His Illegal Self

35

Trevor came padding softly down the hill with his new flashlight, three feet long, two and a half pounds. It had been free of cost to him, thanks to the roomy overalls he wore when shopping.

His feet were bare, hard, the heels and balls buffed like saddle leather or polished concrete. He did not turn the flashlight on-darkness is your friend. The moon had not yet risen when he got through the last bit of guttered track and arrived at the cane toad territory down by the creek. He could hear the frogs as well, and the water passing over the dam Rebecca’s kids had made. Through the flooded gums he could see the candles flickering in her hut. She would be lying on the bed he built for her-he had told the boy about that misunderstanding with Rebecca, but the boy did not have a clue.

A little farther was the cutting into Adam’s land. It was not difficult to find. The American babe had a huge propane lamp. She was like an oil refinery. The lamp perched on a three-foot yellow pipe screwed directly to the brand-new gas tank and it spilled light out across the uncut grass, the mustard-yellow path leached white, winged insects rising by his knees.

Trevor called out to announce himself but he did not slow his pace. The boy watched from his hiding place beneath the hut. He saw Dial’s feet meet Trevor’s in the bright back doorway, two steps above him. She stepped aside and Trevor brushed past her.

Inside the hut Trevor and Dial faced each other.

You can’t torture him like this, he said.

Trevor, what are you talking about?

Tell him about his father, Dial. She flinched and Trevor thought, She’s left him!

He led the way out onto the piddling little deck that weak lazy Adam had constructed, and here he squatted, the heavy flashlight lying across his lap, the ridiculous uproar of the propane lamp behind him.

You know you could see this place from outer space, he said.

I like to read, she said.

I’m word blind, he said. I was whipped for not reading, he said, but my brain can’t do it.

The American did not reply and so he waited until she came to him. She would not come completely. She leaned against the doorframe, half in, half out, but her big dark eyes were sort of naked. He thought, She’s single.

I’m an orphan, he explained.

Really.

You shouldn’t be pissy with me, Dial. I’m one of your neighbors.

Don’t start that.

You should be visiting them. You haven’t been friendly. They don’t know who you are.

If I wanted friends I would have stayed in Boston.

But you are friendly, Trevor said. He meant it too. I’ve seen you, Dial. You’re kind. You’re not his mother but you love him.

He hadn’t planned to say that. He didn’t even know he knew it. They watched each other in surprise. For a moment she was rigid but then she hugged herself and sighed.

I’m an academic, she said. I shouldn’t be here.

I know that, he said.

She gestured at the puzzling plank nailed crookedly on the wall. I hate all this shit.

I can see.

I’m from South Boston. Do you know what that is?

It’s in America.

I’m the first person in my family to go to college. Can you imagine what it would mean to them if they could see what I’ve become.

A hippie, like me.

It’s so much worse than that.

You’re not his mother, though, he said. He wished she would sit closer to him.

You don’t know that.

His father’s dead. Isn’t he! He did not know if this was true or not. He tried to read her bitter smile.

He has a right to know, he said.

He has a right?

Yes.

Oh really.

Dial, I know what I’m talking about.

You know what? Stop fucking with his head, man. This is much much worse than you can know. He’s not you. No one’s going to burn his legs with cigarettes.

She had read the scars, that’s all. Big deal.

I know, she said, that you think he’s just like you. She spoke gently now, and lay a hand upon his knee.

Trevor shrugged.

But this boy comes from Park Avenue. In New York. He’s going to go to Harvard and be a fucking corporate lawyer. He’s so absolutely not you, Trevor. He’s a fucking prince.

So he’s going back to that, soon, to his real mother?

Did I say that?

Then what?

She rocked forward on her knees and for a crazy moment, as she lay her hand on his bare shoulder, he thought she was going to kiss him and he felt a brief giddy surge of blood.

Instead she whispered in his ear-I heard something under the hut. He’s out there somewhere.

And together they looked out into the skirt of light, at the places where the tree trunks drowned in dark.

Shush, she said, and there was, as if in response, the sound of a feral animal scurrying beneath the deck, and then fast footfalls on the path and then a great thump as the boy arrived inside the hut, like a possum fallen from a tree, eyes ablaze like gas. Buck was tucked compliantly beneath his arm.

The boy did not say a word. When Trevor approached him, he stood his ground.

Dial watched this happen with a kind of bilious feeling in her gut. When Trevor asked for soap and a towel she was pleased to find them for him, and when he escorted the boy outside, she took a sharp knife and began to cut cherry tomatoes in half, for what reason she could not really have said.

God save us all, she thought.

Soon she heard the slapping sound of the shower. It was just a pipe beneath the floor of the other hut, a slab of sloping concrete that let the water flow away into the bush. It was lovely in the afternoon, but at night there were spiders and bugs biting you. When the boy returned his hair was wet and his face was pink and scrubbed. She had chopped perhaps ten tomatoes, and they lay in half with their tiny yellow seeds glistening on the bench.

Trevor asked the boy, Where are your clean clothes?

He pointed up to the loft bed.

Then go get dressed.

The boy’s face had some strange soapy glaze, but he obeyed, and Trevor came to the countertop. He removed the knife from her hand and lay a fistful of weed inside her palm. Then, without asking her permission, he began to crack eggs into a bowl. Yesterday’s spring onions had not wilted and with this and not much more than a few baby tomatoes he put together three omelets which they ate in silence.

Afterward the boy helped Trevor to wash and dry the dishes. Watching this, Dial tasted green and bitter jealousy rising from her gorge. So now she did not want him taken from her? How fucked was that?

The boy stayed close by Trevor, rubbing his soap-wet hands on his clean shorts.

Trevor turned off the propane lamp. In the sudden quiet the boy heard the panic of a single insect in a web. His own breath was held like a crumpled milk carton in his bony chest.

Trevor sat, his back against the doorframe opposite where Dial was squatting.

You know those boards are going to shrink, he said.

The boy sat too, cross-legged, pink faced, closer to Trevor than to Dial.

They’re green, Trevor said.

Oh, really?

The boy saw how the moonlight was caught in the gauze of many little wings, white ants, mosquitoes, moths with black jeweled bodies.

I’m just telling you, Trevor said.

And I appreciate your kindness.

And then no one spoke and it made the boy feel sick and worried like when you watch the Kenoza Lake stars and try to imagine the end of space. You build a brick wall but when you break through, there is still more space. You can scare yourself to death.

The boy said, I’m an orphan, aren’t I?

He was pretty scared, to hear himself say that.

He expected Dial would reach out to him then, and he would push her clear away. Dial did not move.

No one spoke some more.

The boy thought, What have I done? Behind him were the shadows of the stupid timber lying on the floor.

Where’s my daddy, he asked.

The frogs were singing to one another, things were dying in the night. He could see Dial’s hair, the cold fiery edge of it. There was papaya balm on Trevor’s leg ulcer. Made him smell like rotten fruit.

Where is my daddy, Dial?

I don’t know, she said at last.

You promised you would write to him. You must know.

Not really.

Like that.

In the dark, finally, she reached out to touch his streaming hopeless face.

The air was suddenly filled with parts of him, each bit sharp enough to cut. You liar!

Where is his dad? asked Trevor. He deserves to know.

You, said Dial.

You, she began again, are a cruel and dangerous fool.

Don’t you ever call me a fool.

Oh, please. Don’t be so precious. He isn’t you. He’s someone else. You couldn’t imagine him if you lived to be a hundred.

Are you his mother then?

The boy got quiet and listened.

What, said Dial.

You heard me, said Trevor, but Dial was already standing and staring behind her into the dark. She brushed past the boy, bumped the lamp. He thought she was going to climb up to the loft but when she came back she was carrying a length of two-by-four and she cracked Trevor across the back with it.

The boy cried out.

Trevor roared, rolled, a mouse, a cockroach.

Dial would not permit him escape. She thudded him twice more, across the ribs. The boy watched the big man curl up like a baby. Then he rolled clear off the deck. Onto the smelly dirt where Adam used to pee.

Dial looked down into the stink, timber in her hand. No one spoke.

Trevor whimpered. She threw the wood on top of him and turned away. When she wiped her nose and stepped toward him, the boy did not know what to do.

Come here, she said, but the boy ran out into the night and down the hill, past the car, and on the dark road below he smelled papaya balm.

Are you there? he whispered.