his bungalow behind him, way up

Tin Street at the top of Lot Hill. He hadn’t been there in a week, and that was only to grab

a bag of flour for Mila and a few paperbacks for himself. In a way, he missed the little

house on the hill; the foliage creeping up his back porch that needed weekly thwarting,

the little sunroom off the living room where he normally took his breakfast, and his

bedroom, which jutted out over the cliff and hosted the best cross-breeze he’d ever

experienced in his thirty-three years. But Mila’s house was on the beach, and it had a

firepit, and an outdoor shower, and it had Mila. A week ago - after returning from his

house with the bag of flour and the paperbacks - he’d offered to pay half of January’s

rent. Mila had frowned and shook her head, which at first he’d taken as a bad sign - a

sign that she didn’t think that he really, technically lived there yet - but then she’d

smiled, and said, “What, on what Bumpy's paying you? You can’t afford a bag of flour,

for God’s sake.” He’d laughed, and she had too, and when he handed her the flour he’d

slapped her ass. Not hard, just a little that-a-boy, and she’d smiled back at him as she

went to the stove and started to flour the Snapper he’d brought home for dinner.

Now as he rode along Tin Street he dismissed the bungalow, thought that maybe

he’d call his landlord and tell him he didn’t need it anymore. This, of course, would need

to be discussed first with Mila, but it was a discussion that Lucien looked forward to. To

sleep next to her and know it was a permanent thing - at least a temporarily-permanent

thing, how’s that for an oxymoron? - was, to Lucien, the best prospect he’d come upon in

a while. At least since he’d been offered his own parish. And better, maybe. Probably.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 194

Lucien pumped his legs and came to the top of the hill that marked the halfway

point between Mila’s house and Bumpy’s. A mile and a half or so down the road, Red

Hook looked to be already bustling; the tourist season was in full swing, and rented cars

accelerated then braked abruptly in the crowded streets of the small harbor town, their

drivers obviously not yet tuned to the delicate intricacies of left-side driving. As he

started down the hill he stopped peddling and, approaching a turn, hit the hand breaks,

which sent a smarting pain from his hand up his wrist; he hadn’t used a Band-Aid today,

and though the cut looked to be healing nicely, it was still sensitive to the touch. He had

not forgotten the dream from a few nights ago; in fact, he’d been going over it in his

mind, trying to piece it together like a 1,000-piece jigsaw. He was sure that none of it had

really happened, contrary to what he had thought in the dream; the sense of everything

being real, being now, had left him, and he dismissed it as some sort of hallucinatory

mid-night inclination, something maybe from the heat or possibly all the rum he had put

down. But one thing did stay with him, and that was the boy: Toby. Toby, he thought,

was a real person - probably someone who had attended his church, one of the countless

children who’s face had simply blended in with the rest - and a part of him wanted

desperately to meet him, to see his face, to confirm that he was in fact real. Lucien

wanted to know that he wasn’t making something out of nothing, out of a passing dream

spawned from a poor night’s sleep and good old Cruzan Five Year Estate Dark. It was an

odd feeling, but —

His thoughts were cut off when he rounded a bend and saw the wreck. Replacing

his thoughts of the dream was a sheer veil of white across his vision, an utter blankness of

the mind, and as he hammered the breaks and put a foot to the ground and dropped his

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 195

bike and started to run, all he could hear was the wailing woman, bent over at the side of

the road near the little blue car, one hand at the side of her head and the other bracing

herself on the ground, saying, “0/z mi dios, oh mi bebe”

The woman was flanked by a boy who looked to be about fifteen; both were dark

skinned - natives, probably - and the boy wore a pair of jeans and a blank white tee shirt.

He motioned to Lucien, who was still running, then turned back to the woman and the

smoking car that jutted halfway from a ditch. It was the hood of the car that was smoking,

a long but thin stream of it curling and dissipating ten feet or so above from where it

emerged at the side of the hood. As Lucien drew near he felt his legs start to drag beneath

him, as if in revolt at the vision that opened up before him

From where he had been running, the car looked to be okay. But as he reached a

certain point he was able to see the left side of the car, the ditch side. The windshield was

smashed, and Lucien felt his eyes slip quickly from the shattered glass there, because it

looked like there was some blood in there, settled in streaky lines and dripping down the

glass on the passenger side of the car. The car was crumpled into one of the short, thick

fig trees that lined the road; walking along Tin Street, Lucien had often thought about the

fig trees, their hard wood, how great they would be for building - maybe if he bought a

piece of land, a large one, right on the ocean, he could build a house purely out of fig

wood for he and Mila. The fig tree hadn’t even split - no give to that wood - and it had

leveled the left side of the car, just crushed it; the lip of the hood was up near the tire, the

steering wheel inside bent upward like the satellite dish on Mila’s porch. Lucien

wondered how whoever had been driving had gotten out.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 196

The boy grabbed Lucien’s shirt and pulled him over to the woman, who was

kneeling on the embankment, shattered glass winking around her knees like quartz. One

of her knees was settled into the grass of the embankment but her foot was toe down

against the pavement, and he felt a churning sensation in the pit of his stomach when he

saw that, around her foot, the blue-black pavement was stained a darker shade in a few

small pools and a great deal more quarter-sized drops of blood. “Who’s hurt?” he heard

himself say, but then he shifted his stance and saw the baby.

It couldn’t have been a year old, and it was dressed in a one-piece cotton frock.

The front of the frock was saturated with blood, red and sticky on its upper chest and the

lower part of its neck. The woman’s hands were covering the child’s head, and for this

Lucien was thankful. The child was not crying.

The woman looked up at Lucien and said, “Ayude a mi bebe.” She turned back to

the child and ran her hand along the top of its head. Its hair was damp and black, and

again Lucien felt the urge to vomit, that roller coaster sinking sensation in his stomach.

“Cell phone?” he said to the woman. “ Telephono?” His voice seemed far away,

muted, and his ears rang and tried their mightiest to block out all sound. He was

watching all of this as he might watch a play; he felt sunken back into his own head, his

eyes taking everything in for him but not really registering any of it. He was very aware

of his own hands, their lack of movement, their position in relation to the rest of his body.

He held them out in front of him, waist high, as if they were contaminated, or he was

allowing them to drip-dry after washing them. He didn’t feel his legs at all.

Another tugging on his shirt. “We don’t have a cell phone.” It was the boy, who

had been standing back, almost hugging the faint white line that bisected the road. He had

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 197

approached Lucien quietly, almost nonchalantly. His eyes were starry, stymied, and his

face was calm. Blood trickled from somewhere within the thicket of his hair, tracing

down his forehead and running into his eyebrows. “That’s my brother there.” Looking

lost, pointing to the baby on the ground. “And my mother. She doesn’t speak any

English.”

Lucien felt a hand around his ankle and looked down, away from the boy. It was

the woman; one of her hands was gripping Lucien’s ankle, almost massaging it, and the

other was laid flat across the silent baby’s chest. She stared up at him with wide, brown

eyes, unblinking, her lips moving but not making any noise. Then she pointed at Lucien

and said, “listed es sacerdote, yo puede verlo en sus ajos.”

“What?” he mumbled, fighting the overwhelming impulse to kick the woman’s

hand away, turn, run. “What? I don’t understand.”

“Padre ,” she said, and there it was again, that feeling that he was going to keel

over and lose his breakfast in the weeds. She had said Padre. Father. Priest. “Padre,

ayuda por favor.” She wasn’t crying but moaning, lamenting, almost like an overzealous

actor. But this was not a play or a daytime soap. This was real life.

“Hold on,” he said, and turned from her, feeling her grip on his ankle tighten.

Lucien looked for the boy and for a moment couldn’t find him, then spotted him behind

the car, down in the embankment, walking around and squinting up at the sky with his

hands in his pockets. “Young man!” Lucien called, but the boy didn’t turn. “Hey!”

“Marco!” came the voice of the woman, and when Lucien looked at her she was

leaning her torso in the direction of the boy, one hand still on his ankle and the other on

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 198

the baby. Something released in his chest when he saw the hand on the child rise gently

and then fall; it was alive. Maybe not for long, but it was alive.

Marco turned and his mother yelled something else in Spanish, then he was

approaching them, unsteady, like a drunk, all mild eyes and faint smile. “Listen,” said

Lucien as the boy knelt beside his mother, tried to touch the baby, and was slapped away

by the woman. “I need you to translate. Tell your mother I need you to translate.” Marco

just stared at Lucien, that strange, slight smile drifting to and from his face. Lucien

looked at the woman; she had let go of his ankle and was now cradling the baby’s head in

her hands, crouched over it as if protecting it from foul weather. Before he knew what he

was doing he slapped Marco - a backhand, and he felt the boy’s cheekbone against his

knuckles as he followed through. The boy’s eyes lit up, for a moment furious, then

softened again, and he turned to his mother and said something to her in Spanish. She

looked from the child to Marco, then to Lucien, then back to Marco, and then began to

speak. Again, Lucien heard her say the wordPadre, and he winced; he knew what she

was asking. He hadn’t needed the boy to translate after all.

The boy looked up at Lucien, finally aware, his eyes showing a hint of tears

quivering in the comers like oil shivering in a hot pan. “Father,” he said, and it wasn’t

quite a question, but it was close. Only now did Lucien notice the silver chain

disappearing under Marco’s shirt. He had no doubt about what was fixed to that chain.

They were Christians, and if they were anything like the other locals on St. Thomas, they

were Catholics. The boys stood, gripped one of Lucien’s hands, and said, “She knows

you are a priest. She said she sees it in your eyes.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 199

Lucien looked at the woman, still huddled over the baby. Whispering to it, it

looked like. “Is it a boy or a girl?” Lucien said.

“Boy. His name is Manny.”

“W hat...” Lucien said, and then found that he couldn’t speak. It was as if

something had landed on his chest and snatched his breath. He coughed, the boy jumped

back, startled, and then Lucien said, “What does she want me to do?” The woman was

crying now, her back heaving and curling further downward toward the pavement.

“She wants you to say Dure Los Ritos. I don’t know how to say it in English.”

Now the tears spilled, his eyes apparently over their limit of what they could carry. His

poor heart, probably, as well. Then Marco said, simply, “He’s going to die. He hit the

glass.” He stuck a thumb out at the cracked windshield - passenger side - and removed

his hand from Lucien’s. His eyes had begun to gloss over again.

Lucien took back the boy’s hand, now holding it in his own. “You mean the Last

Rites. Is that what you mean?” The boy nodded. Lucien nodded back, running his fingers

along the boy’s long hands, patting them. “Here,” he said. “Sit.” He motioned the boy to

a patch of grass a little bit beyond his mother but still in plain view of his little brother,

little Manny. The boy sat and Lucien said, “Listen, Marco, I need you to translate some

things. Not much. Then I’ll perform the Last - the Dure Los Ritos, okay?” Marco nodded

again and Lucien crouched by the woman. He laid a hand on her head and said, not

taking his eyes from her, “What’s her name?”

“Remedios,” came Marco’s voice. Quick, uneasy, as if he were speaking between

gasps for air.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 200

“Remedios,” Lucien said, and she looked at him, her eyes swollen, red. “Are you

a Catholic?” She nodded. “Has Manny been baptized?” At this she looked at Marco and

he spoke to her, quickly, and she answered just as fast, nodding.

“Si, si,” she said, motioning with her hand in a gesture that said let’s move. She

erupted in a torrent of Spanish, taking her hands from the child and gripping Lucien’s

shirt, balling it up into tight little fists, crying, saliva running in thin lines from her gaping

mouth.

He grabbed her shoulders, careful not to shake her, and said, “Si, si, Dure Los

Ritos.” This seemed to remind her of the baby, because as he said it she turned back and

returned her hands to beneath its tiny head. “Translate, Marcos,” he said. “Now I’m going

to perform the Last Rites. The Dure Los Ritos. This is an extreme unction, and you must

accept Christ and the Lord God. Do you understand? You must accept Jesus, as well,

because Manny is so young. Do you understand?”

As he spoke he occasionally paused, then Marco would take over. Remedios

never took her hands - or her eyes - from Manny. When Marco finished Remedios

mumbled something and then Marco said, “Si, she understands.”

Lucien shifted so his posture echoed that of the woman’s. He knelt over tiny

Manny; the boy’s face looked like it had initially begun to swell and then had just

stopped, his little cheeks pale and sunken, his eyes closed. His breathing was light and

inconsistent. “Water, I need water,” Lucien said, and Marco was up, fishing in the wreck

of the car. He brought Lucien a half-full, warm bottle of water. The label read, in blue,

elegant letters, Perrier. Somehow, it seemed wrong to Lucien. He quickly peeled off the

label and splashed some water on his hand and then touched it to Manny’s forehead. The

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 201

water mixed with blood and thinned, beginning to drip down the boy’s brow and into his

eyes. Remedios wiped the bloody water away from Manny’s eyes and looked at Lucien,

her mouth turned down, trembling, her eyes so wide.

He’d only performed it a handful of times, but as Lucien uttered the first words of

the Last Rites, it came back to him in a drift, like flower petals in a light breeze. Each

word seemed fresh and immediate in his mind, and he found himself listening to the

words, actually listening to his own voice, each syllable, each pause carrying so much

consequence.

Manny died halfway through the sacrament - just simply stopped breathing - but

Lucien didn’t stop. Other than a gushing exhale from Remedios when the boy's chest

ceased to move, the little road was unusually quiet as Lucien spoke the sacred words. He

finished the Last Rites over the corpse of Manny, son of Remedios and brother of Marco,

and after was embraced by the boy’s mother, her tears warm and moist against the fabric

of his shirt.

Rain, Sun

When the sky decided it was going to rain in St. Thomas, it came like a quiet dog

that just snaps; one minute everything is docile, pleasant, and the next everything comes

in a vicious, unrelenting rush, ripping down against the earth and tearing plants down to

the soil, beating a hard-driven path with its remorseless gusts of wind and needle-like

rain. It was this very process that allowed the island’s climate to thrive, hard streams of

fresh water washing away the salt on the sea-side plants, thousands of gallons of it

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 202

returning, in just minutes, to the soil and forests. But the volatile weather was one thing

that hadn’t grown on Lucien; sure, the rainbows were lovely, but it was discomforting to

him, walking on the soaked grass or pavement, your feet squishing in their sandals while

the sun beat down hot on you as if it had been there all along. Just a little too paradoxical.

Your shirt hanging low and twice as thick as it had been and sticking to your body,

sweaty, muggy, damp - damp, Lucien imagined, like a deep and dark cave, or like a

grave. Lucien preferred his weather to fluctuate not so explosively - in Tiverton, it would

cloud over hours before it started to rain, and that rain came lightly before it (if it did at

all) started to really pour. Gave you time to get the lawnchairs inside, or to roll up the

windows of your car if you’d left them open. Gave you time to prepare yourself. And

Lucien was not at all prepared when the rain came, standing as he was on the side of the

road, comforting Remedios and keeping an eye on Marco, who was sitting next to his

recently deceased brother, hands buried in his dark hair, weeping and occasionally crying

out in Spanish.

They stood in the rain - Marco sat - and waited, and wondered what they were

waiting for. The rain washed away most of the blood and extinguished the smoke that had

been rising from the car’s hood. A few times Remedios broke Lucien’s embrace and

floated over to Marco, trying to lace her fingers with his, but the boy was unresponsive.

The shock had worn off, and now he was feeling everything that had been lingering

somewhere masked within the overprotective confines of his own mind. And on top of all

things, he was being rained on.

Finally, a tourist rumbled up to them in a rented compact car; the rain had already

stopped and the sun had been out for a full five minutes, returning like a smug and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 203

overconfident dog trotting toward you from an overturned barrel of trash. The man had a

cell phone, which Lucien used to call Sister of Mercy, the island’s only hospital. Cradling

the phone against his ear, using both hands to comfort the shaken Remedios, it occurred

to him that calling a hospital was moot; Manny had been dead for half and hour. But this

is what you do, he thought, turning his gaze to the owner of the cell phone, a squat little

man with dark sunglasses and a repugnant - almost neon - sunburn. This is how you do

things.

The hospital people came and they covered Manny’s fragile body with a blanket

and lifted him into the ambulance, assisting Remedios, who had begun to limp - she’d

somehow staved off that injury, Lucien thought, until things had been concluded with her

baby. Once she and Manny were in the ambulance, they radioed in for another for Marco,

who hadn’t stopped bleeding and was beginning to grow disconcertingly pale. Lucien

waited with Marco and one of the ambulance drivers until the second car arrived, and

then walked down the road, picked up his bike, and peddled home - or, rather, to Mila’s.

When he got home he phoned Bumpy and told him that he wouldn’t be in today.

In a rare gesture, Bumpy said that was fine, that Lucien should just take as much time as

he needed, and to phone when he was coming back. Must have been in my tone, Lucien

thought, setting the phone back into its cradle. Probably thought my mother died or

something.

But his mother hadn’t died, little Manny had died; died with Lucien’s hand on his

chest as Lucien, in his sandals and chino shorts and “Gone Fishing” tee-shirt, had

performed the Last Rites over his lifeless body.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 204

After sitting at the kitchen table for a while and watching the green digits of the

stove’s clock, he filled a bowl with fresh water and brought it out to the porch, setting it

in the sand near the shower so the dogs wouldn’t spill and slobber all over the porch, then

went back inside and opened the door to the living room. He was greeted by a small

crowd of dogs, barking and jumping up, landing their claws on his chest, tongues lolling,

one practically on top of the other so they looked more like one strange specie than three

individual breeds (if you could even paint them with that term; they was more like

mongrels). He finally got them down and, grabbing a Cuban that Bumpy had given him

from a drawer in the kitchen, made for the porch.

He sat down in a low folding chair and watched the dogs take off down the beach.

He propped his legs up on the table, lit his cigar and puffed for a while, feeling the warm,

prickly taste of the tobacco, looking out at the ocean, watching the white caps surge and

break. All but a few clouds had burned off, but the deck was still damp, small puddles

gathered here and there along its rough, sandy finish. He thought of getting up, going

upstairs, grabbing a book and bringing it out to the deck, but his ass was comfortable just

how it was, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to do any reading, anyway. Probably end up

going over the first page a few times and then, once he got to the next, forget what he was

reading about in the first place. It had happened before.. .but seldomly.

What was on his mind - apart from the horrible scene he’d literally run into today,

apart from the stinging air of death that seemed to hover just above his head - was that,

today, he’d acted as a priest; and it had not been something slight, it hadn’t been a

blessing or receiving a confession. No, he had performed the Extreme Unction; a

sacrament.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 205

And here was the kicker: it had felt good. And it had felt new.

What bothered Lucien most was that, as he had felt the very life escape from

Manny’s body, he had been himself surging, full of the Eternal and the Love and

everything else he had thought he’d lost. As he’d allowed the inculcation of the Spirit,

though, he’d felt the flight of awareness, the lifting of earthly compassion for the boy, for

his family, instead focusing on the sacrament; focusing on God. This was exactly why he

had left New England, why he’d come here to start fresh: there had been a loss of reality

- of humanity - with the continuing escalation of his faith. And nothing could take away

the fact that today it had felt so good, so natural, so home.

And another thing: why couldn’t he shake the boy? Toby, his mind chanted. Even

as he had recited the Last Rites today, it had been somewhere in his mind, floating like

embers from a fire: Toby.

It would catch him when he wasn’t looking. As he rode home from the accident,

he’d found himself going over a little famous verse, its assonance tumbling quietly from

the tip of his tongue and into the wet air: To be or not to be, that is the question. He’d

slowed down, stopped peddling for a moment, and then renewed his pace, thinking that

this was what happened after you took part in an extremely strenuous situation. Then

he’d thought, To be or not Toby, that is the question. Toby or not Toby? Toby, Toby,

Toby. And he’d rode most of the way home just like that, not thinking that he was crazy

because, again, this is what happened to you after a child not yet a year old died within

your grasp.

Now, sitting on the porch, it was harder to accept. One week ago everything had

been straightforward, effortless; he’d been cruising. Then a weird dream and a horrible

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 206

accident and a return to his former job {your calling) had overturned him completely, just

flipped him over and shook him out for everything he was worth. He needed to talk to

Mila.

He was working on his second cigar when she came home. Her car putted into the

driveway and ground to a halt, releasing as it choked into slumber a huge plume of black

smoke, and Lucien thought pretty soon he should put on an old pair of clothes and look

under the hood, see how things were going in the land of Honda. Not today, though.

He watched her collect some of her things, still seated in the car, then turned his

eyes back to the sea. He heard a door creak open and then slam shut, and then, “Hi,

baby.” He nodded, eyes still at sea, and puffed on his cigar, let the smoke fill his mouth,

the back of his throat, then blew it out through resolvedly pursed lips.

“Hey there,” he said. He could feel her looking at him, probably standing with her

hip cocked and the back of her hand against it, holding in that hand, maybe, a newspaper

or a roll of film or a coke from McDonalds. But he wouldn’t look at her. Not yet. Right

now it was the ocean he needed to see.

“What?” came her voice, and her hand was on his cheek. He felt the surge of

tears, held it back. He turned his face left, away from her, and she said, “What? What is

it?”

“Today...” he said, shutting his eyes, thinking. Today. To be. Toby. Stop it,

Lucien. Stop now.

“What? What happened?”

“Today, um...today a baby died in my arms. Well, not really in my arms, but I

was holding it kind of, like - ”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 207

“Wait a minute,” she said, and she pulled his face to hers. His tears broke, and so

did her look, her face concentrating into a little ball, her eyes tearing up as well - that was

Mila. “What happened, baby? What happened, Luke?”

He shook his head. “Oh, Christ,” he said, then he told her. About riding to work,

about cresting a hill and then coming down and then coming upon the crash, ditching his

bike. About Marco, about Remedios, and about the baby Manny. She pulled up a chair

and kept near to him, her face close enough that he could feel her breath on his cheek. He

told her about the Last Rites, and about the ambulances.

He didn’t tell her, however, about the ride home, and how he couldn’t get the

name out of his head, that blasted name.

When he was finished, his cigar had gone out, and he said, “Mila, baby, do you

have a match?” Then she was hugging him, telling him that it was all right, that it was

beautiful that he’d said the Last Rites, that he was amazing for doing what he’d done. “I

know,” he said. “I know. Thank you. Thanks.” Then he looked at her, and said, “There’s

something I want to talk to you about. Something else, something that’s been on my

mind, I guess, for a while.”

“Okay,” she said. “What is it?” Still leaning so close to him, hands entangled with

his in his lap.

“I want to be with you.”

“Me too,” she said, laughing, sniffling, taking in a breath that sounded like a

hiccup. She looked around her and then back to him, as if offering the beach to him. “I

mean, obviously.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 208

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “And this, all of this - ” motioning to the beach, they

might as well have been negotiating the beach and not themselves, “ - it’s so great. You

know?”

“Sure, baby.”

“Listen, Mila,” he said, and then the tears were back. “Oh, God.”

“It’s okay, Luke. Here.” Then she had his head against her breast, and though it

felt awkward to him - purely the physicality of it, the position of his head bent and his

neck strained and his nose pressed against her so that he couldn’t breathe through it - it

soothed his tears. He brought back his head and looked at her. She was smiling, a

beautiful, sad gesture, like she’d smile at a baby.

“I want to start paying rent, I mean. I want to be part of this. I want those dogs - ”

motioning to them on the beach, lying just above the high tide line, heads laid atop paws

or stretched out in the sand with twitching limbs, “ - to be my dogs.”

“You can have Rosco and Sam,” she said, “but Nelly’s all mine.” Then he was

laughing too, joining her, feeling fine for the first time in this long day, this afternoon that

had been stretching, stretching, and finally broke with his laughter.

“Oh, I’ve had a rough day,” he said, and felt the surge of fatigue take his legs and

arms - the good kind of fatigue, the mellow kind you get after a long run or a hard day’s

work -and he leaned his head back against the chair’s headrest, and there was the sky,

blue and tall, so steady against the few clouds which moved across it like creeping ivy,

and Heaven was up there and it was down here, too. He’d touched it today, felt it under

his outstretched palm, a beating heart giving in to itself, the tears of Remedios; that was

Heaven, this was Heaven, this earth and sand, the ability to give oneself over to

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 209

something or someone else, to an idea or to a dream or to the sea or the sky. “I love you,”

he said, and though it wasn’t the first time he’d said it, it carried with it this time a new

significance, like the Last Rites had earlier, and even as he said it he knew he had to go

back to New England, for a while, anyway, and find Toby. Because he loved Toby, too;

not like he loved Mila, but like he loved what he’d thought he’d lost, the will and desire

to make something of nothing, to produce hope and faith from the air with a word or a

gesture. This was how he loved Toby, and this was why he had to go back: because Toby

carried something with him. He carried a certain love like Lucien carried a certain love,

more, even, leagues of it. Had to meet the boy, the special, promising, momentous boy.

Get a flight out of St. Croix. Tomorrow, or even today.

For the first time in years - or maybe since that morning - he was going with it,

listening to his secret yearnings, what he had used to call the Call of God and now

recognized as something completely different; it was the beat of his heart, the breath in

his lungs, the flutter of his eyelids and the quiet and persistent stream of his thoughts.

And when Mila whispered, “I love you, too,” he was crying again - for God’s sake, he

couldn’t hold it in today. But the tears relaxed him, their bitter salt sliding into the comers

of his mouth and feeling, somehow, like home. Then he said, “Let’s walk,” and he rose,

taking Mila’s hand and guiding her down the porch.

They kicked off their shoes and started to walk, and Mila said, “Come on, guys.”

The dogs lifted their heads, turned them sideways, and then their bodies followed, rising

jerkily from the sand and sprinting past them, barking, and Lucien thought it almost

sounded like they were laughing. They held hands and walked on the beach and listened

to the waves break and swish into shore, and then suck back out to sea with foam and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 210

black bits of sea plants. The dogs ran ahead and circled back and ran ahead again, just

along the water’s edge, jumping into each other, sparring and using their paws like hands.

Mila said, “What was it like, Lucien?”

“What’s that?”

“Today, I mean. With the baby, and its mother and its brother. Did it.. .was it sad?

Are you sad?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m sad. But I wasn’t really sad at the time, I don’t think.

Maybe I didn’t have time to be sad, or it was like Remedios, how she didn’t start limping

until Manny was dead.” The word hung for a minute: dead. It silenced them in the same

way that would a tree crashing through your window in a hurricane. Then he said, “But it

was more, kind of. Like, there was this incredible peace. And then it rained, and it was

like it was raining for Manny, or for us. I don’t know. Weird.”

She looked at him and squeezed his hand. “I think you’re handling this

beautifully, Luke.”

He nodded. He was, wasn’t he? “Yeah. Thanks, Mila. I feel okay about it.”

They walked for a while and, when they reached the end of the beach and the start

of the black, coral wall that traveled miles along the shore, they turned back. Rosco and

Nelly trotted with them, and Sam, on top of the rocks, pawed at something there, yipped,

and jumped down, sprinting past them, swerving and dodging invisible obstacles along

the beach. Up ahead, he turned his head, sniffed, barked, and then began to chase his tail.

“That dog,” Mila said, laughing.

“There’s something else,” Lucien said, and she turned to him, eyes cocky but

gentle.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 211

“Oh yeah?”

Lucien nodded. He felt incredibly even, grounded, and every step along the sand

was for him equally measured, precise, like it was all predetermined and set to the very

millimeter of the length of his strides. “I need to go back for a little while.”

Mila frowned. “Okay...”

“No, no, don’t worry. You know me. Come on, Mila.”

“Yeah, I know, but you’ve got think how this looks - ”

“How what looks?” he said, and he stopped walking, turned his body so it faced

hers.

“Luke - Lucien - you’ve had a pretty intense day today.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that.” Something in his veins had seemed to surge, as if his

heart had kicked up its pump an additional notch, and he could feel his face begin to

warm with rising blood. Mila always said what she thought, and it hadn’t occurred to him

that she might have a problem with his going back to Rhode Island, however brief the

visit - that she may, as strong as she was, feel threatened by it. Mila, after all, had her

own ghosts, and a scar under her right armpit to prove it.

“With everything that’s going on, I mean. I mean, I’m not saying you’re not

thinking clearly - ”

“I’m thinking more clearly than I have in a very long time, Mila,” Lucien said,

and began to walk. For a moment he thought that Mila had stayed just where she was, but

then he felt her hand in his, and she was again walking beside him.

“Listen,” she said. “All I’m saying is that maybe you should sleep on it. We - the

both of us - are here for pretty solid reasons, wouldn’t you say?” Lucien shrugged, and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 212

she continued. “Yes, Luke, we are. And I know that going back right now would be

pretty tough for me. I’m not sure that I’d be ready, even if I wanted to. I’m just

wondering if you ’re ready. Like, I mean, where would you go? The rectory?”

Touche. Hadn ’t thought o f that one. Score one point for Mila.

“And what would happen when you drove past your old church? I mean, with

everything that happened today - you said it yourself, that you felt like it was just like old

times. And it was better than old times, you said. What does that mean for us? I mean,

how do I know you’re not going to just go back and fall in love with the Church again

and then here I am without my Luke?”

He looked at her; her lower lip was quivering in an almost comical gesture. Her

eyes looked low on her face. “Mila,” he said, and slung an arm around her. She leaned

into him, her hair falling across her face, her strong arm pressed squarely into his ribs. “I

don’t intend to go back to the Church. In fact, I think that when I go back - well, at some

point, when I go back - I’m going to make it official. Okay?” At some point, he had said.

Why not right away? Because of Toby. He needed to be a priest for Toby, and after that,

then he could make it official. But first, Toby, because the boy needed help. As amazing

and strong as the boy was, he needed guidance - priestly guidance.

A few times, talking to Mila on the beach, the word, the such easily

pronounceable word, Toby, had almost left his lips. But he wouldn’t tell her about him.

What would he say? That he was going back home primarily to meet a boy he didn’t even

have tangible proof existed, and that, as an after thought, it had occurred to him that he

could find Bishop O’Malley and renounce his vows while he was up there? She’d think

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 213

he was crazy. Best she thought that he was going back for closure. That was a good word;

that one he could say to her: closure. He said, “It’s just, I need closure, okay?”

They had come full circle and were standing just beyond the firepit at the edge of

Mila’s property. “Are you sure you’re ready for it?”

He nodded. “I think so. I hope so.” He’d always had a knack for acting; his senior

year of high school, he’d scored the leading role - well, the leading male role - in Annie

Get Your Gun. The truth was, he’d been ready to renounce for a while now; had, in fact,

felt more ready than ever after this morning. He’d always be a religious man, but what

he’d done this morning had felt too good, and for the wrong reasons. He needed to vacate

himself of whatever it was that drew him to the Church, as fine as an institution that it

was, as much as he loved it.. .just as he needed to vacate his tongue and his mind of the

boy’s name. The two things - Toby and his renunciation - seemed to him, somehow, to

go hand in hand, to fit like two pieces of a locket. So yes, he would renounce. But first -

“Toby can have dinner first,” she said, and for a moment the ground shifted under

him, his heart striking a flutter of sixteenth notes and his throat constricting as if a belt

had been tightened around it one notch too many.

“What?” he stammered, and she looked at him quizzically.

“I said I hope we can have dinner first. What’s with you? Are you okay?” She

gripped his arm, as if to steady him. “Jesus, Luke, you’re pale. Is it this morning?”

He nodded, his heart already beginning to return to its normal pace. He felt like

he’d just climbed a long flight of stairs. “I’m alright, it’s okay.” He looked at her. “What

do you mean about dinner?” He felt the wildness of his eyes, and concentrated on

steadying them.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 214

“I just said that I hope we can have dinner first. Before you leave. I was making a

joke.” Still holding his arm, she took him up the stairs to the porch and inside, letting the

dogs stay out for now, and set him down on the couch. “You’ve had a day, Luke. I’m

gonna make you some tea, all right?” She swayed into the kitchen, hips like a pendulum,

doing it on purpose - maybe to be funny, but maybe not. “Whew,” she said. “Quite a

day.”

“Yes,” he echoed. “Quite a day.”

Over Sea and Clouds

That day he made two phone calls: one to Bumpy to tell him he wouldn’t be at

work for a few weeks, and one to his sister, Anna, to tell her that he was coming in and

n eeded a place to stay. Both parties were sympathetic in their own peculiar fashions;

Bumpy told him, again, to take as much time as he needed, and could he bring back some

coffee syrup and maybe some of that Portuguese sausage Lucien was always telling him

about? Anna was overjoyed, and Lucien could hear the spray of saliva as she babbled into

the other line, as she told him that she’d have to go shopping for food that he liked and

tell her friend Maggie that she wouldn’t be able to make “girl’s weekend” this week and,

oh yeah, maybe stop over at TJ Max to get an extra blanket for the guest bed because the

winter had been so ridiculously cold. As he got an earful on the phone, Mila sat next to

him, quietly watching television, legs crossed, tapping her toes against a leg of the coffee

table. When he hung up she smiled and said I love you, I’m happy for you, really, and

Lucien pulled her close to him and wrapped an arm around her neck and ran his hand

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 215

through her hair and felt her body shiver only the slightest bit as she held in her tears. He

told her that he’d be back before she knew it and that he loved her, too, and when he did

come back, he’d talk to Mr. Falzer about ending his lease for the bodega at the top of Lot

Hill. Then he told her, simply, thank you, and he felt her breathe and then she said you’re

welcome.

Two days later he was on a seaplane to St. Croix looking at the plane’s shadow

dart across the deep blue water and then was in a taxi, looking out the window at the

starched landscape, the flat part of the island where the plants grew a dull brown and

strangely named supermarkets towered over empty parking lots. Then he was on a plane

to Puerto Rico, where he arrived and laid-over for two hours and was pick-pocketed,

fortunately losing only a few hundred dollars and an expired driver’s license (and his

wallet), as he kept his important belongings in his carry-on precisely because things like

this could happen. Then he was in Raleigh, where he needed to sprint through slow-

walking travelers for his red-eye plane to Providence because the flight from Puerto Rico

had been delayed and subsequently arrived half an hour late. When finally he reached the

terminal, boarded the plane, stowed his carry-on and settled into his window seat, he

waited patiently for the plane to take off and then for the stewardess to take his order for

his drink. When she did, he said the first thing that came to his mind - he hadn’t

considered what he’d wanted to drink, only that he wanted one - and ordered a seven and

seven with an extra cup of ice. It was something needed and, Lucien thought, deserved.

At last; the home stretch. He sipped his drink, chewed his ice, and stared out the

window at the black night below and all around, smiling occasionally at the screaming

baby (soon he’d get up, he thought, and offer the baby’s mother a tip that he’d learned

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 216

from his own mother, that a good thing for a screaming baby on an airplane was to put to

damp, warm paper towels in the bottom of two paper cups and fix them over the child’s

ears; this aided equilibrium, soothed the pressure, and when a baby screamed on an

airplane, nine out of ten times it was because of the pressure). But immediately, all

Lucien wanted to do was look at the night and sip his drink. Maybe later he’d order

another one.

When he finished his drink, he excused himself and squeezed past the young man

with the headphones sitting next to him and, following the sound of cries and whimpers

and passing looks of annoyance (so close, he thought, to looks of arrogance) on the faces

of those close to the poor baby, found the mother in question. He bent down and told her

about his mother’s secret tip for a crying baby, and the woman opened her mouth and

stared at him, flabbergasted, almost snarling, her eyes slim and bloodshot, and told him to

mind his business.

He rose - slowly - and returned to his seat. When the stewardess came back

around, he ordered black coffee and an aspirin. He felt he was going to need it.

Where the Heart Is

When the plane landed, daylight was just beginning to break. The plane coasted

into its dock and settled there, and as people started to rise from their seats, murmuring as

if on sacred ground, Lucien gently shook the arm of the man next to him, the man with

the headphones, and he woke and said, “Hey, thanks, man.” Lucien nodded and looked

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 217

out the window at the gray clouds and black runway and, beyond a chain-link fence

marking the runway’s border, the snowy roads of Providence.

As small as T.F. Green airport was, Lucien felt in the moment that he moved from

gate to terminal a pressing, weighted force land on and settle into his chest. The place

buzzed with movement; people pushed and swept past him, holding out tickets like flares

at night. Bumping him, shoulder-to-shoulder, never eye contact, always talking - to

cellular phones, to children, to spouses, to themselves. Feeling wobbly and drunk, Lucien

passed a Dunkin’ Donuts and thought of the coffee pot in Mila’s small, bright kitchen,

waking up and coming downstairs to its bubbling chatter, feeling the breeze blowing in

from the ocean, tasting the remnants of last night’s rum or before-bed cigarette or sex,

chasing it away with the hot coffee, sitting outside and from the porch watching the sun

begin its slow rise over the Gulf of Mexico. Mila at his hip. The wordless minutes of

morning. Now he was back in the bustle, the go-go-go of stateside life; the feeling came

over him all at once, like he was surrounded by a hot, suffocating fog, and he fell towards

the nearest bathroom, checking briefly that it was marked with the straight-panted blue

silhouette that denoted it as men’s (and wondering, momentarily, if that it had been a

women’s bathroom it would have even stopped him), and once inside crashed into a stall

and closed the door, locking it, sitting on the toilet, trying to breathe.

Slowly, the fog began to lift and he began to feel more himself, and getting up,

finding that his legs indeed still worked, he slowly, deliberately unlocked the stall and

opened the door and proceeded out of the bathroom and into the terminal. He passed

newsstands with tabloids and the Playboys stuffed on a top shelf with black barring laid

across it so only the name of the magazine was visible; he passed souvenir shops,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 218

offering mugs and canned clam chowder and keychains that jingled when you walked. He

passed security and dozens of waiting husbands and wives and sons and daughters,

mothers, fathers, grandparents, friends. Down an escalator and to baggage claim, where

he waited - focusing on his breathing, the rise and fall of his chest under the coat that felt

so bulky and heavy that he wondered why he had ever bought it in the first place - and

finally picked up his suitcase. Then outside, into the cold New England air.

It was like a shock, like when you momentarily lose hot water and the shower

turns cold; suddenly he was surrounded by wind, the chill, the feeling of the cold peeling

back your nostrils and making a flaky crust of your skin. But he laughed when he saw his

own breath puffing from his mouth, now bathed in the feeling of returning, of coming

home, and he laughed again at a man standing near a large, concrete beam, bundled up

and smoking with shaking fingers, bag at his heels. Here it was; grand old New England,

at its most sublime and freezing, where, as his mother used to tell him, if you keep your

hands out of your pockets for too long, then well, you might just lose them.

He was looking for Anna’s car and finally remembering why, in fact, he had

bought this coat, when instead he got Anna, sans car, skipping across the crosswalk, all

six feet of her, her Patagonia brimming with fur lining and her cheeks apple-red. She

would have kept right on trotting into the terminal, but, as she passed not five feet from

him, he said, “Anna,” and she halted. She turned to him and the smile took over.

“Lucien?” she said, eyebrows up, jaw down.

“Yup.”

“Oh my God, look at you,” she said, and she walked over to him, went to pick up

his bag, then scrunched up her face and craned back up and hugged him. She dwarfed

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 219

him - her six feet to his 5’9 - and jammed her cheek against his forehead, then drawing

back and parting his hair there so to have an unadulterated patch of skin to kiss. She let

go, stepping back a half-step, and said, “You know, I didn’t even recognize you. Huh. I

guess I thought you’d be in the cloth. And pale. But you’re so tan.”

Lucien picked up his bag and said, “A year and then some in St. Thomas will do

that to you.”

“You mean make you tan or change your mind about your clothes?”

“Ha ha,” he said. “Come on, I’m freezing.”

“And a beard, Lucien? Really?”

“Can we go?”

As they walked to the car - Anna doing most of the talking - snow was falling,

and Lucien smiled at it. It was a nice, light fall. Something about the snow, though,

pecked at him, planted some offsetting veracity that was deep enough in him that he

couldn’t figure out, couldn’t put a finger on, until halfway home, when, against the low

hum of talk radio and Anna’s louder-than-average voice, he finally remembered the

dream, the snow, the blood, and those eyes over the mountains.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 6

Creation’s Rainbow

Holding On

Jon Upshaw, son of Hillenbrand and Cate Upshaw, husband of Meredith, father of

Jon Jr., retired Commander in the British Navy, and captain of the renowned and ill

famed Seascraper, had been shitting blood for just about three weeks.

When it started he’d thought it might have been something he’d eaten, or stress -

maybe even an ulcer; that, under the present circumstances, certainly was not out of the

question. In fact, it had seemed likely. But as time marched on and he began to notice

more of it on the toilet paper and around the inside of the bowl, sprayed in little droplets

as if by a paint-gun set to a fine mist, he began to worry - and more, to count out any

natural biological phenomenon. And finally, when there was more blood than fecal

matter - when it felt like razor blades were nestled into the lining of his stomach and with

every move cut deeper into him, when it required an act of stamina and courage unlike

he’d seen or practiced through his entire career, including his thirteen years in the navy,

just to walk downstairs, open the door to the head, get his pants somewhere around his

knees and sit down on the cold, porcelain bowl - it became sealed in his mind, pulled

tight into his awareness like sheets on a military mattress; Mr. Black was slowly killing

him.

220

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 221

In the last week he’d lost three teeth, two molars and an incisor, and looking in

the mirror to inspect the blackened holes where there had used to be teeth (and after

reluctantly and solemnly relieving his bowels, a practice which he’d tried to cut down to

once every three days but sometimes was, by necessity, a multiple-per-day occurrence)

he saw that the flesh under his eyes had begun to droop to such an extent that the whites

under his hazel irises had almost doubled in their exposure, red tendrils of connective

tissue and living, pulsing veins lining the curving aperture of each sagging and now-

yellowed globe. He’d lost all sense of smell, and when he ate - when he was allowed to

eat - the experience was a dull practice in necessity, not to mention somewhat painful, as

another three or four teeth had seemed to come loose and with each bite of broiled

hamburger or starchy boiled potatoes his mouth screamed for him to stop, to wait a

minute, there was something wrong in there, it wasn’t like it had used to be before he had

started to melt.

That’s how he had come to think about it: he was melting. Gravity seemed to pull

at him with more force than he’d ever noticed, and sometimes, in the navigation room, as

he ran his hands absently along detailed charts and penciled in opportune points to shift

course according to the depth of the seas and the navigability of the waters therein, as he

listened to the hollow chatter of the radio for reports of foul weather (almost, in a way,

hoping for it, maybe a gale that would sweep away this evil - this contaminated - ship

and suck it down to the very bottom of some fathomless trench, just where it belonged),

he would feel the pull of the ocean in the arches of his feet, the spare flesh around his

waist and his bottom and under his chin drawing down to the polished, wooden floor. His

hands would drop to his sides and scream to stay there, to continue further down, through

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 222

the floor to the galley then through that floor too, to the engine room and finally bursting

through the ship’s hull and reaching water, where he could float and blow out all his

breath and drift to the bottom of the ocean, and just melt. To finish the process, to get it

over with; melt.

But he couldn’t bring this all to a quick end; he couldn’t simply pry a piece of

machinery from the engine and take it to the deck and fasten it to his belt and jump. He

couldn’t because he had to serve. Jon was all there was that could push this yacht to

America; he was Mr. Black’s singular attendant. Part of him knew that, if he desired, Mr.

Black could guide this boat with as much aptness and efficiency as Jon himself could -

better, even - but he also knew that Mr. Black, though limited physically to the confines

of the sizeable but really, in the grand scheme of things, oh so small decks and cabins of

the Seascraper, was a very busy man.

He - Mr. Black - spent most of his time below deck; he’d set up in Eldridge’s

former quarters (Eldridge certainly didn’t need them anymore), which were located

toward the stem: a large, maroon-decorated room with a postureputic bed, large, light-

beseeching portholes, a flat-screen television, and a flanking bathroom done completely

in jade-colored marble. Whenever Jon found himself down there - to access the storage

room, which was located on the other side of the slim hallway adjacent to Eldridge’s

former and Mr. Black’s current place of residence, or whenever he was summoned by the

man {thing) - the first thing he noticed was always the cold. It hit him like a slug to the

chest as he came down the twisting, carpeted steps that descended from the ship’s

bar/music room, and it was a stale cold, as if from an unfiltered air conditioning unit; it

carried with it a hum, a buzz, some sort of grind that pressed on your ears and seemed to

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 223

get right into your brain. It was enough to drive a man crazy, and Jon, as he fished around

for old (and previously unemployable) maps in the storage room or waited,

unconsciously holding his breath, at Black’s closed door, Jon, who until now had

considered himself completely sane, found himself counting seconds, reciting under his

breath the names of his aunts and uncles and cousins, humming songs he’d learned in the

Navy, anything to drive that droning, fetid, sticky purr from his mind.

The only times Jon saw him were when he wanted to know about when they

would arrive at their next destination, how long it would take to refuel and restock. Their

first stop had been in Thailand - Eldrige would have been pleased - and that had been the

last time Jon had seen the outside of the boat. After that stop, which had taken half a day

- Jon had gone to a few street markets for fresh fish and some papaya, then wandered the

streets of Bangkok with a buzzing mind and tired legs - Mr. Black had prohibited Jon

from going ashore at any of the subsequent stops. They’d do fine on the canned food,

he’d told him, and time was the important thing right now. Jon had said yes sir, of course,

sir - he hadn’t been able to think of any rebuttal, hadn’t been able to even fathom arguing

with this man with his shining, alabaster face and silken, profuse grove of black curls

sitting fat over the darkened glow of his eyes. So now, when they did stop, Jon made

haste, doing everything he could to expedite the process, hauling thick lines that chafed

his hands and lowering them to the dock, watching the boys there carry the hose to the

tank, produce another hose and fasten it to the bilge, waiting, climbing down and handing

them money, climbing back up, drawing in the lines, listening to the roar and gush of the

engine kicking into life, setting off again into the deep, dark waters of the Pacific, and

finally watching land twinkle and flash and then disappear under a ceaseless line of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 224

horizon. Then he’d stand in the navigation room and look at the water and wonder when

he would have to shit again.

When he saw Mr. Black, however, everything went out the window. Thoughts of

his increasingly deteriorating health, of his family back in Wellington, even of his job as

Captain of this ghost ship were banished and replaced by a growing sense of passion, of

the same desire he’d felt that first day when he’d seen Curtis Black floating on his back

in the ocean. He’d get the call - the pull of his thoughts, the growling mutation of his

own voice echoing through his skull, He needs me now - and he’d drop what he was

doing, sprinting the hallway from the bowhead or taking the steps from the navigation

room three at a time, almost gliding down them, hands sliding down the railing, and

finally, arriving at Black’s door, he’d stop and he’d feel the cold. This was when it would

occur to him that Black was killing him, that being within his proximity was like being at

the center control room at Three Mile Island. Like a cocoon down here, he’d think. Like a

nest. The door would seem to vibrate, humming on its hinges, and from the space

between the door and the floor would emit this soft, white light, and it would pulse, that

light, like it was tied to something but straining to reach his toes, to swarm up his legs

and over his body and into his mouth and nostrils. The light seemed to live. He’d wonder

what created that light, and he’d think about Albert and Frederick, punching each other

and thrashing in the water and then diving down in search of some false, glittering

wonder. He’d think about what went on in that room when the door was closed, what

Black did curled up on the bed as he was whenever Jon entered to talk to him, who or

what he was reaching out to in his silent meditation, what mutilations he could perform

even seated there in a boat afloat, miles from anywhere, on the Pacific Ocean. Then Jon

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 225

would think about his eyes, his cheeks, even his testicles, and how they were beginning to

droop, to wilt like flowers at season’s end. Somehow, he’d think, looking at the door and

waiting for Black’s smooth, sweet voice to call him forth, Black is melting me. Like a

candle slowly burning down or a snowman in March. I, Jon Upshaw, am melting. Then

through the door would come his voice, and it would click open and in would waltz Jon,

forgetting at once the dilemma of his softening, his deterioration, and he’d have a seat on

the floor and look up at Mr. Black and listen, rejoicing in the succor his voice provided,

feeling the exile of the air’s chill and the warmth begin its slow cascade throughout his

limbs and body.

Mr. Black had called for him today. Jon had snapped to from a near-hypnotized

state; he had been standing aft and looking at the waves, feeling, somewhere, the sun

warming his forehead, the areas under his eyes and to the sides of his nose beginning to

bum, and when he felt the tug of Black’s curious beckoning he had blinked and opened

the hatch to the (former) crew’s quarters and scrambled through hallways to the kitchen

and into the bar then down the stairs and to Black’s bedroom. Black had wanted to know

where and when their next stop would be. “Hawaii,” Jon had said. “The Big Island.

Probably late tonight or early tomorrow.” Black had nodded and told him not to doddle

and then had excused him. He’d left the room, the feeling of warmth and absolute

dedication passing from him as the door to Black’s room slammed shut, and had then

climbed the stairs to the bar and made himself a drink. Then to the kitchen, where he

cooked some cured bacon and heated a can of refried beans.

Now, as night began to fall, he sat in the kitchen and picked at the miscellany of

preserved food before him, washing it all down with one of the beers he’d found earlier

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 226

that day in the pantry. In addition to everything else that was going on with his corroding

body, he was beginning to show the colors of scurvy; it had been over a month since he’d

had anything fresh, anything green, and his skin, despite its tan, had grown yellow and

loose. But he was holding on, because he had to. Had to get this ship to America, even if

it meant his death.

He finished the beans, leaving most of the bacon; with the little taste he had left,

he had detected a trace of mildew, and he figured that if he’d been able to really taste the

bacon, he’d have spit it out after the first bite. But no worry; it’s not as if it would affect

his bowels. He had enough problems with his stomach that he didn’t think a bit of spoiled

bacon would carry the problem any further than to where it had already progressed.

He picked up the plate with the leftover bacon and brought it upstairs to the top

deck, where he stood at the railing and flung it into the surf below. He watched it fly,

squinting against the setting sun, then skip once off the water, cut into a wave and blink

out of sight. He’d been throwing plates for weeks, and he didn’t know why.

His stomach was beginning to talk, that razor-blade feeling tightening his navel

and promising eminent constriction of any movement until he finally succumbed to it and

found himself once more in the head, hands clasped over his palpitating abdomen and

eyes squinted in pain. He’d ward it off for a while longer, he figured, but by the time

night came, it would be unbearable. He wondered if Mr. Black could help him with his

stomach, with the bleeding, and made a mental note to ask him about it next time he was

summoned. But when he spoke with Mr. Black, his stomach didn’t feel like a problem.

Nothing felt like a problem when he spoke with Black.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 227

He fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette and with a shaking hand lit it, turning his

back to the wind and leaning over - feeling the stab in his stomach as he did so - and

watching the match flare up as he drew in the smoke then flicker out with the breeze.

He walked slowly - almost limping - to the navigation room and made sure

everything was set to course. He figured it was five hours, maybe six until Hawaii. The

computers whirred and the radio was silent and everything was smooth.

He walked back outside, all the way to where Eldridge had a large, white table

with chairs set around it near the ship’s bow. Throwing his cigarette over the deck, he sat

in one of the chairs and lit another. He waited there, fighting the feeling in his stomach,

eyes slowly adjusting to the growing dark, and watched the horizon for Hawaii.

Zenith

Seventy-five minutes later, as the sun’s last light held on to the dark Pacific, a

ship came into view. Jon removed from his pocket a pair of collapsible binoculars,

unfolded them, and looked at the boat; it looked like a freight barge, probably twice as

long as Seascraper, and lower to the sea, flat and bulky and dragging along the water like

a rake through dirt. On the side of the ship, in large, white, block letters was written

Zenith. There was motion on the deck, but Jon couldn’t make out any faces; too far away,

and too dark. Probably an American-made and Japanese-owned cargo ship on its way to

Hawaii.

A minute after that - after he had risen painfully from his chair and scrambled

into the navigation room - he got the radio transmission from them. It was a call, he was

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 228

sure, to check thatSeascraper ’s course didn’t conflict with Zenith’s, that they weren’t

headed for a collision. Standard procedure, really, but Jon wasn’t sure to what exactly the

call was in regards, because it came in a language he couldn’t understand. An Asian

dialect, chirpy and sharp, crackling quickly through the radio; it probablywas Japanese

owned. Jon flipped a switch, picked up the radio, and said, “Hello there? Speak any

English, there?”

“Ang-a-lish?” came the voice. Then more of the bouncy, clicking parlance, then

silence.

Jon clicked the radio back home, sighed, and turned to the routing deck and

checked the computers. He was beginning to alter course - it looked like the present one

would find them close indeed to Zenith - when he heard the voice from behind him, rich

and critical, soothing to his ears, like the low, orchestral hum of background music in a

small restaurant: “Continue on course, Jonathan,” it said. ''"I want that ship.”

Jon’s fingers stopped where they were, resting on the touchpad of the portside

computer. His stomach instantly was bereaved of its pinching, churning grind; his ears

began to tingle, the sensation spreading out into the roots of his hair, down his face and

along the bridge of his nose. He felt himself smiling, and it stretched his cheeks,

narrowed his eyes, and when he turned to Black he felt as though he were looking into a

mirror: he wore the same smile as Jon himself, and his eyes were slim, black crescents,

crested by slick, arched eyebrows. “Of course, sir,” Jon said, rising a rigid hand to his

forehead, saluting his Captain. Jon felt the smile diminish as something occurred to him,

and he felt his heart sink with his hand as he dropped the salute. He said, “But, sir, what

about Hawaii? We haven’t much time, sir. Do we have time - ”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 229

“I like you more and more, Jonathan,” said Black. He stuck out a finger, pointing

at Jon’s left pocket. “Lend me one of those fags, eh?” Jon produced the pack and Black

took one, and then did something that sent sweet, glorious goosebumps across Jon’s neck

and over the top of his arms: he put the cigarette to his lips and snapped his fingers and

the tip of it came ablaze with blue fire. Black dragged deep and blew out, then said, “I

like that you’ve got drive. It’s a good trait, Jonathan. But,” he said, and dragged again on

the cigarette, this time not blowing it out, and then began to speak again as Jon wondered

where that smoke had gone, “tell me something now. When I called you this morning,

remember that?” Jon nodded. “Where did you go after that?”

Jon thought hard. His mind was murky; he had trouble remembering what he’d

been doing five minutes ago, forget about earlier this evening. But then it came to him,

gradually coming into focus, like a faraway road sign does as you approach it in your car.

“I had a drink, uh - ”

Black nodded, finally blowing out the smoke through his nose. The smoke twisted

and curled in the air, and for a moment Jon saw many things in the churning eddies: the

silhouette of a wolf on a hill, crying at the moon; a group of strange men and women,

warped into the liquid heavings of brutal copulation; a child in his crib, looking wide-

eyed up at a twirling, black mobile. “And then?” said Black, all eyes now; the vacant yet

gorged cosmos of his eyes.

“Then,” Jon went on, “I cooked some beans and some bacon. The beans I ate, but

the bacon was bad. It had gone bad.”

“Bingo,” said Black, taking a last drag from his cigarette and flicking it into the

palm of his other hand, then closing the palm and opening it again, now empty. “But you,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 230

unlike I, can live on the beans. But for me, Jonathan, well...by bacon has gone bad. I’m

hungry, Jonathan.” He opened his eyes wide, brought a hand under Jon’s chin and raised

it. “I need to eat, too.” Gently, Black brought down his hand, releasing his chin, and the

hand slid down his chest to his stomach, where it settled, palm laid flat against the loose

fabric of Jon’s shirt. “I’m sorry about your stomach, Jonathan. About all of this. Really, I

am. But I need to eat. And if you get me to that boat, Jonathan, I’ll help you. I’ll help

with your stomach,” looking at him, searching him, then continuing, “and your eyes. I’ll

help you not to melt.’’''

“Yes,” Jon breathed, and it came out a whisper. He felt his breath coursing

through him, the blood in his veins like liquid fire, racing up his arms and along the inner

parts of his thighs; he felt his mind firing synapses and the hairs along his spine dancing

in spins and pirouettes like miniature ballerinas. “Mr. Black,” he said, “when we get to

America.. .you’ll take me with you, won’t you?”

“Of course, Jonathan. Of course I will.” Keeping one hand on his stomach, Black

raised the other and threaded it into Jon’s hair, just over his ear, and scratched the scalp

there with his long, sharp nails. “Turn around, Jonathan,” he said, and Jon turned to the

routing deck. “Get me that ship. Go. That ship is ours.”

As Jon flicked off the computers and took the wheel, turning it slightly now and

then to match Zenith’s course, Black left the navigation booth and stepped outside. He

walked to where Jon had been sitting when he’d spotted the barge, past the table and

chairs, to the head of the ship, and there he stood, hands behind his black, looking out

over the water in the direction of the blinking white lights of the Zenith.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 231

This time, when Black left him, his stomach did not rise in revolt, nor did his

thoughts return to his weakening physical state or the possible atrocities that went on in

Black’s room when the door was shut. He could almost still feel Black’s hand on his

stomach, the tender touch of his palm across his belly, the flight of the pain there, the

warm impression his fingers left when they lifted. All he could think of now was guiding

Seascraper to the Zenith, so Black would be happy, so he could feed. His bacon had

soured. He was hungry.

And when they got to America, they would tie the boat and walk, hand in hand,

down the streets of California, and Mr. Black would show him things in the alleys and

under the sidewalks where the water flowed and between beams and rafters and under

floorboards. They’d walk in California and find things. Together.

Jon watched Black at the ship’s head and heard the blaring horn of Zenith. It

blasted and then was quiet, blasted again, and became a drone as its lights morphed from

flickering spots on the horizon into glaring, translucent beams, all pointed in the direction

of Seascraper; some, in fact, crossed and settled on Black at the bow. Bathed in the light,

Black removed his shirt, quietly undoing each button, folding it, placing it on one of the

chairs. Then he raised his arms, stretching, lowering them from over his head and holding

them out, palms up, to his sides - the rippling continuance of his deltoids, the brusque

angles of his shoulder blades - and then closing his hands into fists, as if he had caught

something. He raised his head to the sky and, in the intense radiance of the searchlights of

the ever-nearing Zenith, there sprouted from under his armpits black, leathery skin, the

flesh along his ribs peeling back and some of that black matter growing from there, too,

and soon Jon was looking at a man (thing) with dark, coarse, massive wings, which began

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 232

to flutter, slowly first, then Black was crouched and in one huge, flailing undulation, he

sprung and was off the boat and into the air, where he disappeared into the night sky like

a beetle scampering under brush. Zenith's spotlights remained where they were for a

moment, almost insignificant now in Black’s wake, and then - almost hesitantly, if an

inanimate object can be hesitative - began to sweep the sky like the beaming lights of any

given Hollywood night. The horn continued to blare, filling Jon’s ears and setting his skin

tingling, and as he eased Seascraper into reverse, feeling it tug to a halt, and then settled

it into a quiet, purring idle, the screams began. They sounded over the horn, beginning

with a few muffled hollers of surprise - something you might hear from the bathroom

when someone finds a spider on the toilet seat - and grew quickly into throaty, harrowing

cries of agony, and soon the night was full of it, night’s symphony - Black’s symphony -

playing to a one-man audience. Jon stood and listened, half in the navigation room and

half outside, a hand on the door jamb, head cocked, mouth agape and very close to

smiling - his smile disturbed a certain part of him, but that part was hushed by the surge

of emotion rolling through him like the mild Pacific surf below - and as the horn finally

ceased and the screams began to die and the spot lights fell suddenly downward and

settled on the ocean below them, lighting it a pleasant shade of florescent green, Jon

reached into his pocket and produced the pack of cigarettes. He lit one with delightfully

steady fingers and moved, eyes fixed on the quiet and now unmoving mass of the Zenith,

to the table at the bow. He placed an unlit cigarette on the table in front of him and sat

there smoking, waiting, and before long he felt what he knew he’d feel: the touch on his

shoulder, light, the way sun falls on you on a breezy day, and soothing, a brief caress of

recognition, but approving, like the touch of a mother, really. He turned, looked over his

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 233

shoulder, and there was Black, shirtless, the wings he’d grown spread out behind him

magnificent and powerful and dark like the night within which they were spread. Jon

handed Black the cigarette and Black took it, lit it, brought it to his lips, and when he

exhaled there were more images in the smoke, beautiful and sublime - a woman, naked

and pregnant, belly swollen with the navel protruding, almost pulsating, then this shifted

and obscured and became a huge landscape, insanely detailed, a valley lined by trees and

cut right in the middle by a thin stream, where some animal - it was too far in the

distance for Jon to tell what it was, but it was the size of a fox - bathing in the waters

there, lifting its feet in brusque gestures and drinking from the rapidly running stream.

Then Black’s face came smiling through the smoke, seeming to smash the landscape and

the stream and the little animal, and for a moment Jon hated him, loathed him for

destroying the beauty of that fox or whatever it was bathing in and drinking from the

clear water of the stream, but Black smiled and said, “But I also created it, Jonathan. Can

I not take away what I initially give?” Black’s smile was warm and sweetly dodgy, and

only now did Jon notice the fangs there that curved like scythes, small and delicate

looking, not exactly coming to points but almost disappearing altogether as if the tips

were so sharp and fine that they could not be perceived by the naked eye. The gums that

surrounded the fangs were bright red, and the thin lips Jon remembered from his first

meeting with Mr. Black were now supple, glowering like those of a pouting child who

hasn’t had his way. And of course his lips were also rimmed with this bright red - blood,

what else? - and as quickly as he’d become infuriated, Jon was once again filled with

pride and wonder and contentment; he’d been chosen, and he had been spared. Albert,

Fredrick, his whole crew had suffered Black’s fury, yet Jon had been treated like a

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 234

colleague - like a friend, really. And the bloodstains surrounding Black’s mouth and

drying across his chest - well, it was well deserved. Well won. Jon’s mind went back to

California; he’d never been there, never been to America, but he would go with Black as

his guide and see and taste it all, in the fashion of Black’s fancy, according to his way; a

way that sparkled and glittered and never left you hungry.

“Teach me to eat,” Jon said. “My dark angel.”

Black coughed out a lungful of smoke, laughing his charming, deep laugh.

“Whoa, Mr. Jonathan,” he said. The wings behind him folded and slipped behind him,

and as Black dragged on his cigarette Jon heard over the whisper of the waves a rippling

sound of what must have been Black’s skin retracting to accept them. Black did his now-

you-see-it-now-you-don’t trick with the cigarette, pulled out a chair, sat, and said, “Be

careful what you ask for, Jonathan. And be careful how you refer to me. We wouldn’t

want to upset anyone with mistaken names, would we? I’m not an angel, you know.”

“Yes you are, you’re my dark angel. You are the world.”

“No, I’m not. I’m just a little, itty-bitty part of it. A dust-mite in the maker’s bed.”

Jon looked down: ashamed, deflated, something. “Well, I’ve never...I mean, you

are to me. The world, I mean.”

“Good.” A hand in his hair again, stroking. Mother. Like Mother.

Jon looked up. “How do you feel?”

Black smiled, fangs glinting in starshine, and raised his head to the night. More

stars than sky tonight, Jon thought. “I feel wonderful,” Black said.

“Will you teach me?”

“What?” Black said, lowering his head, eyes shut. “What, teach you what?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 235

“To be like you. To...”

“Maybe,” Black said, and with that he rose, taking his shirt from the chair over

which he had draped it earlier, and, walking sternward, disappeared into the darkness.

Jon lit another cigarette, smoked it to the filter, got up - feeling a slight and

familiar discomfort in the lower area of his abdomen and telling himself that it was only

gas - and walked back to the navigation room. Turning the engine to full-forward,

flipping on the computers, feeling the jerk of sea-motion that had become second nature

to him, he looked to Starboard and watched the Zenith until it grew small and blended in

with the night. Soon, straight ahead would be the glittering lights of the Big Island; soon

after that, America.

Letting Go

A day and a half after Hawaii, he had to move his bowels. For this he felt a

mixture of anxiety and excitement; it was to be a moment that weighed a great deal. He

had wondered, mostly after Hawaii and during the dead time, when Black was closed up

in his quarters and Jon’s only company was the expansive sea and slim belt of

unchanging horizon, whether he’d ever have to move his bowels again. He had wondered

if Black had already started the change, started it the moment he had laid his slender hand

on Jon’s screaming stomach and told him to get that ship. Black did not move his bowels;

Jon knew this in his heart: Black was far, far above such grotesque - and human -

practices. And for a long and encouraging day, Jon had believed that Black, with the

touch of a hand, had cured him of his debilitating humanity and relieved him forever of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 236

the sickness he had accrued. It had been a day of feverish contemplation and ignored

pain, sitting atop the deck of the yacht and with half an eye watching the clouds for signs

of storm, getting up only occasionally - wincing and gritting teeth, squinting eyes against

what was either his sickness or the beginnings of his glorious mutation - to check his

course on the navigational computers. He hadn’t eaten all day in preparation for whatever

Black had in store for him; and as he grew hungry, he began to hear what he thought was

muttering and moaning from below deck, and soon was sure that Black had saved a few

for him, had taken wing and returned to Zenith before it had disappeared from sight and

found a few hangabouts to be saved for the journey. The hungrier he grew the louder the

voices seemed from below deck; by nightfall, he was certain that he and Black were not

alone on the ship. At least, for now.

So the next day, when he woke - to his great dismay, he still slept, and as he had

fought sleep the night before he had told himself that it was all part of the process, that a

transformation of this nature must take time - he was profoundly frustrated when he felt

the churning in his bowels, the stark and violent clenching beneath the buckle of his

pants, and as he rushed through slim hallways from the galley (where he’d finally nodded

off) to the head he felt himself lose some of it on the way; hot and liquid against the seat

of his pants and down the back of one leg, setting fires in his stomach and all the way up

to his throat.

The closest head was toward the stem of the boat, and when he reached the door’s

handle he thmst it down with all he had in him and watched it splinter apart from the

wooden door, then he was inside, fumbling down his pants even as he crouched to sit on

the toilet.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 237

It may as well have been water coming out of him for the way it felt, but it was

warm, and he paused for a moment after he’d expelled the first discharge of it, closing his

eyes and bracing himself against the flanking wall with a shaking hand. He prayed for a

moment; for himself, for his feces, for Black, and mostly for his transformation. Let this

be the last, he prayed. Just this last one, then like him. Just like him. Mid-prayer, he felt

his stomach tumble into another knot and he strained, and what came out the time

certainly was not water - it hurt as it slid from him, but he smiled at the low ceiling and

thought, that’s the first solid movement I ’ve had in a week. More, maybe. It was possible,

he supposed, that instead of changing him, Black had simply healed him. Something like

that was certainly in his power. Either way, it was Black to whom he was in debt for this,

for whatever this was: the end of something excruciating and taxing or the beginning of

something fantastic and new.

He opened his eyes and looked at the hand that held his weight against the wall;

there was a towel rack there, just above his splayed-out fingers, and it occurred to him in

that moment, sitting on a toilet with something under him, some part of him, for better or

worse, how so many things which had been previously incorporated into his trivial, daily

existence were totally unfathomable to him now, how inconsequential something like a

hand towel or a heart really was. A hand towel, long gone from its former designated

spot, and where was that towel now? Where, indeed, was it, the lot of it? “And who gives

a flying fuck?” Jon said, then rose slightly from the seat and looked down at what he’d

done.

What he’d done, though, was something awful. He’d hoped for yellow or brown

or green, expected red, but what he got was something far worse. He’d been holding his

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 238

breath, and when he let it out in came in a groan; he stood, looking around the head, as if

for solace from the grim, shrunken reflection that stared back at him from the small

mirror above the sink or the glass door of the shower. With numb fingers he felt for his

pants, and he saw remnants of it there - evidence of it - on the bottom of his tainted

knickers, and as he pulled up his pants and tried to buckle them - fingers and hands

trembling horribly now, and his lips twitching as well, seeming to force his mouth into a

gnarled, clownish smile - he bent over and, both hands holding the buckles of his pants,

vomited onto the towel rack. In terms of volume, it was nothing compared to what he’d

defecated, but it was composed of the same essential horror. His stomach lurched again,

and he bent over to vomit, but nothing came out. It seemed that he was all dried up.

He stood for what seemed like minutes, rocking now, his head and neck in no

conjunction whatsoever with the rest of his body, and tried to buckle his pants. It was

everything to him; to seal the crux of the repulsion to which he’d given birth, to let his

mind travel past and be rid of what he had just witnessed in the toilet on this forsaken

boat, to forget; all of this could be accomplished if he could just buckle his fucking pants.

Finally he was buckled, and he wanted desperately not to flush - felt that to look

at it again would be to surrender to its reality, and to give in to whatever it was that had

caused it and finally recede into the darkness for which he’d so recently yearned. This

was what it had come to; he had made a choice, and was now faced with its hideous

ramifications. So he turned (away from the shower door, so not to see again the laughing

and hollowed reflection) and reached to the toilet, and when his hand neared the handle

the thing in there snapped at him, teeth bared, its slick body slithering and spasming

against the rim of the toilet. It appeared to have more teeth than body, and Jon

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 239

remembered one summer at the lake with his family. He’d been eight, and had spent most

of the day in the water - he’d later recalled the trip and told his friends and then his wife

that it was that very vacation that had given birth to his fascination with the water, the

sea, and had eventually spawned what had started as a teenage inclination and grown

quickly into an obsession to join the British Navy - and at one point, he had come out for

a snack or a short breath, and his brother had pointed at his ankle and screamed and Jon

had looked down and screamed, too, because attached to his left ankle had been a leech,

black and wet, with blood rimming its dark body. His father had pulled it off for him and

patted his head, and had taken a combination of his mother and father and an ice cream

sandwich to convince him that it was all right to return to the water, that the leech had

done no real harm. Now, staring at the thing in the toilet, he was reminded of that leech

all those years ago; but the thing was bigger, vivacious - more alive - and where the

leech from the lake had receded on both sides to what looked like a pair of tails, this thing

had a head, a distinguishable head, with teeth and eyes and holes that Jon thought, on

some level of his thinking mind where he was still capable of rational thought, looked

like they might have been ears. He went to flush it again - not sure, at this point, if it

even would fit down the pipe, and equally puzzled how this thing had come out of him in

the first place - but the thing snapped again, all teeth, this time almost flinging itself out

of the toilet altogether, flipping against the rim of the toilet and seeming to wobble for a

moment before falling back into the blackened water therein. Jon turned and left the

bathroom, flinging shut the door behind him and hearing it bang against its frame and

then swing again open - he’d broken the handle on the way in. He thought about pushing

something in front of the door, maybe finding a chair and fixing it against what was left

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 240

of the handle like they did in the movies, but he was already halfway across the length of

the ship, almost running. He also found that he was headed towards the bow, in the

direction of Black’s quarters.

His legs worked on their own. In his mind he saw the thing flipping out of the

toilet and squirming, twisting across the floor of the head, like some primordial creature

ascending from the ooze, and following Jon’s scent to where he was running - where, of

course, he always ran now; back to Daddy.

Back to Black.

He lurched down the stairs, bracing himself against the handrail, tilting forward

and bent over at his gut, feeling the receding warmth in the bottom of his drawers, the

taste of vomit rising again in his gullet. His gait was hindered by the monstrous pain in

his belly, and as he limped toward the closed door that led to Black’s quarters, he lifted

his shirt and looked down at his stomach.

Splotchy red marks had risen across the width of him, raised from the skin as if in

reaction to a nasty sting or some powerful and poisonous industrial cleaner. He ran a

hand along the largest welt, just under his navel at the bulge of loose flesh where his

longstanding kinship with good Stout had made itself outwardly apparent. The welt was

hot to the touch, and against the padding of his fingers he suddenly felt light, slippery

movement, just a twitch, really, like the simmer of fruit under a pie’s crust as it baked,

but as he withdrew his hand and looked at it as if it were not a familiar part of his own

body but some alien artifact found buried deep in the layers of the earth’s crust, he knew

that there was another one. He hadn’t finished in the head. There was another one.

And it was kicking.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 241

He stood motionless at the door, waiting. Waiting for the thing from the head to

catch up with him and sink its teeth into his calf or the one in his stomach to burst out like

in that movie with the space aliens. Waiting to pass out, waiting for the inviting,

mercifully cool darkness.

Waiting for the door to open. So he could -

So you can what?

So I can end this. I owe it to my crew. I owe it to the Zenith. I owe it to myself.

So end it.

He stepped forward, feeling the cradle of cold and the strings of light pull at him

from under the door. The light pulsed and cooed, a slow flash like the day’s early light

reflected off the water on the hull of a ship. It seemed to murmur, almost, a lover

whispering trancelike promises in the early morning hours. The light was soft and yellow

and gorgeous.

And it was very, very bad.

It was at this moment that Jon realized how bad a man Curtis Black really was. It

was as if Jon had been walking drunk, parading around the ship, floating, really,

conducting himself with cool, unthinking grace as he’d done in the days when he was in

service to Mr. Eldridge, because he’d looked the other way then, too. He’d known what

Eldridge had been up to - they all had - and he’d tolerated it...no, he’d enabled it. He’d

participated in it. Why lie to himself now? Their seemed no reason to anymore. There

had been that time the second year he’d captained the voyage when he’d taken a boy into

his quarters with him for the night, and the next morning had sworn to never do it again.

He’d hated himself for that. But now, taking orders from Black, Jon felt not deplorable as

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 242

he supposed he’d felt all the years under the employment of Eldridge. Under Eldridge

he’d felt as if he were loaning a secret and crucial part of him to his boss’s shady

dealings, as if he were selling out. With Black, though, it seemed that he’d altogether lost

that part of himself. And in its place now was only darkness. Black was evil - purely,

sickly evil - and if he made it to America...well, Jon didn’t want to think about that.

Better to end it for Black and then end it for himself, and possibly recover some of what

he’d hopefully not completely lost to his dark and wicked master.

He reached out a hand and laid it on the door. Just a push, then he’d be in. Then

he would end it. The door was freezing against his palm. He tightened himself, flexed his

arms, whatever they had left to give, here, put it into the door. It slid open. So easy.

He had interrupted Black a few times before. Sometimes it would be for direction

—The starboard engine is sputtering, should we stop? or I recently received a

transmission, small ship warning, should we stop? - and sometimes it would be merely

because he felt that merciless and iron draw, the feeling, it would hollow out his bones,

make air of them, Christ, what was he doing there, he’d think. And he would open the

door, of course, and all thinking would scream to a halt, the yellow glow washing over

and around him, he’d enter Black’s church and instantly mellow over, a direct line of

morphine, his veins opening up for it, for Black’s drug. Black would be there, whenever

he’d interrupt him, hunched over on Eldridge’s (former) bed, his back curved just so, legs

tucked under him, head touching the fabric of the bed, a Muslim at prayer. But not today.

Today, Jon at first thought that Black wasn’t there at all. That he’d just

disappeared - and why not? Why wouldn’t such a man disappear? Like a comet, or a

plague, something unimaginable, impossible to get one’s mind around, something that

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 243

leaves a vague trail and a memory and little else, something seemingly dreamed. When

Jon opened the door to Black’s quarters, he saw the bed, made, but no Black, and

immediately he thought, H e’s gone. Why would the bed be made - tightly pulled sheets,

pillows arranged in neat stacks of two - if the man presumed to return? Not Black; he

always left his nest ringing outwardly of occupation, some shadow of him almost still

remaining there, as if to daunt - or entice - the intruder. Jon looked at the empty bed,

thinking of Eldridge and his boys, and realized that what had gone on in this room before

- before, now there’s a concept - was harmless, trite, really, when compared to what had

been manifesting here over the long and unwaking course of the last few weeks. It was

like comparing a stubbed toe, a little nick, to a pulsing tumor.

He laid a hand on his stomach, felt the kick of the thing in there just below the

skin, working its way to frenzy now, preparing for birth. Make haste, he thought, if he’s

still here, I have little time to.. .to what? Kill him? Kill Black? Perish the thought. You’d

just as soon kill a mountain. But something, something...there had to be something...He

peered around the room, the television, plasma, turned off, it would never be on again; he

was tempted to turn it on, just to harness some sense of normalcy. White noise would

even do it. Yes, something to quiet this awful silence, this lack of the Man. He walked to

the television, forgetting momentarily about the quivering monstrosity settled into the

thick of his gut, and, reaching toward the television, breathing, letting himself breathe, his

finger pausing, inexplicably, on the button marked POWER, only then did he finally see

Black, and his eyesight went south and his bowels released in a painless gush, and his

fingers fell from the television, nails scraping against first its screen then its base then

resting somewhere, so far away, on the polished wood of the cabinet that held the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 244

television, something flopping around in the seat of his pants, beginning to creep and

slither down his leg, pain on the back of his thigh where it bit into him and tore a fist

sized chunk of flesh from his rump: none of this mattered. What mattered was Black,

afloat.

He was in the portside comer, snugged into the wall’s crook, face pressed flat on

one side against the ceiling. His legs and arms dangled harmlessly from his naked body,

arms splayed as if in offering, and a long line of drool reached to the floor from his

mouth. A darkened stain on the carpet told Jon he’d been there a while now.

It occurred to Jon that it should have been impossible, entering the room, to miss

Black in such a state. And now that he thought about it, there had been something in that

comer, something dark, like a wrongly placed shadow, a trick of light. Such things

happened at sea. He’d noticed something, only peripherally, but the sense of absence,

that lack of the tugging yellow light, had been the only graspable thing.. .but no. No. In a

way, he hadn't missed anything. Because in a way, Black was not here. Here was his

body, smashed up against the ceiling. Drooling onto the carpet, the saliva just flowing.

His back, the knitted sinews of it, the strapped embroidery of bone and might, the black

spots tattooed along the backside of his ribcage where those midnight wings would tear

through like some sick, back-alley birth. His fists, clenching and relaxing, curled nails

marking the tremble, the autonomic twitch of his body, and one wild eye, a horse over the

brink of madness, staring into nothing, rolled back into his skull, the sunken socket

seeming to pulse as if in rejection of the eye itself...and somehow, a complete lack of

Black. The man was far, far away.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 245

“One of his startrips,” Jon said, not knowing where it came from and not caring.

Absently, he brushed a hand past his bottom to where the thing was slipping and

squirming to make its way back into the seat of his pants. He swatted at it and it bit him

again, wincing, pushing at it like you’d push a large marble out of the lip of a sack. It

wriggled out of a pantleg and shot across the room and under the bed, leaving a slick-

black and bloody trail behind it. “Gone,” Jon said, and, one hand reflexing to his leg

where the thing had taken a piece out of him, walked toward the comer of the room

where Black hovered against the ceiling. To stand beneath him and play him like a

pinata, maybe find a crowbar, a fire-poker, Albert-the-cook’s prize set of darts...

He reached to touch him but Black’s visible eye rolled forward, there was his iris,

the complete lack of light in it, a pit, this is what the dinosaurs choked and drowned in,

this is the matter that swallows suns and planets, this, this obscurity, raven-shaded sable

inky Cimmerian, sloe-black, happy and sluggish hunting grounds for Jon’s nightmares,

all of this nightmare, all of this, just quiet, please, quiet. The room had come alive. A

fecundity, the air pregnant with ethereal sparks; the television boomed on, white noise -

well, there it is, white noise for you, Jon, it’s what you wanted, after all - and Black’s eye

fixed on Jon, searching him.. .this is what rape is like, Jon thought, and he turned his head

because there was a mewling from the far comer of the room. There, a boy sat huddled,

stick-like arms bent around doorknob knees, crowding his legs against his chest, head

down, fine, dark hair congregated into wet terrazzo against his skull and sweat bleeding

from his cheeks. Bare feet, soiled, nails overgrown and jaundiced, all under threadbare

twists and strands of mined cotton pants, once red, probably, but now brown. Jon

recognized him. One of Eldridge’s boys.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 246

He tried to turn his head but Black’s hand was there, viced around the nape of his

neck. A finger or two pressed into Jon’s cheek, somehow the flat of the hand still back

there at the base of his neck. Black’s voice came from behind him. Came cold. “Look,

Jonathan. Look at it now. This is yours, Jonathan.” Head turning, eyes forced open -

couldn’t close them, his entire face slack, mouth hanging agape, anesthetized - he looked

at the boy, and yes, it was his. The boy - Ty? Thai? Well, he’d had the phonetics of it,

anyway; the name had slipped from him like honey, dopey, slurred with opium from a

late night in Bangkok, eleven years and nineteen days ago, an early Christmas present

from sire Eldridge, the name had ticked off his tongue like hail, Tie, Ty, Thai, until it’d

lost all meaning, tie me down, kiddo, think I’ll help myself to some Ty right now.. .yes, it

was his boy, his Ty, hey, his name is also the culture, and what a culture it is, eh, Albert?

The boy’s head rose, slowly, straining up from between his knees, hair curtaining out

before his brow. His eyes sheathed by all the hair...the boy’s hand rising, a finger

fumbling, brushing at his nose and then at the greasy black hair hanging in his face, once,

twice, and the hair was wiped away to reveal his eyes - or, rather, his lack of eyes. Empty

sockets, red-rimmed, like cracked earth. Ty brought up his other hand and held it out, his

little, depleted muscles quivering, contracting along the copper-piping of his forearm. His

hand opened, and of course, there were his eyes - so big! it seemed impossible that those

monsters could fit inside the boy’s midget skull - with the cords and filaments jutting

backside from them, red-threaded white ovular blobs sitting perched and bulging in a tiny

cup of a bronzed hand and Jon screamed, screaming, Jesus Christ nothing but those eyes.

The hand tightened around Jon’s neck. “What did you do, Jonathan?” Black’s

voice again, cooing like a nursing mother. “What could someone possibly do to make

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 247

him claw his eyes out like that? He did claw them out, Jonathan. With those little, baby

fingers, he reached around his eyes and popped them out like pits from a peach.” One

finger on Jon’s cheek began to move, stroking there, brushing against tooth and gum.

And the voice, lulling him, go to sleep. “The tendons took a while to snap. He felt like he

was going to pull out his brain. But guess what, Jonathan. He didn’t care.”

“Please.” No longer screaming. Throat raw, things tom in there, frayed, broken.

“Just let me close my eyes.” One of Ty’s legs had slumped to the floor, still bent, and he

now resembled a boy in the grips of thoughtful play. He had withdrawn the hand holding

his eyes and was now fingering them gently, rolling them in his palm, as if testing them

for viscosity or attempting to remove their stickiness.

Black continued: “What did you show him, Jonathan? What did he see with those

eyes to make him want so dearly to be rid of them? Did you show it to him?”

“No. Please.”

“You did. Of course you did. Tell me, Jonathan - ”

“Please.”

“ - did you have to teach him? Show him how - ”

“Oh, God.”

“Got/?” said Black. Jon’s head was whipped around, his body following suit.

Black hovered just in front of him, legs bent at the knees and his body tilting forward,

one arm stretched out and his hand gripping Jon’s face like a grandmother coming in for

a smooch. Black grinned. Incisors twinkling, nostrils flared. “God is old, Jonathan.” He

laughed, his grip finally loosening from Jon’s cheeks. “Old, and tired.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 248

“T-tired?” Jon did not know where his mouth was. He did not know how he was

making his mouth move to speak. He knew only Black’s eyes, staring down at him,

casting him in that shadow-light of his, that aura, waiflike and thunderous all at once, like

the crackling pressurization of clammy air before a magnificent storm.

“Yes. He is tired. Of you.”

Jon’s mouth clamped shut. He would stand there, his back to young Ty,

somewhere in the room the slippery thing he had birthed coiling to strike, bearing smugly

the barbed rows of its oversized maw...he’d stand there and look into Black’s eyes. He

was done. Let Black have him. Just to stare into those eyes, those black pits, the utter

emptiness of them -

“That’s a thought that you keep thinking, over and over,” Black said, descending,

his body stiffening into verticality, his feet, as if completely of their own accord, finding

the floor to provide the remainder of Black’s body with a bearing that was just so. He

stood with his hands on his hips, towering as ever despite his mediocre height. His

expression was smug, almost humorously so. He said, “Usually I’d not care, pay it no

mind. But I feel the need to - well, to correct you. I’m afraid you’ve caught me in a rare

mood today, Jonnie Boy. There’s a very ...special little boy. I’ve had the damnedest time

finding him, you know. But I did. I found him.”

“Wha - ” The melting feeling was back, more than ever. Jon’s tongue felt numb

in his mouth, his teeth as if they’d been knocked loose. A 2x4 to the head, something.

Knees might buckle at any minute now. Certainly melting.

What was not there, however, was the feeling of devotion, the lush, swampy

heartsickness that buzzed and persisted whenever Jon was in Black’s presence to the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 249

point of - well, let’s face it: to the point of malignancy, death. To the point of melting.

That’s what it had been all along. He’d been melting because it had felt so fucking good.

“Wha,” Jon said. Tongue just not cooperating at the moment.

“Never mind, never mind,” Black said. “But there’s that thought you have. You

consider my eyes quite often, Jonathan. I’ve noticed that.” Black laid a hand on Jon’s

shoulder. “Come here, Jon. You look like hell. Have a seat.” Black led him to the bed

and, sitting down himself, patted the spot beside him. Jon took a seat on the tightly pulled

bedspread. Black folded his hands in his lap. Jon felt like laughing, or screaming. “My

eyes, Jon. Take a look.” Black raised his head up, turning toward Jon. Batted the eyelids

for him. Opened them wide, like you might do at the doctor’s.

“Bla-bla - ” Jon tried.

Black nodded. “Yes, Jon. They’re black. And what was it you thought earlier?

‘That’s what the dinosaurs drowned in? That’s the matter of the stars,’ something like

that? Very poetic, Jon. You’d have made a pretty good writer in another life, maybe.”

Black fished in his pocket and brought out a cigarette. He brought it to his lips, paused,

then held it out. “Indulge?” he asked. Jon tried to shake his head no, but it was as if he

were immersed in tar. His entire body was warm, liquid. Face and neck, back, all

tingling...pins and needles, sort of, but a different feeling, a feeling like...like angels

crying. That’s what his mother used to say when he shivered. That angels were crying

and he was feeling the tears. Black shrugged and lit the cigarette, this time dipping it into

one cupped palm and emerging with a glowing ember. Nothing fancy now; trick time was

over, apparently. “So they’re black,” he said, and Jon blinked, his face so warm, so hot,

really, getting uncomfortable now. “My eyes, I mean,” Black went on, blowing smoke

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 250

into the stale air of the room. “Black as the pits of the oblivion, right? Tell me, Jonathan,

how were you at science class way back?”

Jon felt drool gather at the comers of his mouth. There were Black’s words, slow

and thick and tangled like good jazz, and there was his drool, sloping down his chin. He

was so hot, on fire. He needed his shirt to come off. He needed water, the sea, all around

him, encasing this vessel, this death ship. He thought briefly of Ty, sitting in the comer,

emaciated, playing with his own eyeballs like they were marbles, then pushed the thought

away. He considered Black’s question. What had it been?

“Science, Jon. How were you at science? In school?”

“I,” Jon said, the drool really letting go now, viscous and ropy like he’d been

vomiting. “No good,” he said. He let out a breath and as he drew back in felt something

give, his lungs expanding and then falling back in, as if a balloon in his chest had popped.

Pain tore across his ribcage, immense and hot, the prickling sensation in his skin (angels

crying) doubling and tripling; and finally a gushing sensation in his stomach, warm and

mercurial like some volatile gas hovering on equilibrium, yes, I was good at science, not

bad, please, say something, I can’t speak. He opened his mouth and the drool fell out, any

intended words washing down his chin and onto his shirt...

“Not very good, I imagine. Well, anyway,” said Black, taking a drag off the butt

and then holding it out for inspection between his pointer and middle fingers. He went

on, “Let me tell you about the color black. Your thoughts, and correct me if I’m wrong

here - ” he removed his gaze from the outstretched cigarette and looked at Jon, eyebrows

cocked, head tilted slightly forward, as if expecting argument. Jon said nothing. Black

shrugged, continued, “All right then. Your thoughts, as I was saying, are that black - the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 251

color, not the man - ” a grin, hangdog, “ - is the lack of color, really, the ultimate void.

When you close your eyes, there it is: black. Right? An absence of light. No, Jonathan.

No.” His expression shifted here, and with nimble movement of hand and fingers he

flipped the cigarette downward in his grip and applied it’s tip quickly and firmly to Jon’s

forearm, which was dangling face up near the lip of the bed. “Feel that?” said Black. Jon

did. Oh, he did, but he couldn’t, for the life of him, find movement. Black’s hand held the

cigarette steady, pressed into Jon’s suntanned arm. Pain, more pain, just searing, his

neurons screaming, a bodily rage of surging adrenaline, but none of it helped because Jon

couldn’t move his God-awful-Christing arm. “The color Black,” the dark man said,

pressing deeper with the cigarette, “is, in reality, a flood of colors, of light. It is a divine

concentration. It is nature’s most superb and glorious hue. It is everything, every color,

every particle of earth’s light, forgathered into one opulent essence. The ultimate esthetic.

Give a child a paintbrush and colors across the spectrum, tell him to paint, watch him

create the color black. Without fail he will create black. It’s basic biology, Jonathan. The

absence of light is not black; it’s white. But black...my eyes, my hair...I am Creation’s

Rainbow.”

He removed the cigarette from Jon’s arm, leaving a raised circle of raw red flesh

outlined by a pure white nimbus. It stung. Everything stung. A citrus-tinged odor of

burning garbage. Still-smoldering flesh. Jon’s ribcage felt as if it were pulsing, each

breath he took more laborious, an iron taste coming up in his throat. He moved his arm —

yes, yes - and found that he was able to speak, as if, because Black had finished, his

mouth and tongue had finally acquiesced and acknowledged that it was his turn. Jon said,

“But the boy.. .the thing.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 252

Black laughed, a rich sound, plush, like the draw of surf. He looked over his

shoulder. “You mean the boy - your boy? I think you could explain that better than I,

Jonathan.”

Jon turned his head - movement felt admittedly good, despite the burning

sensation in his gut that was increasing by the second - and saw that Ty was no longer

there. And nothing to mark that he ever had been. Just a comer of the room, three lines

converging into a point, dust bunnies settled into the crook. “A-and the thing? The...the

leech?”

Black nodded. “Yours as well. Your creation.”

“No.”

“Yes. I am the catalyst. I’m not much more than a channel, I’m afraid.”

Jon moaned, placing a hand to his stomach - no movement there any more, no

more creatures to beget, just the scorch, the pull of his ribs against his skin, the awful rasp

of his lungs. And then the smell - it was becoming more concentrated; burnt oranges, the

smell of an incinerator in need of a good cleaning. Jon looked at the wound on his arm. It

was still smoldering.

Black stood and brushed off his pants. “Well, I suppose I owe you a thank you.

After all, you’ve helped me so much. I couldn’t very well have captained this vessel - it’s

a pretty one, by the way, isn’t it? - and found the boy all by myself. You helped me. You

helped me find that boy. It was a bitch, Jonathan. And painful.” Jon looked from his arm

to Black. “Oh, come on, man. You don’t think that I’m impervious to pain, do you?” It

was getting difficult again to concentrate on Black’s words. The surging feeling in his

ribs was getting unbearable. He felt like lying down, hitting his head against the wall,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 253

taking a shit...and how long had it been since he’d gone to the head and delivered that

monster? Had it been today? Within the hour? How long had it been since he’d done

something human, something real, something he could hold onto and keep? The world

was floating in and out of bright oranges and reds now, his vision cocking, Black,

standing again hands-to-hips, a dark smudge against a landscape of pain and fluttering

eyelids. And the smell was bordering on all-encompassing, getting to the point where his

vision, his hearing, any sense of touch, all of these things engulfed by the scent of fuming

fruit and garbage. Black smiled. “Smell that?” he said. “You’re burning.”

Jon looked at his arm and saw that it was indeed on fire, the spot where Black had

burned him blooming out in blue and almond-shaped flames like a gas range. As he

looked at it, feeling it, not as painful as it looked, really, because his ribs, that was the

true holocaust here, the fire began to spread, licking out and jumping up his arm to his

armpits, scorching hair and moving under his shirt. Soon his shirt was on fire and he was

up and running, Black cackling behind him, out of the captain’s quarters and up the stairs,

waving an arm to quench the flames but only fanning them higher, his shirt splitting and

coming off and dragging smoking behind him, his chest, legs, all on fire, rounding the

comer around the galley to the main deck coughing spraying a fine mist of blood and

other congealed matter against the door as he swung out to the deck over the railing

falling and burning belly first into the water and ahhh...

The cool blue rinsing over him, Jon used his arms and legs, what little power he

had left, to turn himself over in the sea and float on his back. It was calm seas today. He

watched the Seascraper chug by, engines murmuring and swishing, its graceful glide

through the water, just cutting through it, what a magnificent boat. He let his eyes close

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 254

for a moment, wondering briefly if he’d be able to somehow get around to portside where

the emergency ladder was, then dismissed the idea; better to stay here, in the water,

where if one’s body urged to catch fire it would be snuffed before it could even start. He

opened his eyes again - effortful, maybe close them again soon, yes, better to close them

- and he saw Black standing on the starboard deck, just about where he’d jumped,

probably. Black was waving, one motionless hand in the air, and he was smiling, a

sincere smile, a parent seeing his first child off to camp. Jon hoisted a hand from the

water and returned Black’s salute. As the aft-end ofSeascraper drifted past him, Jon

closed his eyes for the last time, feeling the caress of the water tickle his bums, and there

was no Ty, or Eldridge, or fleeting visions of his lived life, and certainly there was no

black. When Jon Upshaw let consciousness leave him, finally, all he saw was white:

awful, pure, lightless white, and the Man had been right - white was the void, it was

white, and Jon was slipping into it, to forever, into that winterland of horrible zero.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 7

Stateside

Little White Lies

The talk stopped after a while. Anna smoked, and scoffed when Lucien asked for

a cigarette (but was quick enough to light one for him). The snow picked up as they

moved closer to Tiverton.

The countryside whispered by as in a dream, snowbanks along the highway

giving way to wispy trees skeletal and clattering in the wind, backdropped intermittently

by the old farmhouse or lonely manor along the banks of Tripp River. Soon the river

realized its girth and swelled into Westport Sound, a glittering expanse of cobalt water

frenzied with whitecaps and blowing marsh grass. The Sound served as a natural border

between Westport and Tiverton - Massachusetts and Rhode Island - and looking at it as

they pulled into Anna’s pebbled driveway Lucien felt humbled, penitent, almost, as if

he’d betrayed the shivering river for her bigger, shinier sister that was the Caribbean Sea.

Anna had prepared the guest bedroom for Lucien, and after showing him around,

traversing the room in harried circles, fluffing pillows and re-smoothing his bedsheets,

she left him there, closing the door behind her, so he could “get reacquainted.” Lucien

found himself wondering what exactly she had meant.

255

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 256

He unpacked the little luggage he’d brought, folding underwear and tee shirts into

his father’s old cedar chest, which dwarfed the room’s other furniture. Once done, he sat

at the desk she’d vacated for him (as if he’d be doing work here, writing his memoir,

maybe, or possibly catching up on his taxes, which he’d never had to figure out in the

first place) and looked out the window. Anna’s backyard, normally overgrown and

speckled with wild poppy and hibiscus, was a blowing snowscape, tundra-like with

animal tracks zigzagging across its tree-framed length. He breathed, tired from traveling,

and decided that he’d like a nap. First, though, he’d go to the attic and haul out his cold-

weather clothes.

He left the room, admiring Anna’s simple decorating - everything wood-bare and

homelike, blown glass fixtures, walls adorned with portraits and old photographs

mingling with art he didn’t understand but nonetheless appreciated; the place had a feel

that was inherently cozy, a dark-in-the-summer and bright-in-the-winter kind of

sanctuary vibe to it. He stopped at the top of the stairs. He could hear Anna in the

kitchen, rattling around and humming a song he couldn’t place. “Anna,” he yelled. He

heard her clatter stop for a moment. Such was Anna not to answer, to simply assume that

he knew he had her attention. He cupped a hand to his mouth and said, “I’m going to the

attic for a few things. Just wanted to make sure there’s nothing up there that might shock

an older brother enough to send him straight to the Days Inn.”

He heard her laugh, then, “Nothing but dust and boxes, Lucien. I moved the sex

swing to the basement when I found out you were coming.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 257

Lucien cringed, already moving down the hall, and said, “Alright. Give me five

minutes, and if I’m not back down by then, assume that you’ve missed something and

I’m passed out from the trauma.”

He heard her yell something about hot cocoa, but he moved out of earshot and it

became a blur.

Anna’s attic was the old trap-door kind, and when he pulled it open dust fell down

in a drift, catching the light from the end of the hall. He moved up the stairs and was

assaulted by the dark; no windows up there, just old mildewed floorboards and unfinished

walls brimming with pink fiberglass insulation. The walls were on a slant so Lucien had

to duck as he walked. In one far comer, Anna’s chimney cut through the room like a

brick-laden jugular. Boxes everywhere.

His boxes were easy to find, close to the stairs and within easy reach. They were

marked, simply, with the letter L, and had been pulled out from the rest of the various

containers - all stuffed with his parents’ old things and a range of memorabilia that Anna

hadn’t had the heart to chuck when she’d moved from home. This was Anna’s first

house; she’d previously lived in an apartment in New Bedford, a seedy little city East of

Tiverton, and before that had lived with Lucien’s parents. When Dad had died - six years

ago now, and holy cow if it didn’t seem like twenty - his mother had moved almost

immediately to Florida to live with her sister. That had left Lucien and Anna, but at that

point Lucien was living in the rectory. There had been some guilt, and Lucien had briefly

considered forfeiting the rectory quarters and finding a place with his sister; Anna had

never been one to have many friends (not that Lucien had, either, but he’d had a

congregation of over a few hundred, and that had kept him pretty busy). But she’d said no

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 258

way, so it had been Lucien at the Church and Anna in the hell-hole apartment for three

years. Then Anna moved to Tiverton and Lucien moved to St. Thomas.

There were three boxes marked L. The first was filled with winter clothes, parkas

and some outdated flannels, a pair of jeans and some corduroys. He pulled the box over

to the stairs and opened the second. Books, mostly paperbacks, an old Bible, and under

that, stacks of old yearbooks and some old newspaper clippings. The clippings had been

cut by his mother, and most were pertaining to his priesthood. In one case, he’d made the

front section of the Standard Times, New Bedford’s newspaper. The headline, coupled

with a picture of Lucien in full God-gear, had read something like Local Priest to Spice

Up Dioceses, Focuses on Youth. He didn’t bother looking for it. He folded the top of the

box and shoved it back with the others.

This left the third box, and Lucien allowed himself a long breath before he opened

it. This is what he’d come up for. This was it. He’d been thinking about it all the way

from St. Thomas, listening to the poor baby wail on the plane, driving from the airport

and chatting with Anna; it had been this, only this, there at the back of his mind like an

itch in the middle of your back, right in the place you can’t reach no matter how you

contort, and it just itches and itches and you can try to forget about it, try to distract

yourself, but damn if that itch doesn’t just keep right on itching. He let his fingers move

under the lip of the cardboard and pulled up, and there it was, glinting somehow despite

the lack of light, small and laid atop a mound of robes, candles, and shiny ornamental

bric-a-brac: his golden crucifix.

His legs went a little rubbery at the sight of it. His stomach gave a groan and

clenched like an arthritic hand. He set one hand on the floor to steady himself and picked

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 259

up the crucifix by its chain, letting it hang in the attic’s dusty air. He watched it

pendulum, winking when it caught the light from downstairs, and he wondered if Anna

took it out now and then to polish it. This sent a bolt of anger along his gut, replacing the

churning there, and he swallowed and let out another long breath. This was displacement,

pure and simple. He couldn’t allow himself to become angry with Anna. So it had

seemed like the right thing for her to do to keep his Priestly things in respectable

condition. What was wrong with that? And anyway, he’d come all this way - up the

eastern seaboard of a continent, for God’s sake - for this. This is why he had come -

well, this, and the boy. If there was a boy.

His right hand was planted on the floor for stability. To peel it up, to bring it

chest-level and do what he’d wanted - needed - to do this whole time - God, it seemed

impossible. He was stuck in his position, leaning against the dusty floorboards for

balance, dangling a small golden cross from one hand. The attic was cold, but Lucien felt

a slick sheen of sweat settle over his forehead and legs. He blinked then raised the empty

hand. He watched as it opened, palm up, fingers extending slowly like a leaf coming back

to life, uncurling on the ground and floating back to tree.

In his palm was a scar the shape and size of a crucifix, pink and raised from the

skin like embroidery. Slowly, he twisted his left hand until the chain was short enough

for him to pluck the cross out of the air. His right remained as it was, scar-up, and he

shifted it into a spot of light that was streaming into the attic from the stairs. He closed

his eyes for a moment, opened them again, and then placed the crucifix over the scar. It

covered it perfectly. So it had been real, all of it. Dream, blood, boy, and mountains. All

real. It was the impression of the crucifix, his crucifix, on his hand; this crucifix that had

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 260

been the gift of his ordainment, this crucifix that had been secreted away in Anna’s attic

in Tiverton, Rhode Island, and had also, somehow, been real, manifest, in Lucien’s dream

as he lay sleeping in St. Thomas.

His palm closed over the cross and he felt something there, a hot little tingle like

an electric shock, and for a moment he swore that some kind of light emerged from his

closed hand, a glow like when you press a flashlight to your palm and look at the other

side. He frowned, pocketing the crucifix, and as he did it came over him like a Caribbean

downpour: here he was, sitting in his sister’s attic in Rhode Island, fretting and musing

over a golden cross and a dream and a boy he’d never met, while back in St. Thomas,

back home, a woman was waiting for him who wanted to give herself to him completely.

What the fuck was he doing here?

A swell of pain hit him and put him on his ass, the ache coming from his right

hand and riding up his arm and across his body. In his head, a static like faraway radio

crackle hummed and popped; like there were voices in there, murmuring and laughing,

hissing, but the frequency was too low to hear. He strained, gritting his teeth against the

pain - centered now in his chest, like ice expanding - and felt for the cross in his pocket.

As soon as his fingers touched it under the fabric of his pants the pain lightened, so he

shoved his hand in his pocket and wrapped it around the warm metal. The pain receded

almost immediately, the hum vanishing along with it. “Okay,” said Lucien. “Okay, okay,

I get it.”

A voice sounded behind him and there was pain again in his chest, this a different

pain, a gassy feeling like he’d swallowed a burp. “Lucien,” the voice said. “It’s been

more than five minutes.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 261

“Oh, Christ, Anna,” Lucien said, pulling his hand out of his pocket and leaving

the cross where it was. There was a momentary flutter in his stomach - like more gas - as

he let the crucifix go. He clenched his jaw, flipped from his ass to his heels, and

squatting, said, “You almost gave me a heart attack. My God, Anna, seriously. You can’t

do that to people.”

“Sorry,” she said.

He turned around and looked at his sister. Her long torso stretched into the attic,

one hand on the floorboards and the other dangling into the downstairs hallway. A tall

drink of water, that Anna. She bent her head to one side, surely a ditsy gesture had it

come from anyone else, but for Anna it spoke more of concern, substance, a certain

shrewdness. “Find anything you need up here?” she said. She nodded toward the box on

the stairs, then her eyes found the open box in front of Lucien.

Lucien picked up his old stole, wrapped it around his neck, gave a grin that was

intended to appear humorous but came out awkward, and said, “I think I’ll take this stuff

down. Just, you know, just to...”

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, sure.”

He removed the stole and replaced it in the box. “Grab that box for me?”

“Yep,” she said. She hoisted the winter-clothes box with graceful, sticklike arms,

set it against her tummy for balance, then turned to go downstairs. After a few steps she

paused and looked back at him, frowning. “You okay, Lucien?”

He smiled. “I could use some hot cocoa.”

She stuck out her lower lip and began to nod, slowly, as if calculating something.

“Okay,” she said. “I think I can manage that.” Then she was downstairs, crown of her

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 262

head winking out into the soft light. Lucien felt for the crucifix in his pocket - still there

- then picked up the box and, careful not to bump it (glass in there, a few goblets he’d

picked up at an auction years ago), made his way down the stairs and to his room.

He left the boxes by his bed - he’d go through them later - and followed the scent

of steaming chocolate to the kitchen. Anna sat at the table, reading glasses perched on her

nose and a newspaper folded in front of her. “Cocoa’s on the stove,” she said, looking at

him over her glasses, eyes crinkled and smiling, brow furrowed upward as if she were

expecting something.

“What?” Lucien said.

“Nothing. Grab me a mug, huh?”

He poured the cocoa and took a seat at the table with Anna. “So,” he said.

“So.”

“How’s your love life?”

She dropped the paper and took off her glasses. “Lucien!” She laughed, one of

those awful Anna-snorts she was known for at family picnics and holidays, then sipped

her cocoa. “Are you serious?”

He shrugged.

“Jiminy Cricket, you’ve gotten bold in your old age, huh? What is that chick

doing to you?”

“I believe it’s your love life on the table right now.”

She blew on her cocoa, brought it up to her mouth, then set it back on the table.

“You know, I’m not sure that I have to answer that question. Do I? I mean, I’ve never

had to field something like that from you.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 263

“Well,” he said.

“Well is right. I’m not versed on this. I guess we’ve got some catching up to do,

now that you’re allowed to talk about this kind of stuff.”

“Oh, Anna, come on. I could have talked about anything I wanted to. Being a

Priest also includes being a person, a human being. So please.” He laughed, and after a

moment Anna joined in. They drank cocoa in silence, both watching the kitchen window.

Outside, the last few visible flakes of snow danced against the pane, fluttering around in

hectic eddies before taking off for higher or lower ground. The sun, somewhere behind

the clouds, was probably tickling the horizon, just getting ready to bow its tired head and

give way to night.

After a few minutes, Anna spoke. “We should light a fire tonight. Did you see the

fireplace?”

Lucien shook his head, sipping the chocolate.

“I had it restored.”

He nodded, and said, “So, we were talking about your love life.”

She let out a dramatic sigh. “Okay,” she said. “What do you want to know?”

Interesting question. The answer, Lucien realized, was not much. “I was just, you

know, wondering if there was someone. Is there - ”

“Kind of,” she said.

“Kind of? What does ‘kind o f mean?”

“You really want to know?” She raised her eyebrows at him and Lucien felt a

flush creep up his cheeks.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 264

“Okay,” he said. “I think I’m going to stop talking about this now. I think we’ve

done enough brother-sister bonding for a while.”

“Not quite,” she said. “Do I get to ask a question now?”

Lucien took his cup, drained it, then brought it to the sink. “Go ahead,” he said,

rinsing the cup and placing it in the dishwasher.

“Why did you come home?” Her voice was low now, a little whimper to it as if

she were divulging some embarrassing secret.

Lucien looked out the window. Anna’s house was perched atop a modest hill, and

past the road and a few cottages was the river, rolling in the winter wind, wild and

wonderful in a Don’t-Screw-With-Mother-Nature kind of way. “Good question,” Lucien

said, then turned to Anna and leaned against the counter. “You want the novel?”

“How about the abridged version?”

Lucien shook his head. “Really, Anna, I don’t know. I can’t tell you, I don’t

think.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “You mean you can’t, or you won’t?”

“Can’t.”

She crossed her legs, her knees edging against the tabletop, crammed under there

like tent poles under a too-heavy canvas. “Lucien,” she said, setting down her cup and

folding her hands in her lap - all of her folded, legs and arms, her back hunched a degree,

like she was cold and trying to cop some of her own body heat - “I don’t know. I don’t

know. It’s like, I hear from you so sporadically, and you love it down there, I mean, that’s

what you always tell me. And then you just call and tell me you’re coming. I mean, I

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 265

didn’t think you’d ever come back, not for anything, just, Lucien, I just...” She trailed off,

voice vacillating, and she bent her head lower and brought a hand to her eyes.

“Oh, Anna, don’t, what’s the matter? What is it?”

Without lifting her head, hand still gripping the bridge of her nose and covering

her eyes, she mumbled, “Are you in trouble? Is it trouble?”

Lucien walked to the table and put a hand on her shoulder. He sat down, hand

remaining where it was, and let her cry. Here was something he was good at, something

he was trained in. A million confessions and probably close to half-a-million cries. He’d

found that it was best, regardless of the scenario - death of a loved one, divorce, disease,

mortal sins and the ensuing guilt, you name it - to let them cry it out. The tears held the

blackness of sorrow. To let them go was crucial, because to hold them in, to let them

build up - well, you’d finally spring a leak sometime, wouldn’t you, and that sorrow

could poison your soul. He’d seen it happen. Sorrow was worse than any mental disease,

drink, or drug; sorrow was death’s right hand man. Ask any widow or widower who dies

within a month of their spouse.

Her crying had quieted, but her hands remained veiled over her face. She had the

look of someone in great pain, sitting slouched with her legs falling out of their crossed

pose and her head in her hands. “Anna,” Lucien said, “it’s okay,” his face close to hers,

his lips barely moving as he spoke - more than a year away from the Cloth, and he still

carried the habits of receiving confession. “It’s all okay. I’m okay.”

“So why?” she said from her beneath her hands. No waiver in her voice now; she

was merely hiding her eyes from his.

“Why did I come back?” He’d almost said home. Almost.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 266

“Yes,” she said. Nodding.

“Look at me,” he said.

She removed her hands from her face and straightened her body a bit. Bags under

her eyes and bloodshot whites, but the eyes themselves were dry. She’d cried it out.

“I’m not in trouble, Anna.” He didn’t know whether or not he was lying to her.

He didn’t think he cared either way.

“There’s something, though,” she said, fishing around in her purse for a cigarette,

blinking and rubbing the back of one hand under her eyes. “I can tell that you’re worried

about something. I know you. I can just tell.”

“Well, I didn’t leave St. Thomas on the best of terms, Anna.”

She paused bringing the cigarette to her lips and looked at him. Her expression

was one of surprise - large eyes and pursed mouth, chin tilted down slightly. A little look

of hope in there; it struck Lucien then that Anna would not mind at all if he’d been in a

fight with Mila and was considering moving home permanently. Lucien felt himself

frown and Anna mirrored it. “What terms? What happened?” she asked. Drooling

practically, oh, Anna. Same girl she was as a teenager.

Lucien told her about Remedios and Manny, and about his subsequent talk with

Mila (her look darkened a shade when he mentioned that he was intent on officially

moving in with Mila, but he dismissed it as some kind of sisterly defense mechanism).

He even went so far to tell her about his dream - something he hadn’t divulged to Mila -

but he left out the parts about knowing Toby by name and his crucifix leaving an

impression on his hand. She remained quiet through his story, smoking and nodding, and

by its end Lucien felt a tug in his eyelids and the tickling in the back of his throat of an

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 267

impending yawn. When he let the yawn go, Anna smiled. “Nice one. I think someone

may need a little pre-dinner nap.”

“Yeah, probably.” Lucien knocked a fist on the table then got up to leave, but

Anna grabbed his wrist.

“One more question,” she said.

“Okay.”

“What does all of that have to do with coming home?”

Lucien looked at her, locking eyes, and calmly, with a straight face, said, “I guess

I need closure.”

Different woman, same lie. And it worked like a charm: Anna nodded, picked up

her mug, and headed to the sink. “I understand, Lucien, I really do,” she said. “Sorry I

broke down a little there. I just really missed you, you know? And I’m still weird about

you taking off and everything, and, you know, aband - er, leaving your job, I mean - ”

“It’s fine,” Lucien said. “I know. But I’m fine. Really.” This time he felt the lie, a

little sting in the roof of his mouth.

He walked out of the kitchen and upstairs to his room. He allowed a short look at

the cardboard boxes lying at the foot of his bed and decided that he’d go through them

after dinner. For now, it was a queen-sized mattress, four down pillows, and a thick

quilted comforter. He kicked off his shoes, picked up the newspaper that Anna had laid

out for him on the desk — Standard Times, local newspaper, let’s see what’s going on in

this side of Eden - and got into bed.

He’d been reading ten minutes when he came upon a blurb in the local section

that read:

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 268

Two Local Students Finish 1st and 4th in State Latin Exams

New Bedford: Honors were awarded today to Toby Shepard, 13, o f

Westport, and Ellen Barrett, 14, o f New Bedford, for achievements

in State Latin exams. Mr. Shepardfinishedfirst among over

three thousand students, and Ms. Barrett finishedfourth. The

award ceremony took place at New Bedford High School during

the 21st annual Honor Society Banquet. Mr. Shepard will receive a

$500 scholarship in recognition o f his achievement.

The article was coupled with a small, fuzzy picture of the two students posing with

certificates and standing with a tall, bearded man brandishing a microphone and a shoddy

suit.

Lucien stared at the page, mind tingling, and realized, finally, that he wasn’t at all

surprised. He’d almost expected something of this nature. So be it.

The boy lived in Westport. The article hadn’t mentioned what school he attended,

but Lucien assumed, judging by his age, that it was Westport Middle. The school was

twenty minutes away. That’s where he’d be able to find him, and Lucien intended to do

just that.

He folded the paper and laid it on the floor; the picture had been pretty grainy, too

small to really distinguish the boy’s features, but no matter - Lucien would know him

when he saw him. He whipped the covers up to his neck - it was going to take some

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 269

getting used to again, this cold weather - and let his head fall into the pillow. He was

asleep in minutes.

St. Julie’s

The next morning, Lucien borrowed Anna’s car - she’d taken off the remainder of

the week from work, and had said that she’d had some work to do around the house

anyway - and drove to St. Julie’s, his former Parish.

The ride took him through Westport and Dartmouth and into New Bedford. When

the country roads began to subside and give way to two-lane streets lined with shopping

strips and convenience stores hawking overpriced gasoline, Lucien felt his nerve drain

out of him all at once like water purged from an airplane septic tank. He hit the brakes

and pulled onto the curb. Cars flew by on his left, trailing exhaust and the Doppler-

touched whine of blaring horns. Lucien’s turn was just ahead, a little past the peak of the

hill that bordered the New Bedford Country Club Golf Course. For the area, really, this

was a pleasant drive; New Bedford could get pretty nasty, and Lucien had always

cherished this section, with its oak-strewn streets and century old houses. Now, though,

the thought of moving his car back into traffic terrified him; it would be like trying to

wade into a riptide without being swept under. This was the feeling: that of being sucked

into something, with the dizzy rush of passing cars and city lights and people walking and

talking and signs, good God, signs everywhere: Cheap Gas Buy Here and Home o f the

Whopper and Mobile Supports The Sox and, of course, the ever frequent and sober

emblem of promise, Now Hiring. He breathed through his nose, palms wet against the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 270

steering wheel, and pushed the gearshift into park. He let his foot off the break, feeling

the car bump into a standstill, and shoved both feet against the dashboard, knees snugged

into his chest, hands falling from the wheel and taking a place in his lap. He closed his

eyes, trying to visualize the Church: just up the street, now, Lucien, drive there slowly,

take it all slow, go 20 if you have to; just don’t stay here. If you stay here, sitting in this

car, you may lose your mind.

“If I haven’t already,” Lucien said. He laughed, making a sound a little too giddy

for his state of mind right now: high-pitched and tremulous, it came out like a balloon

losing air. His hair felt matted against his forehead, so he reached to switch off the heat,

which was already on low. So much for his acquired sensitivity to cold weather.

He cracked the window and fumbled in his jeans for a lighter. Cigarette lit, he

turned his head to the passenger door, trying to ignore the steady hum of passing cars

from the window, and looked at the front seat. There, his alb sat folded under his stole

and cincture. The Roman Collar was gone, apparently; earlier that morning, Lucien had

sat with the boxes and gone through each piece, running them through his hands, just

getting the feel of them again. He’d wanted to spark something, some feeling like he’d

done in St. Thomas when reading the Last Rites, but it hadn’t worked. There had been

nothing - well, nothing apart from the driving chant in his mind to go and find that boy,

to find Toby. But that had been there all along.

He’d found the alb at the bottom of the box, bleached white and rather new

smelling, really, for having spent so much time in an attic, and the cincture had been

beneath that. He’d unfolded all his garments, one by one, and shook them out looking for

the Roman Collar, but it hadn’t turned up. He had figured, though, that it may never have

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 271

actually been there, being that he couldn’t recall what he’d packed where in the first

place. Packing those boxes had been the last thing he’d done before heading to St.

Thomas, and it had been a fiirious episode, fabric-stuffed fists jamming into the box, his

breath heavy with gin, sweat dripping from brow to chalice or yearbook or sweater-vest.

Opening them up, however, had been pleasant - not enlightening like he’d imagined, and

he’d been happy about that, actually, because holding the cloth in his hands, feeling its

weight, had spawned no desire to return to the Church. He didn’t want to return.

Yet here he was, less than a mile away from St. Julie’s. He ran a hand over the

alb, smoothing it out, and looked back at the road. He brought his hands back to the

wheel, put the car in drive, and merged into traffic.

He pulled into the parking lot of St. Julie’s and had to return his hand to the Cloth

on the passenger seat. He hadn’t thought twice about bringing the garments, though he

had no idea what he planned on doing with them. Return them? Maybe throw them on

and give a Mass for old time’s sake? Whatever the case, it was the feel of them that kept

him even; it had happened last night with his crucifix, when he’d had that pain - mental

pain or spiritual pain, either way it had hurt like hell - and this morning, before he’d

taken off for New Bedford, he’d slipped the cross around his neck. It was the first time

he’d worn a cross in over a year, and it had felt strange around his neck, oddly heavy, but

right, like a good winter coat.

He drew a breath that didn’t feel nearly sufficient enough to supply him with the

oxygen necessary to heave his body from the car and walk into St. Julie’s. Leaving the

Cloth on the passenger seat, he switched off the ignition and opened the door. The cold

air hit him like kick to the kidneys.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 272

Flipping up the hood of his parka, he made his way quickly to the church’s

entrance, weaving through minivans and snow-covered two-doors, his feet doing most of

his thinking. His head was somewhere else at the moment - there was an indiscriminate

feeling that he was walking on the moon here, one foot up and the other down, that’s all

he could manage; from him to the church was pure dreamspace, like a sucked-out

atmosphere, and his vision was skewed with floaters and the sun’s glint off dirty snow so

that he had trouble keeping his balance. It starts with the eyes, Lucien thought, not

knowing what the hell that meant but knowing, somehow, that it was exactly right. A

window to the soul, the eyes. Someone he’d known once had said that - someone he’d

admired, he remembered, but in his current state remembering who had said it was out of

the question - and the axiom had then transformed from tired cliche to immaculate truth.

He’d later found himself focusing on people’s eyes everywhere he went; at the market, in

confession, over dinner with Anna, it was the eyes, the eyes he looked to. Reading them

was like gaining an intimate knowledge of the person in question, almost stealing

something. You could tell a lot by the depth, the amount of light they returned, how much

space the whites took up (or how much given owner allowed his eyelids to bare them).

Standing at the twin glass doors at the front of the church, Lucien resolved that when he

finally met Toby - which he most certainly would - the first thing he would do was

check out his peepers. Maybe find out what the kid’s up to.

First, though, he had to open these doors.

No. First a cigarette. A cigarette would do him fine right now.

He walked around the comer of the church and lit up. As he smoked, he wondered

what Father Horace would think if he rounded the comer and caught him here, puffing

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 273

away like one of the old ladies at Bingo, bearded and slouched over and plainclothed.

He’d probably have a heart attack - that is, if he recognized him at all.

Father Horace had been Lucien’s mentor after he’d been ordained. He also,

incidentally, had taken over the parish when Lucien had left for St. Thomas (a step down

from his former diocese, it had seemed; the old priest had left a larger Church in New

Bedford, St. Anne’s, for St. Julie’s, but such was Horace: it was as though he’d been

taking responsibility for Lucien’s desertion). Lucien supposed that seeing Father Horace

was the reason that he’d come today in the first place. Horace was old, and shrewd in a

charming kind of way, the type of man who could say more with a look than most people

could articulate in a half hour conversation. Lucien had lost touch with him a few months

after moving to the Virgin Islands, but as far as he knew, Horace was still here, watching

over the members of St. Julies like stem mother. Seeing him was going to help; Lucien

was sure of it.

Help with what ?

There it was, that voice at the back of his mind, the crazy drone that whispered

things to Lucien, whispered Toby, whenever he seemed to be getting off track. “What

indeed,” Lucien spoke, smoke mixing with the steam of his breath and dissipating in the

cold air. He flicked the cigarette, popped a cert, walked around the church to the

entrance, and, with perhaps a touch of unnecessary force, swung open the doors.

The church was kept warm. Gray carpet stretched past dark wooden pews to the

alter, where a girl clothed in white robes was attending the tabernacle. Above the alter

girl, a large, wooden crucifix was mounted to the wall on a slant, Jesus bearing perpetual

open arms and an expression mixed with spiritual longing and physical pain. Lucien had

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 274

helped decide on this particular Christ; the year he’d taken the rectory, St. Julie’s existing

rood had come askew. The prognosis had been termites, and the diocese had decided to

spend the money for a replacement. Lucien had liked this specific model because of

Jesus’ expression - it wasn’t the gaping mouth and rolled back eyes typically attributed to

Jesus in his last hours. With this crucifix, Jesus seemed to be looking directly at you, not

quite pleading, but deliberating, fussing over you, almost, like a mother deciding whether

or not to add another layer of clothing to a child headed outside on a cold day. It was a

strange look, granted, but it had hit a chord with Lucien. There was something about the

flat line of a mouth, the extended cheekbones that almost smiled, the large, knowing eyes,

that had chilled him and humbled him. It was Jesus dying for something, not merely

dying. That was it. There was martyr in that face.

Lucien breathed, feeling in his pocket for his own crucifix and then realizing it

was around his neck. He brought his hand to his chest, finding the steel outline of it under

his parka, and looked around. The place was dimly lit. To the left, candles flickered,

alluding quietly to some undetectable wind. Dark stained windows inscribed with Latin

hymns rimmed the oak-paneled walls. Little light had found its way inside the church’s

walls today, and Lucien stood at the threshold for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the

darkness. After a moment, he moved down the aisle, legs a little unsteady but overall not

as bad as he had imagined. Halfway up he knelt - again, his legs working of their own

volition — and gesticulated, then moved into the pews and let his bottom find the hard

wood he’d been so familiar with for so long. When he sat, the alter girl looked up from

the altar, blinked at him, then went back to her work.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 275

He sat there for a while, letting his eyes unfocus, legs tucked under the pew,

drumming a silent beat against the wood with his knuckles. After a bit the girl walked

from the altar to the rectory, eyes set directly in front of her and not diverging. She

moved with a kind of adolescent fluidity, hands sashaying at her hips, robes floating out

behind her in a silky wake. A few minutes later, she reappeared, now in street clothes.

She moved to the middle of the altar, gesticulated, then turned up the center aisle.

She kept her eyes forward, but Lucien slid over on the pew and gave a wave.

Almost reluctantly, she stopped and turned a degree or two. Her look was irritated, eyes

knowing, like she’d imagined that this dirty-looking bearded man would want to talk to

her about something or other. A cocky stance, and full of energy like she was about to

take off running; but a bored face. It occurred to Lucien that young people didn’t know

they weren’t bored until it was too late, until the chaotic and lovely years of youth had

evaporated into yesterday’s atmosphere and yielded the bleak matter of adulthood and

routine. It also occurred to him that he hadn’t seen someone young - this young, the girl

looked thirteen or so - in a very long time. There had been Marcos, he had been a boy,

but nevertheless, he hadn’t been in possession of this girl’s juvenile vitality. There had

been no verve to Marcos - not, anyhow, when Lucien had known him. He’d lost it in the

weeds there on the side of the road in St. Thomas. Lucien said hello.

She cleared her throat. Raised her eyebrows. Stole a look at the church’s front

doors, then returned her gaze to Lucien. Her look made him feel perverted.

“Okay,” Lucien said, and chuckled to himself, a little laugh that emitted like a

snort, a tsss kind of noise, sort of hiss-like so it got the girl nervous, visibly so. Her

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 276

posture straightened and her arms twitched at her sides. She bit her lip. It was Lucien’s

turn to clear his throat, and he said, “Is Father Horace here? Today, I mean?”

Her look lightened. “No,” she said, “it’s Father Jim. He’s in the rectory. Do you

want me to get him?” Midsentence, her body had swiveled back towards the alter, and

now her face followed. Lucien stood.

“No, no,” he said, reaching a hand to her. She jumped a little, still on her guard,

apparently - he’d have to shave that beard - but turned back. “No,” Lucien said. “I’ll get

him.”

“Are you sure?” She squinted at him, finally taking in the full span of him. His

coat and cords did nothing for her, evidently; she frowned and looked back toward the

rectory.

Lucien sighed. “Yeah,” he said, and turning, he began to walk along the length of

the pew to the side aisle. When he reached the rectory door he looked back. The girl was

gone. “Tough,” he said. “Pretty tough.” Stateside. There it was.

He knocked on the door and a voice from inside told him to come in. He opened

the door - here were some familiar feelings, crossing the threshold from sanctity to

sanctuary, church to home - and the place was pretty much as he’d left it. The office was

sparsely decorated, a few paintings here and there where Lucien had had family pictures,

but the same desktop computer humming a whirring note atop the same faux-wood desk.

A fish tank had been placed near the water heater in one comer of the room, and Lucien

wondered if that was a good idea. The fish swam in lazy circles.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 277

The man behind the desk looked remarkably young. His posture was impeccable,

and as he removed a pair of glasses he motioned with his head for Lucien to sit. “Have a

seat,” he said. “I’m Jim.”

“Lucien. Hello.”

The priest paused, the hand with his glasses stuck mid-wipe on one black sleeve.

He let out a breath and replaced his glasses, leaning forward and losing some of his

posture. “Not Lucien Delacroix?”

“Yes.”

Jim straightened again and smiled. “Good,” he said, getting up from his chair.

“Great. Listen,” he said, hitting a button on the phone on the desk then leaning toward

Lucien, “can you wait here a few minutes? I’ll be right back.”

“Yeah? All right. Sure,” Lucien said. “Sure, I can wait. But - ”

Jim leaned closer, as if to confide something. Up close, his face was covered with

a thin sheen of sweat and a stubbled coat of baby fat. The guy couldn’t have been older

than twenty-five. “I have something for you,” he said.

“For me?” Lucien frowned. Jim turned, without a word, and skipped off into the

rectory. Lucien was half-inclined to follow him and see what had become of the rest of

the place. He’d expected the quarters to be empty; Father Horace lived in Freetown, a

nice little lakeside house with a sun porch and a rowboat for fishing. But the rectory

looked lived-in. A fish tank. And Lucien had an idea that Father Jim wasn’t just hanging

around. This, Lucien realized, was Jim’s church. Horace had left.

Jim was a few minutes, and when he returned he was holding a package wrapped

in brown paper. He sat, hit the button on the phone again, and placed the package in front

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 278

of him. Lucien looked at him. He was really sweating now, auburn curls moistened to

brown and plastered to his pocked brow in greasy daggers of hair. He was breathing

heavily, as if he’d been running. He looked at Lucien, smiling, and pushed the package

across the desk.

“This is for me.”

Father Jim nodded. “Yes it is,” he said, and he must have caught himself being

eager at that point, because he fought his smile to a flat line and leaned back in his chair a

little, clasping his hands in front of him. He closed his mouth. Lucien could hear him

breathing through his nose, huge inhalations like faraway surf.

Lucien looked at the package, then picked it up. It was heavy, and he felt

something substantial in there shifting around as he moved it. It was tied with waxed

string and completely unmarked but for a few words written in black, heavy print across

the top:

Lucien Delacroix

Do Not Open Until Christmas.

Lucien looked at Jim. “It’s February,” he said.

Jim nodded. Eyes alight. “I know,” he said. “Father Horace said - ”

“Father Horace?” Lucien said. “Where is he?”

“ - said that you’d be here before then, said - ”

“Where?” Lucien said. “What?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 279

Jim stopped. He motioned for the package, leaning over the desktop again.

“You’re Lucien Delacroix. This was your parish. That Lucien Delacroix - ”

Lucien stood, moving the package behind him and out of Father Jim’s reach.

“Yes, yes.” He looked around him. The rectory door was open a crack. Gray light

throbbed from inside the church. Lucien’s head began to lift again, and he felt the

moisture of his palms, that cold, greasy manifestation of things happening too fast. “Who

are you, I mean, who are you again? And where’s Horace?”

Jim’s look was blank. “I’m Father Jim,” he said. “Horace is at St. Luke’s. Are you

going to open the package?”

“Wait,” Lucien said. “St. Luke’s? What’s wrong with Horace?”

“Are you sure you’re Lucien - ”

“Yes!” The feeling in his gut, that shifty, centrifugal sensation of empty space

collapsing, turned into a hard ball. He felt blood rise into his cheeks, hot and not

altogether unpleasant. “Listen, tell me what happened to Horace. Okay, Jim?”

Jim swept a hand to his glasses and removed them again, began to clean them on

his sleeve, and said, “I apologize. I’m sorry. But I’ve been holding this package for a long

time. And Horace...well, it seemed relatively important.” He looked at Lucien, eyes

expectant, but continued when Lucien said nothing. “Father Horace has been in the

hospital for months now. His heart. I figured that you knew. I think I thought you two

were rather close, from the way he talked of you. So — ”

But Lucien was out the door, package in hand. He ran toward the altar and then up

the center aisle. The package bumped with his gait, whatever was in there thumping

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 280

against the sides like a loose ball bearing. Something substantial in there. Something

heavy.

Father Horace

St. Luke’s Hospital was in New Bedford, and though traffic picked up as Lucien

breached the city’s mercurial borders in his sister’s Toyota, he shelved his panic, at least

for now, to make room for his growing concern for Horace. Lucien realized that his haste

back at St. Julie’s may have cost him some pertinent information - Father Jim had

obviously been eager to talk - but something in him - maybe that same something that

chanted the boy’s name over and over like an obsessed and deranged monk - told him

that time was an important factor in all of this. And he couldn’t escape the thought that

the package Horace had left for him had something to do with the boy, and yes, it seemed

impossible, but carrying that package from Church to car (where he had promptly tossed

it in the back seat) had yielded the same feeling that he’d experienced the night before

when he’d picked up his old crucifix. It was a feeling of effectiveness, ofeminence, like

the autonomous feel of hammer in hand at the launch of some massive construction. A

feeling like you could only go up. All of these sensations spoke Toby, that word, that

fucking word:Toby.

What really concerned him, though, was the length of time Father Horace had

been in the hospital. He’d done the math; the package said do not open until Christmas,

so Horace had given it to Father Jim to give to him sometime before that. Even if it had

been a week before - which somehow Lucien doubted - that would have put Horace in

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 281

the hospital for nearly two months now. At the very least. And at Horace’s age, it was

seldom that you went into the hospital for two months and came out walking.

He parked a street over and hiked up a small hill to the hospital. The weather had

ceased to bother him; there was an internal kind of heat in him now, something radiating

out from around his throat and down to his gut like a good shot of scotch. As he sloshed

through sleeted snow, legs pumping up the hill, he felt sweat begin to trickle from his

armpits and down his ribs, individual beads tickling the sides there, hot against his skin;

he felt the salt of them; they felt like tears. The hospital grew large as he approached it,

looming, churchlike. He chugged up the hill.

Inside, St. Luke’s was an ivory haven. Why everything white, Lucien wondered,

in hospitals? There were certainly more cheerful colors - pastels, something more, well,

more Caribbean could have done the trick - but white? So plain, so sterile. A kind of

arctic sterility. That would be it, Lucien thought. To appear disinfected, barren,

uncommitted one way or the other. To turn one’s face from sickness and death and move

on to more of it, that was white. That’s what white did for this place. It was for the

doctors, the nurses, these white floors and hats and walls and halls. To remind them what

they were there for.

You ’dprefer blackl the voice said, and Lucien thought, Maybe I would.

It wasn’t visiting hours, but Lucien introduced himself to the receptionist as

“Father Lucien” — it slipped from his tongue unannounced and sincere, as if it the last two

years had been no more than a forgotten dream - and blushing, the woman told Lucien to

have a seat and she’d be with him momentarily. After a minute an orderly appeared from

a set of double doors and told Lucien to come with him.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 282

Horace’s room was on the third floor - labeled on the elevator button simply as

“Ward” - and in the elevator Lucien felt the walls moving in on him, white painted

porous panels breathing, almost, contracting, and the orderly standing calmly because this

was his job, escorting people to and from deathrooms and cleaning up after everything

was all over (and before everything began again). Lucien took a breath and held it, his

lungs filling with that metallic hospital atmosphere, and when the doors opened he let it

out and walked ahead of the orderly toward room 319, fighting the olfactory assault of

hospital chemicals and itinerant disease.

The door was closed. Lucien knocked then let himself in. Horace was turned onto

his side, one branchlike arm jammed all elbow under him, the other resting atop a sheet-

covered but nonetheless troublingly angular hip. The television, propped high in the

room’s far comer, murmured daytime drivel. Horace didn’t move when Lucien entered.

The priest’s face was turned away from Lucien, and it didn’t seem likely that this

emaciation was his former mentor. He’d been a robust old man with a particular fondness

for eating, highly colored summer and winter alike, wild and thick hair the color of full

autumn wheat. What lay before Lucien, though, was a wasted casing, a spine that jutted

like broken cobblestones through a thin layer of hospital gown (white), a head of hair that

was only barely so, dulled and dead and the color of long gone hay. Lucien reached to

touch him and the man turned, a jerky movement, a twitch that looked involuntary but

couldn’t have been because Horace’s eyes were now attempting to focus on Lucien’s

own, blinking and shifting as if trying to spot an insect mid-flight. “Horace,” Lucien said,

and those eyes closed for a long moment and then opened again, and there he was - there

was Horace; his eyes still held something of the man, at least, a faint but fixed glimmer

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 283

that held the acumen of eighty-plus years of walking around and seeing things. That was

Horace in there, in that hollowed husk; it was there in his twin windows, the windows to

the soul, the eyes - “Horace,” Lucien said, gushing now because he’d remembered that it

had been this man who had told him that. It had been years ago - years - before he’d

been ordained, before he’d even been sure he’d wanted the Vocation; Horace had laid a

fleshy hand on Lucien’s, and said, Son, yo u ’ll know because you’ll look in a mirror, and

when you look you ’11 see it in your eyes. The eyes are the soul’s window. That had struck

him. It had stuck. Later, after his ordainment, Horace said, This is a job o f eyes. It is all

eyes, I think, because you see them all day every day and after a while it is all you see,

these eyes where the true form o f the person exists. This was how the man spoke,

verbatim; you couldn’t not listen. At Mass he’d preach an hour straight and his

congregation wouldn’t shift a degree, and not a peep from them, not moan nor mutter,

just a close mass of shiftless folk hearing words as if for the first time. Lucien found that

he was holding back tears now; despite himself, he was mourning the man, old, sweet

Horace, who breathed shallow breaths and tried to recognize him in the sick, filtered light

of a hospital room.

Then Horace spoke. “Lucien,” he said, voice like sifted dirt, and Lucien felt a

tightening in the back of his neck, like a precursor to a seizure or the initial spasm of a

titanic sneeze. The man’s mouth barely opened when he spoke, and Lucien cringed

watching those deflated lips attempt annunciation; chalky ropes of thick saliva gathered

at the comers where his lips met, and the tongue flicked forward and was sucked back in

like something predatory and dark emerging from its hole to snatch a bite for lunch. The

skin of his face hung like old drapes. His jowls had become mere meat. The smell was

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 284

unsettling. He said, “Lucien Delacroix,” and now his voice was stronger, more moisture

to it, and more recognition; the syllables came forward as if in affirmation. “Ah, hello,

Lucien. Well met, well met.”

“Horace.” All he was able to say at the moment. Horace shifted in his bed. One

arm was still pinned under him, so Lucien leaned over and brought it gently out. Horace

murmured thank you and raised his knees under the blanket.

“It’s my bad side, the left,” he said. “Lucien, the water?” He gestured to a tray

fixed to the bed. Lucien nodded - still not quite capable of speech, his mouth stuck in a

starched smile that hurt his jaw - and handed Horace the a small cup. He drank, cracked

lips on blanched plastic, then smacked his lips. “I wondered when I’d see you.” He

laughed, a wet rattle that got Lucien’s teeth tingling, and said, “7/Td see you.”

“Horace - ”

Horace shook his head, frowning; a stem look had come over him, and his frail

body tensed in the bed. He gripped Lucien’s arm. “I’m not good for long talking these

days,” he said. “It’s best you let me talk now. I know why you think you’re here. But that

has nothing to do with all of this.” He gestured again, this time turning his head - loose

ropes of flesh hanging rooster-like from a jutting Adam’s Apple - as if in reference to the

room itself. His eyes seemed to roll, wild-like, like an animal before a storm.

“I’m here for you,” Lucien said.

‘Wo,” Horace said, his hold tightening on Lucien’s arm. “Stop.” He bent his neck

so his chin rested on his chest. He breathed, a raspy whine like there was a hole

somewhere in there, like air was escaping (and it very well may have been, Lucien

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 285

thought). He raised his head again, took some water, then said, “The package.”

Breathless, almost. “Did you get the package?”

“Yes.”

Horace nodded. “Now you have to let me speak. No interruptions. I haven’t got

the air for it.”

“Okay.”

Horace’s neck bent again, chin on chest, and Lucien wondered at this gesture; the

man could hardly keep his head up. His skin was jaundiced and when he spoke his teeth

were browned, crooked. Liver spots everywhere, cheekbones pointed and pocked. A faint

blue glow under the skin, as if oxygen had been making its way slowly out, a little at a

time like some disenchanted lover. The chin came back up and Horace spoke. “Your

dreams. I had imagined this would be earlier. It is late, all of this...” He broke off and

began to cough, his cramped hand leaving Lucien’s arm and drawing to his mouth. His

water spilled.

“Horace, no,” Lucien said, and he stood. “You need help right now. You can’t

talk, can’t talk like this now.”

“Mmm,” between wet coughs, hacking tacky matter into his hand, eyes reddened

with strain; “Call the nurse. There’s a button.”

Lucien hit the switch for the nurse and waited with Horace as he coughed and

choked. It was there again, that feeling that his head was swelling and floating up toward

the ceiling; your dreams, Horace had said. It was too much. It could have been an

arbitrary reference - strange words from a very sick man - but there was a clarity in

Horace’s eyes that told Lucien otherwise. The dreams, the boy. This was about the boy.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 286

Lucien was sure of it. He felt sick, as if he’d drank something foul; his stomach rolled

and a rotten yellow taste swelled in his throat. The room shifted a little. Lucien grabbed

the metal railing that ran the length of Horace’s bed, closed his eyes for a moment,

focused on the hum of the TV in the comer.

The nurse was Hispanic, a pretty young woman with a glossy bed of brown curls

and a certain nonchalance to her gestures that calmed Lucien. She frowned at Horace’s

coughing, adjusted his bed a bit with a remote control, and asked what else she could do.

“Need medicine.” Horace spoke with his hand held to his mouth, as if in anticipation of

another spasm. “So I can speak.” The nurse frowned again, this time aiming it at Lucien;

visiting hours were still a few hours away. Nonetheless, the concerned familiarity with

which she moved and spoke continued to set Lucien at ease. She was like a balm.

Strange.

“What could I do? Come on,” she said, looking back at Horace. “I can give you

something for pain,” she said. “Why don’t I talk to a doctor, see what’s what? Okay,

Father?”

Then Horace began to speak, now in Spanish, and Lucien watched as the

woman’s eyes glossed over a bit. She seemed to shrink standing there, knees going

slightly slack, and when Lucien looked at Horace - talking without coughing now, fluid

Spanish like he’d been raised speaking it - he realized that it hadn’t been the woman who

had been soothing him. Horace’s hand was back at Lucien’s arm - he hadn’t realized it -

and it was stroking there as the Priest spoke, working in light rhythm with that of his own

voice; a warm blush spread over him as Lucien watched the old, skinny arm move over

his own. The nurse was nodding, eyes vacant now, and she began to smirk - only her

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 287

mouth, not with her eyes, no smile to the eyes; they were perfect ovals laid on their sides,

understanding and lucid yet utterly blank. Like she was reading. If the eyes really are the

window to the soul, Lucien thought, then Horace has hers at the moment. It’s in his

possession and he can keep it for as long as he wants, as long as he goes on talking like

this and stroking my arm like this because he really is a hell of a guy, Horace, the kind of

guy you’d lay it all down for and think nothing of it.

But Horace stopped stroking Lucien’s arm and stopped talking and the nurse gave

a brisk nod of the head and turned and disappeared from the room. A minute went by -

during which Lucien watched Father Horace look at the television, his head turned on his

pillow to the other side of the room, his breath shallow and his chest moving up and

down discretely as if it pained him - and then the nurse came back with a syringe filled

with an amber liquid. Horace nodded at her and she stuck the needle into the I.V. taped to

his hand. He patted her hand while she did this and her face lit up, the life back in her

eyes now, and for a moment Lucien was looking at Mila, Mila smiling down at him after

a night of dancing to steel drums and electric guitars, looking at him in the dim light of

their small bedroom with the breeze coming in through the window and the smell of

ginger and plumeria; this was one of those woman, the nurse, and Lucien loved her for

that moment as she filled Horace’s veins with that yellow drug, as if she were his own;

and she smiled at Lucien and then at Horace and then she left the room.

Whatever the drug had been, it seemed to take an immediate effect on Horace,

because he sat up a little and reached over on his own to fill his spilled cup. He drank the

water down in one draft and filled the cup again, then said, “Now then, where were we?”

Lucien sat back in his chair. “You’re okay now?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 288

Horace shrugged. “For the next half-hour or so.”

“What did you say to her? To the nurse?”

Horace waved a hand. “No matter.” He looked at Lucien, eyes fixed and hot,

sharp, like a man taking aim through a scope. “The package, Lucien. Where is it?”

“Oh,” Lucien said. “My car. Back seat.”

Horace’s eyes closed and he let out a puff of foul smelling breath. “Lucien,” he

said, eyes still closed, “that is an important package, Lucien. I suggest from here on you

not let it out of your sight.” He paused, looked at the cup in his hand, then turned back to

Lucien. “I assume you haven’t opened it yet.”

Lucien shook his head.

“Sure, sure.” Horace muttered something almost inaudible, something soft and

under his breath, prayerlike, then said, “Allow me to talk for a moment. I don’t have

much breath, okay?”

“Okay, Father.”

“Good,” Horace said, and leaned back in his bed. He took a sip of his water, then

said, “On Christmas day in 1963, I was in Naples, Italy. It was just after they shot

Kennedy. You wouldn’t have known it over there, though. Italy was a different place

then. There were still certain sentiments left over from the war.” He paused, his mouth

turned down. It trembled a bit. He coughed, his hand back to his mouth, and then

continued. “Going on, I was in Naples because we’d been ordered there. We being

myself and a few other priests, New England boys, all of us. All of us young. Young

priests. Orders from the Vatican.” His eyebrows went up, and he looked at Lucien as if to

gauge for a reaction. When Lucien said nothing, Horace went on. “It doesn’t surprise

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 289

you, then. Well, I suppose that’s good for what I have to tell you. On Christmas day in

1963, I - along with a few other men, all priests, as I said - murdered a child not three

hours out of his mother’s womb.”

“Oh my God, Father.”

He nodded, raising a hand in the air and then returning it to his lap, as if in

recognition of the horror of the act, as if resigning to it. “Indeed. It has cost me a great

deal, Lucien. But it was what it was. It was a strict order from the Vatican. We were to

find this child - Fernando Fellini, I shall never forget that name - and we were to kill it.

And we did. We smothered it in its crib and wrapped the body in a robe that had been

provided for us for just that purpose. We then brought the corpse to Rome. Then we were

sent home.” Horace frowned and drank from the cup. “Could use a drink, no, Lucien?

Ah, my kingdom for a nip.”

“This is shocking,” Lucien said. He wasn’t sure that any of this was really taking

place. This was what it felt like to go crazy: at first, you began to question the things you

think, feel, hear, and see - going crazy was when you stopped questioning. And I’m at

the point where I don’t feel like questioning anything anymore, Lucien thought. Because

I believe him. “Why would the Vatican - ”

“Because,” Horace said. “Because.”

“It’s crazy,” Lucien said. His mouth felt numb. The words coming out had the

faraway feeling of small stones trampled under a heavy pair of boots.

“Is it? Sure. It is crazy. Of course it’s crazy.” Horace smiled, shook his head. “It is

also crazy, Lucien, that the Vatican knew that Fernando Fellini’s mother would give birth

on Christmas day. It was also crazy that the boy’s father and his brothers - he had six of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 290

them - did nothing to stop us. We walked through that villa like a train of impending

death, veiled in black robes and chanting Latin Hymns - ancient Hymns, Lucien, Old

Testament stuff, the forgotten Hymns - and the Fellini boys stood there gaping, frozen in

place almost, as if they’d been set that way by some sculptor. Moved not an inch

throughout the whole ordeal.”

“How?” The room had gained temperature; Lucien could feel it. It’s from his

eyes, Lucien thought. It’s from Horace’s eyes, because they’re burning now, they’re

burning blue fire. Where is the soul in those eyes?

“I don’t know,” Horace said. “I don’t know how. You may as well askwhy. But I

know this: it was very important to the Vatican that little Fernando was not allowed to

live. So we made sure he didn’t.”

“Oh my G od-”

“My breath, Lucien,” Horace said, pointing a crooked finger at his emaciated

chest. “Let me speak. The point to all of this is that... well, the man who killed Fernando.

The man who held the pillow to his face. His name was Andrew Kelleran. From a diocese

outside of Worcester. Andrew was, like you, a fallen priest.”

This stung Lucien, physically so. He felt a tightening in his chest and a lurch in

his stomach, like bad gas. His face must have shown it, because Horace said, “No,

Lucien. Don’t. I understand. The point is that this is why he had to kill the boy. He

existed somewhere on the outskirts of the Church, somewhere between Man’s

responsibility to worship and ecclesiastic duty. He was a loophole, Lucien. He held a

covenant with God but was not suited to abide by it. Like you, Lucien. Exactly like you.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 291

Horace stopped talking again, and looked at Lucien. It seemed he wanted him to

speak now, to say something, to affirm all of this. Something. “Why was the boy killed,

Horace? Why did you kill him?”

“He was a dire threat to the Church. This was as much as we were allowed to

know. I can speculate, I suppose - and I have, the lord knows. But speculation, I have

found, does not always mix well with Faith. Do you understand?” Lucien nodded. Horace

smiled, and said, “This is an awful lot, Lucien. But there’s more.”

“More?”

“Lucien, how much of Revelation do you recall?”

A sick feeling passed through Lucien; this was something that he’d almost

expected. Something about all of this - something about the feelings he’d had since

getting off that plane in Providence, the feel of the crucifix in his hand, the way it had

seemed to light up, something about Toby’s name incanted again and again in the back

part of his mind - it all seemed to fit together now, coming together somehow, and it was

as if Horace was the glue to it; he didn’t feel so crazy sitting here next to Horace. Lucien

said, “I know Revelation.”

“Chapter 13, verses 11-13,” Horace said. He licked his lips and went on. “ Then I

saw another beast, coming out o f the earth. He had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke

like a dragon. He exercised all the authority o f the first beast on his behalf, and made the

earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. And

he performed great and miraculous signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to

earth in full view o f men.” He stopped, and looked at Lucien. There were tears in his eyes

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 292

now, brimming, blue eyes so clear so lucid, like deep water. “We know about your

dreams, Lucien.”

“We?”

“The Church.”

“I don’t - ”

“The Beast, Lucien,” Horace said, and the tears fell now, a torrent of them,

running the cracks of his old skin, falling from hung cheeks to hospital linen. “The Beast

is among us.” Then his hand was back on Lucien’s wrist, twisted knuckles and thin

studded veins running its course but oh so strong now, gripping his wrist like a subzero

vice; through gritted teeth, Horace said, “You dreamed Him. You dreamed the Beast.”

Lucien yanked back his arm, but Horace retained his grip. The old man sat further

up in his bed. I.V. tubes rustled against the bedspread. The water spilled again. “What are

you saying?” Lucien said. “Why? How do you - ”

“The Church has many resources, Lucien. We have people. We know, Lucien.

You have dreamed the Beast. You must know this, if nothing else. You have dreamed the

Antichrist.”

The dreams, to Lucien, were murky and veiled, much as dreams usually were. But

he knew and remembered at least something; there were those eyes over the mountain,

and that boy, Toby - Toby Shephard - who was trying to get away from them. Or run

toward them. Or both. “The eyes,” Lucien said. “The eyes over the mountain.”

Horace’s grip loosened, and for a moment the clarity of his eyes were replaced

with a certain dimness, an interior kind of puzzlement that shrunk his pupils and turned

the depths of his eyes to a glassy surface, like the reflection of light off an oily puddle.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 293

Then Horace was back with him again, his look once again determined and hard, but the

hold on Lucien’s arm remained slack. “I don’t know,” said Horace. “We - we don’t know

the nature of them. That is for you and you alone. It is your burden, those dreams. Or

rather, the beginning of your burden.”

“I believe you,” said Lucien, and he found that he did. Looking at Horace, feeling

the bum of the cross around his neck - hot now, a good heat, like a woodfire warming the

soles of your feet - he knew that the man was right.

“Good,” said Horace. “Then believe this also: this is your responsibility. It’s you

now. It’s been you, I think, since you left for the island. Since you left the Church.”

“He who is like unto the Beast is able to make war with him,” Lucien said.

“Yes, Lucien. Yes.”

Lucien swallowed. He thought about his next words for what seemed like an

eternity; but there was no way to blunt them. He came out with it. “Father, you mean that

I have to kill a child. An infant.” A statement; no question to it. A submission.

“No - not an infant - no - ” He broke off here, coughing again, and now blood

came from his mouth, coagulated, thick like syrup; the stuff came from his mouth and

flew onto the sheet over his lap. His eyes seemed to bulge. Veins ran red in them. “The

adrenaline is wearing off.” He coughed up more blood and gripped his gown above his

heart, furling the material there. “I can feel it,” he said.

“Adrenaline? Father, that can’t be — ”

“Listen, Lucien,” Horace said, taking his hand, gently now, a tenderness to it as if

allowing comfort to the grief stricken. Mila took his hand like that sometimes. “It is not

an infant. Not a child. We missed that time. The Church erred. It wasn’t known whether -

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 294

it couldn’t be done. No matter. But the beast is grown. He has matured. You know him,

Lucien. His name is in your dreams. A seventh son of a seventh son. Toby. Toby

Shepard.”

Lucien recoiled. Now the room was swimming, truly; he slumped in his chair and

took Horace’s hand; the white walls of the room began to crack and sway and Lucien

closed his eyes. “No,” he heard himself say. “No. It’s not the boy. I have to save the boy,

Father. You’re wrong. I’m sorry. The Church is wrong.”

His hand was being squeezed now, still that degree of tenderness to it; but urgent.

“Hear me.” Horace’s voice came to his ears stronger than it had all morning, and the

picture in Lucien’s mind was Horace in his heyday, the burly and blushed man who loved

his wine and his God. “Let your Faith be your conductor. You will know, Lucien, or the

Beast will find you. And then he will make you know.'’’’ There was a great hack, wet like

before but now there was a certain crackle to it, and when Lucien opened his eyes Horace

was convulsing, spittle lining his mouth and flecking out in quiet spurts.

“Horace, God,” Lucien said, and hit the button for the nurse. He laid a hand on the

man’s chest. Horace bucked under his palm. The amber liquid had been adrenaline.

Somehow, Horace had convinced the woman to give him adrenaline. Lucien was no

doctor, but he had a good idea that giving adrenaline to a heart patient - one that isn’t in

cardiac arrest - was a bad thing. With his free hand, he pushed the button again, then

again. It flashed and Lucien sat there with foaming Horace, troublingly silent in his

convulsions, and when the Hispanic nurse came in Lucien screamed at her and was

subsequently ushered out of the room by the orderly who had taken him up. Lucien

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 295

fought and spat and was taken downstairs and let outside and once there he lit a cigarette

and sat down on the cold winter pavement and cried.

Found

He was dried out, dazed, and mostly numb when he pulled the Toyota into Anna’s

gravel driveway. He flipped off the ignition and sat in the car for a while, listening to the

car purr into slumber. Rolled down the window and had a cigarette, watching the

whitecaps break out on the river. Next to him on the passenger seat were his Stole and

Robes, and on top of them was Horace’s package, brown and square and tied with a

yellow string and innocuous enough, really; a package. He hadn’t had the stomach to

open it.

He’d waited around at the hospital - they’d let him back in after he’d calmed

down some, but he’d been cordoned to the waiting room - and every couple of minutes

he’d asked the receptionist about Horace’s condition. It had taken an hour or so for them

to stabilize him, and by then the clock had moved its hands and yielded the official

visiting hours, but Lucien hadn’t been allowed back up. Father Horace needed sleep,

they’d said. There had been no mention of the adrenaline or the nurse who had given it to

him.

Lucien looked at the package, then grabbed it and moved from the car across the

frozen lawn to the house. Inside, he called for Anna, and when she didn’t answer he went

to his bedroom and laid the package on his bed. He thought about opening it, then

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 296

decided that he’d have a cup of tea first. With Anna. It would be good to talk with Anna

before he opened it.

He checked her bedroom - empty - and then moved downstairs again, calling her

name and breezing through the living room and into the kitchen, where he filled the kettle

and put it on the stove to boil. A plate of ginger cookies on the counter. He took one and

munched.

The blood plastered across the kitchen wall and smeared along the floor leading

out the back door didn’t register, not at first. It’s as if his eyes wouldn’t accept it as

something real, something concrete. First, and obviously, blood didn’t belong there. It

wasn’t a place where blood should be. And second, there was no way that much blood

could exist outside of a slaughterhouse or something. Odd, that much blood all over the

place.

But his legs took him along the path of the blood and it led him outside again into

the cold air. The blood had soaked the snow. The color was a rosy pink. Somewhere this

side of fuscia. A long line of it in the fluffy snow with dime- and quarter-sized drops of it,

the snow melted and pushed inward as if by footprints. But not by footprints; by blood.

There were no footprints at all, not anywhere.

And his legs took him along the path further into the yard until the path stopped at

the edge of the woods under a Dwarf Oak where all the snow had melted and there was

yellowed grass with blood soaked into it in a large pool and a few pieces of something

else that looked like sausages burst from their casings. Then Lucien looked up and

Anna’s face was smiling down at him with her mouth open and her tongue sticking out.

Her eyes were open, too, wide open like she was joking around and opening her eyes

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 297

wide to make him laugh. Her feet were tied together and she was hanging from the Dwarf

Oak from her feet and hanging a little below her head was more of that sausage-looking

stuff. It hung from a big hole in her stomach. Stretched naked lanky and dead from the

tree. Blood dropped onto the grass below from her mouth and her ears but mostly from

the hole in her stomach. Her smile was huge and her arms hung down, ten fingers splayed

out as if reaching for ground and blood dripping from them, too.

Lucien turned and walked back into the house. He grabbed the cordless phone

from the kitchen and tracked bloody footprints upstairs to his room where as he dialed

911 with one hand with the other he tore open the package Father Horace had given to

Father Jim to give to him. Far away, someone answered the phone and Lucien said,

“Anna’s dead,” and then hung up. Underneath the brown paper was a shoebox, and

Lucien opened it and there was some tissue paper, and he unwrapped that, too.

It was a knife. The handle was wood, crude, unfinished and rough. The blade was

white - looked at first like ivory, but Lucien touched it and figured by the heavy and

coarse feel to it that it was probably bone. The handle was short and the blade was long.

He sat there looking at the bone knife for what seemed like a long time.

Nevertheless, by the time the police rolled in, he’d been gone close to half an hour.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 8

Full Bloom

Light as a Feather

And this is how a boy of thirteen, who hasn’t yet developed the grim habit of

picking up a newspaper in the morning, comes to learn of his nation’s joys and sorrows:

Maybe he wakes to the smell of cooking bacon on, say, a Saturday, and padding

downstairs in socks and a pair of shorts, shirtless because the house is kept warm in the

winter, he is met halfway by a pair of drooling, ecstatic dogs (because they can sense the

weekend, the prosperity of it, the latency of a long walk in snowy woods) and then in the

kitchen by his mother with a brimming mound of Freedom toast (no longer French toast,

not in this house, ha ha) and bacon bleeding grease on a stack of paper towels. He sits

down and eats like he’s been sleeping ten days. There goes half a gallon of milk, oops;

this kid can eat, thinks the mother, it must be puberty. Maybe the mother wonders, briefly

and only so, because to think such things is not motherly, whether or not her young son

has discovered himself sexually... it felt like it took Cliff forever, but Hutch and Andon,

good God, when they hit it they hit it, dirty magazines in drawers or under mattresses or,

in one case, a whole stack of them in the empty space of a stereo speaker so the kid

would actually have to use screwdrivera to access them.. .but the boy is up, ravenous no

298

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 299

more, and calling his father, who’s in the living room with the dogs because he’s already

eaten, fruit, wheat toast, and a poached egg.

Father walks into the kitchen with his toolbox and dogs in tow, who are promptly

let outside because they’d just get in the way of what’s about to unfold; the boy and his

father are going to fix the refrigerator - it leaks whenever the cold water dispenser is

utilized - in a Saturday ritual dating back to the first child, that is, the ritual of dad fixes

something while I hand him tools and pay attention so maybe I’ll learn something about

home-repair so later in life I’ll be able to, God willing, save a few bucks here and there.

Maybe dad experiences momentary thoughts similar to his wife’s, about his son’s

sexuality, as the boy strains, shirtless, slim but budding muscles quivering, hoisting his

end of the fridge from its kitchen cranny then nonchalantly applying the back of his hand

to a few beads of sweat on his forehand; after all, he’s gone from baby-fat and receded

chest to, well, almost chiseled, the lines of his torso deeper and darker than even half a

year ago, nipples darker, arm- and leg-hair thicker, blacker - but this line of thought, of

course, is also dismissed, quicker even than his wife’s, because if this isn’t motherly

thinking then it certainly isn’t fatherly, plus he’s got a job to do, hey, Tobe, hand me the

wrench, what size? Oh, I don’t know, let’s try 5/16, what do you think?

Meanwhile, the boy has settled a few feet away from his father, cross-legged and

crowding the toolbox, an eager student. Hands his father the wrench, 5/16, sounds good

Pop, no good? How about this one, 5/8, that should — oh, shit, I’ll get a

towel... newspaper? Okay.

Then the boy is in flight, delirious because it’s been a good few weeks; there’s

this girl at school, you see.. .into the living room, he grabs a stack of newspaper and races

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 300

it back to the kitchen, then spreads them across the base of the fridge where greenish

water is pooling across the tile, thanks, according to his dad, to the damn well-water

corroding the damn copper pipes, should have gone with plastic in the first place like the

guy had said. And it is here, laying out sheets of newspaper and watching them suck up

the water, where he sees the headline, A-section (national news):

Second Atrocity This Month Has Silver Lining

So he sits and reads and hands over tools while his dad works on the damn copper piping,

and the information garnered from the newspaper, coincidently, will play an important

role in the boy’s social life - at least initially - rescuing him from a painfully awkward

silence at a modest clearing in some nearby woods that he and his friend Nate call,

simply, the “Stash”...

Stiff as a Board

Back at the Stash, same winter wind playing through the trees like a hand through

a thick head of hair, same two boys, grinning stupidly, gleeful and rapturous because of a

few vital amendments to standard Stash procedure; first, a couple of girls had joined them

today, and second, they’d added fire.

Staci Lowe, Nate’s delight, had agreed earlier, during school, to skip last period

and make the hike through the woods with the guys. A little pre-Valentine rendezvous.

Her stipulation was that Madison McEllis, her best friend, could tag along, and it hadn’t

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 301

taken much prodding for Nate to get Toby to go along with the idea; Madison owned the

biggest set of cans in the seventh grade, hands down, and in the last few weeks Toby had

noticed himself noticing her, as if she’d just materialized. The boys would be skipping

gym class, but screw - it was the easiest class to get lost in the crowd, and who’d notice

that Nate and Toby were missing anyway? Not Mr. Mickle. He’d be too busy watching

the girls stretch their quads.

So when the 1:10 bell rang, the foursome took to their respective lockers, grabbed

their backpacks, and then slipped from school grounds one at a time, four inconspicuous

escape pods fired from the mothership. They reconvened a little bit up Tucker Road,

then, mostly in silence, made their way through the woods to the Stash. Walking with the

girls, Toby had felt stumped - felt that they were all stumped, really, as if they’d been on

route to a funeral and not a cozy cranny in the woods where he and Nate stashed naked

magazines and the occasional beer. The air hung around them light with snow and thick

with tension, and to cancel out the latter Toby searched for words - a mere one-liner

would have done - but dismissed them before his mouth could assemble them. He and

Nate exchanged looks from across the width of the girls, who walked with arms folded

into armpits, keeping their distance from the boys so not to bump shoulders mid-stride.

Nothing had felt right.

This changed, however, once they got a little bit into the woods. It could have

been the close quarters the trees offered - characteristically looming today - but Toby

thought that it was more likely the dim shading of a snowy winter afternoon in a New

England forest; the flakes that made it down past the tall branches of the old pines were

spectacular in this particular light, almost luminous, like stars burning down to earth. Just

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 302

for them, too - no one else anywhere, roads and houses and schools sucked into the

vortex of the sound of pines leaves crackling underfoot and the smells of sap and old

cedar. The feel of winter’s chill chapping his cheeks and the light fragrance of cucumbers

as - yes - Madison’s shoulder came into contact with Toby’s own: perfection. Sublimity

in the palm of a child’s perfectly angled hand, winter’s woods, a best buddy and a few

great gals, good company and the autonomy of being young and vivacious and Jesus

Christ O-Mighty, how about the tits on Madison McEllis'} Even through a goddamned

winter jacket!

The fire had been Nate’s idea, and in any other situation Toby would have been in

strict objection; snow or no snow, if these woods went up it could have meant a whole

mound of shit that Toby wasn’t prepared to account for. But one squeal from Madison

had sealed the deal, then and there - sheepish Toby had said sure, okay, why not, a fire

might be pretty sweet. Nate had made preparations on the sly; presently, he disappeared

behind an oak then emerged with an armful of lumber and a bottle of lighter fluid (when

Nate had had the time or inclination to hike the better part of a mile with an armful of

wood was beyond Toby). Regardless, Nate had the fire going in a few minutes.

Now, with the fire dancing and the group hovering in the borderlands of another

awkward silence, Toby found himself shifting in his crook, ass unable to find the right

angle necessary for comfort, knees itching under a pair of embarrassing longjohns, his

mouth tickling to talk — opening and closing abruptly, a breath and a sigh, fingernails to

his mouth then shooting to his lap and back to dangling with the rest of him. Nate had

forfeited his regular spot on the root, chivalrous as ever, and yielded it to Staci. He sat

with his arms hugging a jittering pair of knees, partly from the cold, probably, and partly

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 303

from the company. His rump, Toby noticed, was pretty close to being in direct contact

with Staci’s. Staci didn’t seem to mind. Nate had twisted a branch off a sapling and was

currently holding its glowing tip in front of Staci’s parka; this got her giggling, and Toby

felt the beginning thrusts of an inexplicable erection. Madison, meanwhile, sat a few feet

away, and Toby found himself wondering how one went about inching a little closer...

“Hey Tobe,” Nate said, shoving his stick back into the fire. “Why don’t you get us

all a couple beers?” Staci rolled her eyes and Nate, having caught the gesture, lost a bit of

his posture, eyes cast down, mouth twisted into a smug but altogether benign grimace.

Muttered, “Whatever,” and dug a little deeper into the ash with his stick, sending sparks

flying. Toby watched the red flecks dance with the sparse but chunky snow, and for

another moment the world was perfect and snug, limited only to this close and familiar

slice of woods; they were all watching the fire, the way it reached up with bright orange

tongues, its rising heat shimmering and obscuring the browns and deep greens of the

forest into a smudged and oily prism. The crackle of the fire was huge, drowning out the

normal sounds of the woods; no wind, no shudder of the trees bending with the wind’s

refrain; just the hiss and snap of the fire and its heat creeping in on Old Winter’s cold.

Madison shrugged, leaned back and, planting her hands behind her, thrust out her

chest. Toby’s erection bounced to, a lot of life down there; it had been doing this quite a

bit lately, sometimes appropriately but usually not. “I could go for a beer or something,”

Madison said. Her voice was high pitched but soft and inflected with a tad of Bostonian

root. Her sentences were securely punctuated when they came to a stop, and she remained

straight faced whenever she spoke - she was the kind of girl whose smile, because of its

rarity, made you feel like you were looking at an exceptional piece of art. You got

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 304

Madison McEllis to smile, you had won a hard fight. She sat back up, fixing her hands in

her lap - this would be beneficial to Toby’s aroused state, probably, as those boobs just

wouldn’t stop staring at him, and after all, if he had to get up to get beers from the crook

in the tree he sure as hell wouldn’t want to do it with a raging hardon jutting from his

jeans - and she said (straightfaced), “I, like, drink with my brothers all the time.” This

made sense to Toby; he knew her brothers. Matt and Jim. Easy, New England names to

go with their easy, New England dispositions. They were friends of Jimmy and Hutch,

and had been over a few times for football games or Manhunt. Bruisers, and nice enough,

but not too bright. Toby looked at Madison - her eyes were lost in the fire somewhere -

and wondered how she did for grades. There was something coarse about her: this

resentment, veiled thinly as self-confidence, like she was out to prove something. Like

she thought she was only out to prove it to herself, but in reality all she wanted to do was

cope, to adapt.. .Toby found something familiar about that.

“I could get some beers,” Toby said, never taking his eyes away from Madison.

He felt that she knew he was looking at her, and that she didn’t mind, but such was

Madison not to return his gaze.

Nate looked at Staci, then gave a casual wave with his stick. “Nah, whatever,

man. We probably shouldn’t.”

Toby shrugged, admittedly disappointed - beer might have been something to talk

about, something to snap this hush that had enveloped them since they got the fire going.

“Fine,” he said. “I mean, uh...” He looked back at Madison, who was still looking at the

fire, noncommited and seemingly at peace. Toby sighed, then silently chastised himself

for letting himself become so affected.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 305

“So,” said Staci, who was now leaning into Nate - and Nate, for the moment, had

shut up, concentrating solely on his stick’s placement in the fire, possibly out of his

element, Jesus Christ, was that possible? Toby tried to make eye contact with him across

the fire, but got nothing but the crew-cut top of Nate’s head and an eyeful of smoke

(which got his eyes watering, and just his luck that Madison chose this moment to look at

him as he rubbed the tears from his eyes with the fat of his palm).

Toby looked away, searching for something, anything to comment on. They’d

talked about the fire for all that was worth. Couldn’t talk school; that would classify as

talking shop, and Toby had read enough here and there to know better than to do that. But

no matter; every time he looked at Madison McEllis, sitting slouched with her knees

under her and chewing her lip, whatever thought he had would fly away at a velocity

somewhere around the speed that his blood was rushing head-to-crotch. “Hey,” he said,

trying to keep an eye on Nate, who, though Toby was routing for him, was starting to get

irritating - sneaking a hand around Staci’s waist, head bent down and to the side to where

Staci’s own now was practically nuzzled into his armpit. And all the while Madison

sitting exactly where she’d settled originally, a long yard away from Toby and not

showing any signs of saddling up. “Did anyone read about that stuff with that boat in the

Pacific?”

Staci shot up and out of Nate’s quasi-embrace, which seemed to redden him a bit.

“Oh my God,” Staci said. “It’s awful. I heard about it on the news.” If Madison had a

tinge of the Bostonian drawl, Staci was sick with it. Her inflection presented practically

British; God came out Guawd, and the word awful, from her mouth, was a massacre, all

w: awwwwwwwwwful. Staci was short, like Madison, a little less busty, and much darker

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 306

skinned (Portuguese girls; “They’re hot when they’re young but turn into fucking

wildebeests when they hit 20,” Hutch had once told Toby). Her mouth looked like it had

been stretched by some not-so-delicate piece of machinery and had been unable to wane

back to its former shape. Broad, flat nose. Thick, long, auburn hair. Nice enough looking,

really, but not quite Toby’s type (which, at the moment, was Madison, and exactly

Madison; small, button nose, slim brown ribbon of eyes under a delicate, freckled brow,

kinky dark hair that bordered on frizzy but, because of that indefiniteness, utterly

appealing, and that unsmiling mouth, self-satisfied, a crazy secret-keeper of a mouth.

God, all Toby wanted to do was to get the girl laughing...).

Toby shifted in his seat. “No, it’s not awful, that’s the thing - ”

“I haven’t heard about it,” Nate said. “What is it?” Grinning at Toby now,

probably happy that he’d got the group talking, apparently having forgotten that it had

been Toby’s words that had removed Staci’s head from the crease of his arm.

“I read about that,” said Madison, head tilted to one shoulder. The girl looked like

she was constantly contemplating something heavy. Oh boy, Toby was getting in it deep

here, how had he overlooked this girl before? She was perfect. “The headline said,

‘Second atrocity this month has a silver lining,’ or something like that.”

Toby had to physically arrest himself from squealing. “Yeah!” he said. “Yes,

that’s the article, I mean.. .the one I read.”

“Cool,” Madison said, and there it was: a smile. A loose curl coiled around one

side of her mouth, snow touching down into her hair, eyes beaming - eyes fixed directly

onto Toby’s own. Toby blinked and the smile was still there, a beacon in all of this dark

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 307

mess of woods, fuck Nate and fuck Staci, fuck everyone, Madison McEllis was smiling at

him.

“Do you read the Boston Globe?” Toby said. The words felt strange and forced

out of his mouth, but he was glad he was able to get them out at all. His legs were numb,

he noticed.

Madison nodded. “It’s so much better than the news on television.”

“Wow,” Toby said. “I totally agree.” Apart from the last few weeks, he couldn’t

remember sitting down with a newspaper in his life; it was only on the occasion that his

mom or dad cut out an article for him and left it on his pillow that he paid attention to the

news at all. But he was fully versed on the “month’s atrocities.” It was strange how things

like this worked out - overhearing the teachers at school talking about that mess in

Colorado, working on the fridge with his dad and reading the paper because it was there,

something to do while he handed over tools. Was this grace? Toby thought maybe it was.

Madison was still nodding, one delicate hand playing along the snow-touched

earth, smile showing no signs of receding. “You’re pretty smart, huh, Toby?” she said.

Toby looked down at his own hands, which were stuffed into his lap to cover

whatever might have been otherwise apparent there. He mumbled, “I do alright, I guess,”

and somehow lifted his eyes to meet Madison’s. Maybe he would ask her for her number.

At home, in a drawer under the microwave, there was a Westport Middle School

directory that had everyone’s number in it. Madison’s would be in there. Still, though,

Toby thought that asking her for it would be a good move. He wondered what Hutch

would do. Probably have his hand halfway up her shirt by now. Toby frowned and said,

“I mean, I do well in school, but I like to hang out and everything.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 308

“Hey, dickhead,” came Nate’s voice. Toby looked at him, furious for a moment

that his friend had interrupted the moment. But Nate’s eyes were kind, and knowing, his

eyebrows barely cocked and his mouth biased to one side. He was bailing him out. Had

Toby been drowning? Yeah, maybe he had been. “You were about to tell us a story

before Madison over here started giving you the googly eyes.”

Staci shot an elbow into Nate’s ribs. Nate grunted then, abandoning the sapling

he’d been heating in the fire, raised his arms to the air and fell over Staci, almost

knocking her off her perch. Staci cackled, and though to Toby the gesture looked

awkward and strained, it seemed to diffuse the situation. It arose to Toby that Nate had a

kind of talent that he would never acquire. It was something you were bom with; a kind

of airiness, a height at which to carry oneself so that things going on below were dim and

insignificant to the eye and mind. A sheen, like the kid was bom lubricated, slippery

enough to squirm out of whatever but cocksure enough to confront it if he chose. A well-

greased boxer. That was Nate.

Madison, meanwhile, was looking at Nate and Staci like they were covered head

to toe in pigshit. It was entirely possible - likely, even - that Madison detested Nate.

Whatever charm he had was profound enough to elect him most popular boy in seventh

grade, but it only went so far. For every twenty people he left bright-eyed and disarmed,

he utterly grossed out one. Madison, Toby thought, was a member of the one-clan, and he

could understand that...she could walk up there were Nate walked, probably, and was

able to see through his boyish ornamentation. Nate could bullshit with the best of them,

and though it didn’t fool Toby, it didn’t bother him, either. It was other things about him

that made him best-friend material. It was the way he understood things - understood

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 309

Toby - and his way of being able to dismiss them. It wasn’t quite aloofness; Nate was

smarter than that. It was more like unconcern. He saw Toby for Toby, and that was it.

“You’re rare, man,” Toby said to Nate, and Nate, removing himself from Staci and

settling back into his former position, grimaced.

“Shut up. Too smart for your own good, Tobe.” Nate looked at Madison. “What?”

he said. “What, have I got some chocolate on my face or something?”

Madison rolled her eyes, glancing sideways at Toby and shooting a quick but

definite smile - ah, cripes, a snowmelter of a smile, Toby couldn’t get enough of it.

Nate picked up the sapling from the fire. “Jesus, go ahead, Toby. I want to hear

about the silver lining. Illustriate us.”

Toby opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. “Come again?”

“He’s trying to say illuminate,” Madison said.

“That’s exactly what I said,” Nate said.

“Okay, okay,” Toby said. “It’s not that big a deal. I mean, I guess it is, but - ”

“Story,” Nate, digging around in the fire and inching closer to Staci again.

“Right. Well, you guys know about that stuff in Colorado? At Apache Springs?”

Everyone was silent at this, and Toby felt something move in his throat. It hadn’t left his

mind that he’d predicted the Apache Springs massacre - or at least, had known about it

without having ever heard about it. He’d met with Dr. Mendoza Weiss a second time, and

it had gone pretty well. He hadn’t been able to tell whether or not she believed him — she

probably didn’t - but Toby had felt alright about that. And he’d been open to her

suggestion that everything reallycould have just been a coincidence. The birds, Hutch’s

nosebleed (this incident, she had said, could be “altered by memory and time,”) and the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 310

whole thing with dreaming about Apache Springs. Maybe he’d heard it, subconsciously

or whatever, and had dreamed it. The mind, Dr. Mendoza-Weiss had told him, was a

powerful thing. Toby had agreed with her on that point.

Staci sat with an elbow propped on one knee and her hand cradling her chin. Nate

thrust his stick into the fire, sending more sparks drifting into the darkening woods.

Madison was staring again into the fire, like she’d lost something in there. Nobody was

going to say anything about Apache Springs. It was something heavy, sad. “Okay,” Toby

said. “Well, that...that stuff that happened in Colorado, that was the first atrocity. Right?

The second one happened I think about three days ago. Sunday, maybe. It was a ship...It

was near Hawaii, and they found this ship with all these dead people on it.”

Nate had leaned forward. “Who found it?”

Toby shrugged. “Coastguard?” He looked at Madison, who also shrugged.

“Probably the Coastguard or something. So the newspaper said that they found this ship

with a bunch of dead people on it. It didn’t go into detail about it or anything, but it said

that it was just like what happened in Apache Springs. Only worse.”

“Worse?”

Toby nodded. “Yeah, like, at Apache Springs, all those people died. They were

killed, I mean.” Solemn faces all around, cast into mangled shapes by the flickering fire

and dying light. It was like Toby was back at summer camp, sitting around the fire with

his bunkmates and telling ghost stories. But this story was real. “But I think it said

something like, or it kind of mentioned or whatever, that the people on the boat - 1 mean,

the people that got killed on the boat, just a few days ago - they were eaten. Partly eaten,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 311

anyway. Like it was some kind of ritual. I don’t know. They were North Korean. Maybe

there was some kind of ritual. Who knows.”

“You’re lying.” This from Staci, and it came out, Ly-en. She bit her lip, and

added, “They were Koreans?”

It was Nate’s turn to role his eyes. He patted Staci’s leg and looked back at Toby.

“So where’s the silver lining?”

“I’m getting to that,” said Toby, sneaking a peek at Madison, whose eyes were

turned to Toby. With all this talking, Toby’s boner had gone down, but the way that

Madison was looking at him - slim eyes turned big, head tilted to one shoulder, mouth

just barely open so the whites of her teeth and the tip of her tongue peeked through the

slightest bit - brought it back to life a little. He looked away. “The, uh, the thing about it

was...I mean, I think it turned out that the ship with the North Koreans? It was carrying

nuclear warheads. Like, four of them or something, and it was heading back to North

Korea. The guys they found that were dead all had guns on them. Bad guys, all of them.

Weird, huh?”

“Jesus,” said Nate.

“Yep,” said Madison. She was nodding at Toby, apparently pleased with how the

story - or how Toby’s story telling - was unfolding.

“Yeah,” Toby went on. “I guess that it must have been a vigilante.”

“Whoa, whoa,” said Staci, leaning forward on her stump. “Easy with the five

dollar words there.”

Toby wondered briefly if vigilante had ever, in the history of language, been

considered a “five dollar word.” And further, whether Staci knew the term was “quarter

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 312

word” and just thought that vigilante was so shrewd a term that it deserved to be

multiplied twenty-fold. Staci, Toby concluded, was annoying, and yes, he was being

pompous and snobby, but so be it. And was Madison smirking in her comer of the

firelight? Yes, Toby thought that she was.

“So,” said Nate, “the silver lining is that the boat was carrying explosives?”

“Nuclear explosives,” said Madison.

Toby nodded. “Yeah, the paper said that they probably wouldn’t have caught the

ship if it hadn’t been...attacked. Would have flown right under the radar. Crazy, huh?”

“Everyone was killed on it?” said Nate.

“Think so.”

“And the crew was eatenT’

“Something like that. Or the paper said something along those lines.”

“Who did it?”

“They don’t know. But no bullets were fired. Guys did it bear-handed.” Toby

punctuated this last statement by getting up and grabbing Nate’s stick. He put its tip into

the fire, held it there for a moment, then walked back to his crook. The ember leading

him was bright and red, and Toby realized that they had all talked until dusk.

For a while they sat in silence, then Madison turned to Toby a bit - just allowing

him her profile, just enough to let Toby know that she may have been talking to him —

and said, “I’m cold.” Nate grunted, and when Toby looked at him it was all eyebrows and

high cheekbones. Go ahead, the look seemed to say. That’s your in. Toby winced. The

idea of moving over to Madison and fixing an arm around her shoulder was an

abstraction, an idea and no more; he found himself wishing for some of Nate’s gusto, just

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 313

a touch of it to get him over the high hump of potential adolescent contact. He and

Madison had something, however small, and it had been brewing and brewing and though

it wasn’t steaming over, Toby thought that some kind of gesture was probably in order.

Why, after all, would she have said that she was cold? Right? The air seemed close, the

darkness speaking silent volumes, and everyone was waiting for Toby to do something;

Nate, annoying Staci, Madison, all sitting quiet, static with anticipation, for Toby to act,

for Christ’s sake, justact.

Before he could do anything - before he could think about doing anything - Staci

spoke, nothing Toby actually heard, in one ear and out the other, but in speaking she had

effectively broken whatever it was that had been hanging so low over them. It had been a

day of this, peaks and valleys, bubbles growing and popping before forming again. Toby

felt exhausted. Was this the feeling he’d wanted so badly? Was this being sick? It was

like a chocolate covered turd. His mind didn’t know which way it was going. Toby

looked up and realized that his friends were mid-deliberation. “Wha...what were you guys

saying?”

Nate looked at Toby, a smirk threatening the surface of his mock-stony face.

“Staci was saying that we should play a game. Sounds gay to me.”

“I don’t care. You don’t havta play it if you don’t want, Nate.” Staci had edged a

little away from Nate, and it seemed to Toby that his buddy was now past the point of

caring. He’d gotten bored, it seemed, and was interested only in stirring things up for the

sole purpose of entertainment. Toby usually relished it when Nate got like this, but not

today; the core of him felt that he still had a shot with Madison, a chance to make the

right move, to give her something to go home with that might stick. Toby fixed his gaze

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 314

on Nate, gave him his best D on’t fuck this up for me buddy look, and without gauging

Nate for a reaction, turned to Staci.

“What game?” Toby asked.

Staci’s expression loosened and Toby breathed. To lose Staci would definitely

mean losing Madison, and he wasn’t ready to go home. Not close to ready. Staci faked a

yawn and said, “It’s called ‘Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board’.”

“Know that game,” Nate said. Face cracking a bit, the devil coming into it - eyes

lit up and reflecting the fire, menacing, like wood stoves filled with blue-burning gas.

“It’s pretty gay.” He looked at Staci, smirk finally taking form. Staci stuck out her lower

lip and Nate, probably despite himself, laughed. “Alright,” he said. “Let’s play.”

“Good,” said Staci, standing up. She turned this way and then that, scanning the

area, and put her hands on her hips. “Does everyone know how to play?”

Toby shrugged then looked at Madison, who was getting up and wearing an

expression that, to Toby’s delight, seemed to be completely agreeable. She dodged

around the fire and hooked an arm into Staci’s. “I’m not sure, I think I’ve heard of it,”

Toby said, feeling suddenly self-conscious, for some reason, about his voice. The timbre

of it, the way it floated somewhere between the right octaves; there was a right note for it

somewhere, and damn if he could find it. Deep but pitchy, like when you put your ear

right up to a speaker playing loud music...

“Yo, dude,” this was Nate, Nate was saying something. “Yo, are you thinking

about stars again, Tobe?”

Toby looked up. His face felt heavy. “Huh?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 315

Nate shook his head, moving to where the girls were and trying - failing - to grab

Staci’s free hand. “Oh, come on,” he said. “Come on, Madison gets to hold your hand.”

“She’s not holding my hand,” Staci said. “She’s, like, escorting me.”

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Nate said.

“What?”

“How about we play this gay game?”

“Okay,” said Staci, unruffled, chirpy. “Hey, Toby, are you coming?”

“Sure,” Toby said. “Yeah, I’m coming.”

Toby listened to Staci as she explained “Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board” -

excited and a little bossy, talking with her hands, Toby fighting a wince and for the most

part winning - and it went like this: The group would pick one person to be the “board,”

(Madison volunteered for this role, which to Toby seemed ironic because of the four of

them, with her slopes and contours, Madison was definitely least plank-like). The board

would lie flat on her back, hands to her sides and legs together, and attempt to remain as

still as possible. The three others would position themselves around the board at strategic

spots - Staci and Nate flanking her somewhere around hip level and Toby crowning her

off, as it would be, with flittering hands and knees tucked just into the curves where her

neck met her shoulders - and then place their hands under her. Here, Staci’s directions

stopped.

“Now what?” said Nate.

“I thought you knew the game.”

“No. I was kidding. So now what?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 316

“Well,” said Staci, slumping down a little on her knees, giving the nose an itch

there, yeah, she was cute, Toby saw it, but what was laid out before him was what moved

him, parts of him, all of him. Staci said, “Now we lift her.”

Nate nodded. The three of them, according to Staci’s government, put their hands

underneath various parts of Madison McEllis, Staci and Nate with theirs under the small

of her back, Toby’s resting between the cold ground and just above her shoulderblades.

She was warm, Madison, and delicate, her breath soft and somehow also powerful,

Toby’s hands, his fingertips, a part of that cycle, in and out and in again; he could have

stayed like that all night, with his chest hovering just out of contact with the back of her

head, those loopy curls swelling from their roots and spilling over Toby’s forearms and a

few patches of bare earth.

But Staci said lift and the delicacy of Madison’s breath was gone, replaced now

with a slight stiffening of her body as the three holding her attempted to lift her from the

ground. “You gotta stay on your knees,” Staci said, shooting a look at Nate, who, now

wise to the game, was attempting to spoil the expected outcome by lifting Madison right

off the bat by really putting his back into it. A few veins rose against the freckled skin of

his neck, little hoisted highways emerging from the country of his body, spilling up from

beneath coat’s collar, and he leaned back, heaving one last time, rocking Madison the

slightest bit but otherwise not making any real headway, before laughing and settling

back to his former petered posture. They hadn’t been able to lift her, not by a long shot.

“Now what?” Toby said, and, looking down, caught Madison craning slightly to

look at him, just the whites of her eyes visible in the low light provided by the fire, her

eyebrows arched slightly, but no mistake about the fact that she was sneaking a peek -

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 317

how about that - before letting her eyes relax again, neck following, body following,

Toby feeling it against the tips of his fingers; the unwinding of back muscles, sinews

slackening, and her breath, the pulse of it, meandering back to molasses, impervious and

gushy and warm. And to be a part of it, to be connected to it, siphoned into her current

and fueling it, maybe, maybe she was feeling something here, too...

“Now take your hands out from under her,” Staci said. She withdrew her hands

and Nate followed suit. Toby paused, but only momentarily, and then slid his hands along

the ground until there was no more Madison, just air to snatch at, to wring lifeless.

“Now,” Staci went on, “close your eyes.” Toby did. The woods went from dim to black,

and just under and in front of him, there was a girl there who was breathing soft breath

and he could almost hear it, just below the fire’s whisper and the noise of the woods, he

could hear Madison McEllis there breathing for him. To him. Toby felt himself tilting his

head back, some pagan at prayer, and opening his mouth as if to say something. Instead

of words, though, came a breath, and there was no insecurity about whether the breath

was too loud, too sigh-like; here was love, right here, a melancholy and sublime

symphony of chemicals and indiscriminate but unmistakable beats and blasts of interior

sound, wow oh wow Toby was in love. “Now,” Staci’s voice, won’t let it destroy this

feeling, this wonderful vibe and schmaltzy wave of maudlin endorphins, no, Staci, say

what you gotta say and shut up, or don’t, in one ear and out the other, in one ear and out

my belly button, “now,” said Staci, “repeat after me. Light as a feather, stiff as a board.

Light as a feather, stiff as a board.”

They repeated it, a little woodsy pubescent hymn, synchronized and soft, from the

diaphragm now: “Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Light as a feather, stiff as a board.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 318

Madison quiet, lips pursed, Toby imagined, in anticipation of the looming

metamorphosis, and Toby trembling now in preparation of touching the shoulders of her

back of her torso of her busty busting blooming body. “Light as a feather, stiff as a

board,” he said. “Light as a feather, stiff as a board.'’’’

“Open your eyes,” Staci said, her voice breaking as if she’d been crying. Toby

opened his eyes and there they all were, astonished looking, Nate’s eyes vacant,

complacent, Staci with her mouth open and her hands hovering a few inches above

Madison’s torso. “Now,” she said, “we lift her. With two fingers, like this.” She held out

her hands, palms up, and curled in the pinkies, ring fingers and thumbs of both hands so

only pointer and middle remained prone.

“This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done,” said Nate.

“It works. Watch.” Slowly, Staci replaced her hands under Madison, two fingers

on each hand slipping under the small of Madison’s back. Nate replaced his hands as

well, politely this time, mouth grinning but eyes concerned - maybe he was thinking

about the something, now, that Toby was thinking about. The something from the Stash,

the something that happened here a few weeks ago that was not so easy to forget about;

thinking about the fallout, the momentary fallout of their friendship and the irreversible

fallout of those little black birds. Of course they were thinking about it; how could they

not? For Toby, it had been on his mind constantly - filed way back, deep as he could get

it, but nevertheless a constant reminder, like an unhealing blister; he’d wake to it, it

would be swimming around in his conscious mind until he could sweep aside the

morning fog and muster enough verve to push it back down to where he kept it, his

secret, somewhere between his spinal cord and the rest of his thinking brain. Deep. To get

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 319

it deep. All he could do. He arranged his fingers in the proper position and slid his hands

back under Madison. Thumbs bent and resting against the nape of her neck, two fingers

side by side and together and touching the fabric of her jacket, there was that pulse again,

stronger now, rushing, really, like water through a hose; her eyes flew open and Staci said

lift again and Toby lifted, and as he did, he became harder than he’d ever been, no doubt

about it, a boner with which to compare all boners, a real home run.

But never mind his woody for now, because now Madison went up like a

Styrofoam box, two fingers under her and lifting halfheartedly but boy did she go up,

twelve digits in all, twelve fingers (and four of those fingers, by the way, belonging to a

chick, and nobody putting their back into it anyway) responsible for this girl, this full-

sized real person practically coming into the air entirely of her own accord, it seemed,

like a balloon that requires a little propulsion but otherwise does fine on its own, floating

up and up before hovering a few long seconds and finally making its sleepy way back to

earth. That’s what Madison felt like: a balloon filled with helium, just enough so that it

created equilibrium with the air around it, so it hovered there and didn’t know which way

to go. Whichever way it was pushed, really, was the way it would go.

“Push up,” Toby said, not knowing he was saying it, merelyfeeling the words, the

way an outfielder feels the catch and release of the ball as he fields it and wings it to his

cutoff man. “Let’s push up.”

“Tobe? Dude, Toby.” These were Nate’s words, Nate. The best friend.

Somewhere Staci was talking too, but these, that is, Staci’s words, were best left unheard,

Toby thought, and he didn’t need to hear them if he didn’t want to, he could filter them

out - Nate operated on a higher frequency anyhow, didn’t he?

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 320

“Yeah, Nate,” Toby said, or heard, or whatever, all the same now anyway, “yeah,

I hear you, buddy.”

“Dude, let’s put her down.”

“No!” Toby laughing, eyes fixed on Madison’s angelic little face, from up here it

was an upside-down oval of white, pure, snowy white hills and that little button of a nose,

eyes closed and working under the eyelids like in REM sleep, nostrils flaring and red-

rimmed from the cold out here, pores breathing, opening for Toby. “No, I say, I say let’s

see how high we can get her. Now, let’s do it. Now. Now. Now.” These words pouring

out of him and his boner dancing in his pants, springy and painful against boxer-briefs

and longjohns and jeans.

“Tobe, dude,” Nate’s voice excited now, he was into it, too, wasn’t he? He

sounded so excited, his voice all huffy and edgy and tremulous. Toby could tell. He could

tell how happy and excited his best friend Nate was.

“Let’s get her up, way up, way high,” Toby said, and though his filter was

working - what a neat trick, the filter, something to work on later, eh? - he could still sort

of hear, peripherally, anyway, Staci givingher two cents, so he smiled with closed lips

and gritted his teeth and opened his mouth a little to say, “Quiet,” and Staci was quiet.

Over to the side the fire roared and leapt up, five, ten feet into the air, and there was a

gasp, maybe from Nate (not from Staci, she had been told to be quiet) or maybe from all

that oxygen leaving the air at once as the fire, not to be snubbed, dammit, purloined its

own space; Toby felt the heat from it, nice because it was getting cold out here, but he

wouldn’t let his eyes off the face of the upside-down-flat-on-her-back angel lying in front

of him, quiet like a pond at dawn, light as a feather, stiff as a board. His hands felt the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 321

pulse of her - the pulse, again, somewhat different, funny how biorhythms can change

like that, from moment to moment; the pulse now was in synch with Toby’s own, which

he could feel not only in the tips of his fingers tracing the ins and outs of Madison’s

jacket and all that flesh beneath it, but coursing through him everywhere like the sun

liquefied and beating beating beating in his veins, trumping the rest of his innards and

organs and heating his core to starstuff, plasma like what they found back in 1999 to be

the sixth element, whatever it was, liquid, hot and flowing through him arteries and

capillaries opening like tulips bleeding heat plasmatic matter engorged throughout the

solar system of his, and let’s be honest here, rather meager frame. “How high do you

think we can get her?” Toby asked through still-gritted teeth. “I bet we can get her all the

way. All the way, what do you think, Nate?”

He finally turned to Nate, able, somehow, to tear his sight from the pale star that

was Madison’s face, and Nate was there, staring at him, not quite scared, but perplexed

and almost satisfied, his face relaxed and pleasant looking with one eye squinting almost

to closed and the other totally normal and slack, kind of, like its nerves had collapsed; a

weird look, but Nate was capable of a weird look when it came down to it. Also, Nate’s

hands were removed from Madison’s body; he held them out to Toby - See? - with

fingers exactly how Staci had dictated, an upside-down scout’s honor. A few rogue flakes

of snow fell into the cup of one palm, and Nate closed his hand on them. “Tobe,” he said.

“I’m not holding her anymore.” He cocked his head in Staci’s direction. “Neither is she.”

Toby looked over. Nate was right. Staci wasn’t holding onto Madison anymore.

In fact, Staci was slumped over, knees splayed out and torso bent into the brush, that

exasperating mug buried facedown in a pile of drying pine leaves. “Yeah,” Toby said.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 322

“You’re right.” He looked back at Madison, a foot or so off the ground, and leisurely,

tenderly, brought his own hands from under her back. Madison remained afloat, steady,

buoyant like a loose piece of metal between a pair of magnets, eyes still working under

their lids. “I’m doing this, aren’t I?” Toby said. Silence; even the fire and the woods had

quit for a minute. Silence so quiet it rang in his ears, punched at them like air trying to

escape. “Nate?”

“Yeah, Toby. I think you’re doing this. You should stop.”

Toby shook his head. “No.” Fuck no. Because the thing was, Toby was having a

lot of fun with this. The faucet. In the bathtub, the day of the birds, the hot water faucet.

He hadn’t been able to turn it. No control. But today, oh boy, this was all his. He was in

control here. He looked at Madison, concentrated, breathed, “Left,” and sure enough,

Madison shifted a bit - Toby had only wanted a bit - to the left, herky-jerky-like, not like

she was moving towards something but being repelled from something. Toby had only

wanted a bit, but he could have had a lot, a whole lot; could have rocketed her into the

woods like an owl on the hunt, dodging through trees and dipping under and over

branches, the tube of her body bending and giving to his every thought.

And then there was his erection. It was standing mighty, throbbing now, ticklish

in his pants. He found himself wanting to spring it loose, unbutton the jeans and tear

down the longjohns and briefs and let it free. He wanted to put it somewhere, do

something with it — and he’d been having erections for, now, what? three years ago was

the first one he’d remembered, it had been lunchtime and Heather Guatz had been eating

ice cream and had spilled some on her shirt...and he hadn’t done anything about it. Never,

ever had he done anything about these Christing boners, and why? It would be there and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 323

he’d try to ignore it, subdue it, put it away - but no more. Now he wanted - needed - to

take it out, let it go, hold it, grasp it, purge. Purge.

Toby grasped Madison’s head, each hand burrowed into a bed of curls, pulling

tips of ears; fingers massaging there, the fury of his abdomen drawn into his two smallish

hands, working out the evil there, dispelling it.

“Fuck, Toby,” said Nate. “What are you doing?”

“Shh,” it was all Toby could get out. He didn’t want to get himself talking, not

now and not to Nate, because there was something inside him just yet, some passion or

some rage - couldn’t tell which - that was telling him to get up and dance. Dance all over

everything, just let it go and dance with feet pounding the ground and runty strong hands

ripping the trees from their roots, engorged penis leading the way like a compass needle

pointing north. And at this point, holding onto Madison’s head, feeling the warmth there,

was the only thing keeping him from it. Just her curls and her ears and her temperature.

There was a problem here. It was sort of like the blackboard problem - an age old

thing, really: the teacher calls on you to get up and answer a problem on the blackboard,

but you can’t because you’re wading waist deep in pubertal wood. Toby had not been

passed over by the Blackboard Problem Gods; once this month, actually, he’d been

caught with his proverbial pants around the ankles...but usually, because he could smooth

talk even the testiest of teachers, he’d be able to buy enough time to sort things out with

himself, to think about his rabbit from 3rd grade that died of intestinal cancer, John Candy

mowing his lawn with no shirt on and drinking chocolate syrup straight from the bottle,

and of course, the ultimate fallback, and such a cliche - baseball statistics. Toby didn’t

know many, but enough to do the job, usually...

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 324

But this problem ran deeper. Taming a boner for the sake of saving a good dose of

embarrassment was one thing. In this case, he needed to subdue himself for the sake of

three people around him, not to mention the woods and the town of Westport and its

principalities. And the bugger of the whole thing was, he didn’t even want to. He was

Toby Shepard, completely, finally in control of all of his miraculous facilities, jaw

clenched and hands stuffed full of Madison McEllis, the object of his lust, his fancy, he

was just a kid butoh so much more. I’m in full bloom, full fucking bloom, Toby thought,

I’ve got Madison right here and I want to stick it in her mouth or in her ear or just bury it

in the fucking ground. I’m a mean bastard and I’m capable of rape and I’m capable of

burning this whole fucking shitshow down and I love it, love it, because I’m in full

bloom.

“Toby...”

“Yes, Nate. Yes. Yes.”

“Toby, you’re pressing her too hard. Stop, Toby, please.” Nate crying again, voice

oscillating and cracking like a toddler whining for his mother’s tit. “Toby, look at her.

Stop, please .”

“I am looking at her,” Toby said. He was. Her mouth had dislodged a bit, hanging

open like a cracked door; her nostrils, before rouge and flared, were quivering now, white

like the rest of her. Eyelids still going hard. It might have been a trick of the light, with

the woods completely dark now and the fire burning harder than it had all afternoon

(burning almost pure blue now, incidentally, like a range set to high), but it looked to

Toby like her skin had taken on a green sheen...just a hint of hue to it, but there

nonetheless. “See her face?” Toby asked.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 325

“Yeah, Toby. That’s what I’m talking about.”

Toby nodded, concentrating for a moment and watching Madison move up a level

- again, just a smidge, didn’t want to hurt anyone here, right? - and listening for Nate’s

inevitable groan as her body rose a few inches higher. Toby said, “I remember when I

was around four. Andon used to tell me that if I licked one of the frogs from down in

Babbling Brook, my face would turn green. I never tried it.”

“Oh yeah?” said Nate. He was inching closer to Toby, just a little at a time.

Probably getting ready to make a move. Toby understood. He was ready for it. A few

weeks ago, before the birds, Nate would have been on him already. Pinned him down.

Strike that, actually: before the birds, Nate would have been out of here at this point, tail

between his legs - and so, probably, would have Toby. But not now.

“Yeah,” said Toby. “And doesn’t she look like that now? Like she licked a frog or

something? Weird.” Toby looked at Nate, whose hands, still closed around those

snowflakes, still thrust out towards Toby as if he’d forgotten about them, was crouched a

bit, posture like a cat getting ready to leap for an outlying branch. “Come closer, Nate,”

Toby said. “Come on. It’s okay. I’ll let you touch her, if you want.” This halted Nate,

turning his coil into a dogged slouch. Nate shut his eyes, lowered his head, bit his lip.

When he opened his eyes, he turned his head to Staci, who was still lights out with her

face in the scrub bordering the clearing.

“She’s breathing,” Nate said. Almost a question. Toby nodded. Nate’s hands fell

and he gestured to Madison, afloat on her back, hands straight by her sides like they’d

been pinned there. “What are you going to do with her?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 326

Toby shrugged. A giggle escaped that he didn’t necessarily feel in control of.

“I’m gonna wait.”

“Wait for what?”

For what indeed? For my boner to go down, that’s what. But he couldn’t tell that

to Nate. Funny; all of this - this horrific incident, the things he’d been saying, the fact

that he’d put Staci into some kind of twilight with just a word - for Christ’s sake, he had

Madison McEllis floating - floating! - and he couldn’t tell Nate about an insignificant

little erection. He was aware of himself. He could feel the monster coming out - so is that

what he was? Some kind of monster? Sure. Why not. Maybe he felt a little bad about it.

Some part of him - his head, his brain - felt bad. But that’s not where the blood was at

this particular moment. The blood had gone south. Bad blood. Black blood.

And not gray. It had gone gray to black, swiftly, like in chemistry class, where

this liquid is touched with that liquid and instantly turns indigo, the eddies of it swirling

and affecting the bordering fluid like cancer, unfurling like maypole ribbons, cyclonic

and contaminating until it hits the glass lid of its jar and stops, settles. “I’m black now,”

said Toby, and as he did he felt his grip on Madison loosen - not his physical grip, that

was still there, but his grip, his hold on her, the throb and pound felt through slender tips

of fingers, going, leaving...

And Nate was talking, mouth moving quickly now like a movie set to fast

forward, but Toby couldn’t hear it, because his internal frequency was suddenly and

horribly tuned to this thunderous and somehow smooth voice, no pitch to it, ominous like

a dungeon choir heard from above the ground; like a thousand voices at once, a thousand

dark twins with the same inflection and tone, but all together now, magnified and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 327

reverberating in his head like it was coming from inside his own ears, like some giant

miniaturized physically but retaining that booming, dizzy voice, standing somewhere in

the cusp of his ear and whispering, saying, ‘Wo. No. Not black, Toby, you ’re not Black

because I’m Black, you see that, you can’t not see that, you ’re a smart boy, Toby, you ’re

rich with It, you’ve got It, and I ’m going to take it from you, you White little cunt, you ’re

White, the White, the terrible White, I ’ve found you and I ’m going to take it from you,

take it all from you, do you know what White is, Toby, do you want to know that the color

white, White, is the cumulative reflection o f light, the ultimate void, the lack o f all things

natural and noble and good, the Boss is not happy with you, Toby, and I ’m going to take

it from you and your White fucking soul it’s mine it’s mine I ’m going to take your soul

and eat it like I ’m starving for it, Toby, I ’m going to eat your fucking soul, I ’m going to

take it all because finally, I ’ve finally found you.”

“Fuck you,” Toby said, teeth gritted so hard that he felt the battery taste of blood

come into his mouth, “come and get it.” Concentrating on the voice, which was just an

echo now; it had gone as fast as it had arrived. But Toby wanted to find that voice again,

maybe get a dialogue going with it, tell it to fuck itself and to come on, come and find

me, I’ll dance with you. Anytime. Please, just come.

Toby looked around, feeling the acid taste in his mouth, sampling it. He turned his

head, spit out some blood, and looked at Nate. It was harder to see him now, because the

fire had gone down; no more blue flames, no more open range, just a fire dying down,

smoldering a little because the snow had picked up. Nate was not looking at Toby,

however; he was looking down, somewhere at Toby’s midsection. At his erection? Had it

sprung free? Toby realized that he couldn’t even feel it now.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 328

He looked down from Nate (who, from what Toby could tell, was looking pretty

green himself now) and saw that no, Nate hadn’t been looking at Toby’s erection. Toby’s

erection, actually, had deflated completely, now just another little extension of himself

tucked away in his pants, boyish once more, harmless. Nothing. What Nate was looking

at was Madison, who, at some point, had settled - or fallen - back to earth. Her head was

turned to one side, where a pool of vomit bloomed out from her open mouth like a

dialogue bubble in one of Toby’s comic books. Her mouth was moving slightly, opening

and closing again like a fish out of water. She was trying to say something. Her eyes were

still closed. Toby realized that his hands were still fixed into the thick of her hair, and he

retracted them, quickly, smoothly, then looked at Nate. “I’m sorry.” This was all he could

manage. There was nothing else in his mind, nothing for Nate, nothing for the woods,

nothing for anyone (well, maybe something for that voice, that giant, whispering and

blaring voice - Toby certainly had something for the voice).

“I don’t know, dude, I don’t know, man, she just puked,” Nate said. Nate, who

had been frozen in his place, a rookie matador faced with his first bull, was now

beginning to move toward the girls, hesitant, shoulders seeming to take him in two

directions at once like he couldn’t decide which girl to tend to first.

Toby stood up. A wave of nausea, just briefly, passed through him like a punch to

the gut. He bent over for a second, one hand to his stomach, then straightened. He felt off

his bearings, tilted, like abstract art. “I gotta go,” he said. “Clean this up.”

Nate looked at him and blinked, then Toby took off, running through the woods as

fast as his legs would allow, woods parting here and there, bowing for him, like people at

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 329

a party bobbing and weaving as the host cuts through them to attend something so

necessary, so of the moment, because he is the host and that is what he does.

Engorged

Running with a boner is just a big pain in the ass.

Toby, to be honest, didn’t expect to have to - but then, that was life, just a big

collection of unexpected ideas and incidents followed by feverish ponderings and, finally,

meditative restitution. Things tended to kind of pop up, just appear there, one second

momentous and unvarnished, raw with potential, but then poof, splurt, there it went like

an ejaculation, fleetingly simple and sweet and then...well, then corrective, almost,

startling but expounding like a jump in a cold lake; Toby, over the last few months, had

become accustomed to such processes, to the extent that he expected tumult, resigned to

the idea that life hit you hard then left you alone for a while, some fickle bully, only to

return with a little more, a tiny Pavlovian amplification so you didn’t feel it when you set

it beside last time’s occasion, and there it went, life, working slowly, methodically to

holocaust, to the grand explosion...then the ashes could be sifted through, gazed at

indiscriminately, left to blow around a bit. A little like jerking off, if you want to be

Romantic about it.

Jerking off - rubbing one out, beating the meat, flogging the dolphin - well, Toby

didn’t know much about it. Just what he’d heard (all gained from his brothers: that it

made you tired, that you could feel it in your toes, that the best place for it hands down

was the bathroom because you could lock yourself in, that is unless you wanted Mom to

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 330

bust in with to find you with your monkey in one hand and a wad of tissue in the other,

that it was messy and embarrassing, and painful if you did it too much, and that jesus

crow it was worth it, man). Apart from his wet dreams - his nocturnal emissions, ha ha,

sorry about the five dollar words, Staci - he’d never experienced orgasm, and apart from

the remnants left on bedsheets in the morning, desiccated, saucer-sized yellowish stains,

he’d never known a fresh manifestation. Today, he was determined to find out about

both. There was so much that could have been going through his head - should have been

going through his head - but it was this, and only this: to take it out, his stiffy, and let it

finally breathe.

What he hadn’t expected, anyway, was to have to run home with his dick stiff and

chafing and jutting down one side of his jeans. He’d thought - to the extent that he been

able to think - that it would take some coaxing, after everything the afternoon had

entailed, to even get Toby Junior (another older-brother euphemism) back into proper

shape. But running through those thick and beautiful woods, all it had taken was a

thought or two of Madison lying dead to the world atop two feet of snowy, cold air, her

tits reaching skyward and just dying to spring loose from that bra under her shirt under

her sweatshirt under her parka...andping, Toby, midstride, was back in business.

Here was another strange thing: it was almost natural, to Toby, that while running

he began to take larger and larger strides until they were like lunar leaps, his feet

springing from some patch of ground and his body sifting along through branches and

snow for seconds at a time, completely airborne but for the some or another pine brushing

against his arms like the tickling tips of fingers from a crazed mob of groupies. He knew

the feeling from dreams, the propulsion of chugging legs before the one furious bound

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 331

that would send him airborne; this was a feeling from his few but memorable good

dreams, the dreams where he’d be capable of flight and think absolutely nothing of it.

This was no dream - no, no such luck, right? Not if you were to ask Nate, Staci, poor

Madison - but the feeling was the same. As he ran faster, the leaps became longer,

twenty, thirty feet a pop, landing in stride and feet finding rhythm with the ground below

before departing once more, chest thrust out mid-flight, arms back, chin cocked to the

sky, feeling the wind whip at his nostrils and feather through his hair; Toby, flying. Well,

almost flying, but that would come in time. Toby was sure of it. Everything would come

in time.

“I’ll come in time,” he said, and his pace quickened once more, knees buckling

briefly before flexing and there was the pounce, had to be fifty feet this time and maybe

more, who knew because he was going so fast now, woods a blur around him, boughs

and twigs slapping the material of his winter coat but his face spared because he knew

just when to turn it, ducking, bobbing, dodging with loon-like grace, loon-the-bird not

loon-the-crazy, or then again maybe both, and there it was: ashy, dusky light approaching

at the mouth of the woods just ahead, a few more good jumps and he’d be there...

When he broke the surface of the woods and hooked left toward home, thinking

for a split second of slowing his pace so not to attract the attention of the stray car or idiot

jogger but dismissing it, saying fuck it, he considered what he had left in his wake. There

was Madison, lovely and mystifying Madison, and Nate, a best friend for the ages, a

friend who, in the face of something horrifying and perplexing and inexplicable, had said

screw it and remained loyal - Toby doubted that he’d do it again, oh no, not after this

one, this one was no accident, this one was Toby’s and Toby’s alone - and of course,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 332

drooling, chattering Staci, poor girl, face down in a pile of brush. God, she’d probably

pissed herself. Toby would have been able to understand that. Then there was the Stash,

something as close to home as somewhere away from home could get. A cozy retreat

where thoughts took flight and sometimes didn’t come back. A church of friends or

solitude, all depends on the day and what you feel like doing with it. He’d left the Stash

behind, back there in the woods with those three kids - yes, kids, they were just kids, and

Toby felt at ease thinking of them as such, because they didn’t know things and that’s

what made a kid a kid - and the Stash would remain there always, but it would never be

Toby’s again. To Toby, now, the Stash was merely a clearing arranged well for sitting,

for thinking, with some trinkets and various paraphernalia salted away lackadaisically

within its confines, and a newly added fire-pit, just a ring of rocks to keep the brush out,

really, nothing fancy...but no more. Just a stash. Had to stop thinking of it as the Stash

now. Better, in fact, to stop thinking about it altogether.

And there was one other thing that Toby had left behind. Something important.

But again, ha ha, something better off not thinking about, right Tobe? Right buddy?

Don’t think about those things, those things back in the woods. The woods were dark

now, without him.

“I got that fire crackling,” Toby said, and he felt himself stiffen a little more down

there in the pants, down around the left thigh area where Toby Jr. was nuzzled at a

somewhat disconcerting angle, wedged into his thigh’s armpit like a rogue pack of gum

or a particularly nasty calcium deposit. “Ow,” said Toby, then he laughed, laughing,

jumping and counting the telephone poles as they whizzed by; two poles, two and a half,

he could do better than that, so he flexed his calves and tried for three and got four, this

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 333

time his head clearing the wires hanging between the poles, birds strung along the wire

like puffy, breathing Christmas lights scattering and taking flight, chattering and

squawking because up there on the electric lines, that was a place where no one usually

bothered them, not until Toby Shepard came around jumping home like a comic book

giant gone cloud-hopping.

He was coming down, close to home now, when a car came around a bend just

ahead. Its lights were on and for a moment Toby saw nothing but a white glare, then the

car clicked off its brights and Toby, running, flashed a smile at the driver - a woman,

mid-fifties, he could see her as well as if he’d been sitting next to her - before taking off

again, legs driving from the ground, and as the car squealed to a stop his smile remained,

fixed there mouth red and bleeding gums teeth white sharp and barbed ruby red lips like a

funhouse mannequin. Already at least a hundred yards away, Toby heard the car’s door

creak open and slam shut, maybe a little yelling or maybe a pre-faint moan, something

quiet from the woman, anyway, but no matter; Toby was just about home.

He coasted in, feet catching the ground and digging in there so he could halt

without wiping out face first into the house. Motion stopped, he paused at the landing,

just before the three steps leading to the large oak door. What, pray tell, would his mother

say if she saw him arrive in such a manner? Her son, her baby son, little Toby who’d

been just sort of miserable over the last few weeks because, you know, he’s having a

tough puberty, those hormones are really kicking into high gear lately - what would she

think if, from the kitchen window, as she snapped the tips from and washed the asparagus

for that night’s dinner, she saw Toby sailing down from twenty feet above the ground like

a prop plane, backpack flailing behind him, a grin on his face like a maniac pitching a fit?

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 334

Maybe she’d laugh, not knowing what to do, or maybe she’d just keel over right there

and die. Hell, if Toby had a mirror, something full length to catch the lot of him, his

young ticker would probably seize up, too. But never mind that. No sense dreaming. He

had things to do.

So he walked inside, very cool, tossed his backpack in its usual spot by the door,

then cut around the bend to the back stairs, sparing a quick glance for his mother in the

kitchen and coming up empty. His feet itched as he took the stairs; they had, after all,

been airborne for the better part of the last ten minutes or so, and as Toby climbed the

two flights to his bedroom the gravity of walking sobered him a little. He wanted to be

jumping among the snow and trees again, watching the ground as it raced past, stone

walls shooting by haphazard and baroque like lunatic trains. But of course, there was a

pressing matter at hand, that is, his boner was itching with tenfold ferocity than his feet,

so he kept at it, walking like a normal person up the stairs, one, two, three, one foot after

another, until he crested the gray (ah, gray) carpeted stairs and stood looking at the open

door of his bedroom. If there were ever a threshold...

Moving closer, suddenly not so sure-footed, he saw Daisy lying on his bed, tail

wagging, thumping against a pillow, furious and constant as if she were trying to restrain

it and doing a mediocre job. Ears flicking, muzzle set down on paws, movement of tail

infecting the ass with increasing locomotion as he came closer. “Hey, Daisy,” Toby

feeling strange talking to this animal while in such an erect state, feeling perverted about

it, sick. “Hey girl.”

Daisy’s tail increased its madness but the rest of her remained still. This was usual

business for Daisy; without fail, she’d be there when Toby came home from school, in

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 335

such an arrangement plus or minus a few degrees of positioning, tail never still until he

jumped down next to her on the bed and scratched until she’d had enough. Lily wasn’t

into all of that, that is, waiting...but Daisy would wait hours on end, who knew what time

she’d meander her substantial weight up two flights of stairs to settle down on the bed,

groaning, her ass usually directly on Toby’s pillow. She was, always had been, Toby’s

dog, and she let him know it, sweetly, loyally, on a daily basis.

Toby sat on the bed and Daisy inched up, paws and stumpy legs stretching for his

lap, muzzle and wet nose pressing into one leg - the leg without the erection - before

finally taking example from her tail and heaving herself up then collapsing - oh, Daisy,

what a groan you can manage when you want to - halfway onto Toby’s lap. “Daisy,

down,” Toby said, and obedient Daisy flopped down off the bed and onto the floor. She

sat down and cocked her head, ears up, winked, then laid a paw onto one of Toby’s

shoes. “No, Daisy, go find Mommy. Go find Lily.”

Daisy remained as she was. Toby looked at the bathroom and then back to the dog

at his feet. He pointed to the stairs. “Go, Daisy. Downstairs.” Daisy pawed at his leg

again, just briefly, and then, lifting herself up again like an arthritic water buffalo,

sashayed out the room and to the verge of the stairs. There she turned around, sat, lifted

her ears, and resumed staring. Well, that would have to do. “Jesus, Daisy,” Toby

muttered, then, lifting himself up, moved to the bathroom and, sparing a last glance at

Daisy and giving her the sign for stay - arm and palm out, like the universal signal for

stop - closed and locked the door behind him.

He tore off his jacket and laid it on the lip of the tub. Shirt off, then pants around

the ankles, never mind the shoes, followed by longjons and finally his boxer briefs, and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 336

there it was, sprung to like an SS salute. He touched it and it was hot, completely

engorged, color almost red like a rose in early spring. Throbbing, pulsing, like Madison’s

heartbeat back there in the woods...he sat on the toilet and closed his eyes, gave it a little

touch, just a hello, and it responded with a magnificent jerk, a thud and a beat that Toby

felt in his ears (not in his toes, though, not yet).

And what now? How to begin something so daunting, so colossal? Maybe just go.

Just do what feels right. Play around a little, experiment.

Eyes fixed shut, he tried to conjure up Madison’s image. It was cold out there in

the woods, and her hair had spilled over her jacket, and underneath that jacket she’d

probably been sporting some hard nipples...

It wasn’t working. His right hand was working and he had a good image of

Madison in those woods - of when she’d been sitting ass on knees and of that smile she’d

given him, the way she’d thrust out her chest when she reclined with her hands behind

her - but it was nothing, nothing like what he’d experienced when sitting behind her, stiff

as a board, dammit, with fingertips tracing her back and that pulse, that rhythm they’d

established like two fine dancers; nothing. Like grating cheese.

Toby jerked (flinched, that is) on his seat when a noise came at the bathroom

door; something boisterous and abrasive, like metal against wood, a small sawing sound

from the side of the door. Toby opened his eyes then shut them again. It was scratching -

Daisy, scratching to get in. “Daisy, go find Mommy,” said Toby. A few more scratches,

then the scampering of pawed feet on carpet. Then silence.

Toby breathed deep and returned his hand to his lap. Still hard there - there was

no stopping that, apparently - but nothing felt right. Wasn’t this supposed to be fun? He

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 337

thought back to when Hutch had taken it upon himself to teach Toby, in preparation of

his “trek into manhood,” how and why to beat off. It had been a little before his birthday,

some time around Thanksgiving when Hutch had been home for the week. He hadn’t

gone into specifics - Toby had been thankful for this - but he’d given him some key

advice, mostly where and when stuff: Never in your bedroom, he’d said. And yo u ’re

going to want to. Trust me. Even with the lights off and even if you think Mom and Pop

are sleeping. Mom ’11 pick that time to come up and tuck you in for the first time in a year.

I t’s the mother’s instinct; they've got like this internal alarm or something, and it goes off

right when you ’re doing something wrong or embarrassing. I t’s like damn clockwork,

man. So do it in the bathroom. Always in the bathroom, ‘cause you can lock it. Toby had

promptly told Hutch to get lost, that he had no interest in that stuff. That it was gross.

Plus, why do that when he could just get the real thing? Hutch had laughed.Real thing?

he’d said. You wouldn ’t know the real thing if it sat in your lap and shoved its tongue in

your ear, you turd.

So Toby had taken his advice so far, and sure, most of it had been logistics, some

of it humorous (probably at Toby’s expense, but he hadn’t quite understood exactly

everything that Hutch had been getting at) but there was one piece of advice that had

stuck. Hutch had closed the conversation with this short but heavy slice of guidance

before patting Toby’s shoulder and taking off downstairs cackling: Always, he’d said,

always, always have an image. Better than any magazine or porn flick you ’11 ever get

your hands on. Nothing - nothing - replaces a good mental image.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 338

So he tried again. Madison in the woods just wasn’t doing it; as fresh as the image

was, as there as it was, Toby just couldn’t get underneath that winter jacket. His dream

needed flesh. A feast of it.

Last year, at the sixth grade picnic, Toby’s class had gone to the Pine Hill

Country Club for a barbeque and some swimming. The pool had been huge - three-

quarter Olympic size, the lifeguard had told him - and as Nate had chased around it

laughing like a hyena and snapping the bikini tops of a myriad of sheepish and giddy

girls, Toby had watched, from one of the poolside chairs, his squealing classmates dash

back and forth. The highlight of the show, even a year ago, had been Madison - budding,

blooming Madison. At the beginning of that year she’d been the same color and style as

all the others, but after Christmas break - holy God, it had been like a metamorphosis.

Boobs just flying, busting out of shirts and sweatshirts alike; she hadn’t known what to do

with them. It had been months until she’d finally taken control of them, found the right

bra, maybe, or just talked them down like a good cop would a bridge jumper. Whatever.

Either way, at the class picnic, any authority she’d come by in recent months had

vanished like dewdrops under a hot sun. Out of control: she’d come in a tee-shirt, a big,

baggy one, probably one of her brothers’, but when it came time to swim the thing came

off and out came the funbags. At one point she had stubbed her toe, and as Toby watched

from his chair she had bent over to one side to attend the wound, hair falling down across

one shoulder and her tits falling in on each other, snow-white and round with the nipples

impressing like raisins against the material of her bikini...and she’d looked up from that

posture, one hand still to her injured foot, and found Toby looking at her - heck, drinking

her in, why be coy about it now, after everything - and she’d smiled, retained the pose for

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 339

a moment, before tapping the toe in question and uncurling back to vertical, fixing her

bikini bottom with a few fingers from each hand and skipping off for a hamburger...

And now it was beginning to work. Now he was getting somewhere. The ticklish

feeling had returned; there was a certain wetness he’d before lacked, and wow he was

starting to feel it in his toes because, thank you lord, he had his image: Madison, her

breasts globular ivory and swollen, distended in that little pink suit top - how had her

father let her out of the house like that? - and the suit a degree too small for her, last

year’s suit, probably, so bosom and ass pressed outward abidingly, obligingly, a small,

faux-silver hoop connecting one part of suit bottom to the other, exposing membrane in a

perfect circle of freckled and pale flesh, the suit itself riding hard into the lobes of her

genitalia, all twelve years of it, the rough and raised skin, spread over with the ghosts of

cropped hair, environing her sensitive parts working like stretched fabric as she adjusted

in her chair to reach over for a sip of Beth Ambrose’s Cherry Coke -

But just as he was feeling it, working into a slow and deliberate rhythm, there

again at the door was the scratching of one miss Daisy Shepard, scoring comblines of

scuffs into the white painted wood. Madison gone from his mind, the image shattered -

how to keep the image, how to retain it with the nuisance of the daily grind? Hutch hadn’t

mentioned this - Toby opened his eyes to his humble bathroom, completely dark but for

the amber glow of the backyard floodlight cutting through the blinds, and spoke: “Daisy,

stop, please. Go find Mommy!” More scratching, feverish now; Toby, evidently, had

denied Daisy one too many times the after-school snuggles, scratches, and rubs to which

she had grown accustomed. She was working with both paws now. He pictured her on

her hind legs, fat rump bonded to carpet, hoisting her upper torso up for leverage against

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 340

that barrier of firm cherry wood oversized door and raking down, down to the floor with

her paws. Paw over paw, sweeping a staccato descent and cutting into paint and leaving

flaky white chips where she’d eventually land, paws down, breathing heavy because she

was a little chubber, catching her meager breath before starting anew, back to the top

there, no I won’t find Mommy or go downstairs {scratch scratch) I won’t find Lily

{scratch scratch) I’ll keep scratching at this door, thank you{scratch) until you open up

{scratch) and let me in {scratch) so I {scratch) can see {scratch) what you’re doing in

there {scratch) with the lights {scratch) off {scratch) like{scratch) they {scratch) are

{scratch scratch). His vision, his Hutch-vision, had slipped from Madison to Daisy,

firmly, just like that; Daisy, black with gray muzzle and white paws, white ringing the

eyes like film-negative bruises, lumpy and pear-shaped, working nonstop at that door

with her nails; Toby looked around the room, not taking anything in, really, not taking in

the tub checkered with yellow light from the blinds or the gray tiling under white-painted

walls, not taking in the dangling light fixture that looked older even than this house, not

taking in his purple jutting hardon, waiting steady, over ivory porcelain over a bowl of

blue water rimmed with caked yellow crust because he hadn’t even thought of cleaning in

months; he took in none of this, despite eyes open to it all, because his picture, his vision,

was of Daisy, scratching, scratching, scratching at my door. He breathed in, slow, deep,

clean, through his nose, then let it out in a pair of words, “Daisy, quiet.”

And Daisy was quiet. Hey, it had worked on Staci. What a great friggin’ trick.

Sure, he’d probably have a formidable drool stain soaked into his carpet to clean up

afterwards, but who cared? It was worth a few moments’ peace.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 341

It didn’t take much to return to the image. Closed eyes again, hand back in place,

a little bit south this time because he was really starting to mean it, down there at the hilt

was where you came if you meant business, right Hutch? Thanks, Hutch, you pervert.

Thanks for the advice. Thanks for everything. Thanks for Madison in a bathing suit,

fabric clutching at her like fucking Reynolds Wrap, riding up in all the right places,

breasts just cushions, ah, your tits, Madison, your huge tits so pale so virgin so upright in

that little top, look how they move when you run, they ripple like they’re filled with

water, come over here and give me a kiss then bend over for me again I think your toe’s

bleeding I think you need to touch that toe again fix your bikini bottom its riding I’m

riding we’re all going to be riding it feels good when I touch it here when I pull it this

way easy on the way down firm on the way up squeezing getting the last bit of toothpaste

from a near-empty tube pushing and pulling and pulling and pulling and oh, Madison,

you’re still growing, up and up, taller and taller and lengthening and the curves there are

becoming more prominent, how’d that happen, I’m like fertilizer for you, Madison, my

Madison, in my mind is where you grow, feet stretching a bit getting some width to them,

naked hips encasing your puberty your little labia fleshing out to supple but hair receding

back down to soft nude flesh hmm that seems backwards but oh well, up and up stomach

losing all that baby fat and darkening to olive ah, nice flat stomach with a little scar on

the navel where you used to wear jewelry, breasts, mmm, still there all right, neck

slimming to bell curves and ropey tendons protruding like foundation beams and hair

straightening, hmm that’s odd, okay, yes very odd hair changing color maybe in ten years

when you’re a reputable young woman this will be your look to straighten that childish

striking shock of curls and put bleach in it to make it blonde and the tits well you’ll grow

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 342

into them I suppose I suppose that’s w-why your tits are of a different shape not melons

but fat teardrops so drastic how different so interesting how time and age can change a

gal must have been drinking milk, Madison, otherwise how to explain the broadening of

lips across your face the full supple lips well there are implants for that (implants for

everything these days, heard once of a guy who put implants in his legs - legs, imagine

that, what a weenie the guy must have been to want leg implants because who looks at

legs anyhow) but still Madison your lips from brownish red to cherry and full and moist

and sharp little teeth behind there, girl, like a cat scowling, growling, like a kitty, kitty-

cat, mmm, moving up now taking our time (maybe back down later ha ha) oh yes, oh

dear, your eyes have changed color as well no longer dark film strips now almond-shaped

drawn tapering back to a point like an Asian or like a cat and bright green, mmm, jade

almonds under thick lashes a molasses-slow blink, was that for me, little kitty? Kitty-cat?

Kitty, come here, Kitty. Hey. Hey.

“Hey,” Toby said.

Against the pitch-black tapestry of his closed eyelids, there was a woman, not

Madison, a woman, a grown woman', this was his vision. It didn’t come like imaginary

things typically come - when you think of something, after all, it is merely that: thinking.

An abstraction, something periphery that disappears as soon as attention is turned to it,

that little fragment of light that is there, must be there, but isn’t when you look. An idea

of something. A flimsy scheme of the brain. But not this; no, this was clear in his mind,

not like a photograph; it wasn’t two dimensional, it was full, like a holograph, something

entirely inclusive so you could walk around and take in all its angles. Well, it hadbecome

that way, anyway - developed like a photograph holograph( ); as he’d pictured Madison

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 343

in her bathing suit, she had started to grow, or to mature, rather, into what he’d thought

initially was just some older version of her current self...but as she had filled out (parts of

her, anyway, while other parts had eddied and tapered to perfection, as if chiseled by

some master whittler) she had gained breadth, and breath, and cultivated into this living

thing - woman - who was now staring at him, there within his eyelids, meeting his

mind’s eye’s gaze, staring and staring and only blinking to look cute. And it wasn’t

Madison. God, no. It was a sexy little kitty-girl. Or woman, rather. Woman. Yes.

So hey, how are ya’. Nice to meet you. What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?

Kitty got your tongue, is it?

He was afraid to open his eyes lest he’d lose her. This was an image, good grief.

He wondered what Hutch would think. This was a woman named Kitty; he knew her

name like he knew his own. In a way, after all, she was his, created by him - well,

harnessed by him - and now, trapped within his eyelids, she was there for the taking.

Naked as a newborn, perfectly round and full fleshed and so vivid, how could she be

there, right there? It was as if he could touch her. Instead, though, he returned his hand to

himself, and as he did, as he eased fingers back down around the hilt, she came forward a

bit in his mind, as if she’d been previously veiled and as if the unveiling was her being

encouraging, saying, come, Toby, come; now he could make out every pore and pit of

her. Vanquished entirely of imperfections, skin like cashew butter, breasts that dipped

and curved in textbook spheres, an inch of smooth, perfect skin between them, a little

valley for sanctuary; nipples small and firm, areolas circles that would make Divinci

squirm, the color of overripe raspberries; a seamless torso that stretched down to full hips

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 344

and between them that soft crease of folds and wrinkles that so intrigued Toby, just got

him engorged. Hey, Kitty. Come here, Kitty.

It was okay that she didn’t respond. She was, needless to say, only an image.

Nothing more. A little souped up because Toby was talented (touched, paranormal, what

have you). Still, though, an image. But Toby could work with her as she was: turn her

around, give her the old 180°, bend her over at the waist, hands on ankles, head upside-

down peeking back at him, hair in eyes, and under the tanned downy flesh of her ass that

mysterious crinklebox of what-the-hell-is-in-there smiling inverted back at Toby

Shepard, who, if you’re interested, was currently working his way to a pretty furious

orgasm.

The buildup began - a warm flush spreading from his gut and out, down along

channels of nerve-endings and a long span of prickled skin, and sure enough down there

in the toe area, curling them all knuckle and nails scraping linoleum flooring...in his

mind, in his eyelids, Kitty turned suddenly, swiveling on her heels in a sticky naked

about-face, and curved her arms inward, hands disappearing into the shadowed

subterranean of her unknown. She thrust down her head, neck straining, until her chin

rested on the curved ridge of her collarbone. She began to quiver. Toby felt the surge die

a little and his hand picked up his mind’s slack, pistoning faster, frantic like a

housecleaner polishing a candlestick at five-of-five; what was she doing? No control of

her now, none, as she sat there coiled into herself, forearms working at something down

in the shadows, breasts jiggling in protest, legs bent at the knees and feet sticking

outward like duelers squared off and listening for the ten-count. She looked like a

monkey sitting like that, crouched over and playing with himself as zoo-goers ogle and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 345

point. Then, as fast as she had folded, she sprung up, prize in hand - yes, she had crafted

something, she was approaching again materializing from the black that surrounded her,

coming forward more clear more bright, a beacon in Toby’s eyes, and as she walked,

strutting, all legs, legs crossing at the knees feet with painted toenails pointed 45° and

overlapping, sexy Kitty lifted her hands from down there from her piping and raised up

cupped in both hands a something a certain something that looked like crafted metal,

steel, but was dulled like a foggy mirror. What was that? What was she -

It struck the light - wherever the light came from, there between his eyes and their

lids, who knew, maybe from her, maybe parts of her were just luminous - and when

Toby saw what it was, he began to laugh. “Oh, God,” he said, and his boner jumped

again, and the rush was back, toes curled against the cold floor, calves tightening and

ankles sliding back back until they touched the base of the toilet, arm working slow and

steady, building and building because Kitty, in her cupped hands, was offering Toby the

one thing he wanted: a hot water faucet. To be more precise, his hot water faucet, that

was, the one from his tub.

Toby opened his eyes and looked at the faucet, the real one, and said, “On,” and

as it turned on at full blast he felt a warmth so unfamiliar spread out from his crotch that

at first he thought he’d disemboweled himself while performing this latest (and

reasonably minor) mind-trick. The tickling left everything and centered square in his

pecker, hot-good-god-it’s-hot, and a feeling swelled in his throat like he was going to

retch. The retch, however, came in a muffled and abandoned pomstar oh. Blood peeled

up through his neck and splashed into his cheeks. A brief wave of nausea followed by a

massive jerking of his body. His torso hoisted forward and his neck snapped down, and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 346

there it was: his penis, larger than he’d ever seen it, dancing in his hand and bobbing like

a boat in rough seas. It released sperm and the stuff flew, as if pressurized, much of it

landing on the wall across the tub and some of it on the tub itself, which, by the way, was

still running at full blast, the hot water steaming and eddying smoky and moist curling

into Toby’s nostrils, which were flared brilliantly about now...his eyes felt bugged out of

his head and he was distantly aware of teeth gritted down, rows pressing into each other,

a little bit painful there, vicelike, like bad sinuses...as he felt the last of it spring outward

his body jerked once again; his eyes squinted shut, pure reflex, and as they did he

searched briefly for Kitty with the water faucet but she was gone. He opened his eyes

again, feeling the blood swirl back down from cheeks, neck, to heart, his pulse throbbing

in his neck and in his groin, and realized that he’d forgotten one of Hutch’s rules: always

have a wad o f toilet paper ready; never know when you’re gonna get inspired. Toby

stood, half crouched, one hand still settled down around his crotch, and peered into the

tub. There were morsels of him flicking and tweaking around the drain, a little brown in

color (supposed to be white, Toby thought, but maybe there was some blood in it. Hey,

what the hell). He looked up and it was flung across the wall as well, tinted by the criss

crossed amber light from the blinds. So much of it. Looked back to the tub and saw that a

glob had landed smack on the top of the hot water faucet. It was mid-drip, curling over

the faucet’s lip, a dab of it hanging viscous and scummy from the dulled fixture,

threatened by the water streaming out there but so far untouched. Toby sat back down,

finally letting his hand relax and fall away from his crotch. He breathed out, a long

breath, like he’d been holding it through the whole episode, and he let himself smile as he

inhaled, because hey, first time! Manhood, baby! Plus, I’m magic! I’m a magic mother

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 347

fucker with a pecker full of sperm and a head full of Kitty! I can just leap those buildings

in a single bound and turn on water faucets using only the power of my beautiful and

formidable mind! Hoorah for Toby! Hoorah for Toby Shepard!

He smiled at the faucet and said, “Off.” Its flow stopped immediately. Maybe, he

thought, maybe he didn’t have to say anything. Maybe he could just think it...before,

when he’d tried that first time, he’d curled his hand into a makeshift magic wand,

extended two flexed fingers and pointed directly at the tap; now, he merely looked at it,

mustering his face into as casual expression as possible, and thought: on. Sure enough,

the faucet flipped back on, so he looked at it again, this time not even thinking the word,

just looking at the faucet and desiring something - not even desiring, but knowing it, like

he was bending it with his very will and want - and the faucet once again switched off.

“Ha!” Smiling huge. “Ha! I got you! I got you, man!” The faucet remained as it was,

ready to be bent, staring back at Toby with its steely maw open and dripping, capped by a

dollop of ropy Toby-sperm. That was his faucet, for sure.

He looked around the bathroom. A whicker basket with some magazines and a

copy of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader: Volume 7. A few paintings done by Toby when

he was younger, 3 rd grade stuff, a watercolor of a dog lying in his doghouse dreaming of

a Volkswagen-sized marrow-bone. To the left, more whicker, this piece a three-legged

stand topped with shampoo, bath salts, and a few extra rolls of toilet paper. Well, he

certainly could have used a handful of that toilet paper about a minute and a half

ago...across the wall - actually, the majority of it just under the dog-dreams-of-bone

painting - the semen was starting to drip, slugging syrupy down the wall and inching

toward the top of the tub, and if got under there it would be almost impossible to

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 348

clean...Toby looked at the spare roll of toilet paper and let his eyes follow it as it rose

steadily into the air, uncurled by an invisible hand (Toby’s mind’s hand, hey) and tore off

precisely where Toby wanted it. Holding onto the image of the stray piece, hanging

midair now and trailing down, almost reaching floor, he guided the roll back to its place

on the whicker stand. He looked back to the paper he’d separated - still floating, just

where he’d left it, excellent - and steered it toward the wall where the cum was starting to

thin out and drip a little faster. Directing the toilet paper to roll itself into a ball, watching

it as it wiped at the largest spot on the wall, but damn, only smudging it...keeping the wad

of tissue there for now, he turned on the faucet, watched the water begin to steam out

again (working that faucet, yeah boy) and maneuvered the tissue to the stream, little

dab’ll do ya’, then he turned off the faucet and, before bringing it back up to the wall to

clean off the spooge there, he took care of the squirt atop the spout. When the wall was

clean, Toby watched the paper, afloat over the tub, watched it, watching...couldn’t quite

get it to...no...yes, actually, yes, it was smoldering now, little curls of smoke winding up

through the folds - hey, this actuallyhurt a little, back there in his head, like a tension

headache or something - but the tissue finally caught and then it was burning, catching

light from the window and changing light, yellow to orange to blue to green to pure

white, and it took a few moments of watching this transmogrification of fire until Toby

realized that unless he wanted his mom upstairs and asking what the hell was going on, it

was in his best interest to extinguish his little experiment and crack a window.

He let the tissue - mostly charred now, much-ash-little-paper - fall into the tub

and washed it down the drain, all of this sitting from his spot on the toilet. He looked

down as the water rushed drainward and saw that his penis had gone completely flaccid,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 349

wet-looking and a little raw, but overall not much worse for the wear. Without looking

up, he bent (bent seemed like as good a word as any for whatever it was he was doing,

and it had come to mind immediately, as if placed there, so that was what it was:

bending) the faucet and heard the water shut off; this answered a standout question, one

that had been nagging at him for the last few hours: could he do all of this, make things

happen with his mind, when he was not aroused - that was, without a raging boner?

The answer was a big yes. Hell yes.

Deflated

He got up (underwear and longjohns and pants up around the waist, nevermind

buckling them), cracked the window to let out the smell of smoke, then opened the

bathroom door. It swung out about a third of the way and stopped. He pushed and there

was some give, so he pushed harder and slipped out.

There, on the floor, was Daisy, sleeping. Ah, yes. He’d quieted her. It seemed like

forever since he’d done it; everything, these days, seemed to go on forever, like each

action was a different chapter in his life’s book and was separated inflexibly from the

last. There was Toby, pre-the-last-few-months, and that was all a blur, infancy to

childhood to Christmas ’04. Then there was Toby o/-the-last-few-months, a real man

about town, and time in that spectrum had a firmer quality but, somehow, was less

harmonious. It was like pitting a collage against a slideshow, where the collage is

boundless and bright with pictures smudged together and meanwhile the slideshow bums

at 1000 watts and changes pictures when you least expect it - CLANG, switch pictures,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 350

faces gone in a technicolor distortion and replaced with others, newer, stranger, each

more horribly delightful than the next, then CLANG...

“Get up, girl,” Toby said. He nudged her underbelly with his foot. This usually

got her going, but she remained as she was, on her side with her hind legs stretched out,

one on top of the other, tail thrust upward to expose her privates, front legs bent together

in a pathetic kowtow, head craned up like her tail, her muzzle peeled back so one

yellowish canine was exposed under a black gumline (this was as close as Daisy ever got

to looking mean, and the irony hadn’t escaped Toby that it only occurred when she slept).

“Daisy,” he said. “Oh, cripes.” He wondered, briefly, how long it had taken Nate to wake

Staci. He brushed aside this thought quickly, however, considering that a) he wouldn’t -

couldn’t - consider Nate a friend anymore, not after everything that happened today, and

that hurt his stomach to think about, and b) he was above all that anyway, all those people

back in the woods. He was brand new. The fact that he felt remorse about losing a friend,

in the light of these new abilities, was disturbing in itself. Friends came and went; but

this, what he had now...he could touch the moon and rape the sky, for God’s sake, and

that was beyond price. Better than being a “child genius.” By (literal) leaps and bounds.

Toby bent and touched Daisy. “Wake up, come on, girl. Come on.” He placed a

hand around her muzzle and shook gently, a thumb touching the exposed canine. The

tooth was dry, the lip stuck in an Elvis-style smirk. “Daisy?” he said. “Hey. Hey, girl.

Come on.” He took a knee and bent his body over hers. Laid a hand on her side and let it

rest there, lightly. She wasn’t breathing. Saying her name now, repeating it, Daisy oh

Daisy no Daisy he stuffed an arm under her body and lifted. She came up and her legs

and head remained limp, still warm, Daisy, like a muffin from the oven, Daisy, no please

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 351

no. Shaking her, fixing his other arm around her and feeling her corpse slip from his

grasp, sliding through the loop of his arms and fur teasing along his wrists. Dead fur.

Dead Daisy. He had wanted to quiet her like he had quieted Staci. Only he had quieted

her heart.

He let the dog slip finally from his grasp. She tumbled down his knees and came

to rest on the carpet, body contorted, twisted, lip still cocked and tooth showing like she

was trying to contain a grin. He had done this. He had killed his dog.

The kicker was, his boner was back in action. It had been five, six minutes tops

since he’d put it down (the right way this time, not with baseball statistics or thinking

about his math teacher at the gym but with good old fashioned tugging) and now it had

sprung back to, ready for another round. And there was a sense of excitement, horrible as

it was, to all of this: this was far beyond turning on a faucet or floating a piece of toilet

paper across the bathroom - far beyond igniting it midair, even, though that had been his

favorite trick so far despite the mild pain it had caused him (a pain in his ears, sort of, like

his brain had swelled suddenly and become too big for his skull). The idea that with just a

thought he’d been able to take away something so powerful - life, the force of life - was

enough to get him going...so yeah, the boner was understandable. Why not?

And then, of course, there was Daisy laying there at his knees, one eye open and

staring at the ceiling, wild looking, almost feral; but dead. No life in that eye, just a

natural look, like an opaque rock you might find at the beach, smooth and waxy and

utterly inanimate. A look in it that said thanks for nothing.

He felt tears pooling at the comer of his eyes, so he forced a grimace, squinting

shut his eyes and bearing his teeth. He slammed his fists into his thighs, once, twice. He

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 352

fell over Daisy, taking her warmth into his own body (which was suddenly cold, fever-

cold, there’s another symptom for you Toby, well, buddy, you asked for it, that’s what

you wanted) and gathering her fore and hind legs with a sweep of his arms. He pushed

her legs together, arranging her into a little crescent moon, and let his face find hers. He’d

been able to quiet (kill) her; so why wouldn’t he be able to wake her back up (and what

was the word for that - reanimate? or simply create? The answer was that there wasn’t a

term for it. Hundreds of words in the English language alone to express “kill,” but not a

single sufficient antonym. How about that.) “Wake up,” he said. Down below, his

erection was pulsing again, only raw now, chafing against the fabric of his undershorts.

“Wake up, Daisy.Wake.” The tears began to spill over and he increased the pressure

where his hand lay over Daisy’s ribcage. “Come on.”

The process was painful and without fruition. He strained and flexed, conjured

images of Daisy’s heart (or a rough approximation of it, anyway), and after a while of

that Daisy’s body began to quiver and then outright shake, to the point where he had to

restrain her body with his own lest it take off from the carpet and slam into the ceiling.

Toby’s ears and nose bled. When he smelled a hint of smoke in the air, not like the smoke

from the paper towel but like smoke from when he and Nate used to play with his father’s

Zippo, touching the flame to their leg hair and watching it go up in a flash then

extinguish, he stopped. It was no use. He was useless. No touch, no revival. Daisy still

dead.

He picked up her limp body, feeling around it for any burning hair (how had he

done that? He’d wanted to bring her back to life, and somehow she’d caught fire - some

part of her, anyway, because he couldn’t find any singed fur or hot spots on her now-

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 353

cooling corpse). He walked, Daisy in arms, to his bed, and there he laid her down and

fixed an arm around her, spooning her curved back with his torso and legs, and rubbed

her behind her dead ears until he fell asleep.

His nap couldn’t have been more than a handful of minutes, because Daisy was

still a little warm when he woke. His mother was calling him from downstairs, and for a

moment the word To by meant nothing to him, zero. “Toby,” she called, and it was like a

word made up on the spot, just a pair of syllables strung together haphazard and loopy

like a little kid pretending to speak a language he didn’t know, say, Spanish, or Chinese.

Then it clicked - oh, okay, Toby, myname - and so did the fact that he was laying lover

like with his dead dog. He’d made her dead, it had been him, because she’d been

scratching at his door for some attention. His mother called, “Toby.”

The vomit came in a hot rush. Most of it ended up on Daisy, spraying her soft fur,

getting in her vacant milky eyes and around her muzzle, a little in her ears for good

measure...Toby lifted himself from his bed, wiped his chin, walked out of the room,

listening for the door to close behind him - look ma, no hands! - stopped in the

washroom to rinse the drying blood from his ears and nose, and walked downstairs -

floating, really, startlingly relaxed - to see what his mother wanted. Was it dinner time

yet? Hmm.

He waltzed into the living room and his mother had on a look like she’d eaten

something spoiled. “What?” Toby said.

Hip cocked, one hand holding her trusty crossword puzzle and the other stuffed

into the pocket of an old pair of sweatpants, his mother sucked in her cheeks and gestured

toward the sunroom.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 354

The sunroom was the place to talk. Nowadays, it served almost exclusively as a

haven for financial discussions between Mom and Dad, maybe a place for the occasional

muted old-people fight they’d get into once or twice or year. Toby hadn’t been in trouble

in what seemed like years, and it was funny now that he thought about it, because some

of his earliest memories were of his brothers - Jimmy and Hutch particularly - being

escorted wrist-first into the sunlit room, tears making a red and swollen mess of their

faces, and the glass paneled French doors sweeping shut as Mom and Dad sat down either

one, or both, for a state of the union. But not Toby. It was possible that his parents had

burnt out after six kids to manage; or maybe Toby was just that good. A great kid, Toby

Shepard. Just an all around nice guy.

“Where’s Pop?” he said.

“A coalition meeting.”

“Yeah?” Toby said. He thought about telling her that he’d killed Daisy, then

instead, said, “Is dinner soon?”

She frowned. “Can you come in here with me?” She turned, brusque, and walked

into the sunroom. Toby followed.

She sat in the far comer under a long drapery of honeysuckle vine. Toby took the

chair directly next to hers, typically his father’s seat (right there at her right hand, too; it

was Mom who dictated punishments and kid-related spew-sessions. Pop was the faithful,

if not aloof, subordinate, most of the time silent but nonetheless casting an

uncharacteristically cold shadow).

Toby realized what a creepy place the topiary could be on a winter night.

Overhead, snow was banked along the glass ceiling, lit a tawny hue from the halogen

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 355

lamp lighting and effectively barring any starlight. Shadows ran across the room like

nightmare railways, dodging across and in and out of potted flowers and creeper plants.

His mother’s face was half veiled in the room’s gloom, a dark fissure snaking slapdash

down her nose and the slim crease of her lips, eclipsing the moon of her face so half of

her was silhouetted against the night outside. Ooh, Mom was ominous tonight.

“Toby,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Toby, Mr. Hendricks called today - ”

“Oh, God, are you - ”

“Let me finish, okay?” She shifted in her chair, took a deep breath, and went on.

“I wasn’t going to say anything, I don’t think. I wasn’t even going to tell your father. Mr.

Hendricks called around, ah, one o’clock, and told me that you’d skipped last period.”

“It was gym.”

His mother nodded. “Well, I wasn’t going to say anything. But where did you go

after that, Toby?” She moved her head briefly and the entire thing became enveloped in

shadow. He couldn’t read her eyes, but he had a pretty firm idea of where this was going.

“To the woods. With Nate.”

She nodded again. “And with anyone else?”

“Yeah. Yes.”

“Who?”

“Staci Lowe and Madison McEllis. They both came with us.”

“Where in the woods did you go?”

“The old fort.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 356

At this, Toby swore that his mother cracked a smile. The Stash had been around a

long time, long before Toby, and had probably served its purpose in one way or another

for the last twenty-plus years, vacillating between silly-fort-to-hide-in and place-to-go-

do-naughty-things as each Shepard kid had grown. Toby blinked and his mother’s face

was again all business. She said, “What did you guys do down there?”

Toby felt a flutter of something in his throat and tried to swallow it down. It was

as if there were some dark army storming his eardrums, trying to break into his head and

settle into his brain. Back there at the Stash, Madison McEllis had floated on her back for

a solid five minutes and then vomited when Toby let her down. Upstairs, Daisy was dead

on his bed, covered with the remnants of Toby’s lunch - and lunch, there was a concept,

remember lunch, Toby? Holy shit, lunch; he was a different person at lunch. Childlike,

innocuous, and a hell of a lot weaker. A different fucking person as he had shoveled

down Swedish meatballs and greenbeans.

“Mom,” Toby said, “Mom, what do you know? I mean, I’ve - ”

She came back into the light, leaning forward and placing her hands on her knees.

It was a youthful gesture, and for a moment Toby saw his mother in a different light -

saw the girl she used to be. It didn’t help anything. He felt the day press down on him in a

stifling heft of gravity, and found himself holding back tears. Not tears for Daisy, or for

his soul - compromised as it was, Jeez - but for his mother, and for what was to come.

Soon, his mother would know what she had in her seventh child. It was unavoidable. She

spoke, and Toby thought he heard tears in her voice; she was fighting them back too.

“Madison’s mother called, Toby. Just now. Madison isn’t doing very well. I’m worried,

that is, I don’t know what you all did there in the woods. What did you do, Toby?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 357

How to approach this one? He could show her. That would be easiest, to show

her. Fix his attention and give her a good float. Sure, Toby, maybe she’d puke after, or

die like Daisy. So nix that option. But to try and explain it? Yeah, right. Toby had a

feeling that explaining himself - if he were to be frank - would buy him a lot more than

therapy with Dr. Mendoza-Weiss once a week. So he said, “We played a game.”

“What kind of game, sweetie?” Talking to him like he was an infant. Coddling

him.

“What kind of game,” Toby said. Despite himself he let out a laugh, just a bark,

really, but his mother recoiled as if stung, rocking rearward in her chair and undulating

her head back on her neck so her double chin manifested in soft and slightly stubbled

rolls. She looked ugly like that, and the child of her was gone; once again mother, plain

mother. “Well,” Toby said, “we played this game Staci knew. Called Light as a Feather,

Stiff as a Board.”

His mother clicked her tongue and shifted her position again, outwardly

uncomfortable now, one hand stuffed into her lap and the other playing with an earring

hanging low from a time-stretched earlobe. She pursed her lips, sighed, and said, “Did

you guys do anything, um, inappropriate out there? Anything sexual in nature, er - ”

“Mom, I’m not one of your clients. Please, mom.” He had heard Jimmy use this

line on Mom a lot, and it had seemed to fit the situation.

...And what exactly was he doing here? He was stringing her along. Was he

playing with her? Was he playing around with his mother? He couldn’t stop thinking of

Daisy, and at the same time, couldn’t help this sense of exhilaration, this anticipation,

like he was waiting for something, something great...he wanted to get up from his chair,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 358

tell Mom see you later, burst out the door and strip off all his clothes and run through the

woods to the river, maybe try to jump it, see if he could manage that, and if not, if he

didn’t make it across the river, then see how that water served for footing...

He felt like laughing. Like exploding. His body was marvelously warm, a

plasmatic current like lava coursing up his back to his neck. His feet itched to leave

ground.

His mother stood up, then moved to where Toby was sitting and touched his

forehead. “Are you alright, Toby?”

Toby frowned and felt his mother’s fingers move on his brow. “What did

Madison’s mother say?”

Her hand traced down his hair and found his chin. She tilted it up and looked at

him. “She was very concerned. Madison wouldn’t say anything except that she was with

Nate and you. Her mother was worried that she’d been raped.”

“Did she say that? Did she say ‘raped’?”

His mother nodded.

“Well, I guess that in a way, she was. Yeah, I sort of raped her.”

Her hand remained a moment as it was, long enough for Toby to watch her

expression change from motherly concern to utter horror. Her lips twisted then peeled

back, her eyes widening like forward-motion clips of blooming pansies. She withdrew

her hand, cocked it back as if to slap him, then, moving the raised hand instead to her bed

of graying hair, fell back into her chair. She muttered something indistinguishable,

opened her mouth wide as if to let out a scream, and then shut it again like she’d

swallowed a bug. She cocked her head - very Daisylike - and said, “What?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 359

“Hey, Mom, take it easy,” Toby said.

“Take it - take it - ?”

“T-t-t-take it easy, I said. Here, I’ll show you.” Toby stood and took his mother’s

hand. Her eyes widened, and the feeling came back to Toby, this time a tsunami of

images carrying with it a clear picture of his mother as a little girl, bright-eyed and

wonderstruck at seeing something for the first time; as a child she may have brandished

this look at a particularly nasty lightning storm or the vibrant and daunting spectacle of

her first visit to the circus, but today, now, it was spawned by her son, a thirteen year-old

boy, moving slickly from lamb to tiger. It must have been his look, the ripened and

spoiled guise of a smile that knows way too much. He could feel it; this was no child

smile. Felt no trace of it in his eyes. When he took her hand, she moaned, almost

inaudibly, and he felt her heartbeat grow in her fingertips. She was close to fainting;

Toby could sense it. He squeezed her hand and sent a little bend, just a fraction of what

he’d propelled onto Daisy, and watched as her eyes widened another degree and she

straightened in her chair. She came up neck first, like a dog about to retch, then shot up to

where Toby stood, dizzy and beside herself in the ocher glow of the sunroom. “Did you

feel that, Mom?” he cooed. “Did you feel it when I saved you from fainting? This is what

I can do. Feel this.” He brought up his other hand and wrapped it around his mother’s.

“Look, Mom,” he said. “Look and feel.” He flexed his mind and his mother’s hand began

to glow, at first only a shade darker than her natural skin color, like an overripe peach,

then effervescent orange, almost translucent, and finally a bright, magnificent red,

sanguine and deep hued like plasma. Her veins pulsed shoots of blue like nuclear

pipelines, and as the blood ran to and from her fingertips, scattering back up her arm

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 360

toward heart, the glow began to spread toward her elbow and then her shoulder. “Do you

see what I can do, Mom?” Toby asked, retaining his grip on her wrist with one hand but

with the other tracing the veins up her arm like a lover exploring the endless inches of his

partner’s skin. “How does it feel, Mom?”

“Wonderful.” It came in a pant. Breathless, she was breathless. “Feels,” huffing,

“feels how it looks.”

“Pretty, huh?” Toby said.

“Oh,” she said, and Toby watched the glimmer wind up her neck, tendrils of it

fingering forward like wild ivy, and begin to track up the curve of her chin to her jawline.

The entire left side of her body was blushed, pulsating like neon, the veins jutting and

throbbing with a cerulean shine. She’d had enough, for now.

He removed his hands and the light tapered off into a flushed corona around her

wrist where his hand had circled it. She fell back into the chair, winded, eyes like warm

rain. Toby watched as she felt her left wrist with her other hand, rubbing it there, and then

brought it up to the left side of her neck. She looked at Toby and there was no recognition

there, none; her eyes were vacant but pleasant, wet-looking. He’d seen her look like that

at Andon’s wedding two summers ago. Like she was lost somewhere nice. Like she was

floating.

“Mom?” Toby said. “Mom.” She looked at him and there was a hint of recall, a

widening and constricting of the pupils. Her lips were quivering. “Mom,” he said, now

cupping her chin in his hands, tilting her head up; there was still a halo, a radiance about

the skin there, somewhat like the hands of Toby’s watch when it had been out of the light

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 361

for a long time. A hint of the glimmer. Something that stuck with her. Toby smiled. “So

tell me,” he said, “do you feel raped?”

Her mouth opened, and before she could answer he turned on his heels and

walked out of the sunroom. Didn’t look back.

Goodbye, Hello

That night, he heard nothing from his parents. His mother stayed downstairs, and

presumably warmed his father’s meal (Toby had had nothing since lunch, but didn’t feel

altogether hungry) and then went to bed. Who knew?

What Toby did know was that she’d recovered from the ordeal, or at least must

have to an extent, because from time to time he heard her moving around downstairs,

talking to her father in ordinary tones; she’d either forgotten, made herself forget, or had

been so creeped out about what Toby had done to her that she’d neglected to tell his

father. It may or may not come out tomorrow, Toby thought, but that didn’t matter a bit.

This was not something Toby was willing to hide. He wanted to show the world, and if

the world didn’t want a part of it, then fuck it. Fuck the earth.

He read in bed for a while - next to Daisy, who had now gone ground-cold - and

around midnight, he mind-hoisted Daisy and floated her out his bathroom window. When

she met the ground — softly, Toby intended to perform all of this with as much respect as

possible, being that it was all on him and being that it was Daisy, his Daisy-baby - Toby

followed her, putting one leg and then the other out the window, followed by arms then

head then torso, and he was adrift in the winter night. No snow tonight; the moon shone

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 362

down like a disco ball, making glitter of Westport Sound, which, as the crow flies, was

directly south of Toby’s house. Toby took Daisy under one arm, assisting himself with

the weight with a little bend, keeping her floating a bit, and leapt his way through the

woods to the river (he couldn’t fly yet, and wasn’t able to float Daisy while he leapt; two

things at once was much harder, demanded a lot more concentration, and Toby was afraid

that if he overexerted himself he’d bleed again. He hadn’t liked the bleeding).

When he reached the river, he dipped Daisy into the water and watched her float

out with the mild current. When she was out a little bit, he bent hard - this one hurt, but it

had to be done - and watched as her tubby body burst into flames. No smoldering this

time; she ignited like brush under a fdm of propane. It was the best memorial Toby could

come up with on short notice. And yes, there were tears.

When Daisy’s flame had died out, Toby turned not back toward his house, which

was North, but to the West. To the West was the Voice. And Toby had a bone to pick.

So he walked by starlight, along the river, not leaping now, no rush to his step.

Just Toby under a thick blanket of Milky Way and all those stars. The wind was at his

back and the lapping water made pleasant company. For the first time in his life, Toby

felt exactly right.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 9

The White

Kitty

February 14, 2005

3:10 AM EST

She crouched and fawned over the healing scar in the crook of her left elbow. Ran

a long nail over the raised edge of it. The surgeon had done a good job. A tidy little

surgery. Thread and needle and no anesthetic. She hadn’t wanted it; the pain of surgery

had been her penance, a burning reminder that she’d have to do better from there on. That

she’d have to pay attention. As the surgeon had stitched and wiped at the wound with

stinging cotton swabs he had stopped occasionally, peering over his round glasses to look

at Kitty gritting her teeth and licking her lips and urging him on. Initially, he’d insisted on

anesthetic, but no, no; and she hadn’t had to bend him to convince him. She’d convinced

him with her voice and her purr and she’d paid him and then left Chicago. A straight shot

to Boston; Peter Pan, baby, fly on that bus through the midwestem night.

She’d been laying low since her last kill. Her first job once in Boston had been to

pick up a train to Providence and then hitch over to Tiverton, Rhode Island. He’d told her

in a dream where the priest was living and she’d hitched a ride (well, bent a ride, really)

and found the place empty but for a tall drink of juice named Anna. Anna had been the

363

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 364

priest’s sister. Kitty had immediately bent the hell out of her - so hard that Anna’s nose

and ears had bled, how about that? - and she’d searched her inside and out but the

woman had had no idea where her dear brother the priest was or what he was up to. She’d

said I don’t know, I don’t know, out for a ride, I swear I don’t know, please, so Kitty had

exploded her stomach from the inside out and flung her into a few walls and then floated

her into the backyard and strung the bitch up, all this while sitting pretty munching a

cookie and watching from the kitchen window. There was always time to practice,

always time to pull tighter the harness on the good old bend.

After finishing her cookie she’d been on her way to the church where the priest

had worked - St. Julie’s in a shithole called New Bedford - when He’d called to her

again, this time urgent, a dark and sweet voice in her mind that chugged and hummed like

a runaway train. He’d told her that the situation had changed, that she’d done fine and it

was best now that she find a place to hole up. So it had been out of town and to Newport,

where she’d found a nice little waterside inn with a continental breakfast. It was a

comfortable place to put her feet up, but nevertheless, it had been a boring few days.

But today was the day. It was early and she should have been sleeping hours ago,

but there was no sleep to be had; not now. Today was the day she would meet him. He’d

told her so. She was to set out around noontime, on foot (He had been adamant about

this; no trail, Kitty, he’d said. No bending till I see you. But there will be plenty after, my

pretty Kitty. All you could want) and head east to Westport. She was to go to the woods.

He would find her there. Happy fucking Valentine.

Kitty kissed her finger and touched it to the scar, then pulled down the sleeve of

her shirt. She stood up into the space of the room - a dorm-sized flat with hardwood

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 365

flooring, adorned with fake antique furniture and replicas of old nautical maps that

decked the walls like emblems - and stretched her rested bones. Part of her wanted to go

to sleep just so she could be back with Him; there hadn’t been a night that went by

recently where she didn’t dream Him. Tonight couldn’t come fast enough, not shacked up

in this Bed and Breakfast without cable or a restaurant and bar downstairs; fuck, Noon

couldn’t come fast enough either - at least at Noon she’d be on her way, working towards

something, towards Him. Another part of her wanted a job to do; at least in Apache

Springs she’d been able to busy herself with her work, collecting money (and molars) for

a purpose. But this waiting. It was sweltering, painful.

She got in the shower, running it hot, and let the steam permeate her. Sat there for

a while on the mint-colored tiles and listened to the water run off her aching skin and

bubble down the drain. Feeling herself begin to drift, she stood back up and started to

wash - she had a hike ahead of her, a pretty decent one, and though she could run now

for as long as she cared to without breaking a sweat, she figured that traipsing through

those snowy woods would get her pretty dirty. The least she could do in preparation of

meeting the Man was run some shampoo through her hair. And it was something to do.

She was rinsing out the suds when she heard the knocking. It was muted enough

that at first she thought it was a neighboring room, maybe a couple of drunks getting

frisky and neverminding the headboards banging against the wall. For a moment, she was

even a little incensed at this - after all, 3:30 in the morning was 3:30 in the morning - and

thought that after the shower she’d pay a visit to her neighbors, maybe see what all the

noise was about, see what she could do to convince them to be a little more quiet. But as

she turned off the water and stepped into the cool air of the bathroom, she realized that

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 366

the knocking was coming from her door. She smiled - company! - and, without drying

off or finding a towel with which to cover up, walked to the door and opened it.

It was a guy in a suit, oafish looking with a big brown coat and an unknotted tie.

Lines on his face, a sour look like three was something better going on somewhere and he

knew about it. He was flanked by a handful of policemen, pressed uniforms and creased

pants and glocks holstered at hips. One of them was murmuring into a radio fixed to his

shoulder, head turned to one side, mouth pursed in a delicate whisper; but when he got an

eyeful of Kitty, smiling naked at the mouth of the door, his hand fell from the radio and

his eyes shot open. Mr. Suit, meanwhile, looked unimpressed.

“Kellan Caulfield?” said the Suit.

Kitty opened her mouth and shut it. A flash of nausea shot through her, and for a

moment she felt as if she were going to pass out; it had been a long time - forever - since

she had heard that name. She wanted to tell the man with the suit - Peters, his name is

Peters - that no, she wasn’t Kellan Caulfield, that there in fact was no such person as

Kellan Caulfield, never had been. But there had been, hadn’t there? Little prissy Miss

Caulfield of Pueblo, Colorado, co-captain of the Pueblo high school Pom team, three-

year girlfriend of one Mr. Michael Lynch, loving daughter and Georgetown hopeful - a

boring case if there ever were one, a real sucker. She shut her eyes and pushed the

thoughts away, and when she opened her eyes, said, ‘Wo,” then extended a lovely long

silky arm and found with her fingers Peters’ throat and began to squeeze; her peripheral

vision briefly registered the closest cops going for their nightsticks and she bobbed as one

made a pass at her, throwing her weight across the threshold of the door, feeling Peters’

substantial frame buckle and all at once lose structural integrity - what before had been a

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 367

an animated and quivering sack of struggle, like the feel of a hardheaded horse between

your thighs as you try to whisper it down, was now only a sack, a vessel of dead-to-the-

world mass that shadowed the range of Kitty’s outstretched arm when she moved her

own body. The weight of him seemed to be on a half-second delay, dragging behind his

body as she moved to avoid the windswept barrage of nightsticks. She realized that it

would only be a few seconds until a gun was brought out - they would realize that she’d

broken Peters’ neck and then most certainly would draw - so she maneuvered her wrist

and, hearing the definitive crack of Peters’ neck splitting into fragments, dropped his

body. She ducked back into the darkness of her room, bending shut the door behind her.

The faces it closed upon were almost humorous, expressionless and worried ovals drawn

of color, hung jaws like invalids. Really, she could have laughed.

Naked and dripping from the shower, she moved back from the door and allowed

herself to crouch. There had been five of them in addition to Peters. She wasn’t scared,

but her mind went back to Angelface, the beautiful and stupid cop in Apache Springs

who’d gotten a shot off at her. Five of them now. Five. She couldn’t bend five at once.

But she was low to the ground now, and the door’s frame wasn’t too wide. They’d come

in one, two at a time at the most, and that she could handle. No problem.

She waited, not breathing; hands touching the floor as if she were about to spring,

mouth closed and deliberate, teeth bit down on themselves, jawbone protruding both

sides of her cheeks hard and knobbed: ready. It was quiet for a few moments on the other

side of the door, then there was a scream - a real scream, shrill, piercing the quiet of the

inn, a horror movie scream - and then the crackle of a radio and one of them shouting

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 368

something about Apache Springs and requesting backup and then uttering Peters’ name in

a horrified, lamenting sob. Then the door flew open.

They came in all at once, arms stiff and quivering under their uniforms with guns

drawn and aimed at the window above Kitty. It happened very fast. Kitty bent the guy in

front and watched him bend his elbow and fix the gun under his chin then fire. His chin

and jaw evaporated and he fell in a heap. The men behind him paused, the front few with

their guns down now and gray stuff spackled across their uniforms; Kitty stopped two of

their hearts successively, a little bend for each, and watched them drop. There were four

left; she had miscounted. The men were mostly silent. Their breathing was hard, rough;

like love-breathing, fuck-breathing, only slower, shallower. It raped her ears and she

winced, tried to filter it out. She closed her eyes and brought another of them down

(stopping his heart - it was easy, and fast, and a part of Kitty just glowed at the way she

was handling all of this, so cool, like a sniper, crouched and prone but unflappable,

serene, almost, as she knelt and picked off cops one after another in the small room of the

inn). Eyes were opening wider now and they had found her in the darkness, glocks raised

again; three guns fixed on her now. She brought one down and then another, watching

their bodies jerk and crumple like tents collapsing in a strong wind, and she was moving

her eyes to the last cop - she had him, she was right there; a millisecond sooner and he’d

have been down like the others strewn prostrate and bulky across the carpet; but no. He

got off a shot, his face frozen and his finger working the trigger - Kitty saw all of this as

if she were watching it from somewhere above - and as she felt the slug of the first shot

rip through her shoulder and was jerked back from the impact she saw his finger move

again on the trigger. Somewhere she registered the report from the first shot - bullets

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 369

faster than sound, Kitty, well well - and immediately felt the next shot slam into her

chest. A warmth spread across her right breast and she fell against the back wall, a few

feet back from where she’d been crouched. She brought a hand to her breast and it came

back soaked. She looked up. The cop had lowered his gun and was talking into his radio

with numbed lips, the glock dangling by his hip from a long fingered hand. He put the

radio down and took a knee by a few of his fallen colleagues. Looked up at Kitty and

then back at the dead cops.

There was no pain, not yet; just a warmth. When the second slug hit her, Kitty had

felt a kind of whooshing crumple in her chest. She’d fallen off of her bike once when she

was a child - it had been her first time without training wheels, and she’d always blamed

her father (no I have no father), who had been jogging behind her and spitting staccato

encouragement - and, hitting the pavement hard on her back, for a few moments had lost

her breath. It had felt as if her lungs had been completely flat, useless; and for a few

moments after being shot, it was an exact echo of that feeling. There had been no worry

about the bullet, about the horrible amount of blood; her only thought had been to

breathe. She’d even considered bending herself, picturing her lung and inflating it, but

had then thought back to when her father (I have no father, no, I am parentless, a true

child o f the earth, I have risen from the earth) had told her about the phenomenon. I t ’s

not that your lungs are flat, silly, he had said that night at dinner (when she’d been able to

laugh about it, after she’d forgiven him). I t ’s only a spasm. I t’s the diaphragm. So Kitty

had decided that, no, it probably wasn’t a good idea in this particular circumstance to try

to bend one of her lungs back into shape. A pretty bad idea, really.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 370

Regardless, though, it was probable that the bullet had hit one of her lungs.

Gasping for breath, sucking and heaving, she moved herself up a bit against the hard

surface of the wall, just inching so not to disturb the wound. Keeping one eye on the cop

- still dazed, still groveling over his downed comrades - she tried a look at the wound.

No good. It was lost in a grand swatch of blood.

She inched up a little more and stopped when a fresh volume of blood bubbled

out of her chest. She was going to have to take care of this herself. Her breath was

coming back in fragments, but she was beginning to feel pretty lightheaded now, so to

steady herself she pressed a finger into the wound on her shoulder - she didn’t want to

fuck with the one on her chest, felt that to play with it may further any damage there into

irrevocability - and doing so, even as the pain tore across her shoulder and up her neck to

her head, she realized that she’d only been skimmed there. It felt as if portion of flesh

was missing from her right shoulder, but there was no hole there - or none that she could

feel. Her hand came back with fresh blood, though, so, gripping one thigh with her hand

and pinching - a pathetic attempt to distract from the pain, but what the hell - she

pictured a hot iron pressing into the wound on her shoulder. The pain was magnificent,

momentarily erasing the growing agony in her chest. She could smell herself burning, the

searing of her flesh like compost in her nostrils. She felt her lungs finally open and she let

out a riotous scream.

The cop looked up from the massacre and began to walk over, raising his gun. His

face had become sullen, and when he was close enough to Kitty he spat on her. The

phlegm reached her chest and mingled with the blood. He looked at her and his face

became hungry, feral; when his eyes rolled over her waist he stopped, and Kitty realized,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 371

with a coyness she’d have not imagined, that her legs were sprawled open across the

carpet.

Forgetting the seeping wound under her breast and feeling a hot tide of anger

swarm over her, she locked her eyes on the cop’s knees and broke them. He collapsed in

a bundle nears Peters’ broken form. He rolled on his side and extended the arm with the

gun, but Kitty was faster than him; his wrist snapped backwards and split off from his

arm, tendons tearing and blood spilling over, copious and thick. The hand still gripped

the gun and hung from his arm by an amount of tenuous skin.

He began to scream, mouthing words that at the moment were incomprehensible

to Kitty, blubbering and holding up the mangled arm like a torch. Slowly, Kitty conjured

up a nice bend on the cop’s neck, starting at the left side and working her way right. She

watched as his neck began to tear, a little at a time, in a sawing motion. His screams

amplified and, temporarily forgetting the mutilated stump of his left hand, he brought it

up to his neck as if to stop its slow separation. The jagged stump of his wrist pawed at the

neck, unzipping now from his head and squirting unnamable fluids from whitish-pink to

dark crimson. Keep it slow, Kitty, she said to herself, keep it slow and make it last,

because this could be your last. The cops eyes trembled in their sockets, wide and terror-

stricken, crossed a bit and edging toward the bridge of his nose as if he were trying to

sneak a peek at what was going on down around his throat. Kitty smiled despite her

agony. Her returned breath was coming uneven and painful, each inhalation like a blast of

hot liquid to her insides, an unnerving compression from her stomach up to her throat;

this was no flesh wound. The bullet was in there and it had done damage. She coughed

and felt the familiar taste of blood spill over her lips and run down her chin.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 372

When the separation of Mr. Policeman’s head was halfway complete - as it

reached his Adams apple and pinched it brusquely down as if it were a pebble in the way

of some landscaper’s rake - his screams gained an airy quality, wheezy, like the harsh

laugh of a longtime smoker. For a moment his voice amplified, its pitch cracking like an

eager kid at the peak of a particularly harsh puberty, and as it ranged higher and higher,

jumping octaves all flats and sharps and queasy arpeggios, it became a whistle and then a

squeal, like a swine starving. Blood everywhere now, too much to tell exactly where his

neck was connected or separated from his head, but no worry; Kitty kept right on ripping,

slow and easy. The squealing stopped after a bit and his hand fell back down and then the

head rose from his body, which fell in a neat stack atop Peters. The head remained in the

air for a moment, its eyes ample and frozen in that funny crossed gesture, its mouth a

bloody and toothy grin; floating in the room and slave to Kitty’s bend. She let it drop,

then allowed herself to rest against the wall.

Radios crackled and squawked amidst the mess of dead cops. The words were lost

to Kitty - she felt drained, uncharacteristically and amazingly tired from the last series of

bends - and she let the sound of the radios work through her ears without paying them

much heed. Their continuing chatter meant only one thing, anyway: more cops were

coming. And for the moment, Kitty was unprepared for them. She admitted this to herself

as a cynical employee may take the news of a layoff; grudgingly, but with a certain

degree of sobriety. I’ll probably die anyway, she told herself, but not at the hands of more

of those blue boys. No way.

She laid her palms flat on the floor and locked her elbows. She’d edged halfway

up the wall when something let loose in her chest; there was a pop, an audible one, and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 373

the blood that had been flowing from her wound doubled in intensity, spilling out in what

looked like gallons, soaking her to her feet and meeting the carpet beneath her. She felt

the carpet beneath her feet and it was wet, tremendously so, and she gasped at the thought

that her body had lost enough blood to literally soak the floor; a sudden stabbing pain

emerged from her neck and traveled up to the back of her head and her knees buckled.

She met the floor with her elbows and the pain was there but not significant, not of any

worry, not comparatively, because something had protmded from the gash under her

breast - she’d caught a glimpse of it on the way down, a white gristle-sheathed knob that

looked suspiciously like a rib - and though it had ducked back within her chest when her

ass had found the floor, she felt it floating around in there, scraping god knows what with

one jagged tip, ready to emerge again pending any substantial movement.

So, laying a hand across the opening beneath her breast, she again pictured the hot

iron and felt the bum sweep across her torso, smelled the singing of flesh and the crackle

of fire beneath her bloodied palm; she opened her mouth to scream but her breath was

gone again. When she removed her palm her breast fell onto her ribs; she could feel the

scarred skin there, rough and hot against the underside of her breast.

The pain was incredible, but the blood had stopped. It was a temporary solution at

best, but it would have to do. She would not, not, be here when Peters and company’s

backup came.

She lifted herself again, moving against the wall for support, and when the pain

hit her this time it was a black cloud against her vision. The dislodged rib poked at what

felt like her stomach, because that’s where the pain had now centered, just below her

sternum. Reaching blindly for something with which to steady herself, she laid a hand

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 374

across her stomach and retched, feeling more blood spill out and over her lips. She laid an

elbow against the wall with her free arm and concentrated everything she had on her

stomach, her ribs, her chest; her mental picture now was a bottle of whisky, if for no

other reason than because she’d seen this done in the old civil war movies her father had

liked to watch, the ones where the doctors would wash a wound with the brownish liquor

and give the patient a few slugs before amputating a limb or removing an exceptionally

deep bullet. But as she imagined bathing her body, inside and out, with the whisky, a

warmness crept over her and then she began to numb up - well this was a hell of a trick -

and soon she was standing erect, still feeling the nudge of the floating rib but no longer

hampered by it - currently disconcertion would have to suffice, because now that she

could hear again, now that the pain had taken a sidestep and allowed her other senses to

resume their normal functions, she could hear the wail of the sirens as if they shared the

room with her. A few people stumbled sleepily past the door to the room, not noticing the

massacre within on account of the confused rush of sounds and the flashing lights of

sirens outside; but it would be minutes, seconds, until someone did take notice, until

someone saw a ghost of a woman painted with fresh blood, naked and dripping, a hand to

her rib with ruby warrior’s eyes shining out from the darkness of the shadowed room; so

Kitty turned and opened the window and, sticking out first her head and then following

with her mangled body, climbed to the ledged that ran the length of the inn.

Hers was a third floor room, and for Kitty it would have been an easy enough

jump, but the notion of her rib upon impact making its final slip north or south and

puncturing a lung or the lining of her stomach made her pause. She stole a glance back

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 375

into the room, saw a few more people creep past the open door, then closed her eyes and

jumped.

The wind against her body as she fell, brief as it was, allowed her a kind of

potency, a vitality that was echoed when her feet found ground and, like a cat, like a

Kitty, she balanced perfectly the landing and used her momentum to spring up from the

cold earth and run. The rib nudged and pressed but remained reasonably rigid, and the

numbness she’d lent herself by picturing the whisky conjured a sense of security, a sense

of everything-is-going-to-work-out-in-the-end, that she went with. As her legs worked

against the snowtouched ground, sailing over and only skimming the surface as if she

were a speed skater approaching the final turn, a feeling of well being swarmed over her

and burst at one potent and augmented thought: I ’m going to see him. She leaped a patch

of withered garden, banked a hard left along a woodplanked fence, and turned north when

she reached the rocky shore of Narragansett Bay.

It was now; she was carving her final line, and it was a straight one, straight and

long and pointed at the Dark Man. To the woods, she thought, running naked along the

Rhode Island shore to skirt the cops (who, when she allowed herself a backwards glance,

seemed to be setting up a point of attack, cordoning off the inn’s entrances and first floor

windows but certainly not heeding the second or third story windows, no, why would

they do that? What purpose would that serve? Kitty whistled through her teeth and kept

running).

Like a punch in the throat, it hit her suddenly that she had left her things - her

clothes, the molars, the fucking cash - at the inn. The money. He had been very specific

about the money, had said that once they met that they’d need it. And she’d left it in the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 376

closet, sealed up in the duffle bag like a forgotten pair of sweats. Fuck. He would not be

happy; the money had been her chief objective. What kept her running, though - what

kept her headed North to the highway and whatever landscape lay beyond - was the idea,

inherent in her, pulsing like a second heartbeat, that the money had not been her only

purpose. That he’d needed her for something else - and that wasn’t all; there was an idea

that it wasn’t necessarily that he needed her. It was that he wanted her. So she pumped

her arms, never flinching as if to turn around (because to turn around and attempt to

snatch back that money would be to catch a bullet - to catch bullets - as little lead

brothers and sisters to the one lodged under her right ribcage) and, trying her damndest,

really putting her mind to it, to ignore the throb of the shifting rib that poked and prodded

at the inside of her scorched skin, Kitty ran, ran, ran.

She came to the highway overpass and, abandoning the rocky shore of the beach,

scaled the steep grade of grass-patched dirt toward route 17. She dug her heels into the

snow and mud and clawed tufts of dead grass from the earth, watching the twin vents of

steam puff from her nostrils; bearlike scrambling up that hill, frantic, as if she were

running from something, not toward. At the top of the hill she crept east, sticking to the

guardrail and keeping low, naked bottom now and then touching the snow - it was a good

feeling, the cool of the snow, a small distraction from the unnerving situations unfolding

within her battered torso and her rushing mind. But with the relief of the snow on her skin

came also the knowledge that somehow her weakened condition had returned to her her

senses; the fact that she could feel cold, that she was no longer impervious to it, worried

her. Her vision had also taken a hit, apparently; she found herself, for the first time in

months, squinting in the darkness to make out objects, bothered by the canescent flood of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 377

approaching headlights and stumbling now and then over a rock or root that had gone

inexplicably unseen. It seemed that her body, this system that had been so honed, so well

put together, was set in overdrive now, and, as when a particularly powerful piece of

machinery runs too hard for too long, the peripheral lights of Kitty’s body were now

flashing in and out of working order. She wondered how long it would be until the fuses

popped. Shit. Someone without her talents would probably already be dead.

She waited - feeling the weakness of her breath, the air a little too cold on the

way in and more than a little too hot on the way out - until there was only one car

approaching eastward on route 17. It moved closer, headlights expanding and

illuminating the orange highway markers - smiling, allowing herself a brief moment of

smugness, Kitty wondered what it looked like when those headlights hit her eyes, what

strange luminance the driver would notice before she invaded his brain and took him for

a ride - and when it was in range Kitty bent the driver, and the car - a minivan - came to

a squealing stop, fishtailing in the snow and ending up half on the embankment and half

on the highway’s icy pavement. Kitty moved across the front of the van, headlights

lighting her skin and exposing injuries and dried blood cracking and shearing off like

peeling paint. She watched her shadow on the blacktop and enjoyed the way it moved;

the shadow was all Kitty, so pure and unhindered; the shadow was what she was in her

mind, just a black wisp of nothing that could slip in and out of daylight and night alike;

but in some form, always there, inextinguishable. It was nice, a sweet feeling, and Kitty

smiled and did not feel the gash at her side or on her shoulder.

She opened the door of the van and saw a woman there, looking across the

passenger seat at Kitty, eyes swollen and rimmed with purplish circles, as if she’d been

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 378

crying something fierce; Kitty searched and the woman’s name was Carla, and in the

flash of feeling Kitty received from her she learned that Carla was on the run too, driving

away from something vicious and frightening and dangerous. Ironic, Kitty thought. Look

what she ran into. She stepped up and into the van and Carla hit the gas.

Kitty looked over. “Got any cigarettes, Carla?” she asked.

Keeping one hand on the wheel, Carla reached into the darkness below her seat

and came up with an imitation leather purse. She fumbled through it and produced a pack

of cigarettes and a book of matches, both which she handed over to Kitty. “Thanks,”

Kitty said, striking a match and watching its flame grow and recede as she inhaled the hot

smoke. The feeling as she exhaled was wonderful, swimmy in her head like she’d gotten

up too fast. A warmth spread across her body and she leaned back in the seat, closing her

eyes and taking another drag from the cigarette. The warmth increased a bit and Kitty

wondered briefly it was internal bleeding, if by taking a lungful of smoke she’d somehow

worsened the situation for herself. “Fuck it,” she said, pulling out the ashtray set below

the radio and rolling up her window (cold in here, getting a little cold, she thought, that’s

n ot good none of this is good but fuck it fuck it fuck it I’m on my way I’ll make it to the

woods to Him I have to it’s in the stars).

“So Carla,” Kitty said, brushing from her leg an ash that had fallen from the tip of

the cigarette, “do you know the way to Westport?”

“Uh huh,” Carla mumbled, eyes glazed, hands at ten and two on the wheel, sitting

erect and working her jaw like she were sleeping and mid-nightmare. She mumbled

something else about her cousin living in Westport, and Kitty smiled; it was funny how

people were when they were bent. So raw, so unconcerned. And in a way, people seemed

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 379

happy when Kitty bent them. Like something had been released from them. All these

burdened people just walking around without aim, and the bend gave them that aim, that

resolve, and it came smooth and without strings and it just lifted them out of that muck

that was their life and into the clear blue of unpolluted functionality. Take Carla: this

woman had obviously been at her wit’s end. A box of tissues was propped in the van’s

middle console, angled so it was in easy reach of Carla’s right hand. A multitude of

scattered tissues strewn across the floor. Her puffy eyes, cheeks high colored and

smeared makeup. Here was a woman, early- to mid-thirties, probably, dressed moderately

well, driving - in a minivan, for Christ’s sake - down highway 17 at four fifteen in the

morning. She’d been driving from something fast and determined - Kitty didn’t bother to

search any deeper and find out what it was, because she didn’t really care - and now look

at her: serene and complacent and dried of tears and coasting along with the hint of a

smile - an idiot’s smile, sure, a little drool there on the chin and a sheepish look about the

lips - but a smile nonetheless. Kitty blew a puff of smoke in her face and Carla winced,

that smile turning down momentarily, but the grin returned quickly. See? Nothing could

bother you when in the bend. Nothing was that big a deal.

Kitty was startled out of her reverie when from the back seat there was a squeal

and then a cough, small sounding, just a chirp, really, but nonetheless enough to make her

drop her cigarette. The smoldering butt touched her knee and fell to the floor. Kitty

turned in her seat and staring back at her from a child seat was an infant, couldn’t have

been more than a year old, dressed in little pink sweatpants and a yellow sweater. Her

cheeks were blushed like her mother’s and her lips were pursed in a curdled little pucker;

next to her, on the felted seat, was a pacifier. The baby reached for it, pleading with her

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 380

eyes at Kitty and opening her mouth to cry. “No, don’t do that,” Kitty said, not feeling

tender at all but really just not wanting to hear it. She reached back and replaced the

pacifier in the child’s mouth.

And here was another indication that Kitty was far from on top of her game. For

three minutes - more, maybe - Kitty had been cruising along with stupid grinning Carla

and, letting herself (finally) relax, had not noticed, felt, sensed, that there was another

living body sitting not three feet behind her. Toddler or not, Kitty should have picked it

up. She was slipping, she was hurt, hurt bad, and whatever it was that He had planned for

her when they met - Christ, how far away it still seemed, a day away almost, and it

would be a cold stretch of hours in those woods waiting for Him.. .Kitty had an idea that

He’d want to be on the move as soon as they found each other, and she wasn’t sure she’d

be able to do it. But maybe he’d be able to help her. Suck from her breast that bullet and

kiss her skin back to whole.

She watched the road for a while, fragmented white lines slipping by and the

silhouette of trees hanging like gargoyles over the two-lane highway, and when she felt

herself begin to drift - not with sleep, but with a fluttering of consciousness like the night

was working into her eyelids through osmosis - she rolled down the window and let the

cold air move over her face and body; and when that didn’t work, when her vision

continued its slow and steady movement to black, she stuck a thumb into the wound on

her shoulder. The cut opened up again and she felt the blood begin its delicate trickle

down her arm, but it worked; the pain brought her back well enough, and soon she was

thinking about her impending hike and smoking another cigarette (keeping the window

down this time, you could never be too cautious; she hadn’t forgotten the episode with

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 381

Gus, and she didn’t think that her body could withstand a 70 mph accident if she nodded

off and Carla’s mind fell apart while she was at the wheel).

When the baby began to cry again, Kitty told herself that she’d give it one more

chance, and turning and picking up the discarded pacifier, she said, “Quiet now. If you’re

not quiet, I’ll kill you.” She stuck the pacifier in its mouth and turned to Carla. “Hey,”

she said, placing a hand on her shoulder and registering the faint wince it caused on the

woman’s otherwise even mouth, “make sure your baby is quiet from now on, or I’ll kill

it.” Carla nodded, and her face suggested no indication of the tremor of feeling Kitty felt

as mother stuck an arm in the backseat and caressed infant’s tiny leg; it was a hot rush,

like air expelled from a furnace, feverish and instantaneous and, though fleeting (didn’t

last more than a second), it came close - too close - to breaking the bend. For an instant,

Kitty felt her hold on Carla slip, and no, it didn’t come across in Carla’s face, but it was

there, plain as the night around them; it was a crackling in Kitty head like a radio going to

static when you drive under a tunnel. There and then gone and then there again. Carla

brought her hand back from her baby and replaced it on the steering wheel. She drove on.

A few minutes later the baby let out a squeal, surprisingly low-pitched and harsh,

as if it were sick with a cold, and the second that the sound reached Kitty’s ears she

stopped the child’s heart. Not a sound from Carla, not a break in the bend. The poor bitch

probably didn’t even realize anything had happened. The rest of the ride was silent.

When they crossed into Westport, the first hint of light was breaking in the east,

dimming the stars and swabbing shocks of scarlet low across the horizon. For a while

Kitty watched fields slide by in the quiet darkness, and when the fields gave way finally

to forest, she told Carla to stop. They pulled onto the shoulder and Kitty got out, feeling

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 382

the stiffness that had settled into her limbs. Her ribs had begun to pull at her again, and

the feeling of numbness was starting to fade; knowing better but disregarding her instinct,

Kitty raised her hands over her head and stretched, feeling the bad rib rub against the

wound - not painful, not now, but far too from a pleasant feeling - and when she let her

arms down, she said, “Carla, out. Come here.”

Carla stepped from the van and circled around its humming hood. She faced Kitty

with a kind of reverence, head bent down and her hands locked at her stomach. “Give me

your clothes,” Kitty said, and Carla began to disrobe. She handed Kitty her jacket and

then her shirt, and was unfastening her bra when Kitty told her that she could keep it. It

was too big for Kitty - it looked like Carla was still nursing, her breasts so swollen that it

looked painful - and anyway, Kitty saw no sense in takingall of the woman’s clothes.

Hell, if it hadn’t been for her weakened condition, Kitty would gladly have run through

those woods as she was, letting the pine needles tickle her skin and the winter breeze

eddy around her naked skin; but the fact was, she was cold now. It was a hard fact to

accept, but it was there in the raised skin along her forearms, the quickened pulse in her

throat; she was dying. Not soon - she’d meet Him, she knew that as well as she knew the

sun would rise - but unless he was able to help her, she wasn’t sure how long she’d be

around to return all of his miraculous favors. So Kitty left Carla in her underwear and

told her to get lost. And if she took this piece of advice literally, so be it; Carla had

probably staked out initially to do just that.

It was pushing 5:30 and the air was beginning to grow heavy when Kitty took off

into the woods. Through the tops of the trees, the sky was a leaden gray, the sunrise’s

first light already smothered under a shroud of early morning clouds. The ceiling was

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 383

close and the air felt wet in Kitty’s burning lungs. It looked like snow. She moved

through the woods, one hand bracing her chest, and waited for Him to talk to her, to tell

her which way to go. Until then she would push forward.

Mr. Delacroix

10:45 AM

They said that it would be a longer time than normal before the wake and the

funeral happened. They said it would take a longer time than normal to fix her. They put

it delicately and spoke softly and slowly and paused between sentences and he said

nothing and they said that the extent of the injuries Anna had sustained required slightly

more intricate procedures to repair. They said that there could definitely be a viewing but

it would take an extra day, two at the very most. They said these things and he listened

and he said nothing.

With a mind not altogether operational he navigated twisting Westport roads. It

had been Anna’s car, and now it was his. He thought out loud, thinking and then saying,

I ’m driving my dead sister’s car. He also said, Here I go. Here I go again. Snow sifted

along the hood, up and over the windshield.

He was calmer, more at home than he had been since he’d come stateside. The

irony of this didn’t miss him, and it would have been enough to cry about had he not been

focused entirely on finding that fucking boy. Lucien had become obsessed since he’d

returned to Anna’s and talked to the police the day before; he couldn’t remember being

more concentrated on one thing since he’d been in middle school and had solicited daily

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 384

his parents to buy him a seven-gear mountain bike. He had gotten that bike and now he

was going to find Toby. It was no longer something pliable and dim in his mind, like the

inclination to take an extra helping of desert or, say, leave your parish and decamp to the

Virgin Islands. It was firm, a sharp rock in his mind.

I am driving my dead sister’s car.

He pushed down the accelerator and felt the sandy thrum of the engine. It was a

little car, Japanese made - a rice runner, his father would have called it - and it skidded

through the snow like a new calf walking, all hectic movements and fishtails and

spinning tires. He bit his cigarette and checked the address he’d scrawled on a Wendy’s

receipt and pushed the accelerator further down.

Early that morning, he’d left a message for Mila. It had been relatively short,

admittedly ominous. He’d started with a bleak Happy Valentine, Mila and then had got

right to it. He worried now, driving, that he’d suggested implicitly that he’d been

considering suicide. He barely remembered the message he’d left, but he knew that he’d

uttered these horrible cliches, like what really matters? and don’t really care about

anything at this point and the always self important I just want you to know that no

matter what happens I love you. The truth was, suicide had never been on his mind; what

had spawned these sentiments - and he’d given this some thought - was the feeling that

his life’s wick had shortened exponentially since he’d stepped off the 747 and onto

American stateside soil. His talk with Horace along with Anna’s death had compounded

this hunch (he knew now that he’d had it all along), had affirmed the intuition that he was

now neck deep in some real shit. And here he was, doing 70 on notorious Westport

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 385

backroads in the middle of what your average local would infallibly refer to as a ‘nor-

easta. But fuck it. He was going to meet Toby.

He rounded a turn and knew the house before he even checked the address. It was

a wide, pretty house set back from the road, with shingles and brick and a half-circle

gravel driveway. White trim, two-car garage. Smoke curling out from the chimney. As

Lucien coasted into the driveway, he saw a black flash of a small animal - a dog,

probably - duck around the comer of the house and wink out of sight. There was no way

to tell how he knew this was the house, but he did; it was a feeling in his gut and in his

teeth, similar to the feeling he’d had when he’d first met Mila. A full-body flush, a

tingling like he’d won some unexpected contest or surprised himself with an apt and

profound reflection. He flipped off the ignition, and leaving the keys in the car - a

geographical luxury he relished despite his poor mood - stepped into the winter air.

He slammed shut the door and listened to it reverberate in the surrounding trees.

A lot of empty space out here, some beautiful country. A nice place to grow up. He

wondered how Toby considered it all.

He turned to the house and then paused. On the passenger seat was an old tee shirt

that he’d picked out of one of the boxes by his bed before he’d left that morning. Under

this shirt was the knife that Horace had given him. He wanted to not need that knife, and

most of him genuinely believed that he wouldn’t - but there was another part of him that

trusted Horace so unfailingly that he itched a little to lean into the car and take the blade,

tuck it under his shirt and have it ready.

And ready for what, Lucien? So you can plunge it into that boy’s heart? Because

Horace said that he was the anti-Christ?

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 386

Lucien blinked. Horace was old, and very sick, and when he’d told him those

things his veins had been full of adrenaline - it was still hard for Lucien to get his mind

around that fact, that the old Priest had somehow convinced that woman to give him

adrenaline, adrenaline, for the love of God! - and Lucien was having difficulty resigning

himself to Horace’s words. But somehow, not quite enough difficulty to leave the knife at

home. Not enough difficulty that he hadn’t taken it wherever he went since last evening,

kept it on his person or resting on the car seat next to him like some bleak passenger.

Yes, Horace had been sick, and to take such words to heart from a dying man -

words which if carried out would almost certainly incriminate him, not to mention defile

his soul beyond redemption - would be far from sensible. But there had been such clarity

in Horace’s eyes as he’d spoken, and apart from his advice regarding Toby, Lucien

believed the man when he told him what he’d done in 1965. And undoubtedly the Church

had believed that the killing of the Fellini boy had been necessary for the continued

existence of Christianity... and that was where things got dim, blinked out of the realm of

relative practicality and into that of blind faith. And the fact was, Lucien just wasn’t sure

that he could close his eyes that hard for that long. Hell, he may not have even been

capable of a blink.

He pushed the thoughts away and, leaving the knife behind, turned and walked to

the house. He rang the doorbell and then knocked on the door, his mind swimming; he

felt unprepared to meet Toby after all this time. He hoped someone else would answer the

door, someone to buffer him gently into the boy’s presence. But there was only silence,

and Lucien felt a swarm of relief fall over him. The fact that it was a school day, and that

Toby was probably at school, had not registered; on account of the incidents of the last

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 387

few days, Lucien had figured that the boy would definitely be home, that it would be

nothing more than a firm dose of serendipity; he’d be waiting somewhere close to the

door for Lucien’s presentation, possibly reading a comic book or eating his lunch and

watching daytime television. This is how Lucien pictured Toby: a child, and nothing

more. A child with childlike interests, a boy with grand ambitions for his future and

fantasies of the girls in his class, a boy who would cast down his eyes and only half listen

when spoken to by an adult, a twitching, eager, rambunctious kid. Average. Not the

antichrist. Lucien rang the doorbell and rapped again at the door, hard enough that it

shook on its hinges, and still there was nothing. No response, no Toby.

He waited another moment, looking into the house the blurred glass set in the

heavy door, then walked down the steps and around the flanking bushes to the garage.

The glass there was dark, but when he pressed his face to it he was able to see in. The

garage was empty, but for some bicycles - three of them, one of them slightly larger than

the other two - this would have been dad’s. So Toby was not at home and he wasn’t off

somewhere on his bike; this meant that he was probably at school (because where did

children go without their bicycles? Nowhere, that’s where).

He was flipping up the hood of his sweatshirt and mentally mapping out a route to

Westport Middle School when a dark green Mercedes rolled into the driveway. Gravel

sang throaty and hostile under its tires. Lucien froze as the car approached, tried to

muster a reasonable expression and overshot it; when a man emerged from the car,

Lucien felt his too-wide grin and his squinted eyes with a mixture of self-consciousness

and guilt. The man walked toward him, squinting at Lucien and then nodding as if he

recognized him, and Lucien felt the enormity of the woods around him, the dizzy and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 388

white span of space of the cornfield across the street. He shoved his hands in his pockets

and tried to tame his smile.

The man, presumably Toby’s father - Mr. Shepard - was stocky and moved with

a kind of neandrathalic grace, arms jutting out in front of him as if his hands were wet

and he wanted to keep them away from his clothes. Olive green corduroys and a worn

L.L. Bean parka with the collar flipped up. A patchwork beard with more than a little

gray. Nice smile but bad teeth. In one hand he held a cigar, just the butt of it, and Lucien

watched the ash flare red as the wind picked up. The man stuck the cigar in his mouth,

puffed at it and shoved his hands in his pockets. He stood there looking at Lucien for a

moment before he spoke.

“Who are you?” he said, talking around his cigar, the smoke curling from the side

of his mouth like groundfog.

“Lucien Delacroix, pleasure meeting you.” Lucien moved toward the man and

stuck out his hand. The man accepted it leisurely enough and introduced himself as Phil

Shepard. Toby’s father. His skin was tough and tan for the wintertime, his salted hair

uncombed and feathery in the wind. Protruding from his pants like the pontoons of a

reliable old watercraft were a pair of white sneakers, loosely laced and old. He stood with

his hands in his pockets and his chest out a bit, as if he were in a constant state of

surveying a great expanse of land. Looking at him, Lucien immediately liked him.

Wondered momentarily if a guy with the forthcoming confliction of beat up tennis shoes

and a brand new Mercedes really have made up half the equation in spawning the

antichrist.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 389

Realizing that he was staring, Lucien looked at his feet and wondered how this all

must look to Phil Shepard. Here you are, coming home - from where? Work, maybe, or

from a meeting? The Mercedes and the house and the land told Lucien that Mr. Shepard

was some kind of professional, probably one who dictated his own hours - to find a

bearded man with wild eyes under the hood of a frayed sweatshirt, looking in equal parts

over his shoulder and into your garage. Lucien’s stomach turned, and he realized that he

hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday afternoon. He was starving. What a time to be

hungry.

“Well,” came Shepard’s voice, garbled from the cigar still wedged into one side

of his mouth, “nice to meet you, Lucien. That’s a good French name. Delacroix. You a

holy man?” He was making a joke, but Lucien looked at him and nodded.

“Was.”

“Yeah, all of us were.” His look darkened a bit. He removed the cigar from his

mouth. “You a friend of Jane’s?”

Here was Lucien’s buffer, a charming old man in a winter coat with palpable New

England sensibilities - it was apparent, the good-heartedness of Phil Shepard; it was in

the gentle inflection of his voice and the slight wetness of his eyes - and Lucien found

that he had nothing to say. He hadn’t prepared for this conversation. So he came out with

it. “Actually, I’m here for Toby. Your son.”

Shepard jerked back as if struck. “What?” Stammering. He had dropped his cigar.

“Are you police?”

“No, no. Why? What do you mean?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 390

“Who are you?” said Shepard, eyes soft no longer; bright and weary now, like

desolate planets. It occurred to Lucien how this probably looked; here he was, alone and

haggard, and on a school day, looking for Phil Shepard’s son. A hooded sweatshirt under

a dark jacket. Bloodshot eyes, probably, and rings purple and sharp receding from the

bridge of his nose. The sun ducked behind the clouds and Lucien spoke.

“I think Toby’s in trouble,” Lucien said. This did nothing to soften Shepard’s

look. “I’m a priest,” he added. He frowned and his eyes found his feet again. No ground

here. Everything lost. His sister dead. A strange town, this beautiful countryside, snow

like pebbles against cheeks.

But he heard Phil Shepard mutter something under his breath, and then say,

“Delacroix. I knew I knew that name. You used to give Mass at St. Julie’s in New

Bedford.”

“Yes,” Lucien said, looking up and seeing the man bend over to pick up his cigar.

He brushed off the tip and stuck it back in his mouth.

“You’d know my wife. Jane Shepard. You’d know her face. She goes to church

once or twice a month.”

“Is she here now?” Lucien asked.

“No,” Shepard said. “No, she’s not here.” He frowned, then turned and walked

toward the house. Called behind him, “Come on in.”

“Thanks, Mr. Shepard.”

“It’s Phil,” the man said, and, unlocking the door, he stepped inside the house.

Phil sat him in a sunroom overrun with plants and dwarf fruit trees, then left for a

minute. He came back with two beers, handed one to Lucien and sat down. He took a

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 391

long drink, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and then said, “Toby’s been missing since

last night. What can you tell me, Lucien?”

“Not much,” Lucien said. He looked at Phil as if it were his turn to talk. Phil

laughed.

“Give me a break here, okay?” said Shepard.

“No, you don’t understand. I don’t know much myself. That is - okay.” Lucien

placed his beer on the floor and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “My

sister was killed last night,” he said.

A blank face across from Lucien. Nothing. No reaction. Maybe disbelief, maybe

exhaustion. Phil shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. And then, “Killed?”

Lucien nodded. He could have cried there and then, but he continued. Focused on

the lie that was about to come from his mouth, let it force back his tears, let its

manifestation shroud everything within him like a rug over broken glass. He said, “The

police think they have some good leads in it. This is really hard for me, you know, Phil,

but they had some evidence - don’t ask me what it was, I don’t know, because the only

reason I know this is because I’ve got a friend in the department, and I haven’t slept since

yesterday trying to find the guy...” The words came from him like water from a hot

spring. Fast and furious and jumbled and on account of this to Lucien they sounded

honest, unstaged, and there were enough emotions running through Lucien to make up

for any dishonesty his voice may have betrayed him under different circumstances; he

spat the lie, felt it thick off his tongue, heavy and exact, and when the tears came this

time he let them flow; “This is crazy, all of this, I’m sorry, but my friend in the

department said that there’s a tie to your son. To Toby. That he may have witnessed it, or

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 392

maybe he just knows the guy who did it. And yeah, I’m here and I’m playing the

vigilante because I’m her brother - she’s dead, my sister Anna is dead, and if Toby

knows anything about it, well, sir, please, I just would like to talk to him for a minute. I

can’t stop thinking that there’s someone out there who killed my sister - he cut her

stomach open and strung her from a tree in her backyard - and he could do that again. It’s

like a movie, Mr. Shepard - Phil. Like a movie. I just want this guy caught. And if your

son could help - ”

Phil had placed his beer on the floor next to Lucien’s. He moved forward as if to

touch Lucien, then sat back in his chair. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Wait a second.”

But Lucien let himself speak more, cutting off Shepard and knowing that this was

going better than he could have planned it; and in chorus with this feeling was a sickness

that wrapped him up at the idea that part of him wanted that knife fitting snug into one of

his socks, just pull up the pant leg and unsheathe it and drive it home, Lucien, drive it

home for Horace and for the Church and for your fucking soul. “The fact is that Toby

may know something, and I feel awful about coming to you like this - Jesus I’m strung

out, I haven’t slept, but I told you that already, and I’m sorry that I’m coming to you like

this but I just, I have to see Toby. Listen - ”

“Toby’s missing.” Phil Shepard was visibly shaking now. His face was turned

down in a nasty sneer and his hands were gripped at his sides. He opened his mouth as if

to say something, then, mouth still agape, stood up and left the room. Swung out through

the doors like an outlaw in a western.

Lucien considered following him, then thought better of it. After a few minutes,

Phil returned with another beer. He placed the beer next to the two on the floor, then sat

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 393

back down. “Okay, Lucien,” he said. “First of all, my wife is in the hospital. So you’ve

got to lend me some slack. I’ve got a missing kid. You come here and tell me that he may

have some knowledge about your sister’s murder. Do you see how all of this looks? Why

wouldn’t the police have notified me? They know Toby’s missing. So why wouldn’t I

have received a phone call?”

“I honestly don’t know, Phil. I don’t know how this stuff works.” He met Phil’s

stare, returned it beautifully. A stare that was all grit and no shit. Then he said, “I just

want to find out who killed my sister. I’m not afraid anymore. I was, you know. Last

night. I was afraid he’d find me and kill me too. But not anymore. I just want to find him

and see to it that he never sees the light of day again. In a prison or in the ground.” He

was surprising himself, and found that despite the lie, the obscuring of facts, he was now

being honest; he had been scared last night, and now his own safety was the furthest

thing from his mind. A quiet part of him was mourning his sister but the bulk of him was

speeding along a single track - the same track he’d been chugging along for the last few

weeks. A one way line to Toby Shepard. We’re leaving Topeka, Lucien. Not in Kansas

anymore, Lucien. He had to force down a smile, and soon after this a retch; his mind was

slipping now, a fissure opening up in it that he had to hold together lest he get up from his

chair and laugh in poor Phil Shepard’s face.

Phil smiled, though. It was a knowing smile, and it was unusual on his face,

breaking through his spotty beard and showing rows of time-yellowed teeth; he picked up

one of the beers, took a sip, and said, “Lucien, are you being completely honest with

me?” The smile remained.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 394

For the first time all morning, Lucien felt cold. The sunroom was poorly insulated

- just glass, after all - but more than anything, it was Phil Shepard’s expression that

chilled Lucien. His eyes had gained a hungry quality, lost that moist shine of earlier. And

Shepard was sweating. Buckets of it, pouring off his forehead and down the length of his

nose. His skin glowed with it. Lucien wondered how he hadn’t noticed it earlier. “I’m

sorry, Phil. What? I mean, I’m a little shaky here, you know. But I don’t get it. What do

you mean?” Keeping up with the lie, holding onto it like a buoy.

Phil produced a fresh cigar from his shirt pocket and bit off the tip. Spit the tip

and it hit Lucien. “What?” Lucien, stammering. Head sucked up to the roof of the

sunroom and spun around there. The room wobbled and Lucien gripped his knees.

“Phil?” he said.

Phil looked over his shoulder and said, “Guys.” And immediately a row of six

men and a little old woman were filing in through the room’s double doors. She led, a

plump, rosy-cheeked woman who sat next to Phil and laid a hand on his forearm. The

men were boisterous, rowdy, a few of them sporting facial hair like Phil’s - and all of

them sharing certain traits with the man sitting at Lucien’s left hand, stocky and tough

skinned and grinning. The men elbowed each other and laughed as they moved into the

sunlit room, hands around shoulders and shouting names Lucien didn’t catch; as if they

were longtime friends and hadn’t seen each other in a while.

Through a veil of sickness and starting to sweat now himself, and utterly

speechless, Lucien watched the group interact. The men formed a line in front of Phil and

the woman, and the woman said, “This is him?”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 395

“Yes.” Phil. Polishing off his beer and picking up another from the floor, offering

it to the oldest looking of the men, who took it and drank.

“Found this in his car.” One of the men, a particularly small one with combed hair

and a certain twinkle to his eye, reached into his coat and brought out the knife that

Horace had given Lucien. “It’s the Blade,” he said, and handed it to the woman.

“Good, Cliff,” she said, holding the knife up to the light, admiring it. Her eyes

glossed over, and she said, quietly, “Abraham’s Foil.” The room was quiet for a minute,

all eyes on the blade. Then she quickly brought it down and tucked it away in her purse.

Looked at Phil, and said, “Honey, what do we do with him?”

“He’s a Priest,” Phil said, and a murmur moved across the men. They looked at

Lucien with a certain restraint, as if at a word they would pounce at him, tear him apart,

think nothing of it. They were strapping, well groomed. Toothy smiles like Phil.

It came to Lucien like a seizure: they were Phil’s sons, all of them. Toby’s

brothers. But Toby was not here. Lucien would have recognized him. Plus, these were

men, and Toby was merely a boy.

Or is he, Lucierfi The voice, that hissing voice, still there and Lucien meanwhile

on the verge of passing out from the sheer surrealism of the situation. The voice would

never leave him. His life’s wick. Sister dead. And now the knife in the purse of that

woman.

“Well, this is perfect, then,” said the woman. “We’ll keep him alive. Andon?”

And the biggest of them advanced like some heavy piece of machinery and

brought from his pocket a handkerchief and fixed a large paw over Lucien’s mouth and

Lucien breathed in the sweet scent and slipped quickly and firmly into darkness.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 396

Mr. Shepard

8:00 PM

The grayness was leaving him, mmm hmm, gone, going, gonna be gone now, an

appetite ravenous but not for food; for running and leaping and something yet uncovered

something buried under this snow underfoot crunch crunch under my feet bounding along

through woods toward the Stash. Yes, the Stash, still the Stash, will always be the Stash.

Always be Toby, since before I was bom been Toby, since this world and the stars were

thrust into matter by the big hand of the big man upstairs who likes to watch and giggle

like a pervert peeking at his neighbor’s tits through a crack in the blinds. Been here a

while. Toby:

He’d gained some new friends, Mr. Shepard. A pack of them. The wolves had

joined him a few hours ago; he’d been coasting along the Westport sound, testing his

foothold on the shallow, lapping water’s edge (and it had proved strong, a strong foothold

indeed), and he had heard their cries, recognizable in tone yet outlandish somehow as

they broke like mad tmmpets through the daylight. These nighttime creatures out for a

daytime stroll, hungry, insane eyes and when they approached him they scooted along the

ground on their haunches and whimpered and begged with those pale blue eyes and Toby

had gestured with a hand, of course, of course, follow me. There had been twelve of

them, and they were hungry. Toby could feel it, the starved and greedy nature of them,

the ache for meat, and it was a familiar feeling because he, Toby Shepard, was starving,

too. His stomach had felt engorged with empty space, like he hadn’t eaten in days, but

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 397

soon after the wolves had joined him he’d realized - out of this pure instinct that he’d

come to trust, a little Jiminy Cricket lodged beating in his throat like some beautiful

cancer - that if he went to the Stash, well, there would be things to eat there. Things to

take in, to engorge himself on. A feast.

So he had turned, wolves turning with him, whipping tails and snarling and

gnashing teeth, a fur-lined frenzy at his feet as one rubbed its mangy ribs against his

calves and another sunk a razor set of stark white teeth into its sister’s neck, the furious

scuffle to flank him, Toby, the high-pitched yelps and bantam cries as they shifted

positions in their makeshift pack, through the woods went Toby and the wolves, to the

Stash to eat. These wolves, twelve little Daisys for me with some extra girth and feral

with love. Thank heaven for my friends the wolves. They’ll eat my scraps.

Though he’d covered a lot of ground walking westward along the Sound that

morning he was in no rush to reach the Stash, so he initially set a leisurely pace, strolling

with sashaying arms and taking in the nip of the air and the murky spectacle of low lying

clouds. He could smell the impending snow, a vacant perfume, the icy bouquet that

tinged your nostrils with cold fury; it lent him passion, that lack of smell, like a quiet

concerto that builds to a blusterous crescendo; and as he walked and walked his hunger

built and by 6 he was jogging and by 7 he was screaming through the woods, the bark of

the wolves a vulgar drumbeat behind him as they strained to match his pace. He held

back so he wouldn’t lose their howling symphony; someone had said the children o f the

night. Who had said that? Someone famous, and great.

As he leapt through the trees he could feel a pulse in his sides, an outward push,

as if something were trying to drive through the ribs and skin there. Something sharp and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 398

it throbbed but it was a good throb, like tired bones after a long day when you finally sink

into your mattress. The closer he got to the Stash, the stronger the ache. Mind frothing

over. The brink of explosion. Giddy with it. He was so close to something here.

When the arrangement of trees became familiar, Toby stopped, landing from one

of his leaps and digging heels into the snowy earth. He waited for the wolves to catch up,

and when they did they were panting, tongues lolling, vapor steaming from inflamed

nostrils. Neck fur raised, growling low in their throats, they began to walk in circles

around him, twelve tail-thrashing beasts low to the ground and beating the brush under

their swollen paws, ribs showing through sinuous flank muscle and rising and falling with

their now-steadying breath. Eyes catching the moonlight and flashing yellow and red.

Heads whipping to and fro as they scanned the area outside of their circle. Toby smiled.

“Come on,” he said, and, finding the path to the Stash - so easy despite the forest’s pitch

black night - he began to walk.

The clearing of the Stash opened before him and he recognized Kitty at once. Yes,

it was the sensual form that had been holding the faucet for him - it was his little Kitty

girl - but more than that, he recognized her from dreams forgotten, like dejavu, only

more visceral, more instinct-tinged, as if he’d created her himself. Like something part of

him, a ghost-limb, something that forever itched and burned until its source was finally

discovered - or recalled. Ah, Kitty, yes, I remember now. Here she is for me.

She was lying on a patch of bare earth, sleeping, breathing lightly, curled for

warmth with her legs hugged against her chest. Toby’s wolves began to move in, hesitant

and drooling, paws coming down lightly into the snow as they crept toward the sleeping

figure. “No,” Toby said, and with a few pleading yelps they scattered into the trees,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 399

melding with the surrounding darkness, until Toby could only see their eyes, twelve sets

of lowlit orbs winking from a dark pool of black.

“Awake,” he said, and as he approached her, feet far away now, these pontoons of

mere flesh guiding me through the snow as if my head were in space and my feet far

below, touching the earth, moving along it, I Toby the giant, the immaculate colossus

approaching my tiny Kitty, he watched as her eyes opened and blinked away stardust,

watched her crane up on an elbow and wince, one hand darting to her side and resting

there; Kitty, blinking and rubbing her eyes and looking around the woods until she found

Toby. Her eyes widened and she made to get up, hands propping against the ground, but

she smiled and fell back, hand leaving her rib now, and as she lay back, removing her

coat, then spreading out her arms in welcome and parting her legs, she said, “It’s you. My

Dark Man.”

“Yes,” Toby said, and he knelt before her and felt her embrace tugging him down,

her breasts under a thin layer of fabric warm and soft, the flesh of her fingers tickling the

nape of his neck. He kissed her and as if of its own volition he felt somewhere below him

his pelvis grinding into hers, her soft tongue brushing his lips, parting them, one of her

hands playing through his hair and the other massaging his bottom so his groin mashed

further into hers until it almost hurt. He was pumping now, mindless, grinding fabric

against fabric, and nothing registered in his line of vision, practically blind, but the sense

of touch oh it was like it had never been, never ever, groping hands along her forearms

and searching for an opening where he could find some skin, tearing apart her shirt and

finding with his tongue the smoothness of the flesh there, the raised nipples hard between

his teeth, biting and drawing blood, tasting the blood and Kitty tugging at his pants and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 400

then her own, and as she guided him in there was a tinge of pain and then a warmth that

seemed to spread up and out from his crotch to navel to cheeks straight to brain and eyes,

the daylights nightlights streaming from his eyes and he could see again, her face below

him like a pale moon drawn of color but for her cheeks, red and rosy a nice red rose. She

whispered things to him, dark things, fuck me fill me kill me please please kill me and he

saw her smile and her pointed incisors and removed his hands from her hips and breasts

and planted them firm into the dirt above her shoulders, “7 will,'” he said and began to

thrust, to plow at her, and her smile melted away into the pure grit of concentration and

her eyes slimmed to slits and he thrust and pumped and the wolves began to howl around

him, twelve shrieking cries conjoined and filling in the air around him until it crackled

and he craned his neck up and through the trees there were stars burning hot flaming and

growing and he watched as stars with silent pops exploded into blackness. He looked

back at Kitty, caught strong by his own motion, sweat beading down his nose and

dripping down to her - she caught them all, every drop, in her mouth, caught each drop

with her tongue and closed her mouth and swallowed and opened again for the next - he

bowed his head to her neck and found the wound there, the sealed gash, and opened his

mouth and bit hard, and soon there was pain in his own mouth as the teeth began to grow,

to sharpen, and he bit again and drank her, to drink her consume her, he was growing, his

teeth and his cock growing and as he came he drank from her wound and it filled his

hunger, the hunger in his mouth and in his belly, and as Toby Shepard shot his first load

into an eager, willing woman, he felt something leave him, something huge, as if his

breath was being pushed out of him, but not just out of his mouth or nose but from every

pore and pit of him; it gushed out and for a moment he wanted to cry, to lament his dead

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 401

dog and his fractured life, but then that something, that huge something, was replaced by

something else. And it felt good.

The trees sighing and Toby breathing, feeling that feeling of sucked-out breath

and the wilt of loins inside the panting, dying Kitty. Yes, she was dying; he knew this

because she knew this, and here it was, another trick for his bulging bag, to see her

thoughts, not only to hear them but to see them, a neuro-screen of Technicolor thought in

his brain that offered to him like a sacrifice what she needed and felt, feeling her pain and

her lust and her love for him, and feeling the cold merciful death encasing her little shell

like black lakewater. I the mindreader, thought Toby, I am growing exponentially, and

meanwhile Kitty is dying, but she’s served her purpose, hasn’t she, and to die with a

smile, well, that is to die well. Propped over her, no longer bestial but now tender - he

would remain here for her as she slipped away, curled, arched above her like a bowed

leaf over a dying insect, a little sanctuary for a sweet death. He brushed aside a curl of

hair plastered to her pale forehead, her mouth opening and closing like a guppy sucking

air, the dark maroon of dried blood under her lips and nose, her smile floating up to him

like a petal in the wind; the trees sighed and he felt it with her, her death, with her dark

Toby blotting out the forest, with her shirt tom and her ribs rising and falling gently, so

gently now, with her Toby inside her a key to unlock her; springing forth for a kiss Miss

Kitty died.

And the trees sighed: ahhhhh. He removed himself from inside her, he brushed

shut her eyelids with two small fingers. The trees: ahhhhh. To his knees now, relieving

her dead form of his meager weight, the trees sighing...

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 402

...but no, not the trees, no, voices now, not his wolves but voices, human voices

letting out air with the distinct tone of pain-tinged pleasure, a mild, frightening chorus

that sounded likeahhhhh like the trees; also a shuffling of brush and Toby, hoisting up

his pants and ready to bend, to break whatever it was that dared disturb this soft funeral,

this secret Mass at the Stash, whoever it is will be broken apart by I and my mind and the

wolves will eat the scraps.

Toby stood, shirtless, arms tensed by his sides and fists clenched; he saw the

forest around him move, particle by particle, the life of the trees and brush in an atomic

dance, hues shining from the dark forest like sundogs, a rainbow of colors breaking apart

the night and, licking his lips and tasting Kitty’s blood, tracing the tips of his newborn

fangs with his tongue, Toby watched the forms file forward, shadowed at first and

emerging from among the skeletal trees...later, Toby would realize that he could have -

should have - seen them all along, because darkness wasn’t a problem, not anymore, he

could see miles despite the darkness; he later realized that he hadn’t wanted to see these

figures. Something in him had hidden this secret gallery, this salivating audience that was

his whole family, his brothers, his father, his mother, and as they walked out of the woods

and into the Stash they resembled the wolves, crouched, ass-dragging, grinning stupidly

with the postures of blind servants; they formed a row and smiled, arms around one

another’s shoulders, a linked line of a giant, happy, deranged family. From behind them,

Toby’s wolves finally emerged, no longer hesitant. They moved with a certain coyness,

elegant, heads up, tails flicking behind them. They made a circle around the clearing and

sat. Toby’s family began to clap.

“We love you, Toby,” they said.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 403

“It’s your day.”

“Your night!”

“Forever night!”

“Forever!” This was all of them; forever, they said: Jimmy, Hutch, Cliff, Bret,

Bill, Andon. Mom. Dad. Forever.

“Mom?” Toby said.

She smiled at him. “Your consummation, Toby,” she said. “I have never been

more proud. Never.” She rested her head on his father’s shoulder. Beaming.

“Mom?” A sickness rising. He turned. “Hutch?” Hutch nodded, arms around

Jimmy and Cliff. The family looked on the verge of song, arm in arm. Those sick,

groping smiles. “How did you know? How did you find me?”

“We knew you’d come here, Tobe,” Hutch said. He smiled and gestured to his

brothers. “We all love this place. We showed you this place. This place is yours.”

Then: “We can’t see you that well, Toby.” This was Andon. His bourbon voice,

deep and melodic. “Start a fire, Tobe.”

Toby frowned and bent and watched some brush whip up cyclonic through the air

and come gently down in the fire pit. To his left, a young pine fell, snapped in two and

then in four, eight pieces flying from his left and landing atop the brush, which ignited

with a gasp of atmosphere and blazed up. Shadows flickered across the smiling group,

yellow light shimmering like reflected water across faces, hands, the exposed breasts of

departed Kitty. Toby felt a blush rise and bent Kitty’s shirt and jacket so it covered her

privates. And the anger. Anger because his family had witnessed all of it, the sex, he had

had sex and his family had watched. This fury rising like heated mercury. He tried to

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 404

breathe, let it come and go easy, Toby, this is your family, you cannot bend or break your

family.

His mother, still smiling, and flushed now herself, waived a hand and said,

“Andon.” Bill stepped forward, breaking the chain, and Andon reached behind him and

brought out a man unfamiliar to Toby. Short in stature, a fluffy beard, tired looking. Eyes

that didn’t seem to register much, but a certain reserve in them, a trapped animal look that

Toby didn’t trust.

“Who’s this?” Toby said. Thought a moment, looked over his family and the

bearded man, propped up by one of Andon’s large hands. He felt on the verge of tears -

embarrassed, it was embarrassment, how, after everything, could he afford to be

embarrassed? He turned his head away from them, and said, “Why are you here?”

“You know,” said Hutch. He was squinting at Toby, that menacing look he’d give

him when he was about to start teasing. But the look lightened, morphed into something

altogether different - an envious look, reverent, with a touch of sadness that made his

eyes glisten. “Read our minds, Tobe.”

A silent second went by, then like a sudden gale it hit him, an intense palette of

colors and thoughts and voices, all melded into one as Toby looked at his family. “Stop

it, please,” he said, and the voices stopped at once. I can do this, he thought. I control

this. He looked at his mother, at her forehead, the graying hair there.

It all flooded into him, and by no means linearly; it came to him as one’s memory,

one’s sense of self comes after a long, dreamless sleep; it came in a hurry and it floored

him, literally, and he found himself on the ground as he pondered his birth, saw his

mother haggard and bedridden handing his small body off to his smiling father, the sense

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 405

of pride his mother felt, so strong it brought her to tears, coupled with a sense of

foreboding obligation; this was to be the child of children, the seventh son of the seventh

son, and the scene changed as his father ushered out puzzled doctors and nurses and

ushered in his brothers, little Jimmy holding Bill’s hand, and all six of his brothers laid a

hand on young Toby and his mother glowed, shook with tears. His childhood in his

mother’s eyes, his mother’s hesitation to put him in “normal school” and winded

deliberations with his father’s dogmatic insistence that Toby maintain normalcy until he

transformed, until puberty when all would be awash anyway, his mother relenting, the

extreme, incredible measures she took when in Toby’s presence not to melt with

veneration, hiding her pleasure, her ecstatic joy the day he came home with concerns that

he was going crazy, the guesswork at how long it would be until he bloomed, with Jimmy

and Bill and Hutch it had happened much earlier, but with Cliff it had come later, his

father saying you can’t use any of the others as reference at all because Toby is different.

The midnight family gatherings after Toby had gone to bed, the intercom system to

assure that he’d not surprise them in the midst of their worship, the alters and sacrifices,

the dark priests and accolades and basement meetings, the cutting of the swine’s throat,

toasting the blood on New Year’s ’91, scalping the lamb and strangling the dove,

bestiality, incest, Jimmy laying with Cliff and Bret with mother, they referred to him as

The Angel Crusher, my little Angel Crusher his mother would say as he suckled her tit,

drank her milk this is my mother I drank her milk and now this, all of this, and she has

waited for this day - this night - for eons, it seemed to her , forever, and now it has come

and I have fucked the virgin Kitty and have cut my teethI love you Toby I love you thank

you it has all come to pass -

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 406

“Jesus” said Toby, and he cut it off. It left as it had come, a sudden wash of heat

and he was left feeling vacant, exhausted. “No more,” he said.

“Toby,” said his father, releasing his mother’s hand and taking a few steps

forward. “Toby, you are everything. This is everything that should be.”

“No,” Toby said, and, raising his hand - it took effort to do this, he felt as tired as

he’d ever been - he watched his father pitched backwards off his feet, as if flung from a

slingshot, and sail into the dark woods.

“Toby,” his mother said, one hand in the air, smile vanquished.

“What is this, Mom?” he said. “What am I?”

Eyes steely, unblinking, fixed on Toby. Her mouth was a line and when she spoke

it barely broke. “You are the Coming, Toby. You’re Him.”

“Who?” Roaring, Toby’s mind was flying and roaring, these interior voices like

clanky machinery so loud in his ears. He screamed: “Who? Why don’t you just say it?”

Softly, from the end of the line where Jimmy stood: “Toby, why don’t you say

it?” It was more of a plea than anything. There were almost tears in that voice. Like he

was asking for forgiveness, or confessing something nasty and dark. Shameful, a

shameful voice. But wicked.

“Okay, Jimmy,” Toby said. “What? What am I? You want me to say the

Antichrist?” He’d seen the word in his mother’s mind, like a black orb, something

pulsing and bleeding and casting shadows over everything else. It was at the heart of her

every thought.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 407

His family stared, motionless now in their broken line. From the darkness Toby

heard the shuffle of brush that was his father picking himself up and dusting off. “You

think I’m the Antichrist. I mean, do you - ”

“Toby.” This was the man Toby didn’t know. He had been barely able to keep

himself erect, standing beaten with Andon holding the collar of his jacket. His face was

bruised and pale. Dried blood around his nose. Toby thought briefly of reading his mind,

but found that he didn’t care. “Toby,” the man said again, and with a crack Andon’s free

hand came across his face and the man jerked sideways, his feet going out from under

him. Andon held him up, though, and with quieted eyes and a quivering mouth and his

nose resuming its slow, bloody leak, the man seemed to resign again to silence.

“Mom?” Toby, reeling now, knees under him on the verge of unhinged, looked at

his mother. He’d said Antichrist and she had let out a breath, audible over the rustle of the

woods around him and the blood pounding a careful concourse through his head. Her

sigh had been one of pleasure, the kind that came after the first bite of something rich or

when you sink into a hot tub. His mother: more than ever, Toby wanted his mother,

wanted her to tell him April fools, just kidding, sweetie, we thought that it would be

funny but it didn’t turn out, there’s nothing wrong with you and you’re still our Toby, our

baby. He wanted her arms and her soft warmth and he wanted Daisy back and he wanted

his bed. He’d loved it and he’d loved his wolves and the bend - ah, the bend was so good

- but that had been before it was real. With his brothers and his parents here, at his Stash,

watching him - hailing him.. .now it was real. This was real, all of it, and now Toby did

buckle, his weight bearing up on him and his knees just crashing down onto the hard

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 408

floor of the forest. He lowered his head because his eyes had had enough and he felt

himself say, “Mom,” but it wasn’t his mother who answered, but his father.

“Oh, Toby. Don’t,” he said. His voice was unfamiliar, too tender.

“I feel sick," Toby said, head fixed down, hands gripping root and soil. His legs in

ferocious spasm, knees digging into the snow and dirt.

“No,” his father said. Toby heard him move forward in the snow. Crunch crunch

comes my stranger father. Only a few feet away when he stopped. Close enough to touch.

“No,” he said again, “you’re invincible now. You can do anything you want. Anything.

Don’t you see? See how incredible this can be? It’s you, Toby. All about you. You’re an

angel. An angel, Toby.”

Toby looked up and saw his father, his extended, aberrant smile. “How am I an

angel, dad?” he said. “Look at me. Do I look like an angel to you? Dad? An angel?”

His father’s smile saddened for the briefest moment, comers of his mouth

twitching down, eyes shrinking and brow wilting, but then it was back in full force. He

turned to Toby’s brothers and mother and said, “All right, guys. It’s time, I think.”

His brothers let their arms down and turned to Toby. Jimmy stepped forward,

closed his eyes, drew a long breath that showed in his stomach, then unzipped his parka

and reached into it. From the parka he drew a large knife. He held it out, a long blade,

and a piece of it caught moonlight and it winked at Toby, the knife, it winked moonlight

in the half-second before Jimmy sank to his knees and said “Mens sanguine per tuus” and

brought the knife to his throat and carved out a thin line from ear to ear. The blade

dropped and Toby screamed and Jimmy fell, catching the ground with one forearm and

holding himself up for a second, his eyes never leaving Toby -Toby couldn’t look away,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 409

either - before the threadlike and dilute score in his neck opened up and began to flow.

Jimmy’s eyes closed and his weight gave out. His forearm folded beneath him and his

head gave a small and measured bounce against a rock and then he was still.

There was a retching noise, so loud that Toby could hear it over his own screams,

and he looked left and the stranger was throwing up, dangling from Andon’s clutch, his

coat’s collar strangling him as he leaned over and vomited. Between heaves the man

strained his legs and his body lurched towards Jimmy, but Andon’s awesome frame

wouldn’t budge. Andon’s jaw was working and his eyes were not on the man in his grasp

nor on Jimmy, no, they were on Toby - all eyes on Toby. The smiles gone now. His

brothers’s faces in unpolluted meditation, chaste in their blankness. Toby groaned, his

voice no longer cooperating, no screams left in this throat, no air, just a sickness rising

like hot seawater. The stranger looked at Toby and groaned as well, his eyes pleading;

and Toby saw that what he’d mistaken before for derangement was merely concern,

apathy, something good...it was this man who was good, not anyone else in the clearing

but this man, the disquiet in his eyes told everything, and for a second Toby let the man’s

thoughts through and they were a raging river of horrible acts, the last few hours where

this man had been mercilessly beaten by Toby’s brothers, by his father, his mother, he’d

been drugged and beaten and dragged through the woods by the strong hand of Andon

and now he was here for Toby, he’d come so far just for Toby with no intentions but to

do something good, something necessary, it is we who are the wolves and he the lone

sheep in this moonlit winter haven, Lucien Delacroix from across the river a former man

of God...

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 410

...and then a throbbing in his stomach and the Priest’s thoughts were

overwhelmed by Jimmy’s death; Toby could feel it like he had felt Kitty’s, but it wasn’t a

drifting away as it had been with the girl. It was a screaming, tom-out feeling of wild

loss, as if the water in him were being sucked out through his skin and being replaced

with vinegar, fire pumped through veins everywhere and neurons popping and exploding

in protest and a full body surge, a sick flush, like adrenaline but bleaker; he buckled in

pain and Jimmy’s voice tore through his head. It was screaming. Toby, prone again,

forehead jammed into wet snow, screamed again himself but couldn’t hear it; it was only

Jimmy, the specter of him screaming and laughing and crying for God in Toby’s head but

Toby knew it wouldn’t do any good, that Jimmy could beg forever but God would not see

him. Jimmy’s voice stopped abruptly, leaving a silence that was at once filled with

Toby’s own screaming, and then as Toby slowly lifted his head and saw that Hutch had

stepped forward he opened his mouth to tell Hutch no, please, Hutch, you don’t have to,

but then there was a pain in his back and ribs that resembled the pain from earlier as he

had made his way to the Stash but was a hundred fold, a ripping, malignant bum that

teased its way from back to ribs and back to back and it nudged his lungs - he could feel

something there, something sharp and growing in him - and his breath went away again

and he could not yell or even bend Hutch to help him, to remove from his hands that

knife that he held to the moon, no, Toby could only watch and listen and try to breathe as

Hutch annunciated the Latin and brought the blade in a fast arc across his naked neck and

fell in a heap by Jimmy. Delacroix was crying now, slumped still without even trying to

gain footing anymore, just dangling from Andon’s arm like a broken marionette.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 411

Cliff stepped forward and brandished his own blade and Toby watched and tried

and tried to bend but the pain wouldn’t let him, this pain cascading down his sides and as

Cliff spoke the words and then cut open his own throat Toby felt Hutch’s life tear away

and Hutch was dead, his Hutch, please no Hutch not you, and now Cliff was on his knees

and wheezing through the slit in his throat, a harsh and raspy sound like a broken vacuum

cleaner. Cliff coughed up some blood and it landed thick and congealed on fresh snow

but he remained kneeling, staring at Toby, then Cliffs eyes widened and Toby felt fresh

pain in his ribs as something broke through the skin there. Cliff smiled magnificently, a

noble and satisfied smile, and then fell backwards in the snow, his legs stuffed under him

and bent at the knees and his back vaguely arched and his arms splayed out as if in

victory. After he fell it only took a few seconds for him to die, and when he did Toby

once again felt the shock of something draining from him and something other entering

him in its place. The pain in his side relented a bit; it was no longer a burning pressure

but stinging, a scraping feeling, razor sharp and sliding along his ribs from the hole there.

He tried to look down to see what was growing out of his sides but now Bret was patting

Bill on the back and stepping forward and reaching into his coat...

They went in order, Bret and then Bill then finally Andon, the latter stepping first

over to Toby’s father, dragging along the priest, and his father taking the priest in his

hand and holding him up much like Andon had. All three brothers held their blades to the

moon, then spoke the words Meus sanguine per tuus, which with some strange and

crazed inclination Toby was actually able to translate as My blood for you - thank you

Mrs. O’Hanna - and after speaking the Latin each of Toby’s brothers opened their throats

and soon after that they fell down. Bret and Bill and finally Andon: dead and dead and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 412

dead. With each death Toby felt the dwindling heat, the pain in his stomach and the fire

burning violet behind his eyes, the continued growth of whatever had sprouted from him

until the weight of it pressed down on him like a pack-jammed backpack. He watched

and tried to save each brother, to muster up even the slightest bend - all he had to do was

knock them out, make them sleep, something so they couldn’t complete the act - but it

was no use; the pain and the distraction of the letting out and letting in, whatever it was

that was leaving him and coming back different and brighter and somehow

colder...whatever it was, it wouldn’t let him save his brothers. His parents watched the

ritual and smiled, hands around each other’s waists, and Lucien lay at a soft ebb in his

father’s grasp, vomit caught in his beard, his eyes rolled back to whites. And as Andon

died, the last of his brothers, Toby felt the hold over him finally snap, and he let himself

down slowly; to sleep, here, now, on this quiet bed of snow. Just to sleep.

But they wouldn’t let him. Against the midnight of Toby’s eyelids he heard his

mother call his name. He opened his eyes and craned his neck to look; Toby’s father

winked, then threw Delacroix into the snow. The priest landed face first and didn’t move.

Toby let some of his thoughts in and they were just a buzz, a kind of drone that seemed to

screech like television snow; this man’s mind is blown, Toby thought. He’s seen too

much and his mind is blown. For a moment, Toby felt a stabbing pressure in his neck that

felt like pride; pride at having witnessed all of this and remained conscious, that his own

mind was capable of handling such atrocities. I am special was the thought. And then it

whittled down to simply, I. He pushed the thoughts away and watched as his father

approached him.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 413

His father extended a hand to Toby and then raised his eyebrows, his look

expectant but also somehow coy. Toby shook his head. His father withdrew the hand then

turned to Toby’s mother and held it instead to her. She nodded and waddled forward and

took the hand. And they stood there, holding hands, looking at Toby for what seemed like

a very long time indeed, and Toby was beginning to think that the world had paused on

its axis until his mother spoke: “The woman,” she said, nodding her head at Kitty’s still

form, “was for you, all along. She knew to come to you. It was your dreams. Remember

your dreams?” She paused, as if expecting him to answer or nod, but when he didn’t she

resumed. “You told her in your dreams, Toby. You did. How do you think she found

you?”

His father was nodding, smiling at Toby’s mother. Toby looked at their hands and

saw his father’s tighten around his mother’s. His father said, “It’s important that you

realize this, Toby. That all of this - ” with his free hand he motioned to the woods, to

Toby’s dead brothers - “is your making. You orchestrated this.”

“No.” It was little more than a groan, but when Toby said it the wind kicked up

and the trees shook to their roots and a tremor, slight but undeniable, rumbled from

beneath them like a passing subway car.

“Yes, Toby,” his father said, “do you feel it? Your new power. It worked. It’s all

working.” These last few words were directed more to Toby’s mother, and she nodded

with excitement. She looked feverish, flushed ears in the firelight and eyes black as

raven’s claws. A little drool peeking over her lower lip.

“The woman,” his mother said, “was your consummation. To mark the end of

your childhood. You are a boy no longer. Your brothers - ”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 414

“Stop, Mom, why are you doing this!”

“Your brothers,” she went on, “like your father’s brothers, were sacrifices. Blood

of your blood. From the same seed as you. So sad. We’re both sad, your father and I. But

we’ve known this would happen for a long time. We wish you could have as well. But

you couldn’t have, Toby. You have to understand that. We were protecting you. It’s sad,

about your brothers. But it was necessary.”

“Necessary for whatT’ It came out a scream, and as he spoke the last word the

ground quaked, a booming noise from below like bottled thunder. The crashing of near

trees falling. The wolves began to howl, barking and whining as if in pain. Toby’s parents

crouched a bit, holding fast to one another to maintain their balance, but soon the earth

was still again and they stood back up, unfazed, as if they’d expected such a reaction.

Almost as if they relished it.

“Necessary for your growth, Toby,” his mother said. “Your brothers were happy

to forfeit their bodies for you. And look at you now, Toby. Look how you’ve grown

already .” Said it as if there were more to come. Toby closed his eyes. The unreality of the

situation was jarring - with everything he’d seen and done in the past month and a half,

after the birds and Madison and Daisy and the wolves and Kitty, it was having his parents

here, having them urge him on like deranged, mutant jockeys, that made Toby feel like

his brain was swelling inside his skull. At moments it took the very sight from him, white

flashing against his vision like cruel lightening. He was beginning to shake, and the earth

below him hummed at ready. He looked at his mother and opened his mouth to speak, but

she pointed at his back and said, “Look at yourself.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 415

And because she was his mother, because it had become ingrained in him over

years of listening to her and obeying her and, despite the surface thoughts that told him

otherwise, agreeing with her, he did what she asked and rose to his knees and looked over

his left shoulder.

It was a wing. Pure white, and the light from the fire danced across its sharp

edges. It was feathered with tiny shards of glittering matter that caught the light and

broke it apart. Reflected all light from its unpolluted whiteness. It ran the length of his

back and down past his buttocks. He reached a hand behind him to touch it and it wasn’t

soft as he’d expected; it was hard, bony and rough, like the skin of some thick hided

animal. He reached back with his right hand and the twin wing was there. Turned his

head and it looked the same as the other, still and magnificent and bright against the dark

woods.

“An angel, Toby. See?” his father said, and Toby looked back at his parents and

they were embraced now, as if posing for a picture, arms around each other and their

heads positioned in the direction of their son the little angel. Toby squinted at them and

then looked back at his left wing. “Fly,” his father said. “Just a little. Try it.” Toby looked

at his father again and nodded, mind not anywhere at the moment, just want to try out

these wings for now and sort out the rest later. These wings are amazing. I love them.

He flexed his shoulders and felt the wings move. He felt his weight shift and then

he had no weight at all for a moment as his wings swooped forward and then back,

propelling him backwards before coming to a halt and letting him softly back to the

ground. “You can do better than that, Toby,” his father said, and Toby smiled - it felt

good to smile, to enjoy himself again. And this feeling was more pure, somehow, than

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 416

when he had first lifted Madison or later when he’d leapt homeward through the woods.

It was a less encumbered joy, as if he’d been meant for this. It wasn’t foreign to him; it

was as if he’d been missing those wings all his life and he hadn’t known it, and now that

they were there, now that he’d grown them, he was finally complete. Or almost complete.

He flexed again and felt the wings move and he rode that movement, so natural,

until he was hovering above the ground at the height where leaves began to thin on the

trees. There was no effort to it, flying like this; he could do this forever and not get tired.

He floated above his parents, looking up at the scattered stars through the trees and then

back down at his parents, holding each other as if for warmth and the fire dying near

them, the sleeping priest prostrate in the snow like sorrowful punctuation to the question

of his parents; and when his mother beckoned him he flew back down, gliding gently,

landing in front of her and smiling for the first time in forever.

He pointed to the priest, feeling his wings beating soft but steady behind him,

ever-prepared for lift. “Why did you bring him?” Toby said. “The priest.”

He could have searched his mother’s thoughts for the answer, but Toby didn’t like

to do it. It was a new trick and, as far as Toby was concerned, a bad one. It was invasion.

Taking something that wasn’t his, borrowing from someone else the most personal things

that man knew: undoctored thought. He was afraid what else he would find in there, in

his mother’s mind. He felt his smile start to wither and forced it back.

His mother turned to his father and frowned. “Do you want to?”

Toby felt his father’s hand slide down the edge of his right wing, gently and

exploratory, and finally settle at the joint where it met Toby’s rib. He patted it there and

said, “You’re so close.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 417

Toby stepped back, feeling his father’s hand fall from his side, and his wings beat

a fury behind him, scattering ash from the fire and stirring the loosely packed snow

below. “Close to what?” he said.

“To your completion,” his father said. “That’s what the priest is for. This is all

written, Toby. Everything has been perfect...” He paused, and then, kissing Toby’s

mother and turning from her, he walked to where Delacroix lay and nudged him gently.

“Wake up, priest,” he said. Then his hand came down across the nape of Delacroix’s neck

and the priest grunted, turned quickly onto his back and raised his arms and legs in

defense. He looked like an insect dying. Toby’s father swatted his legs away and bent and

gripped the priest’s throat, then hoisted him up with a strength Toby couldn’t have

imagined. Delacroix tried to swallow and Toby saw his father’s grip tighten around his

throat. The priest’s eyes bulged, terrified and bloodshot. “This scum,” his father said,

rolling his thumb over the priest’s jawline, “is the key to your evolution.” He turned his

face to Toby and his eyes were sad, pleading. “It’s asking a lot, I know. I - we, your

mother and I - we don’t expect you to immediately understand. But you have to trust us.

This is a man of God, Toby, but he isn’t even that. He’s abandoned his God. Turned

away from him. He has no heart, no allegiance. But technically a priest. And that’s all we

need.”

Delacroix whimpered, tried to say something, but Toby’s father tightened his grip

again. Delacroix’s tongue came out of his mouth. Face turning quickly from scarlet to

mauve.

“He’ll be your first,” Toby’s mother said, stepping forward and taking Toby’s

hand. Toby looked down at that hand, at the manicured nails and the liver spots. It was

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 418

shaking quietly, a movement at the wrist that made the veins protrude. He felt her other

hand lift his chin and she fixed her eyes on his. “Your first kill. It’s written, Toby. It will

make you complete. All encompassing. A god on earth. You have to.” Now her face was

stem, motherly; he’d seldom seen this expression, but knew it well. It said she meant

business. “You must.”

He might have said no, might have dropped her hand and spat; he might have

collapsed into her arms and closed his eyes and waited for something to happen, for his

body to take over and shut down his mind and just let things happen as they would; and

maybe - and one can only speculate - maybe he would have killed the priest then and

there, exploded his heart inside his chest and swept his parents into his arms and flown

above the trees to chase the moon and fly forever.

But Toby would never know what he’d have done, because at that moment his

mother’s hand stopped shaking and her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed

at his feet with her nose and ears and eyes bleeding. She convulsed for a moment and

then was dead. Toby felt her death but not as he’d felt his brothers’; it was just a quaint

transition from full to empty, like water poured from a small pot. Toby opened his mouth

and looked at his father, who was now floating in the air, arms and legs splayed out and

mouth agape. The priest was standing below him, eyes shot open and staring in the

direction of the fire.

“My mother,” Toby said, and then he looked toward the fire and there was the

most beautiful creature he had ever seen: a man, floating, short in stature, his granite-

sculpted face and his perfect, alabaster skin; and wings spread out immaculate from

behind him, wings black like the night only blacker, and they were beating slowly and he

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 419

was bobbing slightly up and down in the air and those wings beat the air around and

made the fire dance and the fire’s light was absorbed in their blackness, sucked into those

wings, not reflected from them like from his own. The man pointed at Toby’s floating

father with one long, slender finger. But his eyes were on Toby. And the eyes, well, they

were as beautiful as the rest of him. And blacker than the wings.

His dead mother no longer of consequence, nothing of consequence anymore but

this dazzling dark man, Toby felt his lips move, the little propulsion of air and his tongue

tapping the roof of his mouth in a single word that was: “Black.”

And the creature nodded.

Mr. Black

9:15 PM

The worst phase in rebirth was reacquainting himself with the notion of time. It

was an obtuse concept, time, bom of man’s dim perceptions of the self. Man was lost

without some arcane system by which to quantify his consciousness, so God had given

him time, an incongmous system of measurement made of minutes and hours to atone for

his lack of celestial awareness.

The difficulty was that it - time - was that it slipped over you like a slick shroud.

It gave everything you encountered a sense ofmovement. Gave no opportunity for

contemplation, for dissection and debate, for restructuring and reward. Things happened

and they did not last, because time had already devoured them with its greedy maw. It

was a miracle that men came to cherish anything at all.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 420

In Sodom, before the fires, he’d had a discussion with a man about the notion of

what the man had referred to as the eternal. The man’s eyes had misted over as he spoke,

and it had been a test of will to not flay him open like a fattened swine, simply to give

him a direct account of that which so inspired him; but the man had been out of play. One

of the few good souls in that forsaken city. He’d later escaped, thought his wife had met a

different fate.

Soon after his rebirth, floating in that cold sea, the old yearnings had come awake;

hunger, pain in his limbs like cold fire, an ache in his abdomen that he immediately

recognized as the need to evacuate his bowels (this was almost the worst, almost), and of

course, that sense of momentum that came with earthly existence, the sensation that one

must continue to push on like everything else; this sense of time. And it had only been a

collection of moments, bobbing sickeningly and gasping for air, before he knew that his

own time was short.

So the Archangel Michael - Curtis Black to his friends on earth - had spent

precious amounts of his time floating on a stinking boat of indulgence, burrowed away in

the hull, trying to find this boy. The mark of Shepard’s thirteenth year had come and past,

and Michael had sat below deck, acquainting himself with the slow and wet sensation of

breathing, and watched the brass clock click away a second at a time. He had wondered

how many of these erroneous ticks it would be until the boy spilled his first seed or

delivered his first soul.

He’d found him though - with the help of John Upshaw, a soul Michael had been

almost sorry to release (strange how earthly existence played with one’s mind, allowed

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 421

one sensibilities that hampered and crippled one’s truer passions) - and after he had, it

had been a long flight over sea and land to this dim forest.

When he found him the boy had already lain with the imp. He’d gained his wings.

But deliverance had not been completed; he’d not yet taken a soul. And here it was for

him, time, working now in his favor. It was an irony that was a dull throb.

Floating now in these shabby woods, working through Toby’s father’s mind

before he exterminated him for the dim chance that something important was locked

there within, the angel strained to keep his eyes on Toby Shepard. It was important that

he maintained eye contact with the boy, kept his mind’s pulse close to his own, because

though he was dazzled now, it could be seconds - another small matter of decrepit time -

before the boy came to and staged an assault. And though young, and certainly

vulnerable, Toby Shepard was powerful. Michael could feel it.

Also of concern was the woman’s corpse. It had been Toby’s mother -

technically, at least - but only a shell of what she had once been. The darkness had eaten

her alive, starting at the inside and working its way out. Shepard’s father wasn’t nearly as

corrupt, but he had not had to bear the growth of the devil’s left hand for nine months

within the fragile capsule of a human womb; the atrocity of the child had worked on her

like a cancer, worming into her brain and once there laying nest. She had been one of the

most soiled souls he’d ever unfettered, a piggish, befouled thing that bore the inimitable

stink of hell and screamed like Scratch himself as it had been released. But the corpse

was merely a shell now, and her soul was not what bothered him. No; what nudged him

to remove his attention from the boy and focus it entirely on her was the object nestled

waiting and glowing like a deranged sunset in her garment bag; how the woman had

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 422

come into possession of Abraham’s Foil was beyond him at the moment, but Michael had

an idea that it had something to do with the priest, who was kneeling now, mouth agape

and his hands linked in prayer.

Eyes on Toby, the Archangel Michael swept groundward, wings beating the fire

into a scarlet rage, and drew from the thinned atmosphere his sword. The steel caught the

firelight and cast a shimmering hue across the shadowed figure of the priest, then the

angel was running and with an upward swipe he cleaved the elder Shepard in two. The

man fell to earth in equal pieces, eyes turned upward as if contemplating the forest top.

The two semi-circles of his face were caught in a horrible grin, twin crescent moons

ending in a cluster of hemorrhaged meat and teeth.

Michael sheathed his blade and turned to Toby. The boy looked awestruck, caught

between rampant emotions that Michael could feel pulsing out of him like uncooped heat.

Behind him, the priest stopped his prayer. Then, clearly and reasonably, the priest said,

“You’re Michael. The Archangel Michael. The general of God’s army.”

“I am he,” Michael said, not turning to face the priest but remaining with his eyes

fixed on the Shepard boy. The boy’s expression was twisting into something too familiar

to Michael, a hybrid of unhinged laughter and concentrated hate. This was the smile

Lucifer had worn before forsaking his Father.

The priest went on: “You impose God’s wrath. You avenge His will. With your

blade you striketh down those devoted to sin and spare the innocent. You — ”

The priest stopped speaking and the ground began to tremor and then shake;

Michael heard him whimper and the rustling sound of him throwing his body prone as a

noise like roaring water struck up in the air. All at once the trees of the forest bowed,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 423

symmetrical in their direction, and as they were plucked out of ground as easily as a

farmer may harvest carrots Michael formed a shield around the priest and himself, as well

as the filthy corpse of the boy’s mother. The priest screamed and the trees flew from their

roots, shooting skyward toward the stars and moon before landing with a sound like

distant thunder. Miles from here. Soon the forest was a snowy wasteland of brush and

shrubs and the gaping, scarred cavities where the trees had been; the moon had edged out

the clouds and now shone on Toby Shepard, a boy one kill from bearing Lucifer’s twisted

mark; a boy with a grin of hatred plastered across his otherwise angelic face and his

hands furled into fists by his side. And the boy wasn’t finished.

The brush surrounding the gained a distinct glimmer, as if seen through the heat

from a furnace, and the ignited in a roaring sea of fire. Embers floated upward from the

blaze, dancing against the black of the sky like engorged fireflies. The boy’s eyes filled

with the fire’s reflection until they shone pure red. Shepard opened his mouth and there

was fire in there, too. A spasm of hope shot through Michael; the boy had not yet gained

the White, there was no hint of it in his eyes; a clean resolution to this was at hand, but

he’d have to work carefully. And quickly.

“Stop,” Michael said, straining now because he could feel the boy searching him

out; Shepard’s power was incredible, greater even than he had initially thought, and

keeping the boy from tearing out his own insides while also protecting the priest and the

corpse with the Foil was testing his strength incredibly. This was more exertion than he

had experienced since Lucifer had fallen and waged war on Heaven. “You haven’t taken

a soul yet,” Michael said. Then, only to Shepard now, only to the boy, booming direct

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 424

into the boy’s head with the voices of all the angels, “ Your own can still be salvaged,

Toby. Heed my words, boy. You may see Heaven yet.”

And in his own mind there was a thunderous return, loud enough that it sent a bolt

of pain from his neck into his stomach. The word was NO at a thousand decibels and

Michael felt it in his teeth, his wings vibrated with its crashing sibilance, and then the

brushfires were out and Toby Shepard was running at him, full tilt. He had a moment to

fling the priest, who was still lying on the snowy ground behind him, out of the way

before Toby met his abdomen shoulder-first and rocketed him backwards along the

desolated landscape that had been the clearing. The boy’s skin was searing hot, his

fingers around Michael’s porcelain throat like pokers fresh out of a kiln; the angel bore

his teeth and bit into the boy’s neck and felt his own tongue burning on the blood that

came forth.

Michael rose himself into the air, taking Toby with him, and with one hand

peeling Toby’s fingers from his throat, feeling his voice come back to him and a dizzy set

of dark streamers flooding across his vision as he gained back his breath, Michael, in a

far more relaxed manner than he felt at the moment - the boy was so strong - whispered

to the boy, “Your soul is not yet lost.”

Arm in arm with Shepard, almost an embrace, Michael thought he saw the hint of

a deep sorrow in the boy’s eyes, a shine that seemed to lurk somewhere beneath the

surface where the whites were now full of fire. Wrestling the boy recalled proud

memories. He could almost be David, Michael thought. He even looks like him.

But no. Shepard snarled and heaved him across the clearing. The angel came

down onto a smoldering thicket of brush, then was up again, his wings shedding the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 425

charred ashes of the scorched foliage. They hovered twenty yards apart, one dark eyed

and frowning and the other a grinning, vermilion-eyed maniac, both poised with muscles

quivering - even since Michael had arrived here, the boy’s physique at an alarming rate

had ripped into granite; it may have been a trick of the light, or the distantly-familiar

sensation of real, acute fatigue, but the angel thought that he saw the boy’s muscles

actually bulging enough that the skin broke and then healed within a fraction of a second

thereafter. This mutation was happening quickly, faster than he’d ever seen it; it may

have been because the boy was so old - most of the devilkin had been crushed in their

infancy - but Michael believed it was because he had consummated. He had lain with the

imp, shed his seed, and the only thing saving him now was that he hadn’t taken a soul.

Michael imagined that that was what the priest had been for. Shepard’s parents had been

shrewd; a man of God would have completed the transformation that much faster. A

distinct sensation of things moving too quickly, the situation growing from steaming to

boiling; Time, Michael thought. Blasted, wretched time.

Shepard was still trying to get into his mind, to rupture something inside him, and

Michael could sense the child’s frustration; things had been easy until now for Toby, the

world had bowed and broken at his very whim. But now that Michael did not have the

priest to protect - the priest was praying again now, knees in the snow and shaking hands

clasped in front of him, and was at a safe enough distance that Shepard wasn’t an

immediate threat — it was easy enough to fend off the boy’s mental advances. In turn,

though, Michael couldn’t get through to the boy, either. It was as if a pall of fire encased

him; each time Michael tried to work his way through it, hot agony would scream

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 426

through him, weakening him a little further, exhausting this earthly body to the brink of

collapse.

It was the look in Shepard’s eyes when he suddenly flew at Michael with his

fangs bared and his hands hermetic and strained at the angel’s neck that told Michael that

the boy would have to be killed. It was a look beyond murderous; it was the pure,

demented look of evil, and the boy had taken to it like a child to its mother’s tit. So it

was; the boy’s soul would not be saved. It had been a dim hope at best, and now, dodging

right and kicking the boy where his ribs met his newly sprouted wing, Michael

abandoned the idea once and for all.

Shepard grunted, and as he skidded left and down, Michael flew over over him

and, using the boy’s own trajectory for leverage, pushed him to the ground. Pinned, the

boy snapped his teeth and clawed at the angel, but Michael willed his strength - as

fatigued as he was, summing it up into a ball and forcing it all onto this miraculous and

evil boy - and held him down. The boy’s wings began to beat against the earth, and for a

moment Michael thought he had lost him, but he maneuvered his legs over Shepard’s

ivory wings and forced all of his weight onto his chest. One hand on the boy’s forehead

and the other on his throat.

“Priestl” the angel called. “Lucien Delacroix!” There was no response, and

Michael turned his head just enough to see the priest still genuflecting, his lips canting

some outmoded hymn. The quiet chant of his song was wrong in the ruined woods.

The angel looked back at Shepard, the delicate veins in his throat emerging like

miniature volcanic ranges. The boy strained against the angel’s hands, gnashing his teeth

and cutting his gums.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 427

To move the priest with his mind would be to risk letting Shepard in. He would

have to do this with his voice, with this flimsy body. Delacroix was integral in killing the

boy; Shepard had come too far in his adaptation to be extinguished by the angel’s hands.

In a way, Shepard was now far more powerful than the angel, in that he was as close as

any living thing to immortal; to separate his wings from his body would accomplish

nothing, because the boy was not yet an angel himself. But he was also not human. A

dangerous loophole indeed, and the only solution to it, short of letting the boy complete

his evolution and calling God’s army for full waged war, was waiting still and burning in

the Shepard woman’s purse.

“Priest!” Michael screamed, and this time the muttering behind him paused. The

forest was quiet now, the only sounds Shepard’s snapping teeth and Michael’s labored

breathing. The boy continued to strain - no relent to this child. Michael had to assume

that he now had the priest’s attention. “In the boy’s mother’s purse,” Michael said,

making sure to speak as clearly and directly as he could - not an easy task, as his strength

was running from him like blood from a wound - “there is a knife. Made from bone.

Take the knife and come to me, Lucien. Do it quickly.”

For a horrible moment Michael thought that the priest had not paid him heed, that

he had passed out from exhaustion or had simply fled. But then there were footsteps

behind him, a light sifting through the snow, and soon Delacroix was standing above the

angel and the boy, his legs shaking visibly but the Foil in his hand. The blade burned with

an amber light in the dark forest.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 428

The angel moved his hand from the boy’s forehead to his chin, then, tilting

Shepard’s head and bearing his throat, he said, “Drive the blade into his neck. Use both

hands.”

The priest did not move, only stood there shaking, knocking knees and the blade

loosely gripped in his trembling hand. Then: “I can’t.”

“Do it, Lucien, do it FOR YOUR SALVATION DO IT!” And when the priest did

not move the angel closed his eyes and with just a fraction of his power pictured the

priest’s hands to move him but that was enough to let Shepard in. Michael heard the

priest grunt and then the angel was knocked backwards, his hands slipping from the boy’s

throat, and then Toby was on him, clawing and biting, and the angel bucked but the boy

had maneuvered around to his back where he looped one arm around the angel’s neck.

Michael could feel the boy’s free hand gripping one of his wings, and he opened his

mouth to scream but there was a tearing sensation at his ribs, and he lost his voice then

because with a sound like a twig snapping Shepard tore off the angel’s left wing.

On the ground now, already losing his vision but retaining enough of it that he

saw the boy advancing on him, tossing the bleeding wing to the earth and grinning like

the Fallen One, like his disowned brother. Michael felt his remaining wing begin to beat

against the ground but it did nothing but turn him prone, then the Shepard boy’s hand was

at the edge of his right ribcage and then another razor surge of pain as the boy removed

his remaining wing.

Michael clawed at the earth and turned. The priest screamed. And as the child

came forth and delivered the killing blow, tearing out the angel’s throat with one gross,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 429

mutant claw, the world was black again and the angel thought, Home, I ’m coming Home

now, I ’m sorry Father. I am so sorry.

Mr. Delacroix

9:22 PM

The day’s recent events - the drugs he’d been administered, the flickering

recollections of the beatings he’d received, the long walk through the woods and the

ensuing holocaust, these men each stepping forward and cutting open their throats and

grinning, smiling as they did it for Christ’s sake, the boy Toby Shepard, his Toby, Toby,

bending at the waist and his skin opening up and sprouting those huge, white wings, the

emergence of the other one, the dark one who at once had been so beautiful and

absolutely terrifying that to look at him was like scratching an itch straight to the bone,

the horrible death of Phil Shepard, and then Toby wrestling the angel, a Biblical scene

indeed, sweat and skin and mighty bones clashing with bared teeth and smooth shoulders

and wings so strong that when they flailed they changed the direction of the wind, and the

angel’s death, with Toby arching over his destroyed body and reaching into his throat and

emerging with a handful of grizzle and blood and bone - it had all concentrated into

something small and hot and had centered itself in Lucien’s legs.

He’d been floored when Toby kicked the angel off. Tumbled backwards and

landed flat on his head. For a sick moment, lying there in the snow, he’d thought that

he’d broken his neck. But he’d raised his head and had seen Toby flying with his arms

outstretched, and then had sat up and watched as Toby tore off one of the angel’s wings.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 430

Watching this, he had realized that he had never believed in God - not really. It

had come over him like a flu, a flush through his body hot and giddy; though he’d always

been interested in the Catholic religion, and had never initially doubted his desire to join

the priesthood, Lucien simply had not believed. It had been something symbolic, even as

he had broken the Eucharist and drank the wine - the Body and the Blood - and as he’d

received confessions and forgiven countless souls of their fleshbound sins, as he’d stood

and preached before these willing and contented congregations...he hadn’t believed a

lick of it. Until now, religion - God - had been something that belonged to Man.

It wasn’t. God did not belong to man. God was a real thing that belonged to

Himself, and here was an angel - Michael, God’s right-hand man - dead by the hands of

a boy named Toby, a boy who had haunted Lucien’s dreams and had caused him to leave

his Mila, his lovely Mila. This boy had caused his sister’s death - the realization struck

Lucien and clenched in his stomach like a glove filled with jelly. This boy, the boy of his

dreams, was a harbinger of death and destruction - all that came into contact with him

were dead...they were scattered around the forest, evidence hard and obvious (though

charred now, and there was a smell, too, like burning oranges and vomit) and now the

boy had killed an angel, one of God’s angels, and was bearing down on Lucien with a

determined look on his face and shaking his hands free of the blackened blood that had

bubbled out of the angel’s neck and wings...

Toby was changing again. Even as he approached Lucien, walking steadily now,

naked from the waist up, he was changing. He was no longer a boy. His features had

hardened, his jaw set now from his face like carved wood, his hands and fingers solid and

slender, the line of his shoulders veiled with shadows from the still burning fire. And his

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 431

skin had changed from a healthy pink to a white so pale that it was almost translucent.

His veins pulsed blue up his arms and across his torso. And his wings had become larger.

Without speaking, Toby sat beside Lucien and put a hand on his leg. Toby’s

hands felt cold to Lucien, colder even than the air in these freezing woods, and when

Lucien looked at Toby he saw that the boy’s - man’s, really - eyes were the shade of

fresh snow. Two glowing orbs like cruel moons.

“I’m Toby,” the thing said, and Lucien felt a horrible smile take over his lips.

Here was his boy.

“Lucien,” Lucien said, and laughed. It was something out of control, his laugh,

but it gave him the feeling that someone had pricked with him with a pin to slowly let out

all that air that was swelling inside him and making him feel like he was going to pop.

Toby joined in, his voice harsh and off beam, and as the sound echoed through the woods

the wolves - long since gone from the clearing - broke into their horrible chorus from

somewhere in the darkness.

Toby smiled. “Put your hand here,” he said, and gently took Lucien’s arm and

laid it over his chest. “Do you feel that?” he said.

“What?” Lucien asked.

“Exactly,” Toby said. “Nothing. My heart stopped beating. After...after I killed

him." Toby gestured to the angel’s body, which was now shimmering much as the bushes

and small trees had shimmered before catching fire. The corpse was slowly but steadily

crumbling in on itself, like a plastic raft being sucked of air.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 432

Lucien realized that he was holding his breath, and as he let it out his vision

cleared a little. The earth around him was spotted with pockets of snow and scorched

earth. Toby released Lucien’s hand and sighed.

“How is that possible?” Toby said. “How can I still be alive but my heart’s not

beating?”

He looked at Lucien and his eyes, those pockets of white, didn’t show a hint of

emotion. Lucien wondered if Toby knew that his eyes looked like that. The unreality of

the situation was weighing on Lucien somewhere, somewhere in the far reaches of his

mind, but Lucien also felt a clarity of thought that he hadn’t felt in a long time. It was a

lucidity, a simplicity, similar to that which he’d felt on his first plane to St. Thomas.

As if in answer to his thoughts, Toby said, “I think I know what I am now.” Toby

looked at his hands, then at Lucien, and said, “My hands look different.” Then, as if it

had just occurred to him, “And I’m not even breathing. I don’t have to breathe now.”

Lucien opened his mouth to speak but Toby stood up, then walked over to where

the angel’s body was smoldering, barely recognizable now as a human form. Toby bent

over to touch something and then recoiled as if stung. He said something under his

breath, something that sounded like can’t touch it, then looked at Lucien and at once a

small shape was floating up from the ground and toward Lucien. It floated slowly, and

when it came into view, Lucien realized that it was the knife that Horace had given him.

Lucien began to back away, inching backwards along the ground, but the knife

slowed as it approached him, then came down neatly on the snow near his left hand. Toby

walked back over, his wings trembling behind him as if eager for flight. Lucien took the

knife.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 433

Toby kneeled in front of him, fixed a strong hand over Lucien’s, and said, “You

have to do it.”

Lucien shook his head. “I can’t,” he said.

The hand tightened around Lucien’s and Toby bowed his head. It was a sad

gesture, and Lucien was immediately filled with a diluted kind of grief for Anna. She

seemed so far away now, as if yesterday’s events had taken places years before. This

feeling transferred smoothly to the knife in his hand, which now Lucien felt he’d carried

with him always. And would carry with him always. The knife glowed, flaring from its

golden sheen to bright white.

The hand tightened again and Lucien saw that Toby was shaking. Then, in

Lucien’s mind - Toby’s mouth did not move - came the voice of the boy, still so young,

with an innocence that Lucien hadn’t detected today in the boy’s voice but had been

strong, so powerful, in Lucien’s dreams. It said, Do this now, please, do it, because it

wants to kill you. The thing inside me wants to kill you. And it’s still growing. I can

hardly control it now. You have to do it now. Please.

Lucien closed his eyes. There had been an urgency in that voice that told Lucien

that Toby hadn’t been lying, that it had taken whatever was left of him to walk through

the woods and find that knife and float it over to Lucien. Toby hadn’t even been able to

touch the blade; it had burned him, or hurt him somehow. Lucien could feel the knife

burning in his hand, a white kind of heat that somehow wasn’t painful, like the scorch of

the sun when you tan in the same position for too long. And now Toby was shaking,

Lucien could feel the tremor of him without even looking, and Lucien knew that it was

the boy fighting the thing.. .and losing. Lucien had no time but now.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 434

Before he did it, he thought about God. He thought about the God he had used to

believe in, the One that he’d served. Symbolic and merciful, a thing man revered but

didn’t really, a thing that man worshiped and built shrines for and dedicated his life to but

didn’t really. A what. But it wasn’t a what; it was a Who. Whatever Lucien did now

would be serving a different God; He was the God of the Old Testament, the God who

told Abraham go up to the mountain to kill his son, the God who flooded the earth as

castigation for human pride, the God who dispersed severe and ultimate orders to the

ranks of angels like a general to his army. Someone real. Someone who with intense eyes

and ears watched and listened and judged with not a flinch. For the first time in his life,

Lucien was scared for his own soul. It was a sad feeling, a small feeling.

Toby, still shaking, had bowed down his head, revealing the back of his neck. But

Lucien struck up with the blade, driving it into Toby’s throat, and there was no give as he

did it; the knife slid smoothly into the child’s throat and emerged unblemished and

glowing on the other side. Toby jerked back, hands to his throat, the blood pouring from

his wound glue-white and steaming in the winter air. And here was something that

Lucien would never, ever forget: a smile on Toby’s face as those alien hands clutched at

his bubbling throat. A child’s smile.

Toby

9:26 PM

He tried to feel around his throat to remove from it the sharpness and burning, as

if the presence of it would have removed that feeling of losing control, as if pulling it out

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 435

of his throat would allow that area to seal up and heal but not before the Whiteness inside

of him had blown out like a lungful of poison, but when he reached to grab it it burned

his hands so badly that they ignited at the touch, and so he laid down on the ground with

his hands burning and he was slowly choking, a hot liquid bubbling out of his nose and

throat and mouth, wishing for death now some kind of release so that he wouldn’t have to

feel this way he wanted the Gray back just some kind of sensation of uncertainty but he

couldn’t get the White out of his mind, it was all there in his eyes and in his burning

hands a White feeling of nonentity that was so hot, sweltering, and most of him wanted to

get up and strangle the priest until his eyes bulged from their sockets but he couldn’t find

his legs, he was dying, he was only thirteen but he was dying without his parents there to

hold his hands, I want my Daisy back I want my Mom, and turning his head left he saw

that around him a discreet line of white fire was slithering along the bare earth and he

turned his head and it was there on the other side too, and though that large White part of

him wanted the priest to come into the circle and feel the fire with him he was able to call

out and tell Mr. Delacroix to run, start running now, don’t stop because the fire is coming

to take me, but it came out garbled because there was so much blood and his voice was

gruff and croaky and throaty like just after you drink orange juice, and the other part of

him, the part that had been Gray for so long, the part that had been able to warn the priest,

that part of him was smiling now because this was better than the alternative, better that

he go away now instead of staying here to do those awful things that he felt like doing,

and he turned his head again to look at the priest but his vision was gone now, it was only

White, and as Toby died that last speck of Gray faded finally to White and the sadness

faded with it and his last thought was that he had been wrong, that it would have been

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 436

better to crush the priest and strike up into the universe, leaving that sweet and beautiful

trail of White fire in his wake.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. EPILOGUE

(The following letter was obtained in Calcutta, India, en-route to The United States, by

the Federal Bureau o f Investigation, relating to cases 11113 & 11005: Shepard Family

Slayings/Kellan Caulfield investigation. The letter was addressed to Mila Elizabeth

Holden, US VI, and postmarked 21 March 2005. The Bureau believes the letter was

written on 20 March 2005, Easter Sunday, by Lucien Mark Delacroix.)

Mila,

Just received your last letter. I don’t think that III be in contact for a while after this, but

you probably already guessed that. And judging by your most recent letter, I ’m not even

sure that you would want me to write anymore, but there are a few more things Ifeel I

have to say to you.

First, and foremost, I love you. Always will. Maybe you don’t want to hear that. I can

certainly understand if that’s the case. But know that everything that has happened

doesn’t change the way I feel about you. There are things I want to tell you, so many

thinss... but what happened in those woods - 1 know I have been and am still being

elusive here, and I ’m sorry for that - it was an indication o f something bigger than me,

something that I couldn’t (and still haven’t been able to) reconcile with living in St.

437

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 438

Thomas. And to answer your first question, yes, I am a priest again. To answer your

second, no, I was not when I was with you. I did intend to officially resign when I went to

Tiverton. I understand your anger, and I can only imagine what it’s like for you to be

stuck on the other side o f all o f this.

But I can’t see you. That’s all I have. It burns me up, because to think o f how happy I was

when I was with you ...it doesn ’t seem fair. To you or to me. You must think that I ’m

crazy. But know that with you I was happier than I have ever been, and probably happier

than I ever will be. In so many words, though, I ’ve found the priesthood again. I wish I

could tell you more, but I can’t. The new Order is very secretive and very strict. They will

be reading this letter.

You should tell the police whatever you feel is right. I wouldn ’t want to burden you with

lying, and I don’t think that it will matter anyway. When either they find or you show

them this letter, I ’ll be long gone from where I am now (think mountains, snow). So don’t

worry about that.

I ’ll cut to the chase here — “chuck the fat, ” as you like to say. What I want you to do —

need you to do — is start praying. Get Christened. Go to Church. Please, Mila, please do

these things, because I have tangible evidence that God exists and that hell is real, and

hell is eternal and you need to listen to me. Please, Mila, if you ’ve ever listened to me, if

there is even a kernel o f a piece o f an inclination in you that thinks that maybe I ’m not

crazy, then please, just take that time once a week and go to church and confess your sins

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 439

and pray. Pray, Mila, because your soul is a delicate thing and can be snatched away in

a breath. 1 know exactly how this must look — Lucien goes back home after a little

vacation and disappears off the face o f the map and starts writing these strange letters

and maybe he was nutso in the first place, maybe he came to St. Thomas because he had

a breakdown up there and he was really lying to me the whole time, because no one lies

with more conviction than the insane. They say that when you ’re crazy, you don’t know

that you sound crazy at all; I know how I sound, Mila, and I don’t even need you to

believe me; I just need you to humor me, just for a little while. The believing will start on

its own.

I ’m only allowed one piece o f paper, front and back, and as you can see I ’m almost at my

fill. The Order is canceling its PO box, so don’t bother writing. I ’ll contact you as soon

as I can. But it may be a while.

Don’t forget that I love you, and that if I could take all o f this back, if I could un-see the

things I saw and unlearn the things I ’ve learned in the last few months, I would. In a

heartbeat. But I can’t do that. And don’t worry about me (ifyou ’re so inclined, if you

don’t hate me); I ’m doing what I have to do, and I ’m traveling a great deal and seeing

parts o f the earth I never thought I ’d see. I wouldn ’t go so far as to say that I ’m having a

good time, but I ’ve learned that a good time is pretty low on God’s shopping list. Alright,

I ’m out o f space now. Have to go. Please pray, Mila. For your life, and everything that

comes after it. Pray.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Your Luke

3/20/04

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.