The Last Child

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Johnny went home to Uncle Steve’s two-bedroom apartment. It was a dump, even from the outside. Steve opened the door and looked embarrassed. “This okay?” he asked.

Johnny smelled beer and dirty clothes. “Sure.”

Steve showed Johnny his room and closed the door when Johnny asked him to. The room held a single bed with a table and lamp. A closet. A dresser. Nothing else. Johnny dropped his bag and opened it. He put the photograph of his parents on the table, then opened his shirt and checked the bandages. Red spots had soaked through in a diagonal line eight inches long. It was the worst of the cuts, but the blood was dry and Johnny guessed it would be okay. He buttoned up.

At sunset, Steve called out for pizza and they ate in front of a game show that he described as educational in nature. Afterward, Steve put his hands on his knees, looked awkward. “I have a lady friend…” His fingers shifted on the weave of his fine polyblend pants.

“I’ll stay in my room. Or you can go out if you want. It won’t bother me.”

“Go out?”

“Sure.”

“What about DSS?”

“If they come, I won’t answer the door. We can say we were out for dinner.”

Steve looked at the phone, the door. Johnny made it easy for him. “I’ve been alone plenty of times. You don’t have to worry.”

Relief softened Steve’s hard-edged mouth. “I’d just be gone for a few hours.”

“I’m thirteen.”

Steve rose and pointed. The nail on his finger was brown and broken. “Stay out of my stuff,” he said.

“Of course.”

“And don’t let anybody inside.”

Johnny nodded solemnly and saw that Steve still needed help. “I’ll probably just read. Homework, you know.”

“Homework. Good idea.”

Steve left and Johnny watched him all the way to the curb. Then he went through Steve’s stuff. Methodically. Carefully. He felt no guilt, no remorse. If Steve was going to get stoned or drunk, Johnny wanted to know. Same thing with guns and knives and baseball bats.

Johnny wanted to know where they were.

If the gun was loaded.

He found vodka in the freezer, a bag of pot in a casserole dish. The computer was password protected, the filing cabinet locked. He discovered a hunting knife on the floor of the bedroom closet and a sex manual on the shelf. An interior door led from the kitchen to the garage, where he found a pickup truck with worn tires and gouges in the dirty white paint. Johnny stood under the bright light and ran his hands along the hood, the mud-caked fenders. The truck was old, a beater, but it had air in the tires and the needle lifted off the peg when Johnny turned the key to check the gas. He stood in the garage smell and thought hard about things he should probably not do; but two minutes later he sat at the kitchen table, truck key in front of him, phone book open.

There was one listing for Levi Freemantle.

Johnny knew the street.

He picked up the key but jumped when the phone rang. It was his mother, and she was distraught. “Are you being a good boy?”

Johnny picked up the key, tilted it in the light. “Yes.”

“This is only temporary, honey. You need to believe that.”

Johnny heard a noise through the phone, a crash. “I believe it.”

“I love you, baby.”

“I love you, too.” Another sound.

“I have to go,” she said.

“Are you okay?”

“Be a good boy.” She hung up.

Johnny stared at the phone, then put it down. The key was warm in his hand.

No one had to know.