Jack and Clive dug a hole for a rose bush the old lady had asked for and, together, they studied everything they unearthed: beetles, worms, pupae ready to burst, skeletons, and a recently deceased mole whose coat still was soft and black. Jack wanted to know all there was to know about nature.
College began the following week, and Clive soon became very busy. There were compulsory lectures on campus, and he had essays to read and write. Clive told Jack he had to entertain himself during the week. He wouldn’t have time for him until nine o’clock Saturday morning. Jack would show up at nine on the dot in the front garden under Clive’s window with his bucket, his dull pocket knife, and his butterfly net. To begin with, they stayed in the garden, but when they had examined every square inch of it, Clive took Jack into the woods, taking water bottles and packed lunches, reference books, and collection boxes for their findings.
Clive taught Jack to dissect an animal on a flat rock. A mouse, a rabbit, a pigeon. Clive bought scalpels from the supplies store on campus and made a big deal out of telling Jack how sharp they were. The boy gazed at him, wide-eyed. The first animal they opened up had died from natural causes only a few hours earlier. It was very fresh and didn’t smell at all. Clive guided the scalpel in Jack’s hand and when the animal was laid out and its abdomen revealed, he asked Jack if he wanted to dissect the spleen.
“The spleen is bluish and shaped like a plum, that’s all I’m going to tell you.”
Jack picked up the scalpel, lingered a little, and then he took a deep breath. Soon the boy—pale but smiling—held the shiny organ in the palm of his hand. He had specks of dried blood on his cheek and his hair was tousled, and when Clive praised him, his face lit up.
This became their game. Clive would tell him which organ to remove and Jack would do it. When Jack turned ten, he was a skilled surgeon, not just in terms of dexterity but also speed. Rarely more than fifteen minutes would pass from the time they found, or killed, an animal before Jack would have dissected it. Clive ruffled the boy’s hair.
Clive watched Jack’s mother from his window. She had four children, of whom Jack was the youngest. She worked at the checkout in the local supermarket, but she never seemed to recognize Clive when he did his shopping. She had bags under her eyes, she smoked too much, and yet there was something attractive about her. She had slim tanned arms and a narrow back. Not that Clive had any desire to take on another man’s children. Thanks, but no thanks. Jack, of course, wouldn’t be a problem. He was a good boy, Clive’s boy, but Clive found the other children irritating. The oldest one was a young man of sixteen—seventeen years, an apprentice mechanic somewhere. Clive would see him come home in the evening, hear him argue loudly with his mother, and watch him tinker with a car in the front yard, chucking beer bottles on the grass as soon as he had emptied them. One evening, he came home late and Clive heard a violent argument erupt inside the house. “Whore,” the young man shouted. Jack’s mother howled and something got broken. After that night Clive rarely saw him, and Jack told him his big brother had moved out. The middle children were fourteen-year-old twins. The girl was pretty, but had already acquired the same slutty look as her mother. From his window, Clive would watch her smoke furtively, put on makeup, and change into high-heeled boots behind the hedge when she went out in the evening. She would end up like her mother, anyone could see that. Have too many kids she couldn’t support when her boyfriends walked out on her. Her twin brother was no better. He looked like a mini version of his older brother, and when he was home alone he would sit in a deckchair in the garden and masturbate under a blanket. Clive could see from far away what he was doing; he could see what kind of magazines were lying on the grass next to the deckchair. Clive’s throat tightened at the thought of what Jack had to look forward to.
Clive started buying Jack presents. New scalpel blades and a pair of binoculars with Jack’s name engraved on them. He gave him reference and activity books, he let Jack have his scientific journals when he had finished with them. When they were out in the woods, Clive looked after Jack. He would help Jack across the stream, he would lend him his hat if the sun was blazing and Jack had forgotten his own; he only gave the boy challenges he could meet, and he listened to his answers. The boy deserved to be looked after properly when he was with Clive. Once in a while, he would clutch Jack’s chin and turn his face to his to emphasize something it was important for Jack to understand, or grab his arm if Jack was fidgeting and losing concentration. Obviously Clive never hit him, but it was essential Jack stay focused or he would never find the strength to break free from his background.
“Would you like to dissect a larger animal?” Clive asked. Jack was now so skilled at dissection that hares and hedgehogs no longer represented much of a challenge. It was early one Sunday morning and the mist lay thick under the rising sun. Clive carried a spade, and he had a flask of hot chocolate and some sandwiches in his backpack. Jack nodded unconvincingly. They began by building a trap in a clearing. Clive concentrated on the construction of the trap, and how they would lift up the animal once it had fallen in. Suddenly he became aware that Jack had stopped. He was standing a little distance away, and he didn’t look happy.
Clive went over to him and knelt down on the path, making their eyes level.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, softly.
“I don’t like always having to kill the animals,” the boy said. Clive embraced him.
“But nature’s like that,” Clive said into Jack’s hair. He smelled innocently of forest and sweaty child.
“Then why don’t you do it?” Jack said, wriggling free. Clive let go of him.
“We’ll do something else,” he said.
“Okay,” Jack said, relieved.
They walked further into the woods.
“I wish you were my dad,” Jack said out of the blue.
Clive smiled.
“Well, we can always pretend,” he said, lightly.
The weekends passed and weeks became years. When Jack turned thirteen, Clive’s present to him was a tree house in the woods. Clive had built it in secret and, on Jack’s birthday, he suggested they celebrate the day by camping in the woods. Jack was up for it. They packed provisions, a camping stove, sleeping bags, comics, and torches and off they went. Jack looked puzzled when Clive suddenly stopped and dumped his backpack on the ground beneath a huge tree. Then Clive pointed out the cleverly concealed pegs he had hammered into the tree trunk to serve as steps. Jack obediently climbed up and disappeared inside the foliage. A cry of joy soon followed and Clive smiled as he climbed up. When he reached him, Jack was sitting on the narrow walkway in front of the entrance to the tree house, dangling his legs over the edge.
Clive had put up two shelves inside for their luggage and, at the end of the walkway, he had constructed a screened enclosure, so it was possible to pee over the edge in private. Inside the hut Clive had put up pictures of Jack and Clive. A friendship spanning eight years, where a child had become a boy and a boy had become a man. You could see it in their faces. The softness had left Clive’s, who was now twenty-eight years old, but it was more noticeable in Jack’s. His gaze was intelligent, his face slimmer, and his hair longer. The little boy was fading away.
That evening, they fried sausages in a pan Clive conjured up from his backpack and, for dessert they shared a bar of chocolate, which turned out to be cooking chocolate, but it tasted good all the same. They huddled together to keep warm and heard the owls hoot and the wapiti deer roar.