“How—umm—how long, now?” I asked.
“For what?” he asked without looking.
“The—umm—the—uh—sheriff?” I stammered.
“Since always,” he mumbled, turning his head away. I was quiet for a while, and he looked back at me, “I guess I was maybe fifteen, the first time.” Those words felt like someone had punched me. “Funny thing about those boxing classes is that they don’t really teach you how to do anything other than box in a ring. I tried to fight him off, but—,” he whispered, and drifted off. “He left some money, though. At the time, I guess—I don’t know—I guess I figured that if I took that money, then that made me just as guilty,” he said, and paused. “The next time he came over, I—I asked for the money up front. That first time he—he didn’t hit me, he just forced me. After I asked for the money, though, he—,” again, the whisper trailed off.
“What did—umm—what did he—uh—?” I tried to finish a thought, just to move beyond the words we had already said, but nothing came of it. Quiet settled between us, and he took the ice pack off. Underneath, the skin was already turning purple.
He looked up at me. “He’ll kill me if he ever finds out I was with you.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Don’t you get it? I thought for sure you were smart enough to see…”
“See what?” I asked.
“How many nosebleeds you get in an average week?” he asked, looking at me as if this explained something.
“Four, sometimes more; why?” I asked.
“Lucky, then. I get about six or seven if I’m lucky. What about headaches?” he asked. Again, he looked at me as if all this was perfectly clear.
“Two or so,” I said.
He nodded, “Pretty lucky, then.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Mikey, you left, so you never really got to know any of the other people here. I did, though. People talk about all kinds of stuff when they’re lying next to someone they just got to live out a fantasy with,” he said, and shuddered. “Everyone who’s about our age and a little younger seems to have the same problems, Mikey: Nosebleeds, headaches, stuttering under stress. I talked to Dr. Gantner one time, and—,” he started.
“Did you have sex with him?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“No,” he said, “unlike most men I’ve ever met, Bud Gantner really is straight. Thing is, though, he told me once that he was amazed at how many babies were born within the last thirty years or so with these same conditions. He said something else that was very interesting, too.”
“What?” I asked.
“That almost every baby born here in Placerville in the last thirty years or so has been a boy. Not like every single one, but way over the fifty-fifty mark, he said.” I thought back and he was right. There always had been far more boys than girls in school. “For a time, I didn’t think anything of it, until I noticed one thing; there is a real resemblance between all the boys born in this town.”
I stood up and walked to the refrigerator. I got a few more cubes of ice from the tray, and walked back. I took the bag from him, and put them in. When I handed the bag back, he said “I know, it sounds a lot like that show with the guy detective who believes in flying saucers and stuff, and the woman who’s always trying to find a rational explanation or whatever, but it’s true.”
“What is it you’re trying to say?” I asked.
He set the bag of ice down once more, “I think that the Sheriff has been forcing himself on just about anyone he wants in this town for at least twenty years.” I sat down, again. “I don’t have any way to prove it or anything; I’m not a doctor or a scientist; but look at the facts. Almost every kid born in the last thirty years has been a boy, and they all have headaches and nosebleeds and most stutter when things get rough—.”
“The sheriff doesn’t stutter,” I interrupted.
“He doesn’t, no, but one time—,” he started, but then stopped. I waited. “This one time,” he continued, “he wasn’t—rough—or anything. He didn’t hit me or whatever. After, he just—he held me and talked. It wasn’t like he was talking to me, he was just talking. I think—I think his little brother had just died. He said something about how his little brother used to stutter so bad that his father couldn’t understand the kid. He said his father used to think that a demon had gotten into the boy, so he beat the kid every night while the mother stood over him and quoted bible passages. He said that, back where he came from, they called it a ‘cure’. They beat the kid so much, he said, that he tried not to talk to anyone for fear of stuttering. The only person he’d talk to was the sheriff.” He put the ice pack back against his cheek, with a sharp inhale over his teeth.
“I still don’t know that I understand,” I said.
“That little boy that went missing, the McPherson kid—,” he said.
“Randy,” I said.
“Yeah, him; you were close to him, right?” he asked. I nodded. “What color hair did he have?” he asked, and I flinched. Even though he’d been dead so long, hearing the past tense in that sentence shocked me.
“Black,” I said.
He nodded, “What color hair does Pete McPherson have?”
“Brown,” I said.
He nodded, again, “Gwen McPherson is a brunette, too,” he said, “you had high school biology, Mikey; do the math. There is almost no chance that the child of two people with brown hair could turn out with jet black hair,” he paused, then said “he had nosebleeds, too, huh?” I nodded. Something clicked inside me, and my whole body tensed.
“That would mean that—that—that you think I—that my mom—,” I stammered.
His eyes didn’t move from my face. He didn’t say anything.
“More like at least half the town, Mikey,” he said after a while.
I found I was sitting down, though I didn’t remember doing it. My body was going crazy, and my head felt like something heavy was sitting on it. I thought my eyes were going to pop out from all the pressure behind them. He stood up, and stared at me for a second, then walked to the sink. He dropped the ice pack in; the loud thunk made me jump. He stood there at the sink, watching me. I still felt like I had to come up with some reason that he was wrong, and that I could do that if only I could get my brain to relax some, but it wouldn’t.
“You don’t believe me,” he said, “I can tell. Thing is, you don’t have to believe me. There’s someone else who can tell you.”
“Who?” I asked after a moment.
“Get your clothes on, I’ll show you,” he said. That was when I looked down long enough to realize that I was completely naked. It seemed logical; he’d woken me, stashed me in the closet, all with no time for dressing. Since coming out, I hadn’t even noticed that I didn’t have any clothes on.
I stood and walked back to the bedroom. While I dressed, he came in. When he dressed, he didn’t put on underwear. He slid into his shirt differently than I did. His motions seemed somehow graceful and awkward all at the same time. It was like someone who danced alone all the time suddenly having to dance for an audience. Some writer would probably describe it much better, but his dressing seemed like something incredibly private that I shouldn’t be seeing. He put on his shoes without socks, and my mind, still reeling from everything we had spoken of, fixated on that.
“Aren’t you afraid of getting calluses?” I asked.
“No,” he said, standing, “I’m almost never in my clothes long enough to worry about it.” With that, he walked into the other room, and I was alone, sitting in the dark on the bed where everything had changed.