THE BOY DEPARTED first thing each morning and didn’t come back until after Justin was in bed. Saturday evening, Justin read, staying up to see when he’d get home. He fell asleep and woke at dawn to the squeal of the sedan’s engine. Ashen light filtered through the pecan tree, the mass of branches transformed into distinct shapes. At the wheel, the lanky man hunched like someone fearing a bullet from behind. The sedan lurched and then accelerated toward the street.
Justin couldn’t get back to sleep. When the boy came out, Justin was watching from the dining room. The boy leveled a long glare in his direction and then walked down the driveway.
At church, Justin’s father elbowed him awake.
I’ll not have this kind of behavior, Justin George Falker.
The grogginess lasted through his chores. His father had long ago made the rule that his weekly tasks had to be completed before dark on Sunday. He quickly trimmed the hedges that ran the perimeter of the yard and had grown up densely on either side of a chain-link fence. He was moving along the hedge’s inside, behind the carriage house, when he felt himself waking up, his peripheral vision expanding. The bathroom window was near his shoulder, the venetians so old and broken their gaps offered glimpses of the tub. The girl lay with her head against its edge, her nipples at the surface of the water.
Justin moved the electric clipper carefully now, catching every protruding leaf, slowing to tug at the extension cord, as if it were snagged on the cinder blocks that supported the corner of the carriage house. Each time he passed in front of the bathroom again, she was still there.
The sun hung low over the neighborhood trees as he gathered the fallen pecans into a bucket, raked leaves and clippings, filled a garbage bag, tied it, and put it by the trashcans.
The lanky man hadn’t come back. A smaller hedge divided the carriage house parking area from the yard, and Justin trimmed it last, in the twilight, making sure the boy wasn’t around.
He left the rake and a box of plastic garbage bags out, along with the bucket of pecans and the clipper. This way he’d appear to have good reason to be wandering around, picking things up. His parents were having dinner with friends.
With the lawn free of leaves, his step was silent. He neared the carriage house wall until his nose almost touched it. The siding’s white paint scaled off. It smelled of decaying wood.
The bathroom window glowed at the crushed edges of the venetian blinds. He lifted his foot and quietly shifted to the right, moving one eye in front of a gap.
The crescents of her lashes lay against her cheeks. Her wet bangs were pushed back and her hair clung to her shoulders like weeds. Her collarbones spread just above the line of water. Her pale breasts floated slightly, the water rippling faintly around them.
A yellow lamp was lit on an end table in the corner. The bathwater had a greenish tinge and no suds. He couldn’t understand why she’d stayed in it for so long.
Her waist narrowed and her hips spread, a faint dark patch where her thighs shadowed together. A Celtic design circled her belly button. On her shoulder, there was a heart in a cross of melting ice. Above her breast, a square of barbed wire opened on a colorless heart suspended like the moon in mist.
He touched his erection. That was crossing a line. He didn’t want to become a pervert like the ones in the newspaper.
He steadied himself and moved away. He put the rake, the clippers, the bucket, and the plastic bags in the shed. He ran upstairs and grabbed a towel from the hamper and pulled off his shirt. He lay on his bed. He pushed down his pants and was gasping as soon as he started. He panted, seeing her in the bed, over him. The second time the pleasure was stronger.
He was hungry. He went downstairs and ate, and then put on his rollerblades.
The night was cool. He soared along the asphalt, the wheels swishing and skittering over dead leaves. He enjoyed hitting cracks, the instant, intuitive repositioning of his body. He raced through parking lots, jumping concrete dividers, and swept across empty streets. He reached the park along the lake and followed the path, picking up speed.
The boy was with the fishermen again, staring over the water toward the glow of the oil refineries on the far shore. One of the fishermen murmured to him, and the boy replied in a low voice. The men laughed.
Justin pivoted on his rollerblades and passed again, but by then the boy had turned, clearly realizing he was being watched — his face flushed, charged with anger.
Justin looked around as if he’d been deciding where to go, and skated off. The strength and angularity of the boy’s bones lingered in his mind, like something he might have seen on a field trip — a savage fossil behind museum glass, a set of prehistoric jaws beneath a light.
JUSTIN LEARNED THE boy’s name at school. Clay Hervey. No one knew anything about him, and Justin didn’t divulge where he lived or that his father had left and never returned, abandoning him and his sister. Clay was in his homeroom, sitting in the back corner, his hands loose on the table, the skin scuffed off their knuckles. In place of his middle fingernail was clotted flesh.
The teacher introduced him and asked him if he wanted to say something about himself.
That’s okay, he told her, his voice like a man’s but soft, faintly hoarse.
Nothing? she asked.
Nah, he said, with the distant gaze of a soldier on parade.
How about where you’re from?
Maine.
Thank you, Clay.
You’re welcome.
Justin wondered if Clay knew, as Justin’s father had asserted, that he wouldn’t be here for long.
In the hall, Clay carried his books in one battered hand, his muscled arm slack. He kept his eyelids low, his focus somewhere between the floor and the horizon. Girls watched him. Boys edged away, trying to decide whether they could mock him. He was six foot two and had the hard, cooked-down muscle of a man, not the bloated bulk of young athletes.
After a week, kids started calling him weirdo behind his back. Girls who’d smiled at him and been ignored muttered creep or psycho.
In gym, the boys played basketball — shirts against skins. Justin scored two points. He and Clay were shirts. Clay intercepted passes, loping across the floor to feed the ball ahead. He probably didn’t play often. Justin had seen other athletic kids who weren’t good shots and didn’t want to look bad work the defense like this.
The skins were rallying, and Dylan, their best player, kept blocking shots violently. He intercepted and threw a hard pass, and Clay lunged for the ball and caught it.
Dylan moved in to keep him from dribbling or passing. He was the largest boy in the grade, taller even than Clay, towheaded and so pale veins shone beneath his skin. He had a black belt and told stories about karate tournaments, and when he rammed his sweaty armpit into players’ faces on the basketball court, they didn’t retaliate. He tried this now, but Clay twisted away, the ball between his hands, his forearms parallel to the floor. Dylan closed the gap, and Clay swung back, his elbow catching Dylan’s solar plexus — a hollow sound like a drum. Dylan’s knees hit the floor. Justin felt the vibrations through the soles of his sneakers.
Between classes, kids talked about how Clay had braced with his foot, dipping his knee inward the way a boxer drives a punch. Dylan hadn’t been able to stand up for ten minutes and was now announcing that he’d get revenge. In the hallway, as he was walking away from his girlfriend, Melody, Clay came up behind her.
Hey, he said. That was all the other kids heard. He leaned in and whispered something in her ear. Though she had the black hair and olive complexion of a Cajun, she turned red from her hairline down. She hurried to her next class, clutching her books to her chest.