Timmy opened his mouth to speak, but the stranger spoke first, his words jovial and clear despite the absence of a mouth. “Hey there!” he said pleasantly. “You’re Jodie’s kid, right?”
Timmy frowned and backed up a step as the man continued to approach him. Darryl didn’t seem perturbed by the faceless man, leading Timmy to believe they were not seeing the same thing.
“Yes. Who are you?” said a young voice behind Timmy, and he turned to see Darryl looking at him…no, not at him…looking through him to the stranger. Stricken, but feeling as though he had intruded on a conversation not meant for him, he stepped away so he could watch this bizarre interaction.
The stranger’s eyes resolved themselves from the shimmering mass of his face— so blue they were almost white—then gone again. “I’m a friend of your uncle’s. We’re practically best friends!”
“Really?” said Darryl, sounding dubious.
“Sure. We chug a few beers every Friday night. Game of poker every other Thursday.” He stepped forward until his shadow sprawled across the boy. “You ever play poker?”
“Yes, sir. Once. My daddy taught me before he left us.”
The stranger nodded his sympathy. “Shit, that’s hard. I feel for you kid. Really I do. Can’t be easy waitin’ on a daddy that might not ever come back.”
Darryl’s eyes clouded with pain. “Yes, sir.”
“Hey, c’mon,” the man said, hunkering down next to the boy. “Don’t be so down. If he didn’t hang around, that’s his loss, right? Besides, you got people—good people—looking out for you right here.”
“Like who, sir?”
“Well, let’s see…” The stranger’s awful blank face turned to look out over the water at trees so green they were almost luminescent beneath the sun. “Well, me for one.”
Darryl shrugged. “But I don’t know you.”
“Ah that’s okay. I didn’t know you either. Least until now. Heck, we’re practically best friends now, right?”
“You smell like beer,” Darryl said, a quaver in his voice.
Though it was not there for him to see, Timmy sensed the stranger’s smile fade. He couldn’t understand why Darryl or the man couldn’t see him and why Darryl wasn’t seeing the man’s face, or lack of one. Were they ghosts? If so, then what did that make the version of Darryl they had seen on the bank with the pieces missing?
“Yeah, I knocked back a few before I came over. So what? One of these days you’ll be tipping beers like your old man, I’m willing to bet.”
“My daddy doesn’t drink. At least he didn’t while he was with us. He said it was evil.”
“Well, shit and sugar fairies boy, your old man sounds like a real party animal.” He threw his head back and laughed. It wasn’t a kind sound, the echo even less so.
He reached into his shirt pocket and produced a crumpled cigarette. He set about straightening it, then paused and held it out to the boy seated next to him. “You want a puff?”
Darryl shook his head and reached for his notebook. He was obviously preparing to make a hasty exit. The stranger stopped him with a gesture, a dirty fingernail aimed at the little red square in the grass between them. “What’s this? A diary?”
“No sir.” Darryl made to retrieve the notebook but the man snatched it up and switched it to the hand farther away from the boy.
“What have we here?” With one hand he flipped through the pages with a soiled thumb, his other hand snapping open a Zippo lighter and bringing the flame to the tip of the crooked cigarette, jammed low between lips that weren’t there.
Darryl looked crestfallen and stared at his submerged ankle as he muttered, “It’s a story.”
“A story, eh? Like a war story?”
“No. A love story.”
“Aw shit!” the man said, coughing around his cigarette and chuckling. “You a little fairy boy?”
Darryl shrugged. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Sure you do. You like boys?”
“Yes, sir. Some of them.”
The man slapped his knee, knocking the ash from his cigarette into the water. “Shit, I knew it!”
It was clear by the expression on the boy’s face that he didn’t know just what it was the man ‘knew’ and wanted to leave so bad it hurt. Timmy, still paralyzed by disbelief at where and how and possibly when he had found himself, felt a pang of sorrow for the boy and wished the stranger would leave him alone.
But the man stayed where he was and flipped a lock of chestnut-colored hair from the ghost of his eyes as his laugh grew hoarse, then died. “I knew a fairy boy like you once,” he said. A mouth appeared in the skin-mask as he attempted to blow a smoke ring but only managed a mangled S before the breeze snatched it away. “Couple of years ago back in college. He was like you, you know. Dressed real nice, spoke real good. Had no time for anyone he thought beneath him, if you’ll excuse the pun, which meant pretty much everybody was beneath the sonofabitch. That cocksucker didn’t get to me though. No sir. I fixed his goddamn wagon real good.”
“I’d better go. Can I have my book?” Darryl withdrew his foot from the water. He braced his hands beneath him to lever himself up and that’s when it happened.
Just as Darryl began to rise, the man, in one smoothly executed move, clenched the fist holding the cigarette and swept his arm hard beneath the boy’s hands, dropping him hard on his back. Timmy heard the whoosh of the boy’s breath as he lay confused and frightened. He saw the bobbing of the boy’s Adam’s apple as the fear registered. And then the man rose, his shadow once again draping itself over Darryl.
“Stop it! Leave him alone!” Timmy roared, but he felt as if he was locked inside a glass cage.
“Now why’d you have to go and get all impolite on me, huh? Weren’t we having a good little chat, just the two of us? No women, no bitching, no bills, no bullshit. Just you and me having a fine time.” His ‘face’ darkened. “What would your daddy think if he knew what you are? Or does he know? Are you queer because of him? Is that it? Shit, that’s terrible. I mean, I feel sorry for you, man. I really do. No kid should have to deal with that shit. I mean, my father got drunk one time and tried to—”
Darryl ran. It happened that fast. One minute he was on his back, trembling like an upturned crab, and the next he was on his feet and running toward the trees.
And the stranger fell on him. To Timmy it seemed as if the man had hardly moved and yet he was there, lying across the area of flattened grass Darryl had occupied only a moment before, both hands wrapped around the boy’s ankle, the cigarette forgotten and smoldering between them.
“Let me go!” Darryl cried and clawed at the grass. “Please, let me go!”
The stranger grunted and tugged the boy back toward him, flipped him over and struck him once across the face with his fist. It was enough. Darryl’s cries faded to a whine, tears streaming down his face and scissoring through the dirt smudged there.
The man shuffled forward and sat down on the boy’s legs, trapping him. Darryl regarded him with animal panic, subdued only by the threat of further violence.
“Aw Jesus,” the stranger said as twin trails of blood began to run from the boy’s nostrils. “Aw Jesus,” he repeated, grabbing fistfuls of his long hair and tugging hard. “Look what you did. Look what you did,” he said, over and over as if it was a spell to ward off consequences. “Look what you did. You’re bleeding. You’ll tell. You’ll run and tell and they’ll throw me in jail. All because you couldn’t just be polite and sit and listen. No, you tried to run. You tried to run away and look what you did!”