Strays

by Matthew Krause

  “Really. And do you know why?” This time he did wait, but when Kyle was silent, he said: “Because I always found a way to stay out of them. Do you understand?”

  Kyle nodded, hearing his chin scrape against the phone receiver. “Maybe a little.”

  “That’s what you did that day when you stood up for Sebastian,” Dad said. “And whatever you think of your friend, what you did that day was the right thing to do.”

  “I didn’t want to do it, Dad,” Kyle said. “I wanted to beat the hell out of Seby just like the other boys did.”

  “I know.”

  “Seby’s just a freak,” Kyle went on. “And those guys were cool. I wanted to be their friend, not Seby’s.”

  “So why did you take Seby’s side?”

  “Because …” He glanced toward the front of the C-store, up to where the gas pumps were located but currently out of his field of vision. There was this cat, he wanted to say. You know that girl I mentioned? She’s really a cat. But instead of telling all to his father, he simply said: “I don’t know why I did it. I just did it, and I couldn’t stop myself.”

  “You couldn’t stop yourself because you’re good,” Dad said. “That’s what I prayed you would get from me, son. A sense of doing good that’s so strong that even when you want to do the other thing, you can’t. I see that in you. I believe.”

  “Believe what?”

  “That you’ll do the right thing. You’d stop breathing before you stopped being good.”

  “I don’t think that’s me, Dad.”

  “It’s you,” Dad said. “You don’t believe it because it’s not something you think about. But I see it. You’re my son, Kyle. I trust you.”

  The tears came then, and Kyle slumped against the building and sobbed. It was a hard kind of cry, like when he was very small and maybe fell out of a tree or off his bicycle, and his father was there, gathering him in his arms and taking him into the house to comfort him.

  “What’s wrong, son?”

  “I … I don’t know.” Kyle snorted and spit and wiped his eyes. “I want to come home.” He fought the next wave of sobs until they turned into a short burst of hacking coughs. Dad was silent on the line, waiting. When Kyle was finished, Dad spoke:

  “I want you to come home, son,” he said. “But only if you’re sure you’re finished.”

  “Finished?”

  “You said you have something to do. If you think you’ve done it, come home. If not … well, you better keep on moving, right?”

  Kyle coughed and spit again and felt disgusting for sharing the sound of it with his father 900 miles away. “I don’t think I can.”

  “Yes,” Dad said. “You can. Go do what you have to do, you hear? Take care of that girl. Like she’s the most valuable thing in the world, you take care of her.”

  Kyle breathed hard through his nose, making wet, gurgling sounds. It seemed to fill the space behind his eyes. “All right,” he said.

  “I mean it. Do what I say, okay Kyle?”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  “And one more thing,” Dad added. “Just in case you missed it the first time.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You’re my son, all right? My son. I trust you. And I love you. Don’t you ever, ever forget that.”

  “I won’t,” Kyle said. “I love you too.”

  He hung up the phone and closed his eyes. My son, his father had said, and he had spoken with more determination than Kyle had ever heard before. Kyle tried to imagine what that meant, just what it entailed to not only be brought in the world by this man but actually claimed by him.

  My son.

  It was a great responsibility, wasn’t it? His father, for all of his silly stories and ornery wit and—let's face it!—downright blatant ignorance when it came to the merits of cool things like Star Wars … for all of that, his father was best man he knew. And he, Kyle, was this man’s son, was even assured that some of this man’s good had filtered down to him. Not just to his brothers … but to Kyle as well.

  Kyle breathed slowly, and at last he opened his eyes. It was not possible. How could it be? How could he, who had been relegated to the small tribe of losers and freaks like Seby Lee, even hope to be considered in the same sentence as his father?

  But Dad had said it was true, hadn’t he? And Dad had never lied to Kyle, not once.

  You better keep moving on, right?

  And it wasn’t just Dad who believed; it was Molly—

  I’m trying really hard to believe.

  You’re a work in progress.

  He would go forward. He would take on any test, and he would prove himself worthy of their faith. It was the very least he could do, if he was to be half the man he hoped to be.

  Kyle stood tall, straightening the hem of his t-shirt. He recalled seeing something like this on one of those Star Trek movies (which were not as good as Star Wars, of course) where First Officer Spock, though dying of radiation poisoning, still took the time to straighten his uniform before presenting himself to his captain. It was what a man did, and Kyle was determined to be a man.

  He walked back around the C-store to the islands where the gas pumps were located … and stepped around the corner of the building into his very first test.

  Kyle vs. The BTB

  In some twisted part of his brain, it was exactly as Kyle would have wanted it. He had witnessed this very scene played out in a variety of low-rent action movies on cable TV, most of them starring some knock-off martial artist with zero acting chops and questionable fluidity during choreographed fights. Kyle had watched plenty of these movies, sometimes scheduling early wake-up calls for his paper route when they played on cable at 4:00 in the morning, and he would sit in the living room rolling his newspapers, chortling at the absurdity of it all.

  At the same time, as he mocked these movies, he nevertheless wished he could be that guy. He had longed to be the hero called into action, the guy who, above all others, possessed some skill set that made him the man to be taken seriously. On the A-list, this guy was usually played by Sly Stallone, Ah-nold, or the ubiquitous Chuck Norris, all of whom seemed to be cranking out films at a fever pitch. Yes, secretly Kyle wanted to be that guy, and he had often imagined this very scenario: pretty girl being tormented by multiple thugs, Kyle the hero easily outnumbered, and yet the scene ending with him walking off into the sunset with the girl, leaving a trail of bleeding bodies in his wake.

  His chance at that scene now stood before him. It was up to him to write the ending.

  The first thing Kyle saw were the backs, all three of them, of his tormentors. They stood over by the gas pumps, hovering around Kyle’s Impala, surrounding something or someone that they had backed against the car. Two of the monsters wore loose-fitting jeans with worn patches in places, the kind that felt comfortable on long trips. The tallest and biggest of the trio wore beige cargo shorts, and something about the slump of his shoulders and the fact that he seemed about a foot separate from the other two indicated that he was not as into this game as his colleagues.

  Then Kyle saw the fourth set of legs, intermingled between the legs of the other three. The legs were wrapped neatly in a pair of black, form-fitting jeans, and the arcs and curves of their thighs and calves—quite clear in the buzzing fluorescents of the awning above the pumps—indicated that the victim of these three thugs was female. What’s more, Kyle knew those jeans, knew the bow of those legs, and he could tell by the way that the three thugs bent down at her that she was much shorter than any of them.

  The victim was Molly, of course. In the short time Kyle has left her alone, she had attracted the attention of three punks, who had appeared as if from the ether. Kyle could not see who they were, but he could tell from their giggles and snorts that they were quite a bit younger than your average trucker. No, these boys were not part of that community of idling tractor trailers that slept on the west lot. They were something else.

  The moment hung in the air, and Kyle weighed
his options. Three of them, all about his height, all seemingly larger and probably stronger. There was no way he could take out one of them, let alone three. And yet he had to act quickly. They had Molly, and God knows what they had in store for her. He could run inside and get the C-store clerk, but chances are that would be of little help. Should they call the police, it would probably be at least 20 minutes before they arrived. A lot of damage could be done to Molly in 20 minutes, and to Kyle too, for that matter.

  No, this was his job, and his alone. It was his chance to prove something to himself and to his father. He could not allow this to happen. He had to make this right.

  “Excuse me,” he said, fighting to keep his tone even. He wanted so much to scream and shout and rage, to demand that the three bullies take their filthy hands off the lady, but then he thought of his father, and the way he had stayed centered on the phone, even though his son—

  My son. I trust you. And I love you. Don’t ever, ever forget that.

  —had gone missing for almost 24 hours.

  The backs of the three punks stiffened, and they turned almost in unison, like a choreographed dance number. Kyle could see Molly’s face, peeking out between the shoulders of the two largest men. He half-expected to see terror in her eyes, tears on her cheeks, lower lip quivering with panic, but there was none of that. Fear did not seem to be a part of Molly’s make-up, and there was no reason for it to kick in now.

  “Hey, mister,” she said. “It’s about time you got here.”

  Something surged from her words, her beauty, her calm, assuring face and half-smile that appeared when she saw him. She did know, yes, she saw it in him, just as his father had seen. That was all Kyle ever needed to know.

  “Can I help you guys?” Kyle asked.

  The three thugs, their faces a mass of weird shadows of the night, all took a step away from the car, spreading out slightly like a street gang. The fluorescent tubes from the awning hit their faces at just the right angle then, and for a moment all power Kyle had felt seemed to seep out of him like air from a punctured pool toy.

  There before Kyle stood the three worst bullies of his short and unhappy childhood.

  “What the hell?” Bran the Man gurgled. “No way. That ain’t … are you seeing that, guys? Is that …?”

  “Yeah,” said DC. “It’s freaking Winthrop. Freaking Kyle the Faggot Winthrop.”

  Kyle could still see Molly, now behind the three boys, leaning against the car. She folded her arms across her chest and settled back, crossing one lovely black-jean-clad leg across the other. The half-smile never left her face, and she gave Kyle a soft nod, Dad’s nod, the one he saved for you when he was most proud. Her eyes sparkled and seemed to cheer. Finish them, they said. Just finish these clowns.

  Kyle nodded back, and electricity began to hum under his flesh. He felt as if he could summon fireballs from his hands and burn each of these punks to a crisp, but he knew better than to run with that image. That was not how this story played out. That was not the end of this movie, and it was a movie, wasn’t it? That was what his father had always told him—

  It’s only a movie … only a movie … only a movie …

  “Brandon,” Kyle said, fixing the leader in his sights for a moment before rolling his eyes to the right. “DC,” he said. “How’s it going?”

  “What the hell you doing here?” DC asked.

  Bran the Man offered a half-nod to DC and then glowered at Kyle, grinning. “So this is what Jack was talking about.” He raised his arms out as if embracing the wind. “He said it was something we’d enjoy doing, right guys?”

  A profound and cavernous silence greeted Bran the Man’s voice.

  “Come on, guys,” Bran said. “This is the problem we’re supposed to solve. This little faggot right here.”

  He rocked his head back and began to cackle, clapping his hands in front of his face. Kyle squinted and ignored him, but keeping his head and body very still, his arms out from his sides just a hair as if ready to pounce, he rolled his eyes to the left.

  “Marty,” he said. “You’ve been quiet so far. You have something to say?”

  “Hey, Kay-Dub,” Marty said.

  Marty’s jaw was set, and his lips twitched a bit, a clear indication that he was grinding his teeth. Kyle looked at Marty’s eyes, really looked at them for the first time, and he saw something that he had missed before. He was scared. What’s more, he had always been scared. How could Kyle not have seen it? Marty Segerstrom, the biggest and most powerful of the Beast With Three Backs was filled with fear—fear of doing anything rash, of playing along with any of Bran the Man’s violent games, lest they get caught by grown-ups and wind up in a world of hurt, and yet Kyle realized that there was something else, something deeper, something that had been there even back in 1980. Marty’s entire world was fear, a chronic terror that actually mirrored Kyle’s own. Contained within Marty’s glassy-eyed stare were all the nightmares that plagued everyone at some time or another, the great what-ifs—rejection, failure, doing the wrong thing—that people would rather not face.

  “You okay, man?” Kyle asked.

  “Dude, I’m fine, all right?” Marty attempted to sound larger than life, but it came off like a child annoyed at the constant haranguing from his mother.

  “You don’t look so good,” said Kyle.

  “Shut your pie-hole, Winthrop.” Bran the Man, taking another step forward, allowing his two teammates to fall back in a Blue Angel flight formation right out of that movie Top Gun that Kyle had avoided seeing. “What the hell are you doing clear the hell out here?”

  “On vacation,” he said. “With my girlfriend.”

  “What girlfriend?” Bran the Man snarled. “Seby Lee?”

  He broke out laughing at his own joke, and DC joined in. Kyle glanced over at Marty, who was forcing an open mouth grin and emitting rhythmic, hollow chuckles. Kyle let them laugh for a few moments and then lifted his arm slowly, extending a finger and pointing past Bran the Man, over his right shoulder. Bran turned around in the direction of the point, and upon seeing Molly, still standing cross-legged and smiling, he spun back at Kyle in disbelief.

  “No way,” he said.

  “Way,” said Kyle. “Most definitely way.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Believe it,” said Kyle. “Tell him, Molly.”

  Brandon cocked his head sideways, stealing a second look at Molly but keeping the other eye on Kyle. Marty and DC tried to mimic this motion, taking in the lovely girl who lounged next to the Impala.

  “He’s telling the truth,” she said.

  “Him?” Bran the Man growled. “What’s a babe like you doing with a freak show like Winthrop?”

  Molly’s smile just hung there, taunting the three before she spoke. “You’d be amazed by what he can do.”

  Bran the Man tried to laugh again, but this time it sounded as forced and cadenced as Marty’s had been. “Betcha I could do better.”

  “Doubt it,” Molly said. “I really do.”

  Bran’s lips puckered, his front teeth poking over the lower lip, and he began to exhale in tight breaths. The effect made him look a bit like a rat, and Kyle felt himself smile before he could stop it.

  “Girl’s got a smart mouth,” Bran the Man said. “Maybe I ought to shut it.”

  “I wouldn’t advise it,” Kyle said.

  Bran the Man turned completely toward Kyle. He took another step, and this managed to empower DC, who stepped in line. Marty, pursing his lips and steeling himself for the fight, took a step as well to fall in with his mates.

  “You wouldn’t advise it?” Bran the Man barked. “What d’you think you’re gonna do to stop me?”

  Kyle looked off past them, refusing to make eye contact, and thought of his father.

  … never lost a fight … always found a way to stay out of them …

  “I haven’t made up my mind yet,” Kyle said.

  Bran the Man’s eyes went round as quarters. Hi
s eyebrows slanted away from the center of his head as if his face were melting on both sides. Kyle detected a quiver in his shoulders, an amazing subtlety that gave away Bran the Man’s own fears. DC seemed to read this shift in energy, and his shoulders shrunk back half an inch, as if dodging a rock being thrown at his head.

  The moment passed. Bran the Man’s lip quaked, and the muscles in his high cheekbones twitched. His head thrust forward, and the eyes pinched and narrowed.

  Kyle fought back the urge to smile.

  He’s trying to get into my head, he thought. There’s only one reason for that—

  I think he’s afraid. His father’s voice, some new observation Kyle did not remember hearing from the man before.

  “Yes,” Kyle said. “That’s exactly it.”

  “Who the hell you talking to?” Bran the Man, spraying spittle from his lips as he spoke.

  Kyle grinned. “My Dad.”

  “What? You … you crazy, man.”

  “Crazy all right,” Kyle said. “But you’re not.”

  Bran the Man looked genuinely perplexed by this. “You …”

  “I’ve seen that act,” Kyle interrupted. “Bulging eyes, slobbering on yourself. In about a dozen bad movies, a dozen bad actors doing a dozen different bad versions of crazy. None of them convince me and none of them scare me.”

  Bran the Man’s eyes widened again, and the twitch in his cheek bones was like a maggot wriggling under the skin. He took another step toward Kyle, but Marty and DC did not follow. Kyle glanced at each one to assess the threat. Both were holding ground, but if anything they seemed to rear back a bit, as if anticipating retreat.

  “You don’t scare me either,” Kyle said, and he realized that it was true.

  “I better scare you,” Bran the Man shouted. “I better damn well scare you. There’s three of us, you faggot. What you going to do against three of us?”

  “What are you three going to do against me?” Kyle said, grinning. He was not sure if it was a bluff, but it did not feel like one.

  “Big talk for a faggot,” Bran the Man said. “Right DC?”

  Kyle glanced over at DC. He looked as nervous as he had six years earlier when Kyle had name-dropped Reggie Adler.