Quote from Thomas Merton - words Trump & Company choose not to comprehend

“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. 

That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business.

What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.” 
― Thomas Merton

Mr. Dacy - Part 1

Mr. Dacy’s barbershop was just six houses down from our bungalow, just right at the corner on the opposite side of the street.  My dad said it used to be a little candy store that his aunt tended, but that was before me, long before me, in fact.  Maybe she had stockpiled it, I don’t know.  I do remember that any time I went for a haircut, Mr. Dacy made sure that my pockets were full of candy and gum when I left, and it all came out of some vast reservoir in his back room. There was always plenty and then some.

It was a nice place, a typical neighborhood barber shop in the ‘70s.  Sometimes when my parents would fight, I’d go down and sit in his shop, re-reading his old comics until things settled down.  Everyone was welcome there any time.  Sometimes the beat cops would take refuge from the heat, the cold, the rain, or the boredom, chatting away about the war with Mr. Dacy.  I wasn’t too sure which war they were talking about.  Looking back now, it had to be Korea, but it’s entirely possible that it was just war in general – whatever each of them had been through.  Mr. Dacy hadn’t served.  He volunteered several times, but none of the doctors were willing to overlook the fact that he was missing two toes on his right foot.  Whenever he told the story, his punchline was always "I’m not planning on kicking the enemy" or "I never heard of a man who shot with his feet."  Everyone always laughed when he said it, but nobody more than Mr. Dacy himself.

It was actually a childhood accident, I found out.  No, not exactly.  He called it an accident, but it happened when a shed collapsed.  Usually when a shed collapses it’s an accident of some kind. It’s not when it collapsed because your insane grandfather locked you and your two cousins inside, then proceeded to run over it with a tractor.  He always said his cousins were lucky because they weren’t seriously injured and got to serve in the war.  Their luck cost them more than two toes, though.  They both served in Korea, where one was killed by a land mine and the other by a sniper.  Still, from Mr. Dacy’s perspective, they were the lucky ones.

Anyway, everyone knew Mr. Dacy, and he knew everyone and their habits.  My friends and I would be hanging out at twilight in the winter and he’d turn to me or Richard Kriger and say "Your folks are wondering where you are."  Sure enough, within five minutes, he or I would hear one of our parents hollering down the block for us to come home for dinner.  Mine would always yell, "Tommy – dinner’s ready and getting cold!"

He knew when the patrol cop or the mail man was about to stop in, or when his regulars were about to stop by.  I lost track of the number of times he’d be stepping through the curtains from his back room just as I was opening his front door.  Always just walking out of the back room.

I was eleven.  I’d just run down the block with my dollar and a quarter to get a haircut.  There was trouble – danger in the air – but there was nothing we didn’t know about, and nothing that couldn’t be seen from our front porch.  Despite what was going on in the news, my mom knew I’d be safe trotting by myself from our front steps to the safe haven of the barber shop.  And she knew that Mr. Dacy, missing toes or not, wouldn’t let some stranger get hold of me.  Mr. Dacy saw everything there was to see in our little rectangular world.  He was as much a part of our safety net as any of the neighborhood cops.

People were on edge.  Four boys had gone missing over the past six months.  Three boys on the other side of town, across the river, had disappeared.  Nobody knew where they were – probably run away, most people said, "Gone to join the circus." There was one from Bessimer, one from Bojon Town, and one from Mesa Junction. People were still saying that about the latest boy, here on our own side of town. He’d vanished a month ago, in the middle of the summer. Nobody who knew him said it, of course, but the old bastards who thought they knew everything about everyone still said it about all four boys.  "Nothing to it – they’re just off on a lark."

Richard Kriger would become number five, rounding out a full house.  Three boys from the other side of town and two from this side.  I knew Richard. I’d known him every single day since we met in Kindergarten. He was my best friend. I knew he wasn’t going to go running off for an adventure, whether it was the circus or climbing a mountain.  He didn’t cross the street without an adult standing by to approve.  He was as likely to leap without looking as I was to look and not leap.  I wouldn’t join the circus, but I had no problem trying whatever might be in front of me.  We balanced each other out, and he trusted me.  I trusted him.  He could count on me pushing things a little and find us adventures.  I could count on him keeping things on an even keel.  Between the two of us, we managed to get in just enough trouble, and to stay out of just enough. Together, we could have fun without making our parents go down to the police station.

Well, we did up until he disappeared.  His parents then made their trips to the station, and the cops made enough trips to their house or to their street, which was one block over, behind the barber shop, just across the alley.  Mr. Dacy had had his share of hushed conversations with the cops about the lay of the land, and what might have happened in the alley that Mr. Dacy’s shop shared with the Krigers’ house.  After they left, you could see him fretting and distracted.  Richard was a good boy and we spent a lot of time hanging out around the shop. It was natural that Mr. Dacy would be concerned about how things were going.  Richard was one of his special young friends, just like me.

So, I ran down to Mr. Dacy's like I'd done dozens of times before, though this time I doubted strongly that I'd run into Richard there. Once again, he was stepping out of his back room, sliding between the two curtains so smoothly, I'm not sure they actually parted around him.  Yes, they must have, but there was no tell-tale ripple behind his body.  He was behind the drapes and then in front of the drapes.  Logic says he passed through them, but he left no evidence.

I think even he was a little surprised at how little they moved, because he turned to them and took their measure, glancing up and down their part.

"Hey, there, buddy." He glanced over my shoulder and out the window, lingering on the shadowed shapes.  "No, Richard?  That doesn't happen often, does it?  Wonder where he's gotten to."  He paused, not really waiting for an answer.  If I had to guess, I'd say he was waiting for the words to go away, to vanish beneath the ceiling fan, dissipated into vapor and no more.  No need to crowd them out.  He never crowded anything out, just waited it out in his own canny manner.  There was a time, a year or so earlier, when a vicious dog had gotten into the shop.  Richard, Whitey and I had leapt onto the counters, and the only grown up customer there, Mr. Jimenez, had retracted his legs up into his body trying to keep them from the dog's jaws.  We boys stood atop the counter, wailing at Dacy to chase him, hit him, throw something, look out, run, hit him - any active thing we could think of, we threw out, hoping some panicked solution would avail itself.  Mr. Dacy just eyeballed him.  He turned calmly as the dog wandered the floor, sniffing and growling, but didn't even try to keep him in his direct line of sight.  He waited for the dog to slow and regard him, rolling a growl out to goad him into action, but Dacy just stood there.  He put his comb and scissors down and then stepped around the barber chair that held Mr. Jimenez and walked past the dog to the door. He yanked it open, waved his arm through it, and barked at the dog, "Get out! Out!"  The dog looked around, like he wasn't sure who was being ordered out, then he trotted out the door with his tail tucked.

Dacy walked back behind the chair and retrieved his scissors and a fresh comb from the sterilizing jar.  He gave Mr. Jimenez two pats on the back, said "Let's get back to business" glancing at us as he said it, and waving us down with the comb.  He pointed at me and said "Mickey, give the precinct house a call, why don't you."  I was still quaking from the tension of keeping my pants dry, but somehow felt that he and I had boldly faced down a killer.  Here I was, dropping a dime on a public enemy.  In some far-off universe, I could imagine him breaking out of dog jail and coming for me, hell-bent on revenge.  I'd be first, of course.  I was the squealer and the weak one.  He'd knock me off, and then go for Mr. Dacy.  At least that would be his plan, but something would go amiss and both Dacy and I would find ourselves in a showdown with him ... and we'd win.  Heroes a second time, and that time for sure, I'd have earned my stripes.

Mr Dacy had that kind of effect.  You were part of his bravado, his adventure, and his secrets.  He was your back door to the world of grown-ups.  I knew plenty of older boys who told me about how, as they got older, he'd go from giving them gum and penny candy, and start offering them a sip or two of beer, and later a shot.  Some laughed about it; others were secretive, their chuckles dying in their throats, but only the most uptight ever said "Nah, my mom woulda smelled it on my breath in a sec.  I just stopped going then, and found another barber."  Richard, Whitey and I talked much about it, and we all agreed that, when our time came, we'd step up and partake of some adventure.  We weren't little girls after all, right?  That's what we figured, anyway.

He was pensive this time, though - like he was waiting, watching, measuring something, weighing things, juggling sorrows.  He asked once again, obliquely, about Richard.  "I think I might've seen him earlier today, going down the alley, but wasn't sure.  I called out to him, but he didn't turn around.  Just hit the street and took off at a run.  Long gone from here by now, I'd expect.  He say anything out of the ordinary to you the past few days?"

He was watching over my shoulder again. I sputtered something out that was as non-committal as it could be and still try to put the whole thing behind me.  What did I know from strange behavior?  I hadn't seen him, and I couldn't imagine anything strange he'd said or done in the past month, let alone the past few days, and why did I feel like Mr. Darcy was looking right through me when he wasn't even looking at me, and maybe I'd come back another time for my haircut.  It was at that moment that I decided - without voicing it - that Richard was out there somewhere, in a place I couldn't imagine ... and more importantly in a place I didn't want to ever imagine, and this little sanctuary of Mr. Dacys was giving me no comfort.  The deep panic I was starting to feel pushed out any comfort that I'd usually gotten from being in the barber shop.

I wanted to run home, but dusk had turned from red to purple to black, and the darkness was starting to seep into the lighted barber shop.  The corners were darker; the light fixtures hanging from the ceiling were slowly being suffocated by the viscous blackness that was filling the shop.  I knew if I stayed there longer, even that island of normalcy would sink under the dark pool of sadness that was rippling about.  I made a little gasp and a little shriek which, along with the anguish on my face, was intended to be an admission of panic and of failure.  I felt I was betraying Mr. Dacy by not feeling safe in his sanctuary, but I also knew that, if I didn't leave then, the least of my worries might have been crying in front of him.  My face made the apology my voice couldn't, and I shot through the door, barely encountering it, in the same way he'd scarcely encountered the curtain to the back room when I'd come in.  I coughed on the way home, but I didn't cry. Not then.

He didn't come home that night or the next, and everyone who was willing to leave the house talked about it, mostly in a circle that lapped the block, going from adjoining fence to adjoining fence, back yard to back yard.  It was safe enough, though.  Richard's family lived across the street from us, so we could do our serial gossiping without causing them direct discomfort.  Also, the cops talked to everyone on the block and I'm sure all around, at least once.  They talked to me three times to see if there was anything I might possibly remember, even though I hadn't even seen Richard yet that day.

They found Richard a week and a half later - he was the first of the lost boys to no longer be lost.  A fisherman up by the Rock Canyon Barrier Dam, fishing the eddies for random, stray rainbow trout, found more than he wanted when he snagged Richard's Cub Scout belt.   I was watching Johnny Quest on the couch, at seven in the morning, when my mom came in, then left, then came in, then left, then cried in her bedroom for a while before coming back in. I could hear her, but after Johnny, Captain Kangaroo came on and I was too lazy to change it. Plus, you never knew when Mr. Moose would drop hundreds of ping pong balls on the rabbit, so I was less attentive than I might otherwise have been.  I'm pretty sure I've never seen her as sad as she was when she turned the Captain off in the middle of the Ugly Ducking story book drawing skit.  After she told me, I watched the dull gray screen for a while.

She'd talk for a little, saying things I immediately decided not to remember, then she sat next to me. She kept touching my shoulder, and I don't know which of us she was trying to make sure was still there.  Probably me. Mostly, I just watched the quiet, empty gray screen.  I was ten feet away from the TV, sitting back against the couch, but I wobbled, and with each wobble, I thought maybe I would fall into the deep emptiness of the screen and maybe I wouldn't be any more.  Not out here, not in there, not anywhere.  Maybe I would be where Richard was, wherever he was.  Maybe he was with Jesus, like the nuns said.  Maybe. Maybe not.  Maybe Jesus didn't go where nothing but sadness was.  Maybe, as nice a guy as he was, he knew better.  If I were Jesus, I think I would.

When my dad came home, he and my mom went off to their room for a while, turning the tv back on as they walked out.  When they came back out, my dad said "Come on, sport, let's go downtown for Mexican." and we all filed out to the car silently.  We really didn't say much of anything until we walked in through the doors at Martinez' and we saw them singing happy birthday to a woman toward the back, surrounded by her family.  "Look, someone's having a party!" My dad said it with warmth and flourish, but it wasn't enough to kickstart anything, so we sat and ate in the greyness.  The next morning, my mom told me to be sure and let her know if I was going to leave the yard, and I said I would, but I didn't even come close.  I sat on the porch for about five minutes, and got tired of hoping nothing moved, so I went back in to the tv. The day after was Sunday, and we went to church, and they both prayed, but I was suddenly too mad to say anything to God.  I didn't pray, and didn't join in at the sign of peace, and when it came time for communion, I sat there while my mom tugged on my jacket.  She tugged when I wouldn't kneel and then more when I wouldn't stand to go up.  I jerked back enough to make her lose her grip on my shoulder and at that point, my dad took her elbow and said "It's okay, Margie.  Let him be."  I cried until I could see through the waves that they were coming back.  I wiped my eyes with my tie, and everything was back to normal by the time they sat back down.  She kept watching me.  My dad patted me on the shoulder once, but otherwise followed his own advice and let me be.

Monday was Richard's funeral, so at eight thirty that morning, almost the entire neighborhood loaded into their sedans and station wagons and went the mile and a half to the Lutheran Church that Richard's family attended.   Everything was just familiar enough to be confusing, though at least they didn't have Latin, which helped.  Julie Baker, from school, had told me that they all spoke German there, but like most things Julie told me, it was untrue.  Richard's mom hugged me tight and didn't say anything.  I hugged her back and said, "I..." before my throat locked up.  It was okay, though, because I'd never gotten past "I ... " in the script I'd been working on in my head, anyway.  The same thing worked for me when I shook Richard's dad's hand, though he had the will and presence of mind to tell me "You're welcome any time, Bobby." I said "I ... " and nodded my head, and we were done.  With more distant relatives, I managed to shake their hands and say "I'm sorry." Sure, it sounded like I was apologizing for stepping on their toe, but it was a step up from "I ..."

I didn't go back to Mr. Dacy's until I was a week overdue for a haircut.  My mom stuffed a dollar and a quarter into my hand and pushed me out the door, telling me "It's time." Yes, sort of - I glanced back enough to know that she was watching me all the way.  I thought about ducking behind a bush, but fortunately rethought that impulse.  I wasn't going to be good at pranks for a while, not around the house, anyway. I was a house away when she hollered, “Don’t shilly-shally – it’s going to be dark soon!”  It wasn’t.  It was only two o’clock in the afternoon.  I knew she was watching me all the way. She was worried, but she didn’t want to keep me locked in the house.

"Bobby, long time, my young friend.  I was starting to wonder."

"It's been a busy two weeks."

"Yeah, busy ..."

It wasn't until he agreed on that point that I realized I hadn't noticed him at the service or at the graveside.  His busy fortnight had transpired somewhere else, evidently.

Being young and guileless, not to mention unschooled in social niceties, I just asked right out, "Did you go ~."  I hadn't gotten further before he was shaking his downturned head.

"I ... well, I got to the church early and sat out in the parking lot until it was time and then when the bells started ringing, I couldn't get myself out of the car, so I just drive off.  I came back here and ... well ... just decided I wasn't going to make it to the graveside either."

I fiddled with the arm of my chair while he was telling me this, watching my fingers pry at the seam on the vinyl arm cushion.

I didn't know what to say.  I wanted to get angry and yell at him that he should've been there with everybody else.  I also wanted to tell him that the only thing I was thinking while I was at the church and graveside was that I wanted to be anywhere but there and if I could've snuck out without my folks nabbing me and dragging me back, I would have.  I guess I was just mad because he got to do something I was longing to do.

I picked at the arm of the chair more before I managed to squeeze out of my throat, "He liked coming here. He liked you."

"Yeah, I liked him, too.  He was a good ... person. He was special." I was all knotted up and distracted, but I still appreciated him calling Richard a person and not just a kid. "You're both two of the nicest boys I think I've known, you and Richard."  As nice as that normally would have been, I shuddered.  I could see being tied to my best friend's corpse for the rest of my natural life, everyone mentioning to new people that I had been best friends with "that dead boy, you'd remember his name if you heard it" and telling me endlessly, "So, Bobby, it's still not the same, you know, him not being around - of course I don't have to tell you that."  No, you don't you really don't, at least not every day and twice on Sundays.  I knew it would happen because already at my age, I'd seen how adults would hook onto one thing to tell you about, and then just keep drilling it into you like they were senile.

I sighed and realized I was already out of things to say, having said nothing so far. "I'll ... I was …I just have time for a haircut today ... but ... I'll come back another time." I appreciated what he said and how he said it, but I was afraid he was going to keep saying it, and I didn’t want to think about Richard, and how he and I were inseparable, any more right then.

Mr. Dacy just stood next to the barber chair. I knew he was watching me as I walked back out into the twilight. I knew he was worried.

I got back to the house and realized I still didn't want to be there in the grey quiet.  I offered to run down the block the other direction and get something - anything - from the corner store for her.  Anything.  It could be heavy, or something girly. Just something to get me through that barrier around the house and back out into what had been the world.  She looked horrified and her hand flew up to her mouth before she reached down and squeezed my shoulder.  "No, baby, I want you to stay where I know you're safe." She was right.  There was a little terror rumbling inside of me as I was making the offer, but I pushed it down.

The next morning, my mom got a call.  Then she made a call.  The first call, she just kept looking around and giving short answers.  The second one, she hauled the extension phone down the hall to the laundry room and closed the door.  She came out and eyeballed me, then went about her business.

About an hour later, I told her I was going to run down to the barber shop, and was already half way out the door before she brought me up short.

"Bobby ...  no ... just hang around a while. Maybe help me with some things. You can go out this afternoon if you still want to." She came up with some lame tasks for me to handle for her, things that took about a minute apiece, and for which I probably spent more time going back to her for the next thing to do than I did actually doing the things.  It didn't dawn on me what was really going on until we heard a knock at the door and she told me to go sit in the living room and wait for her.  When she came in it was with two men.  One, she introduced as a detective, but he wasn't the one we had talked to when Richard disappeared. This one had a sharp face and looked like a falcon or a hawk.  The other was one of the cops that patrolled the neighborhood, Officer Jenkins.  If he was in a great mood, he'd occasionally let us call him Officer Bob, but we were scared to just call him by his first name without invitation.  He wasn't in a great mood that day, but he was working overtime trying to be reassuring, so he talked slow and gave me lots of tight smiles.  He danced around a lot of things before the detective, Lieutenant BirdNose cut him off and jumped in with both feet.  "Bobby, you're a smart kid, so we're going to come right to the point.  We think you can help us figure out what happened to your friend, and we're sure you want to help us do that, right Bobby?  If you knew something, you'd be glad to tell us, right? So nobody else gets hurt?"  All of that seemed so obvious that I looked around - to my mom and to Officer Bob - looking for some reassurance that everybody knew I'd want to help and there wasn't any need for all of those question marks he kept throwing at me.

"Bobby? Bobby?  I need you to stay focused buddy, so you can help us like I know you want to." Even the statements were questions in disguise.

My mom reached a hand out and placed it on my arm.  "Of course, he's going to help if he can.  There's no need to ..."

"Then we needn't worry about anything, do we, Mrs. Boerne?" He turned back to me and I felt like a field mouse suddenly on his radar.  "Bobby.  I'm going to ask you a question and I want you to be completely honest with me.  You'll do that, right?"  My mom started to object again, and he raised his hand to cut her off.  With his falcon eyes boring into me, I just nodded.  "Even if it means telling us some things about a friend that he might not want us to know?"

I jumped up from the couch at that point and everyone leaned forward, I suppose wondering if I was about to make an escape.  I wasn't even thinking about that, though.  "If you're thinking Richard was doing something that got him into trouble with someone, then you're ... he wouldn't; he couldn't, he was always ... he was so careful!  We used to call him ... I don't believe ... because ... he was ... he wouldn't ..."  The detective was waving me down with both hands already, in the 3 seconds it took for all of that to explode out of me.  "Bobby, Bobby, calm down, kid.  Sit yourself back down. I'm not accusing Richard of anything."

"Whitey ..."

"No, no, no. Just calm yourself and sit down, then we'll continue."  He looked to my mom for reinforcement and she put her hand on my shoulder.  "It's okay, Bobby.  Let's just hear him out. For now."  She eyeballed him when she said the last bit, and I felt like she was back clearly on my side.

So, I sat back down. After fiddling with his keyring, he continued.  "Mister Dacy is a good friend of yours, right?"

I had no idea where that had come from, and I was reeling.  I had never imagined that anybody I knew might be connected with what happened to Richard. He might as well have asked me about Richard's dad or our principal in Elementary school, who I always thought of as the ultimate authority figure, even after we'd moved on to middle school.

"Huh?"  I wasn't stalling.  I was trying to make sense of the sentence, and was still failing.

"You heard me alright, didn't you, Bobby?"

"I ... I ... I ..." I started crying and leaned into my mom, who was going to have to hug me whether she wanted to or not.  Through the waves in front of my eyes, I saw the beak jerk his head toward the hall. He got up and Officer Bob got up, and they went and stood in the doorway for what seemed like a week talking back and forth, nodding, shaking heads, and occasionally gesturing.  After the detective poked Officer Bob in the chest the sixth or seventh or eighth time, and pointed up the block, Officer Bob shook his head, and held up his hand for at least a pause.

They came back in and resumed their original positions, though both more hunkered down than before.  Officer Bob stared at the floor and the detective stared directly at me.

“We want you to know … if he touched you, if he did anything to you, if he made you do anything you didn’t want to, we can help you, but to make sure you’re safe and other kids are safe, we need you to help us. If you can tell us anything useful, we can make sure that he doesn’t find out who told us, and, like I said, we can make sure he doesn’t do anything to any other kids.”

After all that, then he paused.  I guess he was expecting me to be drawn in by the vacuum he left in the silence and start to spill my guts.  Not having anything to say, I still didn’t know what to say. He leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs.  He was planning on being there a while, clearly.


I reached over and absent-mindedly riffed the pages in the book that was on the end table.

“Bobby.”

I glanced up.

“Bobby, we’re going to need you to pay attention to what’s going on.  It’s serious.  Bad things, very bad things have happened, but you and me, we can make them stop.  Don’t you want to be the kid who stopped a crazy man from hurting other kids, hurting your friends?”

I looked at my mom in terror.  Suddenly everything was on me, and I didn’t know how to begin to tell this man that I didn’t know anything that might help. He seemed certain that I had some magical knowledge, but as far as I could figure, I knew nothing about anything.  I didn’t know anything about Richard disappearing; I didn’t know anything about Mr. Dacy doing anything to Richard – or to me – or to any other kids.  I clawed through my memories.  Was there something in the back of my mind, some little detail that I wouldn’t normally notice or remember, something that would lighten the load I was now struggling with?  I replayed random moments in my head, all a-jumble.  Not knowing what I was looking for, or when it might have happened, my brain just poured everything into a large hopper.  It was like a photographer on a tilt-a-whirl, bouncing and swirling, not knowing what might show up in the viewfinder or what sense it might make when everything was brought together.

"Bobby!? Focus, son. This is very serious, and I don't need you to flake out on me."

"It think it would be better if ~" again he waved down my mom's objections, and again she backed down.

"Let's talk a little about the week before last.  Do you remember going there with a new friend, one of your buddies that hadn't gone to the barber shop before?"

I thought and nodded as I tried to swallow.  My throat was too dry.  The nod worked much better than the swallow.

"Is that something that bothers you, thinking about that?"

I shook my head "No, my throat's really dry."

My mom stood to get me a glass of water.  He reached for her arm, then perhaps remembered that this wasn't actually an interrogation, but an interview.

While she was out of the room, he leaned in like a confidante, "Are you a little nervous, buddy?"  That threw me, and I nodded, eager for the little bit of understanding.  At that, he leaned back in his chair and said, "The sooner you tell us what you know, the sooner you'll feel better.  You don't have to hide this anymore.  You won't be in trouble. Dacy will take it all."

That chilled me, literally.  Goosebumps rose.  For a moment, I'd mistaken him for a friend and he'd taken that and punched me in the face with it.  Calmer and more wary, I leaned back too, as my mom returned from the kitchen with a tupperware cup full of water.  I had a better idea of what I was facing, and as scary as it was, it helped a little just knowing.  He really was planning on using me as a battering ram on Mr. Dacy.

Cup in hand, I drank it half down and set it on the end table.  He stared and I stared back.  We both waited the other out.  I learned years later that that's what detectives did - they pushed for a bit, then waited for the pressure of the silence and the stares to make the person they were grilling break down.  I wasn't resolute, though.  If I thought I actually knew something, I was scared enough that I was sure to have blurted it out.  I was silent because I couldn't begin to imagine what I might know. For all I knew, me reciting the alphabet would be no less helpful than anything I might conjure out of my recollections.

"Are you good to go now, sport?" I hated the way he used nicknames. It wasn't a friendly thing. Being twelve, I don't know what it was called back then, but these days it's called "You're my bitch."

I nodded and he dived back in. "So, a couple of weeks ago, you visited the barber shop with a new friend. Do you remember?"

"Whitey?"

He glanced at Officer Bob as though that meant something, "Whitey, yes.  Why did you take Whitey to Mr. Dacy?"

My eyebrows scrunched up.

"Did he ask you to bring him boys?"

"Wha ... no ... Whitey was staying over and we just decided to go to the barber shop for a while."
?
"So, Dacy, " he paused as he glanced down at his notepad, "Mr. Dacy never said anything about bringing friends by? Think carefully."

"Well, he sometimes would say 'Come back and bring your friends," but it's not like he ~"

"Ok, so there were actually times when he asked you to bring boys around ~"

"No ..."

"But you just told me, told us all ..." he nodded at my mom, making sure to include her in the “all.”

"But not like that, that's not how he meant it."

"It's pretty simple Bobby. 'You come back.' and 'You bring friends.' Those are the only two pieces and they're pretty clear.  Tell me what part of that isn't right."

"But you're making it sound like ..."

"They're just words, Bobby.  They sound just like they mean.  Sometimes, it’s easy to mix up exactly what they mean when someone you know and trust says them you, I’ll grant you that.  "

“So, what … I don’t know what …”

I looked at my mom, but she blinked and looked over at the detective. She was trying to say something to him, but she just kept pulling her hair behind her ear and didn’t get anything out.

He looked around like he was getting frustrated.  I don’t know if he was frustrated or just pretending.  He threw down his pencil and rubbed the back of his neck.  “Bobby, Mrs. Peterson, we’re going to go outside and chat for a few minutes.  I want you both to think about what we’ve been discussing.  It’s very important that we get helpful answers.  It’s important to you, to your friends, to the memory of Richard, to the whole community.”

He waved at Officer Bob and they both went out to the front porch.  They kept their heads together.  There was a lot of head shaking and head nodding.  They’d cross their arms and uncross them and every once in a while, one of them – usually The Beak – would look back through the open door at us.  The last thing they did was both turn and face away.  They kept nodding.  They were still talking but they must’ve been afraid we might hear or try to read their lips. 

The Beak came back in and, without even glancing my direction, told my mom "I think we're done for the moment.  We're going to check a few things out and might even manage to move things along a little.  We'll be in touch."

He still didn't look at me, or even act like I was there. Maybe I wasn’t any more.  I could see that I was still sitting on the couch, but I couldn’t feel it under me. I felt light, like I was floating on water.  I didn't know what I could have told him in what little I said, but it seemed to have been significant.

I sat on the couch as my mom busied herself in the kitchen.  In a few minutes, she brought me out a plate of apple slices and a glass of milk and put them on the coffee table.  I started to pick them up and carry them back to the dining room table – she had rules about those things - but she waved me back down. “It’s okay, just stay where you are.  I’ll turn the tv back on for you.  She turned it on and asked if that was okay. I said yes, but I didn’t even know what was on.  I just watched and chewed.

I stayed in the house the rest of the day.  When dad came home, he and mom went in their bedroom and talked for a long time while supper got cold on the stove.  They came back out and mom started warming it again and dad put his hand on the back of my neck and said, “Come talk with me.”

We sat down on the porch, next to each other on the glider.  He sighed a bunch of times, then he put his arm over my shoulder and said, “Bobby, I know I don’t have to tell you this, but I will.  You know how important it is that they catch him, catch whoever did this to Richard and the other boys, right?”

I nodded.

“If there’s anything you think you need to tell me and your mother, or want to tell us, or if there’s anything you’re thinking about or worried about, you can tell us, right?” He stopped and looked both ways up and down our street. Slow, like he was watching for something.  I didn’t say anything, so he said, “Son?”

I nodded my head but I couldn’t say anything because I was just, because my throat was stuck.  I looked down at my jeans that we had just gotten a few weeks ago, before Richard disappeared, and I dripped a tear on them. They were good school pants – school was still weeks away. They were just some cheap summer jeans. Looking at them, and listening to my dad, it scared me that everything now was measured by whether it was before or after Richard.  It scared me that they thought Mr. Dacy could be involved.  It scared me that they thought I could be involved. It even scared me more that I wondered if Mr. Dacy was involved, and if he was, if I’d helped somehow and not known it.

He kept talking, talking about how important it was that we help stop this, and help catch the killer, that I might know something I didn’t realize at the time, and how important it was to … something.  I would nod and I would shake my head when I thought I was hearing him, but I didn’t hear all of it.  I was under water.  I was sitting at the bottom of the lake and I couldn’t breathe and everything was muffled.

All of a sudden, he shook me by the shoulder. I didn’t say anything – I didn’t know what to say – so he shook me again, tighter.  I was looking up toward his face when he grabbed my jaw with his hand.  He turned my head and looked right into my eyes, and he was so angry.  “For God’s sake, Bobby!  You have to talk. You have to tell us, them, someone, whatever you know! Do you want another …” 

The screen door slammed and my mom’s voice came out of somewhere and said, “Evan!”  That’s all she said, and the arm relaxed.  She came over and ran her fingers through my hair.  He said, “Come on, son. Let’s go have some dinner.”

That night, when I was lying in bed not being asleep, he came in and stood by the foot of my bed and said, “I know, son. I’m sorry I got upset. I trust you.  We’re all just very worried.”  He reached down and squeezed my shin, which was all he could reach, and said, “Get some sleep. Your mom and I love you.”

I cried some more and then I got some sleep.

The next morning, I’d already had my cereal and was peeking out the curtains.  I didn’t open them and look out – I just put my finger between them and peeked.  I looked down at Mr. Darcy’s shop.  There was one car in front.  Typical morning in the middle of the week.  And then a black sedan pulled up.  Then another.  They just sat there and didn’t get out. Then a police car and another, on each end of the row of cars.  They just sat there for another couple of minutes, then a man got out of the first car.  He waved a big circle in the air, walking toward the shop door.  When he did that, the police car lights came on, and the other cars spit out six or seven men, in uniform and not.

Maybe 30 seconds later, two cops came out with Mr. Dacy in handcuffs and shoved him in their car and drove off.  The other cars stayed there.  Two cops in uniform stood out front and the three men in plain clothes went inside.

I got the ottoman and set it in front of the window and sat down.  I didn’t think to check the time, but they were in there a long time.  At the end, they got three boxes out of the trunk of the first car and took them in. Five minutes later, they all walked out with a box.  They got in their cars and drove off.  The door to the shop was still open, and they were gone.  I just sat and watched nothing for a while.  I wanted to go close the door and lock it, but I didn't know what might grab me if I got close, so I stayed at our window. I stayed inside the house all day.

How many poets does it take to change a light bulb?

Rabbit Holes

We still have the box for the chess set we’d gotten Kyle for his seventh birthday.  I assume we do, anyway.  If I were home, I’d keep it right where he left it.  Sylvia’s not likely to dispose of it.  She’s convinced I killed him, but I think there’s still a part of her waiting for him to walk back in the door with the chess pieces and board in his knapsack.  If I were home, that’s what I’d be hoping.

With only a week to go before … y’know … it doesn’t matter how crazy people think I am or what they think I’m hiding, so let’s go on with the interview.  Nobody would ever guess it, I don’t think.

He was always quiet – sweet and easy going and quiet.  Not in a scared, skittish way, but in a way that made you … well made me … feel like he was part of every moment that happened, but still detached. Maybe like a traveler.  I met a guy once who had taken a steamer across to Europe and basically worked his way hand to mouth from Calais across the continents to Saigon.   He was just doing his thing, soaking it all in.  Thinking back now, Kyle reminds me a lot of him.

Sylvia was having a baby, and then suddenly she wasn’t.  Ten weeks in, the doctor said, “Hmm …” over his stethoscope and then brought in his ultrasound tech to probe around for a good twenty minutes with more Hmmm-ing from him. He had a quiet conference with her in the hallway, then came back to us as I was wiping the jelly from Sylvia’s belly. “Sylvia, Michael, I have some bad news for you, but it’s not as bad as it could be.”

He dropped onto his rolling stool like wet laundry, and that’s when we found out that Kyle was going to be an only child, though the fetus that was going to be his sister, who we would’ve named Brie, would linger – if all went well and we didn’t have complications that forced us to do anything earlier – until eight weeks.  Three weeks more, and we’d have the procedure.

We were relieved and crushed when the day came to … take care of things.  Kyle was too young to know if we were sad or not, but we’d still spent thirty weeks making happy surprised faces, regardless of what we were really feeling. We went to the doctor, he stayed with Gram-gram, and then later Syl slept through that day and into the next.

Did I mention he loved reading to us?  He started reading when he was 4, just kind of picked it up.  He was very observant.  He’d watch you and figure out in an instant how things worked.  So, he started reading when he was four, and he’d read all the time.  If he wasn’t reading to us, he was reading to his toys.  

He’d go out into the yard and sit under the big oak out next to the pasture.  

The first time … I mean, there was this time I was standing at the kitchen window and saw him out there with his book on the little stump he used as a seat.  He was reading aloud, or at least it looked like it, because as he read he’d gesture along with the story.  It didn’t take much to figure out Cat in the Hat, even from a hundred feet.

But as I watched, he got up, put the book down, and walked off to the side of the tree.  He was looking down at his shoes and talking. He’d nod his head and look around, and move his arms, like he was having a normal, animated conversation with the ground.

It was cute, really, I mean he was seven, right, and here he was out there talking to God knows what – a bird, a butterfly, a worm, y’know?  I called Syl over and showed her what he was doing.  She rolled her eyes and laughed.  She thinks I’m a monster now, but that day, that first time, she rolled her eyes and laughed for fuck sake.  I mean, sorry – I know, language.  She laughed then, but now I’m a monster.

It was nothing. I was going to ask him at dinner what game he was playing with himself out there, but I forgot, and then it just became the thing he did. Everyone gets one quirk, right? He’d play with friends when they were over, and everything would be normal, right?  Nobody ever said he was acting strange.  When he was by himself, though, more and more often, he’d end up under the tree, reading and having these little chats.

After a couple more Saturdays and Sundays like this, I got curious, so I walked over to the tree.  He had rolled his little stump to the spot where he’d been going for his lectures.  He was reading Are You My Mother using different voices for all the characters. He heard my feet in the prairie grass coming up and glanced over his shoulder. He even gave me a little wave, but kept reading.

When I was about ten feet away, though, he just stopped and closed the book, waiting for me.  I asked, “Whatcha doin, sport?”

“Just reading.”

“Who are you reading to?”

“Huh?”

“You looked like you were reading to someone.  Y’know, like mama and I read to you, with gestures and showing pictures.”

He fidgeted and glanced toward the tree. A slow glance, really, like something caught his eye for a moment.  He shook his head a little and said, “Nobody.”

“Ah … well, have a good time.”

I walked back through the grass and over my shoulder, I heard him pick up where he was before.  His voice was a little different, though, like he was annoyed.  At me, I figured. 

“The big thing said ‘Snort!’ Oh no, said the – shhh – said the baby bird – no, shhhh – you are a scary snort!”

Tell me that wasn’t strange.  I should’ve guess something right then. If you’d been there … I don’t know. Guess you had to be there.

That went on for weeks.  He wanted to go out to the tree when he got home from school, but we usually told him no.  It was late; we had supper; it was going to get dark soon; we were going to have family time.  Usual stuff.  One time, though, he said, “Huh. Family time without family” and looked out the kitchen window at the tree.  Again, maybe someone else would’ve gotten suspicious.  Maybe you.  Maybe everybody would’ve just brushed it off like me.  Maybe if Syl had seen anything that I’d seen.  I drive myself crazy with these things, and it really doesn’t solve anything does it?  In a week, I’m going to take a needle regardless of whether I make sense of it.  

Every Saturday and Sunday, though, he’d take the chess set out of the box, grab a handful of books, and go out to the tree for hours.

On the 27th – this would be the day before - the 27th of October, it was getting close to supper time, so I went out to call him.  He was just sitting on his stump talking.  He’d look down at the chess set and make a move, then look up and say something.  Move, talk, move, talk.  I stopped at the edge of the prairie grass and just hollered to him, and he froze.  He packed up the chess set, grabbed his books and put them all in his knapsack, and started walking through the grass to me. About half way back, he waved.  Didn’t turn and wave, just kind of waved over his shoulder.

At supper, he was happy.  He was actually giddy. He asked about all kinds of things. He asked about how to make bologna sandwiches, and if all snakes were poisonous, and if we could go anywhere, where would we go.  A thousand questions.  He asked if he was always named Kyle.  That surprised us. He wasn’t always named Kyle.  Up until he was born, we expected to name him Bobby, well, Bob, Robert, but we’d never mentioned it to him.  I explained that to him and he just nodded his head like, “Yeah, I get it now.”

After supper, it was barely dark when he said that he was going to go to bed.  “Long day tomorrow” he said.

I asked him “Rough day at the office?” and he smiled at me, but in a sad way.

He hugged us both on his way to bed and kissed us both on the cheek, like he always did.  When he hugged Syl, he was about to walk away, then he stopped and just touched her on the cheek.  Like two seconds, and that was it.

She said, “That was sweet.”

We stayed up late that night.  Not sure why. We were just relaxing and never got around to going to bed until around 2am.  

Syl is the sleeper, so I’m the one who gets up – got up – when Kyle gets – got – up.

This was the 28th. Seven in the morning. It was barely light when I heard him in the kitchen, so I got up to see to him. When I walked in, he was dumping a crapload of milk into a crapload of cereal.  He’d gotten a Tupperware bowl out of the cabinet, like a quart bowl, and had practically filled it up with breakfast.

He started off kind of quiet as we sat there, then got real chatty, and asking lots of questions again.  “Hey, dad, are giraffes only in Africa?” “Hey, dad, is there any way to breathe under water?” “Hey dad, how long do shoes last?”  “Hey dad, did you ever have your appendix out?”  All kinds of stuff.

Right when he was scraping the last cereal out of his bowl and slurping down the milk, I realized I hadn’t started the coffee yet.  I went over and was filling the pot, getting the filter and grounds in place, and he hopped up, grabbed his knapsack, which was sitting on the floor next to his chair, said “Bye, dad!” and sprinted out the door.

I said “See ya in a bit, sport” but he was already out the door and running across the yard toward the tree. Through the window, he yelled, “I’m coming, tree!”  I could just barely hear it through the glass, but I heard him call out that he was coming.

The coffeemaker started gurgling and I stood there with my mug, right next to it, in front of the window, and watched him run.  He hit the grass and … he hit the grass and didn’t even slow down … not until he got to the stump.  He … he stopped and walked almost to the tree, then he turned and looked back to the house.  He saw me in the window – he had to see me in the window – he waved.  He waved at me, not just, y’know, toward the house.  He waved at me and then …

I don’t blame anyone for not believing me.  I don’t believe me and I saw it. I was there.  He waved at me, and then looked down, and, I don’t know, stepped forward maybe, and then he just went down.

He didn’t fall.  He was just standing there, and his body was sinking down.  Yeah, everyone looks at me like that.  It’s old. Real old. If you were there … if you were there, you might’ve killed yourself. Seriously. And not because you did anything, but because … there was nothing to do.

I just stared. God’s truth, I just stared for a moment or a minute or something.  I knew he was going to pop back up, but a part of me didn’t know that at all.  I didn’t even blink for God’s sake, because I wanted to see him the exact moment his head popped back up over the grass.

And then I started running.  T-shirt, shorts, no shoes, and I’m running so hard my heart was blasting in my ears before I was even off the patio.  I was yelling, screaming his name.  Syl said it woke her up because it sounded like I was angry, but … where was he, where did he go?  I had no clue and I was panicked.

I got to the stump and I could see his footprints at that point.  They walked from the stump about six feet, and just before the tree, they stopped.  There was dust there, and so I could see.  The cops could see his footprints stop right there, but they also saw my footprints covering every other inch of the area around the tree.  They could see where big feet stomped the grass for fifty feet in every direction.  What they roped off was maybe a quarter of an acre, going from the end of our lawn to the start of the grass, and all the way back to the chain link fence at the end of our property.  No gate, by the way.  Just fence. Six feet.  Keeps bobcats and stuff out.  Everything out.  Kids in, definitely.

I should have called 911 immediately, but it was insane.  I knew he had to be playing a game, laying down somewhere in the grass waiting to surprise me.  He backtracked without me noticing, then vanished in the tall grass.  I spent thirty minutes frantically dragging my feet through every inch of the grass, like he was a softball someone had lost.  I should have woken Syl up immediately, but how the fuck could I just walk out of the place I’d last seen my son?  You couldn’t do it.  Nobody could do it.  It took me half an hour.  By the time I staggered back to the house, I was seriously deranged.  Nothing could have happened but something did.  He couldn’t be gone, but he was.

I screamed - like six times - for Syl, as I was dialing the phone.  She came out and heard me trying to explain to the dispatcher or operator or whatever, what had just happened. Nothing after that made sense to her, which was hard. But you know what, nothing made sense to me from thirty minutes earlier.

It’s hard for me to blame her.  I saw him.  I couldn’t say I didn’t. I couldn’t say I looked away.  I saw him all the way right up to him vanishing.  I couldn’t even pretend that someone else appeared and grabbed him.  They fingerprinted everything inside the tape and all they found was me and Kyle. I can’t blame her for thinking it was me. I can’t convince her of anything I don’t believe, and I don’t fucking believe this.

So.  The jury took a week to convict me, but they only took thirty minutes to give me the death penalty.  Once you decide, based on what anyone could tell them, once you decide, it’s an easy decision.  Hell, if it was Sylvia in the orange jumpsuit, I’d have done what she did, and applauded what they did.

So, all of that.  I’m going to tell you something I didn’t tell anyone. Haven’t told anyone yet.  Nobody. Not Sylvia, not anybody.

It dawned on me at some point - I don’t remember when - that what he probably said when he was running through the yard, wasn’t “I’m coming, tree.”  I think – and I have no way to prove it – but I think Ithink-Ithink-Ithink - what he really said was “I’m coming, Brie!”

Yeah. That face. Right there.

Hand to God. This interview isn’t coming out until after the execution, right?  That’s what you said.

Anyway, tell the warden when you interview him, throw the switch. I don’t want to wait a week.  I want to go now.  I want to be able to sleep.  I haven’t slept right in months.

miz mae's sparkle

________________________________________________________________

Daddy and I were a ways out on the Lafayette road, easily ten miles from town, when the turn signal commenced clicking. “RighT-righT-righT-righT” with emphasis on the T.

Something felt wrong.  More wrong than usual, I mean. Or odd, really. More odd than usual to be specific. Out on that highway, “wrong” covered a whole lot of things. There wasn’t a lot of right things that took us out that way.  That was already in the back of my head, but the clicking blinker brought it to the front.  Moonshine was what usually brought daddy up that road, but this felt different.  I knew these particular pines. It wasn’t the first or even the second or third time I’d seen them.  The ‘shine houses were always changing, moving from one place to the next, as revenuers pursued them.  What Daddy called ‘the hot pillow places” tended to settle in for longer periods, staying put for a while once they found the right person to give payoffs to. The difference that I noticed was that the trees looked familiar, and what that meant.

When he actually turned off the road, I recognized it.  It wasn't any one thing. It was the visuals and the timing, and something else, like I could smell it.

This was Miss Mae’s place.  She’d got her start in business – daddy said – in a neighborhood called Storyville, down the highway t' New Orleans. After a while, she’d come up here and opened up her own house with five or six girls of the right age.

When we came here, or other times when he brought it up, Daddy always liked to mention he cut his teeth on Miss Mae, back in Storyville, but now she was retired and just managing. I didn’t know what “cut his teeth” meant, but I could tell it was kinda personal.  Now, he came for the new girls, he said, all between the ages of sixteen and twenty five.

Daddy drove slow and easy down the windy road. It was a year past the end of the war, but the ’36 Studebaker was going to have to last another year or more. It was already 11 years old with lots of hard miles, but daddy told us practically every trip that it was “gonna have to last” a while longer.  He rolled down his window as we crackled down the macadam and gravel.  The road curved side-to-side between big old cypress, reminding us each time how close we were to the river’s personal space. Even that was iffy, ‘cause even in my life, the river had gotten restless and changed its bed. They was even some cypress knobs scraped off by drivers who were too lazy, drunk, or wore out to swing wide enough of the trees.

“Daddy?”

He looked at me with a serious face for just a moment, like he was saying “oh, no, here we go again”, then followed that by giggling like a kid on his birthday, then shrugged with just as much energy.  He knew the question I hadn’t finished asking cause it was always the same question.  He danced a little in his seat and popped his gum louder.  He was on his way to a party that, whether I understood it or not, I’d been explicitly forbidden to mention to Mama.  Repeatedly.  “Women folk don’t understand these things” he would explain, then more often than not, add “… and neither do little boys.”  Sometimes he’d ruffle my hair and sigh, then end with “But you will, boy.  One day, you will, heh-heh.” If he said that much, he always ends with a chuckle.

I knew it had to do with animal urges, with naked bodies, and the lure of sin, like the preacher was always saying.  Smoking and drinking and laying with strange women, like he was supposed to only do with mama, but there was always an excuse, even if it was “… you’ll understand one of these days …”  I pictured people on the far side of the door laughing, dancing, and writhing against each other with cigarettes and glasses of alcohol in their hands. I did know that, sometimes if you writhed in a particular way, a baby would eventually come out. At that point in time, I wasn’t eager to learn more than absolutely necessary about writhing, so I avoided it altogether.

At home, I walked in on them twice, mama and him, I mean. There was once when I was a clueless five and once when I was a curious eight.  I saw very little of them under the blankets either time, just the writhing, but I felt the strop very clearly later. When daddy was done with his doings with mama, and she was taking another one of her silent baths, he come up behind me and started stropping me before I begun to know he was there.

“You shouldn’t oughta did that” he said, each word delivered with a lash of the razor strop.  Three or four times he said it, the phrase I mean. That meant a total of fifteen or twenty licks altogether, and whatever it was about, I was left with burning welts.  Even though I saw nothing, whatever it was they were doing was something I shouldn’t oughta seen and especially not do until I was older.  That’s the look he first give me when we pulled in at Miss Mae’s.  It was a look that said, “Soon enough you’ll understand.  But not yet, boy.”

He pulled the car in just shy of the house’s main entrance.  It wasn’t a grand old house like daddy would describe from when he was young and in New Orleans. Why he would go into such detail about those mansions to a boy who didn’t get it, I didn’t know then and I don’t know now. Maybe it was all just for his own benefit. It was just a half-kept, rambling clapboard farmhouse that trailed off at the back, a nothing building just right for the middle of nowhere. No liveried footman, no porte cochere, no big double doors at the entrance.  The door was single, sober, and sturdy, with a little apple sized port hole peeking out at eye level.

Daddy practically hopped out of the car.  His only instruction was “Don’t wander far, buster” which he emphasized with a jab of his finger. He slicked his hair down, dusted the road off his shirt and pants, and before the dust had settled, he was on the far side of the door and I was alone with the trees.

I got out of the car, escaping the swelter.  I spent a while playing mumblety-peg with myself.  I nearly nicked my right sneaker when a squirrel ran across the branch above and startled me, so I stopped.  Mama woulda beat me herself – which she usually left to daddy - if I’d messed up my good school shoes.  I found me a branch and was peeling off the bark in strips when I noticed someone creeping up on me from around the left side of the house.  Not necessarily scary creeping, just curious maybe.  He was too small to scare anyone anyway, maybe a half a head shorter than me, and was taking the long way around the little clearing this end of the driveway.

He'd come ‘round the clearing til he was right off my other shoulder and just back of the trees.  Ten feet away maybe.  Dungarees … blue shirt … bare feet. Just a shadow in overalls.

When the shadow got close enough for an attack, I asked, “Mind if I ask what you’re looking for?” without even turning his way. Daddy always told me to be polite at first, even if I knew I was sliding toward a fist fight.  I was ready to throw my pocket knife aside and lunge at him or be lunged at by him. I waited, then just as I turned to look, he spoke.

“Hi.” Not a he. A she. It was a girl. She was about my age – around eleven probably. She sounded shy but not scared. “Your daddy in there?”  She nodded toward the front door.

I looked over to the door for confirmation, like a new check would do any good, then back at her “Uh-huh.”

It was definitely a her, not a him, even though she wasn’t at all developed.  She had whispy blonde hair, tiny figure inside a shirt that could have come from a high school football player.  The dungarees fit better than the shirt, but were probably a boy’s also, maybe one two inches taller than her.  The cuffs were rolled up so far they clunked against her ankles.

All that spying back and forth went on a while, with neither of us saying anything.  It was like dogs sizing each other up. Or cats or something.

“Is your m~ ?“ I was about to ask, but stopped myself from asking the worst thing.  I adjusted.

“Is your … daddy in there?”

She shook her head in a way that answered the other question that I didn’t ask at first.

She walked on, back tracking a little. Best I could tell, she wasn’t blushing or carryin’ shame, just maintaining distance.  She was out there, separated from me by the trees and from her mama by the walls, just like Daddy and me.  Well, not exactly like, but as close as it was gonna get.

I started, “Um …” and she slowed to see what I was about to say.

“Umm …” now I had to actually deliver words, which I had none ready. “Uhh … “I have gum. You wanna stick of Black Jack?”

She stopped.  It wasn’t the magical lure of a stick of gum, but a tiny little bridge being offered. I was treating her like she thought I might treat a regular person.  Like I could see her as a regular person. Truth was, I didn’t know if she was, but I thought she might be and I wanted to find out, and even more than that, I wanted to be less alone and more bored than I felt like I was out there.

She walked slow, crossing her feet in front of each other, making a straight line, one foot after another, like one of them woman in the movies. It was clumsy the way she was doing it, but there was also something exciting about it.  It was something she’d seen, and probably not just in movies, but maybe she wasn’t copying it well.  It was a stroll, but it was also a lure.

She plucked the stick of gum from my fingers, then peeled back one end of the paper.  I was just stunned as she pulled the gum into her mouth using just her tongue, all the while watching me.

I looked back at the front door.  I was all of a sudden more intrigued by what else might be on the other side of it. When I did, she drifted away again, glancing over her shoulder at me. I followed her over to the porch and leaned a few feet over on the rail.

“What do they call you?”

“Jimmy. I’m James Edward, but everyone calls me Jimmy.”

“I’m Sparkle.  I was born Isabelle, but everyone here calls me Sparkle.” She watched me for a reaction – something from my eyes or mouth or maybe a twitch, but I didn’t move nothin’.

“Made you blush.”

If I wasn’t already, I was sure I was then. I could feel the burn spreading across my face.

“Oh … heh … what do they really call you?”

“Naw, that’s really what they call me.  Sparkle.”

She didn’t look like a “Sparkle,” not nowhere close, but I was just gonna leave it lie. Besides, if I could blush even more than I had been, I was.  She was enjoying it. I was hating it, and not entirely hating it at the same time.

“How old are you, Sparkle?”

“How old are you, James Edward?”

“I’m ten. And three quarters.”

“I’m the same. Ten and three quarters.”

“Nuh-uh – the same? Ten and three quarters? You funnin’ me?”

“Think you’re the only baby born in August of 1937?”

I shrugged. Maybe she was telling me true, and maybe she was just making it up.  If I made it a big argument, I’d end up standing there alone and bored for the next hour.  I eyeballed her, and even if she looked a little puny, it seemed possible she was the same age as me, or close.

“So, where do you live?” I half-glanced toward the house and stopped myself.

“They’s some little houses out back, like apartments. Or cabins, reckon. Some of the women and such as just stay out here if … well, it just depends.”

“And you and your mama …?”

“Yeah.  I was almost nine when mama and me moved out here. So, like two years and such.”

“Where do you go~”

“… to the toilet?”

“No! No, lord no. Not that – where do you go to school?”

“Sorry – just tryin-a make you blush again. I useta go into town, but now a man comes out oncet a week and teaches us.”

“Us?”

“They’s several.  Me, two older boys, and two other girls ‘bout my age ‘n younger.”

“Uh.  So … where do you go to the restroom?”  I figured if she was going to mention it, it must’ve been someplace strange.  If she was there, Mama’d give me a sharp look if she heard me not say “water closet” like a gentleman, but Sparkle already said “toilet” so I figured she wasn’t gonna chafe at “restroom.”

“They’s a little house for showers and so forth, right between the cabins.  That’s where the toilets and all are.”

“Cabins like tourist court?”

She looked off like she was remembering something, then after a moment said, “Not that nice, but they’re okay.” She sounded as far away as she was looking.

“Oh”

“You can see ‘em if you want.”

I didn’t know about that, so I made a good excuse. “My daddy would tan me if I wandered all the way back there.” It was my turn to look off. I wouldn’t like that, not at all.  I shook my head as much for myself as for her.

“He just gone in.  He’s gonna be a while, less’n he’s one of them fast ones.”

She had a point, I guessed. I didn’t know what a “fast one” was. It made me uncomfortable for some reason.

“But if you’re afraid …”

I was honor-bound to set my face all serious and say “It ain’t that, but …” Since I didn’t have a “but,” I tried to distract her and stood up from the rail.  I looked around slow, surveying my borrowed realm.  “I could take a walk, I reckon.  It’s not like I’m walkin’ to Lafayette.”

She reached out her arm and caught part of my hand with her pinky finger.  “Then maybe let’s walk around in front” she added when her hand touched mine.

Our pinkies hooked together and I follered her to a path that went into the trees, parallel to the road, sorta.  She started trailing ahead of me, so I asked something – anything. “Your mama have any other kids?” to pull her back a little. I wasn’t sure about saying it, but it kinda just popped out.

“A boy.”

“Does he … Is he one of the~”

“He died.  Like that same day he was born.  Mama cried a bunch, and I just brought her fresh handkerchiefs.  Wasn’t nothing else to do. I was five.” She said the last like, if she was ten, there might have been something.

“Yeah.” In my head, I added “I’ll bet” but there wasn’t no point in saying it, so it didn’t come out of my mouth. “So, you didn’t know him at all?”

“Wasn’t nobody to know.”

That thought give me a start for some reason, but I still couldn’t argue with it.  I just nodded my head and kept nodding it a while after she stopped.

She stopped us at a little bench in a tiny little clearing out in the trees, then moved behind so it was between us.

Her fingers danced slow along the back of the bench, like her fingers were walking over for a stick of gum.  “I never even seen him up close.  The midwife just put him right in a box and they buried him right off that day.  Mama said he was real early – it wasn’t his time - and such as, and that was all for the best any way.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t some kind of stupid, so I just looked around and said, “This is nice, right here.”

I looked around again, “So …”

“What are you lookin’ for?  Worried about your papa comin’ back out?”

“Naw.” She was right, though.  It was still too early for him to come out, but I was still too worried about him doing just that.  It had been maybe fifteen-twenty minutes at most.

“Anyone ever learn you how to kiss, James Edward?”

“Huh?”  I heard it, but part of me pretended I had just imagined it.

“Kissing.  You know how? Or don’t you?”

“I … uh …”

Her eyes rolled. “Sit down”

I sat.  Sparkle came around and sat next to me.  She took my arm and lifted it behind her head so it was across her shoulders, then she turned both of us so we were at a pretty close angle.

She leaned in toward me.  Even inches away, I could feel the warmth coming off her face.  I could smell the clove gum on her breath, and the moisture as she breathed washed over me like a sweet fog.  It was like being under the covers at night, reading with a flashlight, with the light adding to the warmth from my body and the moisture from my breath.  Only it was a hundred times better than a book.

She tugged on my shirt and I tumbled onto her, even though she only tugged a little.  My lips fell onto hers.  We both slanted out heads to our rights, and suddenly we were kissing.  Our lips moved against each other and half my brain was saying “This is happening? Is this happening? I think so.  Is it?  Does she realize she’s kissing me?”  The other half was saying “What am I doing? Am I doing it right?  Is she just being nice? Is she about to stop and say, “Yuck!?”

At least my lips seemed to know what to do, even if my brain was confused, and they were doing the same thing her lips were doing, so that had to be a good thing.  Even it was going to be a mistake, it was a mistake that felt amazing.  As long as it was happening, I was going to make sure I enjoyed it.  It seemed the thing to do.

We kissed for a while, just barely touching, only by our lips, then she put one of her hands on my shoulder on its way to the back of my neck.  Then she commenced to teach me absolutely everything I was going to know about French kissing for the next five years.

I was lost in the kissing, totally absorbed in what our lips were doing when she took my hand and cupped it against her breast.  If I wasn’t sweating enough yet, this took care of it.  I didn’t know what to do, but she rubbed my hand in a slow circle, so I just kept that up.  Kissing and slowly rubbing.

We did that until I turned 75. We did that until man landed a rocket on the moon, or some such  Whatever.  It was a long, long kiss, however long it was, and I lost all sense of time.

She slowed down the kissing, then moved my hand down to her hip.  She shifted back and our lips separated.  She studied my face a moment and then said, “Alright, brown eyes.  They’re gonna be missing us soon.”

I wasn’t sure if it was my breathing or the wind or the two of them working together, but I was dazed. I didn’t even realize she had stood up until she again hooked my fingers with hers and tugged me forward off the bench.

I was lightheaded all the way back. Not just that, but my legs were pure rubber. I was wobbly enough to be bobbing and swaying, which I only realized because she would occasionally give a harder tug to square me away.

We were back to the clearing before I woke back up, and light was coming across the roof of the house, through the break in the trees back behind, where the cabins musta been.

“So …”

“Uh-huh”

“It’s been some kind of long, hot Summer, ain’t it, I mean hasn’t it, Sparkle?”

“My goodness, yes, you think it will ever cool off?” We were both trying to sound mature and urbane even though I had no idea what urbane meant.

“Well, y’know, of course it’s got to … I mean …” That wasn’t what she meant. She wasn’t talkin’ science or weather or nothin. She was just talkin and I was back to saying stupid things.  Didn’t take long. Maybe thirty minutes? Maybe twenty. Probably ten.

I tried again, “… I mean, yeah, it feels like it wants to go on forever, doesn’t it?” I went from nit-picking to sounding too eager to agree, which was probably still an improvement overall.

While I was talking, she’d drifted slow and easy, like a pinwheel of brush in the river. She’d landed over by an old pump handle in the middle of the clearing, one that someone had put a flower planter around.  Somehow, she’d gone from right next to me to being a good fifteen feet away.  I walked in a spiral toward her, like I was afraid of scaring her off, but I wasn’t scared.  I just wanted to take my time.  If anything, I was afraid of scaring myself off.

“That was nice, wasn’t it, Jimmy?” Her fingers fiddled with the old paint on the handle.

“Oh, yes, Sparkle. It was real nice.  I really … umm … well, I haven’t kissed a whole lot of girls and other stuff but that … that was the best.”  It was.  She kissed better than all the other girls put together.  All three of them. Not that three meant a lot anyway, when you come down to barely one kiss per girl.

“You don’t kiss other girls much?” I wanted to think that she meant that I kissed like a boy with a lot of experience, but even I knew that I had no idea what she really meant. She was probably saying “Uhh … yeah, I figured that out real fast” without actually saying it.

“No, umm, no, Sparkle.  I don’t.” I looked off into space again, like I was making a note to do more of that kissing stuff when I had some time. She wasn’t peeling the paint right – just kind of diddling at it and I could see a whole big piece just dangling loose near her fingertips.  “You’re not …” I reached for the flake and she plucked it away right before I got there, then laughed.

“You were waiting for me to do that, weren’t you?”

She just smiled, then flicked her tongue out and back in real fast.

She glanced at the house, then back at the pump.  “Reckon your daddy will be out soon …”

I squinted at the door, studying it for clues again, like I knew what an ‘about to be opened door looks like.’  “Yeah, I reckon. Sparkle, would you …?”

“Huh?”

“What?”

“You started to ask me something?”

“Here, lemme get that one, Sparkle.”  It was another flake, but smaller and still pretty stuck down.  She was fighting with it, but she was never going to get it with her tiny little nails. I flicked her fingers back and picked at the paint.  I picked it about four times before it came loose, then I handed it to her. “Here.”  It seemed important to hand it to her, but even as I was dropping it into her palm, I felt like a total fool again.  What kind of moron gives a girl a flake of green paint?  Still she smiled a little and asked again, “You were going to ask me a question?”

“Oh … umm …” My hands shot into my pockets to keep them from trembling.

“Nothing. I don’t know. I don’t remember. It was nothing.”

She held the flake up and examined both sides, then tucked it into the pocket of her shirt.

Just then, the door opened and daddy walked out onto the porch. They was a young woman with him and they was being real playful, laughing and going back and forth and tickling each other.  He’d reach out and she’d slap his hand, then he’d pull her close and nuzzle her neck.

Sparkle and I watched without watching, and then we both turned our backs full to them.

“Heh”

“Yeah”

She knew what I wasn’t asking and volunteered the answer, “My mama.”

Nervous silence followed. It wasn’t a long silence, but it was like layers and layers of nervous.  It was like a deep lake full of nervous.

My ring finger made a discovery down in my junk pocket and I yanked it out.

“Oh, hey!”

I flipped it up & out of my pocket, between my thumb and index finger and she looked puzzled.  It was an old, dull grey quarter.  Standing liberty, 1925 (or Barber 1919, not sure), but you could barely make it out.  She musta got a lot of wear in X years.

I moved my hand maybe barely half an inch toward her to show it off better and her puzzle turned to a frown. Redness shot up from her collar and burst against her hairline, soaking her eyes and making them moist.  She stumbled back like I’d thumped her square in the chest. As she stumbled backward, she glanced from me to my dad and back.

Her frown and eyebrows got all bunched up before I realized my brand new mistake.

“No-no-no-no, Lord Jesus (Sorry, mama), no.  Not … it’s not … I’m not …”

I dropped the coin on the ground and she became a blur to me. “I wasn’t trying to pay you or nothin’ “

She was about six feet back, that much I could make out through my own blurry eyes.  “I just … it’s neat. It’s ‘most thirty years old and its kinda my good luck piece.  I just thought…”

She stepped a little closer, but only a little, and then said, “Uh. Well, I don’t want it.”

“Well, I wasn’t even …” but we both knew I was. Not that I was trying to pay her for anything, just it was the only thing of value, real or personal, that had on me.

“Well just pick it up and put it back where you got it.”

“I don’t want it either, not no more. It’s a stupid thing anyway, and I was fixin’ to throw it away after I showed you. I hate it. It’s stupid.” I said it all to my shoes. “I thought you might want it, or wanna look before I threw it away.”

She turned and took a step toward the trees.  I turned and took a step myself, and ran right into my daddy’s chest.

“What the hell, son!? Watch where you’re going.  Anyway, we’re done here. Let’s get on outta … hey, what’s wrong?”

I shook my head.  “Nothin, daddy. They was just some dust got stirred up and got in my eye.”

Sparkle had already commenced to walking off when he noticed her. She wasn’t going fast, but she was going sure, like wasn’t no reason to be where she was no more.

“Uh-huh … hey, you – girl!”

She stopped, but didn’t turn back.

“I’m talkin’ to you, little bitch.  Turn around and look at me!”

She was half-way round when he said, “I don’t know what you’re thinkin, but you keep your trash self away from my boy.  He don’t need nothing from the likes of some whore’s daughter. Ain’t no need for him to wallow in the muck and mire.” ‘Muck and mire’ was a favorite phrase of his, probably the only thing he ever really heard from our preacher.

Satisfied he’d said his peace to her, he reached up and boxed my right ear as casual as if he’d been reaching for a bottle. By the time my eyes focused again, Sparkle had vanished into the trees like a ghost.

“What the hell’s wrong with you, boy?  I leave you alone for five goddamn minutes, and you’re out here playing games with gutter trash?  I see anything like this again, I’m going to by-God wail the skin off your ass.  You got me?’

I didn’t answer him. I just looked down at the quarter, half-buried in the dust, and while I was looking, a tear splashed down and got it muddy.

He boxed my other ear, “Say something, moron!” That spun me around again, and I could see that Sparkle’s mama wasn’t round no more neither.

“Yes, sir. I got you. I got you!” I covered both ears and started bawling then.

“Well, let’s get on outta here, then.  Yur mama didn’t sweat all day over the stove so’s we could show up late for supper.”

“No, sir.”

I ground the quarter the rest of the way into the dust and followed him to the car.