by David Wiltse
His tears had dried but he began to weep once more now that he realized his new position. For the first time since he had followed Dee through the mall so long ago, he was alone.
It did not occur to Bobby to try to run away. He almost never thought about escape anymore. Like his parents, it had become a memory without reality.
He wept and held himself still and prayed for Ash to wake up.
Reggie was on her feet again and yelling at him, and George was planning a trip to Arizona. Just pick up and go. Buy a mule and hike out to the mountains or desert or whatever was out there, and live by himself for a while. He wasn’t too old for a sleeping bag. He could eat beans out of a can and do as well as Reggie’s cooking, and he wasn’t too old to get a companion, either. She seemed to have forgotten that, she seemed to have lost sight of the fact that he was a very attractive man who could get another woman in the time it took to change his shirt. She had definitely forgotten whom she was dealing with when she was dealing with George-but now was not the best time to remind her. Reggie was always mad as a wet hen after she got over being sick. She found fault with everything, especially George, and he had learned long ago that the best way to deal with it was to make himself scarce. If she thought everything was in such an awful mess, let her straighten it up herself. Maybe it would lire her out enough to calm her down.
While she was ripping through the kitchen, bitching about his housekeeping prowess. George slipped outside and hurried toward the stand of trees that divided the motel property from the lot belonging to the neighbor, a small firm that sold and serviced business machines. The trees ran only three deep, but George thought of them as his woods. If he was very still and Reggie wasn’t searching for him very hard, he could stand in the shade of the spruce and feel as if he were somewhere else, somewhere in a different time when the forests enveloped everything and domesticity was nothing more than a temporary growth in a clearing, no more substantial or demanding of a man’s time and consideration than a squirrel’s nest in a tree, doomed for disintegration in a year or two. George could shelter in the security of his woods and peer at the doings of the motel like something divorced from himself and his concern, as superior in philosophy and dignity as an Indian looking bemusedly at the first scratchings of the Pilgrims.
After a time, still leaning against his favorite tree where the bark was worn smooth from seven years of accommodating his shoulder, George saw Reggie come out of the office and head for cabin six as directly as if she were going to put out a fire. Dee’s car was gone, which meant that Reggie was going into the cabin again, or, if the husband was there, to confront him. In direct contradiction of George’s order. In flagrant breach of his promise to Dee. Which left George with two alternatives. He could assert his authority and rush over there right now, grab Reggie by the scruff of the neck and drag her away before she did any damage-or he could not be a witness and therefore remain ignorant of her open defiance. George turned and walked into the parking lot of the business machines firm to see what they were up to these days.
Reggie had the appropriate key in her hand when she knocked on the door. She was in no mood for excuses or delays; one way or the other she was going in and she was going to have some explanations. And if the answers didn’t satisfy her, then “Dee” and whoever was in there with her were history, she didn’t care how much they had paid in advance.
In truth, things being what they were these days, it was very difficult to evict someone unless they were in flagrant violation of the law. If the cops weren’t prepared to arrest them and haul them off, and the tenants understood their rights, it was a long and costly procedure to have them evicted. Most tenants had no clue to their rights, of course, and Reggie was prepared to rely on a combination of Dee’s ignorance and her own self-righteous anger to get the woman out.
She rapped once on the door, then listened. It was hard to make out anything specific above the noise of the television set, but she thought she heard the sound of scuttling and whispered voices.
She rapped again, then put her key into the lock. The door opened three inches, then was held by the chain, but it was enough for Reggie to hear clearly the panicked noises of someone in the bathroom. Guilty, she thought. The noises sounded guilty, as if Reggie had caught the monster “husband” in the midst of some filthy act. She did not want to think what.
“Open the door. This is the owner.” she said firmly. It was important not to give the man time to think or he might come up with some courage that right now she had scared clean out of him.
“I know you’re in there.” she said. She could see the opening of the door but not into the bathroom itself. A dark green plastic leaf bag lay on the floor just outside the bathroom. Reggie wondered what size garbage these two could have. Although some people used bags like that for suitcases these days. People with children.
The box of plastic gloves was still atop the dresser. What on earth did they use those for? She shuddered to think. Everything she saw fed her outrage. She didn’t know what was going on, but whatever it was, she didn’t like it
“Open this door or I’m coming in,” she called. In truth she had no way to get in short of a hacksaw to cut the chain and she thought, pot for the first time, that all the locks in the motel needed to be changed to ones that she could control. But for the expense, she would have done that job long ago. If George were the least bit handy, he could have done it. Even then he would have complained, of course. Siding with the tenants, as per usual. Babbling on about privacy and tenant rights. George and his precious privacy. Nobody needed privacy unless they had something to hide, Reggie thought. Thinking of George only made her angrier and she pounded on the door.
“Right now!” she demanded, and, as if on command, the man stepped out of the bathroom and faced her.
At the first knock Ash was off the floor from his station by the door and into the bathroom in three strides, bundling Bobby in his arms like a loose package of so many sticks of wood, his hand clamped over the boy’s mouth. His shoulder brushed the plastic garbage bag that Dee had brought home from work and it fluttered from the dresser to the floor.
The woman was yelling and Ash was panicked, but he knew what to do; Dee had taught him, he had done it before. He was to stay out of sight, simply stay out of sight until Dee returned. She would take care of it, she always knew how to take care of everything. Ash just had to hide with the boy until she came home.
Ash stood in the bathroom, clutching Bobby tightly to him, as if for protection. Everything was going to be all right, he whispered to the boy. Or he thought he was whispering but then wasn’t sure if he wasn’t just doing it in his mind. Bobby’s eyes were staring at him over Ash’s hand clamped over his mouth. As the boy wasted away his eyes seemed to grow bigger and bigger and now they looked enormous. And frightened.
The woman was yelling again. Ash made sure he spoke aloud this time as he whispered, “Don’t be afraid, this will be okay, she’ll go away and Dee will come back and take care of us.” Bobby’s eyes seemed to show understanding and Ash did his best to smile.
Then it was the woman again. Threatening to come in! Ash didn’t know what to do, but he knew for a certainty that he couldn’t allow her to come into the room. No one had ever actually come into the room before. When they came to the door Ash had just taken the boys and hidden until they left-but if she came in… He could not let her in. It could not happen. He must not let it happen.
Ash placed Bobby in the empty bathtub.
“Don’t make any noise,” he said.
Bobby nodded his head. His eyes seemed to fill his face.
“Please, Tommy. Please, please, please. No noise, no noise.”
Bobby squeezed his good luck medal. He looked as frightened as Ash felt.
Ash closed the shower curtain, leaving the boy standing in the tub, the medal held in front of him as if to ward off witches. The big man left the bathroom, carefully closed the door behind him, then turned to face the woman wh
o was yelling at him. He could see only one of her eyes peering through the crack of the outside door.
“Open this door, please,” she said, but the “please” sounded like a threat.
Ash stared at her, uncertain what to do.
“Hurry up, now,” Reggie insisted. “I’m the owner, let me in.” The big man just stood there, staring at her. Reggie could not believe his size or the kind of bovine stupidity on his face. It was like looking into the eyes of an ox.
“What?” he said finally, the sound rumbling up as if from some cavernous depth through a passage seldom used.
“What?” she repeated. “Well the bedspread, for one thing. Where is the bedspread?”
He swiveled his big head slowly toward the bed. To Reggie’s chagrin the spread was there upon the bed where it belonged. Now they were trying to play tricks on her. It had been gone, she knew it.
“You’re not allowed to take that out of the room, you know.”
He was looking at her again, his movements slow and studied, as if he were moving under water. Reggie thought he must be on drugs. One thing was certain, this man was nobody’s husband. Certainly not Dee’s. Certainly not that sharp, sly, energetic young woman’s husband. She would. just as likely be married to a steer in a feedlot. And if he wasn’t her husband, then Dee was lying to them. Reggie didn’t know what the woman’s relationship was with this huge oaf, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but it wasn’t marriage and that meant she was lying, and if she was lying about one thing, she was probably lying about everything.
Reggie pushed at the door in annoyance, jolting it against the chain. The man was startled. As if I could force it open, Reggie thought. Just as stupid as he looks. And one thing was obvious: he was frightened by the thought of her coming in. Not just resistant; he was scared.
“What are you hiding in there?”
“Nobody,” Ash said. He shook his head from side to side to demonstrate his innocence.
Reggie squinted her eyes, studying the giant. Nobody? Why not nothing?
“You let me in right this instant.”
“I’m sick,” Ash said.
“I have a right to come in there and I insist that you open this door right now.”
“I’m sick,” he repeated.
“I can call the police if I have to,” she said. “Is that what you want me to do?”
Ash closed the door in her face and sat with his back against it while his mind raced in panic.
Bobby heard the woman’s voice angrily haranguing Ash and he pulled back farther from the shower curtain until the coldness of the wall tiles against his back startled him. At first he knew only that his friend was in some kind of trouble.
The hostility in her tone was unmistakable and it pained and frightened the boy to hear someone treating his friend that way. There was another fear, less well defined that seemed to hover in the air, intensified in the seclusion of the bathroom, grew stronger still in the enclosed space of the tub behind the curtain. He had felt it in the first flurried moment following the initial knock on the door, felt it when Ash swept him into his arms, felt it when the big man pleaded-needlessly-for Bobby to remain quiet. It was a fear that was transmitted to him directly from Ash, but one that he harbored on his own, as well, and only now, trying to hear Ash speaking to the woman, did Bobby understand what the fear was. He was afraid of getting caught, of being found out. Ash’s fear. Dee’s fear was Bobby’s own. He crouched in the corner of the tub, as far from the door, and discovery, as he could get.
From his vantage point among the trees George could hear Reggie squawking at someone in cabin six, really going at it with the kind of rage she normally reserved for George himself. He had taken his stroll through the neighbor’s parking lot, making a return loop when he heard his wife’s voice rising in the distance. He reentered his woods just to the side of cabin six. He moved closer to the cabin now, careful to keep out of Reggie’s sight. He did not want to risk having that outrage turned directly at him. It was dangerous enough to witness it from a safe distance; a man could get hit with a stray invective even while hiding behind a tree.
George saw the door shut in her face. And then the volume really turned up. She used her key and pushed with all her weight against the door, but something was blocking it now. Whatever it was, if it had ears, George figured it would be deaf in a few seconds. Or it would wish it was.
Ash felt the woman pounding and kicking the door, each blow causing the wood to shudder and sending reverberations into his back, but she had no chance to force the door open against his weight. Her fury was obvious and vocal, but Ash did not know what else to do. Until Dee returned from work, he would keep the door closed. It was his only plan.
In the bathtub, Bobby strained to hear the drama in the other room. It was mostly the woman, but occasionally Ash would speak in his slower, lower tones. He could not understand what Ash was saying, but the woman’s angry, high-pitched voice came through the door clearly. She demanded to know what Ash was hiding and only slowly did it come to Bobby that she was referring to him. He was the thing being hidden. It was not simply that he was hiding in the way that Ash and Dee were hiding. He himself was the thing being hidden. It seemed like such a long time since Bobby had thought of himself that way. For weeks he had been a part of the family, sharing their excitements and their anxieties. Their situation had become his reality, and although he had not actually forgotten the world before he came to this room, it had ceased to have any reality for him.
Now, dimly at first and then with a building, accelerating, roaring clarity his old world came back to Bobby. A surge of nostalgia and homesickness swept through him with such power that he cried out involuntarily. The homesickness was followed by an emotion that had died even earlier-hope. There was a life beyond the door of the cabin, there was a world outside of Dee and Ash, and the voice of the woman yelling at the door was his connection with it. Bobby’s body trembled with the rush of emotion, a longing ache so strong it felt like fear. He stepped out of the tub just as the outside door closed and the woman’s voice was temporarily stilled. Easing the bathroom door open, Bobby put his ear to the crack. He could hear her this way. She was pounding on the door, still yelling, but with her voice now muted by the thickness of the wood. But she was still there, still trying to get in. There was still hope. Bobby clutched his good luck medal and squeezed his eyes shut as he willed the woman to batter the door down, to come charging in with police and weapons, to find him in the bathroom, to rescue him and carry him back to his own home, his real home. The possibility seemed so real, so palpably close, that Bobby began to cry. His crying was intermingled with exclamations of laughter as spasms of excitement wracked him.
Ash heard the strange gurgling sounds coming from the bathroom and wondered if the boy was sick. The woman on the other side of the door was weakening. There were longer pauses between efforts to force her way in, the righteousness of her demands sounded less convinced, but now Ash was confronted by this new phenomenon coming from the bathroom. He couldn’t leave the door to see what was wrong with Tommy, he knew that, however strong his urge to do so. He hoped the boy was all right. It was so unlike him to make noise of any kind. He barely spoke above a whisper these days, and his cries when Dee beat him were all properly muted by the pillow as Ash had taught him. This was one of the very best behaved of all the Tommys they had had, and Ash thought he loved him more than any of them. He hoped nothing was wrong with him.
The voice was gone! Bobby could no longer hear her. He silenced himself, holding his breath, but she was gone. Bobby burst from the bathroom, screaming.
“Help!” he cried, running toward the door. “I’m in here. I’m in here, help me!”
Ash stared, stunned, as the naked boy ran straight at him, then tried to run through him, over him.
Bobby threw himself at the door, clawing at the chain that held it closed, calling and calling.
“I’m in here! It’s me, it’s me! Help me, hel
p me!”
Ash stood, lifting Bobby as he rose, pulling him from the door as he continued to cry out for help. He sought the boy’s mouth with his big hand as the boy called out “Please, please,” sobbing now. His face was wet with tears and mucus and as Ash silenced him and hugged his body to control him. Bobby struggled with a strength and desperation he had never shown before.
Ash knew it could not last long and shortly Bobby quit fighting and sagged against Ash’s body. Ash sat on the bed, his back against the headboard, and held Bobby against his chest.
“You promised to be quiet,” Ash said.
Bobby muttered something against Ash’s hand.
“You promised,” Ash said.
He looked down at the boy’s naked body held against his own. So pathetically thin, the flesh so close to the bone. So near the end.
“Dee will be disappointed,” Ash said.
The boy muttered something and twisted his head in Ash’s hand. Ash knew he was begging Ash not to tell. But Ash had to tell.
“I have to,” he said aloud.
There wasn’t any way he could lie to Dee, and that meant there wasn’t any way he could protect Bobby. Except one. There was always one way.
“Who do you love?” Ash asked. He did not remove his hand from Bobby’s mouth, but he knew the answer was “You. I love you. Ash.”
“I love you. Tommy,” Ash said. Then he added his real name. “I love you, Bobby.” Ash never forgot their real names. Dee never wanted to know them, but Ash never forgot. He wondered why that was.
Ash reached behind him and pulled a pillow away from the headboard. They would have to move again, now.
George watched Reggie storm back toward the office. So mad, he didn’t want to be within half a mile of her at the moment. Let her take her anger out on the cops or whoever she called-and she was certainly going to call someone; there was no chance she would just let this insult to her authority slide by unchallenged. If she found George she might well insist that he go over to cabin six and deal with it, but just what she expected him to do short of blowing the door open with a shotgun, George had no idea.