Deceit

FORTY-FIVE

I brought the detritus of Benjamin’s sad life to the dark and deserted lounge.

I bought a cup of mud-colored coffee from a machine and sat down at the table.

I opened the primer. Benjamin: age 9.

Every page contained a letter-first page letter A, second page letter B, third page C, and so on.

Benjamin had written each letter ten times, both in caps and lowercase. Then a word using that letter.

The A word was apple.

Then a picture of the word-a red apple in crudely drawn crayon.

Then apple was used in a simple sentence.

I eat apple, Benjamin wrote, in a 9-year-old’s syntax that he would never outgrow.

Happy hundred birthday.

I wish you hundred hugs.

It would’ve been hard to outgrow anything while being weaned on various mind-benders.

The B word was bed.

The bed he’d drawn looked pretty much like the one I’d just left in the ward. A child’s vision of it. Same color blanket. A small black scarecrow with crooked little Zs shooting out of his mouth.

I sleep bed.

For fifty years that’s what he’d done, until one day he saw his mom on TV, the one they’d told him had died in the flood with all the others. Then he woke up.

I went through each page.

Car.

Dog.

Elefant.

Fire.

Goat.

House.

Ice creem.

Jump.

Then the K page.

I stared at this word, because it wasn’t a kid’s word at all.

No.

I’d seen this particular word before.

When a folded letter fell out of a cracked picture frame and whispered come follow me.

See, I wasn’t talking about the wrong guy, Rainey.

The picture was a street filled with little stick figures raining tears. Their little stick arms were raised in childish terror. Of what? A blue giant. He was looming over them with a scythelike knife dripping thick, red drops of blood.

I stared at the sentence.

I live Kara Bolka.

K for Kara Bolka.

That’s why I was never able to find it. Why I could’ve scoured the phone directories from now till doomsday and still come up empty.

Greetings from Kara Bolka.

Kara Bolka wasn’t a person.

It was a place.