by Tony Burgess
The message reads: What do all bad children get?
“Ron Hyssop! Ronnie?”
Ron minimizes the message. A light flicks on in the cave entrance at the top of the stairs. A shadow jumps across, eclipsing, barring the way.
“Ronnie? I want to take your uniform to get cleaned. Where is it?”
A woman steps down on the second step. Ron watches the light catch fire on her slipper. Burn. He pushes his feet into the ground to kill her. He pokes her in the eye. A baseball bat.
“Uh, it’s OK. It doesn’t need washing.”
Ronnie pouts in the dark, paralyzed, his forehead damp with resentment. The suggestion that his Wolf Cub leader’s uniform is dirty fills his head with prickles. He is angry that she looks into such things, that they still matter to her. He can’t believe that she would even risk asking him. Considering … considering how close he is to snuffing her out. Ron pictures her on her knees — her hands held up to the long gash which runs across her face — apologizing for this. Promising to never, ever, ever ask him anything again, she will come to know the scope of the things she interferes with. Ron pulls his shoulders forward and takes a deep, mouldy breath from behind the desk: I am a famous human rights story.
“Ronnie, it does need washing. It’s filthy. You have a meeting tomorrow night. Do want me to get it cleaned, or not?”
Ron’s wife, Karen, cannot see him from the landing. There’s only the pale grey light that reflects off a metal shelf unit. It’s laden with cardboard boxes — faces floating in the dark. She reaches up to flick another light switch on the panel by the door. No more light. That bulb burned out months ago.
“Oh jeez, Kar, sweetie. I’m not going tomorrow night.”
Ron is playing Hearts. He passes the Queen, Jack and nine of hearts to his left. Cause I’m … Cause I’m … Oh shit … Queen of Spades? Ace of Hearts. Ron accepts the card for now, knowing that if he can’t successfully get rid of it he can always exit. He looks over his shoulder quickly, just to make sure Karen hasn’t come down the stairs. He is aware that his wife isn’t a card, that he makes decisions in this game of hearts that he cannot make with people.
But he is also aware, keenly aware, that he can act; after all, he can act any way he chooses. A gang of hissing sounds blot out all of life’s little lessons and, Ron thinks, no one will ever be able to check how little I care.
“You’re not? How come?”
Ron hears his wife flick again at the switch he’s disconnected. He chooses not to speak. Not to answer. He feels tense. She is waiting for him to say something. Why doesn’t he answer? Sweat prickles along his back, and then, in a matter of seconds, he has broken through the anxiety to where he is simply sitting at his computer and not responding. He dumps the queen on a run of diamonds.
Never respond.
All of life’s little lessons.
“Honestly, Ron. Honestly, can’t you answer a simple question?”
She hasn’t noticed. She couldn’t detect it. Ron stares at the nine of spades and his expression is thick with childishness. He feels that she has robbed him of the sweetness of dumping the queen.
“Answer me!”
She won’t let go.
“I know you can hear me. Are you deaf, Ron?”
Oh God, what do I do?
“I’m gonna throw your uniform out, Ronald.”
Can’t think. Shut up.
“Goof!”
Karen tries to slam the door, but a cell of air slows it and she only manages to cause a few coats to swing on their hooks. Ron minimizes his game and brings up his email, forwarding a response, replying to the letter from Gander.
He writes: “All the Kiddies get my attention.”
SIXTEEN
“All the Kiddies get my attention.”
Kathy reads the email. And then she selects a block of forty-three new messages in her inbox and deletes them. Jack is stretching the three-inch-wide ribbon of a bright orange netting across his lap. The net is a fine, supple weave, and as he cuts sections from the end he scissors slowly, careful not to bunch delicate fabric between the blades. He lifts a square and holds it in front of his face so that he can focus on Kathy through the netting.
“Rotten.”
“What?”
“You’re a rotten woman.”
“What? Shut up.”
“A rotten to the core geek woman.”
“Greek woman?”
“No, geek. Horrid. Not fit. You’re a bitch.”
“Hey! Watch it. I’m listening.”
“Yeah, sure, just checkin’.”
Jack has pulled the patch of netting tightly over his thumb and slipped a small elastic band over the knuckle.
“Kath, c’mon, leave that shit just for a second. I got a very cool plan. We’re gonna get the Whisker Wolf this morning. C’mon, sweetie.”
“Enough with the whisker shit already. I’m busy.”
“Hey, Kath, check this out. Turn around for a second, check this out.”
Jack stands up behind her. He has attached little pouches to each of his fingers with elastics and holds his hands over her shoulders like monster claws. Kath senses him behind and turns. She is startled.
“Jesus! What the hell is that?”
“I’m spawny fingers.”
“Don’t tell me your gonna catch Mr. Stubble with your bare hands?”
Jack wiggles his brightly bagged fingertips.
“Naw, I’m making roe bags, gonna fill ’em with different things. Chum bags …”
“Like what?”
“You know, see what the Whisker Wolf likes. A dead mouse, maybe. Corned beef, bugs — I don’t know. Got any ideas?”
“I think you should put your dick in one.”
“Oh my god, I gotta do that. Kath, check it out, check it out.”
Jack struggles with the buttons on his jeans, unable to open them with his sacked fingers.
“Yeah, well, you can stop now. I can assure you that the only thing less sexy than a naked man in knee high socks is a naked man with a spawn sac on his dick. So stop.”
Jack looks up and sees the incoming icon appear on Kathy’s computer screen. It says twenty-nine new messages.
“What the hell is that?”
“Fuck. Twenty-nine new messages! Stop already … Jesus, I’m gettin’ some kinda spamathon.”
“From who? From what?”
“I think it’s a response to a request I made at Misinformation. They were going to put some pressure on the town council for me.”
“Huh? But aren’t they in Texas or something?”
“Yeah, doesn’t matter. They network globally with radical groups, enviro stuff, separatists, some pretty out-there shit. So I directed a little mail for them a while back, and they’re gonna contact some underground groups in Ontario for me. But I don’t understand this, it’s weird. All these messages are about children. Some kind of children’s rights freaks, I don’t know.”
“Kiddie porn, maybe?”
“Shut up, no. I sent them some names and things.”
“You what?”
“Well, yeah sure. I sent a list of names and addresses on the town council.”
“Oh, that was smart.”
“I also asked them to contact us.”
“That’s outstanding, Kathy. Who are these people? Jesus.”
“I’m not so sure now.”
★
Ron is a garden variety pedophile. A clumsy, emotional man. He trembles at other people’s insensitivity. He believes that all people, especially children, need some kind of protection and, sometimes, especially in the case of children, a little extra. The little extra is the unconditional love that Ron sends out to people in the right circumstances — in the remote hope that it will come back to him. His favourite story is
the story of Abraham and Isaac: the hand raised over the head of the innocent, in defiance of the social fabric, is a cruel, beautiful faith that flies in the face of life’s little lessons. It’s the great lesson: that God will stay the hand at the last moment. But to learn this you have to raise it first.
Like all pedophiles, the choices Ron makes are always clearly laid out. He lives across from a public school. He’s a Wolf Cub leader and goes on Christian Youth retreats. He’s always married. At times, heavily married. As he pulls his brown Toyota Tercel onto Highway 7 from Bewdley to Caesarea he is taking stock of himself: a rarely witnessed sight in the wild. Here we have a unique opportunity to study the exotic mind of a child rapist.
The first thing Ron does is set up the perfect moment. It’s something of an addiction for him, this moment; because it has to be an accident. Really, it’s a lifelong feat of engineering: a pure accident that will conjure the staying hand. First, he pictures dozens of boys in brown and grey uniforms, skidding and leaping across a gymnasium floor. Parents? Gone. Everyone gone. It is a world of their own, and they act it out, with bared teeth and swiping paws — the behaviour of wolf packs. They leap and pounce at each other, practising the kill, playing at the kill. The prey is a creature that only they know the name of: it is spoken only in these packs. It is a made-up name: an invented thing. It’s usually wandering, lost, and weaker than its brothers — separated from them. And when it stumbles down into the ravine it will never climb out of, the wolf cubs whisper its name to each other. Then they pounce, tumbling across each other over blue mats, giggling and squealing, scuffing their little knees and wheeling their small bodies up, out of the pile. This is the moment, Ron knows, that they perform for him.
Sometimes he goes even further: sometimes they perform for him sexually. They look back to him, to make sure he’s watching, then they fall in and out of explicit, adult, positions. They look wicked as they approach something like consummation, then collapse out of formation and fight, like children, for a place on the mat. This is when they have complete control — when they are merely like everyone else. When they’re devious. They know so much more than they are allowed to tell; and at this moment they’re in control, completely. Then, one of them will cry out. He’s been hurt in battle. He clutches his knee and rolls away from the other cubs. He has now relinquished control, and is desperate for the protection that Ron knows all children need. This he will provide. He collects the injured child and leads him, limping, through the swinging door of the change room. There, predictably, he removes an inappropriate amount of clothing from his little wolf. And as he hovers his hand across the golden light of the child he sees a tremendous change in the boy. No longer wicked, no longer a wolf cub, no longer adult. He’s just a little boy who has recognized, too late, so very deliciously late, that what is happening to him is wrong.
Ron feels a sickening flavour on his teeth, and he bathes his tongue in it. This flavour, metallic and electric, is, he knows, an early signal from the staying hand of God.
He pulls the car over, surprised at how frightened he feels. He slips a packet of Kool-Aid, with a trembling hand, from his suit pocket. The metal in his mouth is so strong that he sprains his tongue pushing it against the back of his teeth. He mixes the Kool-Aid in a thermos and swigs directly from its wide rim, sending wet raspberry strips down from the corners of his lips.
“I’m ronning away.”
Ron opens his mouth with a smack and laughs.
“Running. Running, I meant running. I’m not. I’m not ronning away.”
He spins the plastic lid back on the thermos.
“Maybe I am ronning away. Ha-ha, I’m a long, distance ronner. Gonna go do some ronning, today.”
Ron pulls a black leather daytimer off the dash and flips it open to where a loose page is folded in half. It reads: Kathy Barrette & Jack Brighton. Buddy Holly Park, unit 6. Mayor. Deputy Mayor. Marion …
He runs his fingers down the list. He’s not entirely sure why there are politicians on it. He certainly has no idea who these people are. But given the source of this list, and the nature of the message it came with, Ron has no doubt that someone somewhere has taken his quest for perfection to heart.
SEVENTEEN
Kyle is sleeping with a tensor bandage wrapped around his knee. Dr. Mendez sits at the table, alternately looking at the boy on his couch and out the window.
Marion’s car has been impounded, so now she walks the main street. She is still calling out: “I wonder what I look like.” And: “I wonder if he’s in there.” But she is impatient and without the car she struggles with momentum. Marion also mutters.
Kathy has turned off her computer because the messages have started to disturb her. She leaves Jack at home to tie his little orange bags while she goes to check the Mayor’s house.
Robert Forbes has asked a local telemarketing company if he can use their facilities. He stands fully clothed in a shower meant for employees working double or triple shifts.
Brian has followed Thomas onto the vacant lot by the lake where they had their first encounter. Thomas doesn’t know he has been followed. He begins tipping stones up on their ends.
Jack finishes tying his little sacs and puts them in a tray in his tackle box. He readies his fishing rod and net by the door, and, sitting on the edge of the bed, slips on a tall pair of Wellington’s.
Kyle wakes, rolls over, and then is instantly aware that the diazepam and Percocet have slipped out from underneath him. His heart bleats in his chest and he closes his eyes. Mendez rattles a pill container and Kyle jumps to a sitting position.
Marion can see her husband approaching on the sidewalk at the far end of town. She realizes that she misses him terribly and nearly runs to him. As the distance closes she is suddenly painfully aware that she has been living for too long in an invented world. She sees that she’s all alone. She has no idea what she might say to him, so she checks herself.
The Mayor is sitting on a toilet beside the shower stall in filthy, soaking clothes. He can hear two employees talking about him through the door. He has decided that there is only one place on earth for him now. He is going home.
Ron has reached the town limits and is consulting a map of the lots. On his list two lot numbers are given and he decides that this is where he’ll start. One is an island and one is a shore lot. The island intrigues him; but for now, the shore lot will have to do.
The moment that Kyle swallows the drugs, before they have any medicinal effect, he feels more energetic. The doctor and Kyle have an intense discussion about his little brother, Thomas. They are both very concerned about his recidivism.
Marion does not move from her spot on the sidewalk as her husband approaches. He scoops his arm around her shoulder and guides her forward, slowly. She is relieved that he asks her nothing. He seems to know that words would terrify her. She decides he is being very nice, and leans slightly toward him as they walk through the intersection.
Brian hears a branch snap behind him and he crouches down. He’s suddenly aware that he’s both able to observe from here and be observed. A man with a fishing pole walks toward the lake, passing very close to Brian’s tree. Brian pulls himself closer to the ground and loudly crunches a pine cone under his knee.
Kathy is standing in front of the Mayor’s house. She looks around, nervous that someone other than the Deputy Mayor might have seen her here before, and strolls through the weeds that burst up through the hard, dry dirt of the unpaved driveway. She doesn’t knock on the door, but looks into the dark room behind the small window over the knocker. Someone is sitting in a chair.
It’s not the Mayor.
Too small.
Thomas Finn hears voices and he lays down flat. He can see two men between upright stones. One has a fishing pole, and the other might be the Deputy Mayor. He enjoys his perspective. From here they appear in perfect proportion with the rocks. They are stan
ding inside a city that Thomas has built.
The Mayor can see Marion and her husband. Lovebirds. Has any of this really happened? He is now happy to be going home. A hot bath and clean pajamas. Even if the real reason I haven’t been able to go there isn’t resolved, I will learn to live with it.
The real reason. The real reason. Raison vrai.
Kathy lifts and drops the knocker three times, but the little person does not move. Probably told to not answer the door. She considers hiding in the tall septic grass, but decides, what with a child alone in the house, it might not look good if she gets caught. She sits on the porch instead.
Ron sees two men standing in the trees of the shore lot. They have seen him, so he approaches. He believes they may be expecting him so he introduces himself. Sure enough both of their names are on his list — I must be on theirs.
Ron sees a child laying in the shallows at the shore’s edge. He believes he is in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.
Marion’s husband spots the Mayor coming towards them — Robert’s clothes are wrinkled and appear wet. He guides his wife with a hand at her back so that she cannot see him as they turn east, up the hill, behind Main Street. He gives his wife’s upper arm a quick squeeze and feels soft flesh roll out from under his fingers. He touches bone.
Mendez is sitting in the kitchen while Kyle showers. He listens to the water. It changes pitch as it strikes different parts of the young man’s body. It’s shrill against his chest, deeper on his soaping hands, and oscillates across his face. The water’s high and steady in the moments when, as he goes to turn, he leaves the spray for the far end of the tub. Mendez feels the sound across his eyes, and it becomes a drawing of Kyle.