When I was 11 years old, I got a baseball glove for Christmas.  I had been a Mets fan since the age of 7, starting in the second year of the franchise.  My dad would put the radio on for me at night before I had one with a snooze button.  I would come to know the names of players like Clemente, Mays, and Koufax, players who always spelled doom for my beloved team.  I was still holding onto my dream of being a major leaguer, the star who could bring the Mets to the World Series.  I tied an old boat cushion to the side of the garage and would throw as hard as I could to hit it.  My dad taught me the mechanics as he knew which turned out to be all wrong, but worked well for me.  I was a champion in Little League, winning two trophies because of my curveball which no one could hit.  It also made me pretty good at dodge ball in gym, which the teacher had renamed “bombardment.”  It was not unusual for me to be the only one left standing, volleyball in hand, pats on the back from teammates who jumped from the gym bleachers as we celebrated victory and dominance over the competition together.

            Gary Resnick, who outweighed me by a great deal and played football, did not like when I threw a fast one that knocked the ball right out of his hand and sent him to the sidelines before anyone else.  The second time, I caught what he thought was a hard toss and again sent him to the bleachers.  Later in the locker room, he body blocked me into a locker. Then he pulled my underwear up tight into my crotch. 

            “Why don’t you play a real man’s game like football, you sissy boy?” he said.  Standing there in my underwear and t-shirt I became Gandhi, the Indian leader we were reading about.  There was nothing Gary could dish out that I could not passively resist.  I constructed a shield between us like Batman would. All I needed was a disappearing gun to shoot him right between the eyes.

            I was not the only one subjected to the whims of the physically superior.  These were regular incidents of trouncing and humiliation in my small North Shore town on Long Island in the late 1960’s.  Just like the food chain, the bigger ones regularly made meals of the smaller ones.  Even though I was not the smallest, you became a target if you got good grades, or behaved well for a substitute teacher. You were at the top consuming everything below you, or at the bottom, to be consumed at any time at the whim of the hungry.  There was little Jamie, who was a constant mouse for his hawk of a brother.  Jamie was beaten so often that he developed a stutter. The stutter only made it worse for Jamie as his list of predators grew.  Mike Santos would wait just far enough away from Jamie’s house in the morning before school where his mother couldn’t hear his screams as he laid him out flat and used his buttocks and other body parts like a soccer ball.  He beat him with the conviction of its importance like a man might build a wall.  Once when Jamie ventured into the role of the predator, his father caught him pushing his little sister off the swing in his yard.  We didn’t ask about the bruises on his face and only wondered about the ones under his shirt and pants.

            I could relate to him because I knew what it was like to be humiliated for sport.  His mother sold Tupperwear at small gatherings at her home that everyone called a party.  His father worked as a welder on the new skyscrapers being built in NY City.  He was a short, stocky man who I once saw carry 90lb. bags of concrete on each shoulder.  He’d come to the fence between our yards and I could hear him as he showed my father his oldest son’s report card.  “Needs to learn proper behavior in the classroom,” he would read. “I guess he just takes after his old man.” He would laugh, then toss the report card into the nearest trash can.

            Like most targets of the predators, Jamie never told his parents about his brother or Mike.  But his parents felt bad about his speech defect.  They bought him a very light aluminum boat with an outboard motor.  I was on the beach when I saw him flip the boat over, and his head came bobbing to the top thanks to a life preserver.  I got to him as quickly as I could and dragged him into a rowboat.  I thought he was dead, but he came to when I pulled him into the boat.  “Don’t ever tell anyone about this ,” he said.  I got the idea that maybe we could be friends after that but instead he acted like I never existed.

            Two months later, I smelled smoke and heard sirens.  It was not long before I saw flames coming from Jamie’s house.  I watched as the house was completely destroyed by fire, and it took 6 months before they moved back in.  I heard that Jamie had set fire to a couch.  No one in the family would confirm it.  But Jamie constantly complained that “the house still smelled like smoke.”

            After that, Jamie’s brother expanded his cruelty to others.  I became one of his targets. He liked to taunt me at the morning bus stop by taking my book bag and throwing it in a yard behind Mrs. Kohl’s hedges.  When she saw me in the yard fetching my bag she would scream at me and threaten to call the police for trespassing.  He thought it was the funniest thing.  Why was I such an easy target? It just didn’t pay to be a nice guy and get on the honor roll every month.  I had no protection either. No older brother to stick up for me, no body guard who liked me enough to take care of the predators for me.

            One morning I snapped.  I was tired of the routine of chasing my book bag behind the hedge, despite the fact that I had become an expert at retrieving it without detection from Mrs. Kohl.  I pushed Jamie’s brother into the hedge and despite his anger, he just dusted himself off.  Jamie’s mother was quite furious however, and I was the one who ended up in trouble, apologizing to Jamie’s brother for pushing him.  The smirk on his face was almost too humiliating to bear. It seemed to be enough satisfaction for him because he stopped tossing my book bag over the hedge after that.

            My father wore a tie to work.  That seemed to separate us from the other kids who had fathers who painted houses, poured cement, and cut down trees.  He worked as a Claims Adjuster in insurance, which means we had less money coming in than the union laborers who surrounded us.  Other kids had color televisions, new bikes and wore new clothes.  I had no such things.  I had to use two TV’s to watch a program. One had the sound and the other the picture. I found it funny to watch the picture with the sound from another channel. It brought some color to a black and white world.  But it was not so funny to wear clothes from your cousin that were 10 years old.  The predators never took advantage of that fact, but they must have sensed that something was vulnerable or I wouldn’t need to be their target.  I knew that I didn’t want to work in insurance, and I didn’t want to be like Jamie’s brother, finding reasons to hate as many people as possible, tormenting them for your own pleasure, as if your life was important but not theirs.

            My father was very angry when Martin Luther King was assassinated.  He hated war, having been a veteran in WWII, and wanted nothing to do with Vietnam.  He didn’t talk about it much, but after Robert Kennedy was assassinated, I often saw him with a brown drink in a small glass filled with ice cubes.  He said, “The bastards got HIM, too,”  But he taught me that “pencils have erasers for a reason” and that “there’s no such word as can’t.”  I felt comforted and motivated because of him.  When we would have a baseball catch in the back yard, I felt secure.  He said what he meant, and helped me earn the money to buy a new 3 speed bicycle by selling some Christmas cards at his work for me.  He bet that everyone could be kind and intelligent like him, but he lost that bet.  He let me use anything in his workshop and didn’t get mad when I left a hammer outside and it began to rust. Everything was something to learn from.  He would read the newspaper every night and bring it to me when he was finished, not knowing that I had already read it.  Well, at least the sports and the comics. When he was around, I felt good about myself, deep down.

            Like everyone else, my parents knew little of my life, or that I was prey for some predators.  I had found a few barbells in the attic and started to use them.  My mother caught me one night in my room doing some curls that I had read about in an exercise book in the school library. 

            “What are you doing?”  she asked. 

            “Oh just working out a little,” I said.

            She thought a minute and then said, “A penny for your thoughts.”

            “It would take more than that,” I said.  Not that I really knew what I was thinking.

            She closed my door and left me in my room.  There were never any marks or anything that would give my secret away.  If my parents knew of my torment, they did not let on.  It would be years before I could put the whole thing together, finally figuring out what the other kids got out of tormenting me. 

                                                        *        *        *       *      *       *

            There were hardly any fences in our neighborhoods.  Our peninsula was like a small island, with only two egresses, one of them a bridge connecting the next town with a four mile road.  Our self-containment created our own mini community.  The physical divisions were few and far between, as going from yard to yard through the whole town was easy, with the suburban houses lying next to each other like fingers on a hand.  We all had seen West Side Story, or Rebel Without a Cause.  We adjusted our lives to the models on television and the movies as we saw fit.  We’d play games like Buck Buck because that is what Bill Cosby did. Or hit each other with things because the Three Stooges did.  Dave Phillips wore a denim jacket and rolled a pack of cigarettes in his sleeve. He sat quietly in the back of the bus with his dark pointy shoes and chains around his neck.  He never said much and no one ever asked him where his father went.

            The Blumhagens carried sharp knives but kept to themselves. They sat on the front porch in the evenings, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, even though the youngest was only 14.  A few friends visited them whom we did not recognize from the neighborhood. There was one sister and two brothers.  They would pretend fight with their 3 or four friends. They used sticks and would shout curses if one of the sticks connected with the target.  We’d smell marijuana sometimes but everyone was too frightened of retaliation if the police were called.  Jeff Blumhagen once broke a kid’s arm by twisting it when he asked why his mother had so many boyfriends coming and going.  My parents were not ones to limit my roaming turf, but I was given strict instructions to stay away from anyone having anything to do with the Blumhagens. 

            I used to like to fish down at the dock, mostly for snappers.  Sometimes I would just throw them back, while other times I’d keep a few to cook up at home.  I used to bring my pole and a tackle box, which contained a sharp fishing knife. One day Jeff Blumhagen came down to the dock while I was fishing.  My first thought was about my parents’ rules, but the fish were biting so I kept fishing. I decided to just try and be friendly. He hadn’t bothered me before.  He asked me how the fishing was.  Then he spied the knife in my tackle box. He took it out and examined it closely before he pressed it up underneath my ribs.

            “How would your mother feel if they found you dead on the dock?” he asked.

            I didn’t think too long. “I don’t think she would be very happy,” I said.

            He pushed the knife against my skin until I could feel that he cut me a little beneath my shirt. I pulled away from him and stood with my fishing pole aimed at him, like a sword.  He took the knife and threw it at me. It stuck in the wood of the dock about an inch from my foot.  Then he laughed as he turned around and climbed the ramp to exit the dock.

            “Guess your mommy’s gonna have her little pussy boy back today,” he said. He kept laughing until he was too far away for me to hear him.

When I went home, I didn’t know what to do. My neighbor Phil was a little older than me, but I trusted him because his parents and mine had barbecues together. We played horseshoes a few times.

“What should I do about it?” I asked him.

            “Nothing.”

            “What? The guy could have killed me.”

            “Has he ever done this before?”

            “No,” I said.

            “Right. So maybe he was high. Or drunk.”

            “I don’t know,” I said. “What if he tries it again?  What if he uses it? What if it gets worse?”

            “Well,” said Phil. “You better not think about it.”

                                                                *      *      *     *     *     *

            One morning at the bus stop there was a new girl in a tie-dyed t-shirt with an orange flower draped over her left ear. She was just standing there and seemed invisible to everyone else.  When she saw me, she came over.  She smiled and bared some very straight white teeth.  Her hair was long and blonde. Her eyes were large and brown.

            “I’m Leslie Beckham,” she said.  Then she reached out her hand to shake mine. I did not ever remember touching a girl on purpose. But I reached out and shook her hand, which was soft but very firm.

            After I let go of her hand, Greg came over and eyed her over.  “Looks like we have a hippie girl. Gonna sing us a song hippie girl? Got some pot for us?” Then he laughed and gave her a shove into the hedges.  “Nice shirt, hippie girl. You spill some paint on it?  Make sure you don’t sit anywhere near the back of the bus. That’s where I sit.”

            Leslie was now the center of attention as she lay in the hedge.  Her eyes were flaming, but she got up slowly and brushed herself off.  “I’m glad that you like my shirt,” she said.

            “I didn’t say I like it,” hippie girl. “I said it looks like paint all over your shirt. Like your parents can’t buy you clothes.”

            “Hey, let her talk,” said Anthony.  “Where are you from, hippie girl?”

            “Upstate,” said Leslie.

            “What are you doing here, then?” asked Anthony.

            “We had a farm. A small farm with a few sheep and cows. We grew Lavender and sold it to soap companies.”

            “Oh. soap companies. Maybe you should have used some yourself.  You smell like a cow. She smells like a cow, right Greg?” He was laughing now.

            “She smells like cow poop,” he said, and he and Greg were besides themselves with laughter.

            Leslie smiled and seemed surprised by the rudeness.  I would have explained it all to her but I was not interested in redirecting the ire of Greg and Anthony at the moment.  I looked at her and she seemed to read my mind that it would be best to just keep quiet, because that is what she did.

            On the bus on the way home, she invited me to her house.  It was quite unexpected, and I was reluctant, but found myself saying, “Sure.”

            She lived on Oak Lane, two streets away.  It was at the bottom of the hill going down the lane, almost where it ended near the water and turned right onto Melody Street.  I could smell the low tide at the beach.  I walked up to the door and rang the bell. I didn’t hear anything, so then I knocked.  Leslie came to the door and let me in.  I smelled something cooking like meatloaf. Her mother was in the kitchen.

            “Hi,” she said. “I’m so glad that Leslie has found a friend already. She’s pretty shy.”

            “Oh Mom,” said Leslie. “You don’t know me at all.”  She then grabbed my arm and took me into her room.

            It was messy. There were things in boxes that had not been unpacked yet. There were a few stuffed animals on her bed. Mostly dogs. But I didn’t see any dolls, or Barbies. She had a baseball bat and a glove with a beat up softball in it in a corner.

            “I see you like dogs,” I said, looking at her stuffed collection on the bed.

            “Oh yes,” she said. “I especially like collies. In fact, I have a secret for you.  You know that show Lassie? That’s my dog. But you can’t tell anyone.”

            “Oh I won’t, don’t worry.” I said. I wanted to believe her. I told myself that it could be true. I knew it wasn’t.

            “How did you end up here?” I asked. “It sounds like living on a farm was great. Why would your parents want to leave that?”     

            “Oh,” she sighed. “They didn’t want to leave.  But my father got hurt. It was his leg. He was out on the tractor and fell off and the back wheel ran it over. He had to have an operation and now he can’t put a lot of weight on it. So he can’t do the things he needs to do to run the farm.”

            “How did he fall off a tractor?” I asked.

            She waited a good long time before she answered. “I think he was drunk,” she said.

            “Oh,” I said.

            “Let’s go down by the water,” and she grabbed my arm and pulled me out of her room.  “I’m going down to the beach,” she called out and didn’t wait for a response.  We were out the door and walking on Oak Lane towards the beach.

            “Do you miss the farm?” I asked.

            “I loved the animals,” she said. “Especially my collie. Dogs are so loyal. They love you and lick you and they never ask for anything but a bowl of food. But I’m here now and have a new friend.”

            “That sounds great,” I said.

            It wasn’t just a beach that was at the end of Oak Lane. There was a large swamp next to the beach area. You could walk there at low tide, but you might end up with muddy shoes.  Leslie spotted the wrecked boat that was just about 50 feet into the swamp.  I had been to it before; it was an old wooded sailboat that had lost its keel. It had blown up in a hurricane, and a few of us ventured into the cabin now and then. Through the windows you could see anyone coming.  It was a place to go if it was raining, but you could only get there at low tide.

            “Hey, let’s see the boat,” said Leslie, and she took off for it before I could explain about the mud.  We both arrived and climbed up the swim ladder into the boat.  Leslie looked at our sneakers and saw the mud.  “My father will kill me,” she said. Then she moved out of the cockpit and opened the cabin door.  All the cushions were gone, but the benches remained, and so did the sink and the toilet. “Let’s go in,” she said.

            I followed her into the cabin, and we crawled to the front where the v-berth was. It was like a small room, but the two of us fit fine, as long as we were sitting down. We looked around the berth and then out the windows.

            “Look at those trees over there,” she said as she pointed across the water. “Doesn’t it look like a painting?”

            I moved across the berth and sat close to her to look out the window. As I got close to her, I realized there was something delightful about being near her. She smelled like flowers, and her hair was long and looked so soft I wanted to touch it. 

            “Yeah. It could be a painting,” I said.

            “Maybe I’ll paint it,” she said.

            “You like to paint?” I asked.

            “Sure. I used to paint scenes from around the farm. I painted the barn and some of the animals. I also painted some of the fields.”

            “Wow. That’s great.”

            “Do you like art?” she asked.

            “I like art class,” I said. “But I don’t draw very well. I like when we make things like pottery. I love to make things with my hands.”

            “Drawing isn’t so hard. You just have to take what is in your head and put it on paper.  But I guess it’s easier for some people. Maybe you can come here with me while I come and paint,” she said.

            “Watch you paint? Well, sure, I guess so.” 

            With that, she ran out of the cabin. She climbed down the ladder and I followed.  We ran out of the swamp and back to her house.  We cleaned our shoes as best we could. When we went into the house, she led me to the basement.  It was a little moldy, but she had almost another room set up down there. A record player was in the corner by a couch, and she had a painting easel set up.  There was a painting of a horse on the stand.  There was a girl riding it.

            “Is that you on the horse?”

            She laughed. “Yeah. But I never got to own a horse. My father said that they were too expensive to take care of and we had a farm to run. He said it wasn’t a leisure ranch. But I’ve always dreamed of one. I still do.”

            “A horse would be great,” I said. “I watch so many shows on television of the days where there’s only horses to ride. Days before things like television and cars. Before telephones and typewriters. Before electricity.”

            “I don’t watch much television,” she said.  She took out some of her paintings that she had in a drawer of a dresser. 

            “Those are fantastic, Leslie,” I said.   She had a collection on canvas of paintings from the farm. 

            “My mom buys me canvas to paint on, but my father doesn’t like it too much,” she said. “He thinks it’s a waste of money.”

            “Yeah. My parents are careful about money, too. I don’t ask for too many things except at Christmas.  I even wear clothes that my cousin sends me. You know, after he grows out of them.  Oh. Don’t tell anyone about that.”

            “Ha. Your secret is safe with me,” she said.  “Looks like we both have secrets.”  I was not sure what she meant by that, but nodded anyway.

            She put on a record. She had a few albums, some Beatles and Bob Dylan.  Albums cost a lot of money for a kid.

            “My grandmother sends me money sometimes. I don’t tell my father. I buy the albums and keep them here. He never comes downstairs to the basement. He likes watching television in the living room.”

            “How do you decide which albums to buy?”

            “From the radio, silly.  Don’t you listen to the music on the radio?”

            “Sure,” I said. “But my father always has the news on.”

            “Oh,” she said.

            We listened to an album by the Beatles.  It had a song called Two of Us.  I had watched married people my whole life. I figured that’s what you did. You grew up and got married. Like in Cinderella. There was nothing to it and you didn’t really have to think about it much.  For a moment, I thought about what it might be like to have someone like Leslie around all the time.  In my house. Sleeping in the same bedroom.  I even thought about mentioning it to her, but decided against it.

            After we listened to a few different album sides, Leslie’s mother called us upstairs. 

            “How would your friend like to stay for dinner?” she asked Leslie. “What did you say his name was?”

            “His name is Brian,” said Leslie.  “Are you sure it would be OK with Daddy?”

            “I don’t think he’ll mind,” she said, but she didn’t sound real sure to me.

            “Oh.” I said, “I have to go home for dinner. My parents may start to worry about me.”

            “You can call them on the phone,” Leslie’s mother said. “It’s right over there.”

            “Um, OK,” I said. I was a little surprised that Mom said it was fine.  She didn’t ask any questions about it but just told me to be home before dark and wanted to know if my homework was finished.

            Leslie’s mother had the table all set, and told us that we were having spaghetti and meatballs, one of my all-time favorites.

            Leslie led me to her room while we waited for dinner to be ready.

            “I just have to warn you a little bit about my father,” she said.

            “What do you mean?” I asked.

            “Well, he can be mean and grouchy sometimes. Other times he can be nice. Sometimes he drinks a lot of beer.  He talks a lot about losing the farm and having to move here.”

            “Oh,” I said.

            “He probably won’t be mean to you,” she said. “But just in case he’s not nice to me or my mother, just pretend you didn’t hear anything. He doesn’t really mean it. He always tells us he’s sorry later.”

            “Oh, I’m sorry about all of that,” I said.

            “Oh, it’s OK. Me and my mom are used to it. It’s only sometimes.”

It wasn’t long before Leslie’s mom was calling us for dinner.  Leslie’s father was already sitting at the table.  He sat across from Leslie’s mother and I sat across from Leslie.  He had a bottle of Scmidts in front of him. It was mostly empty.

            “Oh,” he said. “Who is this guy who has come to eat all our food?”

            I looked up at him. I couldn’t always tell when grownups were kidding.  I made up my mind to not eat too much even though it smelled so good and my stomach was screaming to be fed. 

            “Oh, I’m just kidding buddy. Eat up. We love spaghetti around here.”

            Leslie’s mother served the food. She gave me a huge portion of spaghetti and four really big meatballs.  It was so good and I was so busy eating that I wasn’t thinking about talking at all.

            Leslie’s dad talked a lot. He went on about how the music today is just not like the great music of his time when guys like Sinatra really knew how to make music and sing.  He said that today most of the singers just scream and it doesn’t make any sense.  He talked about how glad he was that President Nixon was a law and order president and that all this protesting against the war was organized by a bunch of communist hippies.  They should grab a gun and go fight the communists in Vietnam.  But they’re all chicken.  He said that his cousin died in Normandy so that we could have freedom to fight our enemies, not run around complaining like a bunch of chickens.

            Leslie’s mother didn’t say much. She nodded at what her father was saying, but didn’t really show enthusiastic support. She smiled a lot and I noticed that she seemed to watch Leslie while she was eating.  After I had finished what was served me, she asked if I wanted more.

            “Oh, no thank you,” I said. “That was delicious. I couldn’t eat another bite.”

            Leslie’s father spoke up. I was glad he wasn’t asking me a bunch of questions about myself. I hated answering questions from grownups.

            “I noticed that you tracked in some mud on the porch, Leslie,” he said.

            Leslie forgot her sneakers on the porch. He must have seen them.

            “Ha!” she laughed. “Brian and I went down to the beach. We were having such fun. I didn’t see the mud where I was walking.”

            “Oh. I see. You don’t look where you’re going?”

            “Well the mud was under the grass,” she said. “I didn’t see it.”

            “You’re not very careful where you walk then? That’s pretty stupid, don’t you think? I mean now we have a muddy porch and maybe you ruined your sneakers. What kind of stupid person doesn’t look where they’re going when they walk? What kind of stupid person ruins a five dollar pair of sneakers?”

            “I’m sorry,” she said.

            “If you didn’t do something so stupid, you wouldn’t have to be sorry now, would you?”

            “No,” she said.

            Leslie hung her head.

            “Well, why don’t you children run into Leslie’s room and wait for dessert?  I have some chocolate pudding for you,” said Leslie’s mother.

            “There’s no chocolate pudding for stupid kids who run around in muddy swamp grass,” he said.  Leslie and I got up and went to her room before it got any worse.

            Leslie pretended like nothing happened. She showed me a catalog with oil paints in it that she wanted for Christmas. She took a birthday card out of a drawer from her grandmother. There was a long handwritten note in it and at the end it said, LOVE GRANDMA. Then she sat on the bed and began to bounce. She laughed.

            It was going to be dark soon, so I got up to leave. Leslie led me to the door. Her father was in the living room watching the news.  He had another beer in his hand.  He saw me leaving with Leslie.  He looked up at me as I was leaving. “You better get a haircut pretty soon, buddy. Leslie isn’t gonna have no hippie friends.”

             “Yes, sir,” I said.

            Leslie took me out on the porch to say goodbye.  “I’ll see you at the bus stop tomorrow,” she said. 

            “Sure,” I said. I stepped down the porch and started home on the sidewalk. I looked back and saw Leslie go back to her house. I liked being with Leslie, but I was glad to be going home.

                                                          *       *       *       *       *        *

            I woke up to the sound of a loud siren.  From my bed I could see red flashing lights as they passed the house.  The sounds of the passing vehicles were deep and the air vibrated with their motion.  I got out of my bed to see the back of a firetruck pass.  Sometimes kids would start fires down at the beach as they hung out. Once in a while they would have too much to drink and set fire to the swamp grass.  The trucks always got there before it spread and became serious.  This time I heard the sound of three trucks and then an ambulance.   

            There was a moment of dead silence after they passed.  Then I heard the whirr of a Chevy starter motor and knew my father had started the car.  I saw him pull out of the driveway and head in the direction of the trucks.  It was not like my father to get up and leave in the middle of the night.  I wondered what was happening.  I got back into bed and pulled the covers over my head. 

            The next morning at breakfast, I found my father reading the paper, his glasses tipped to the bottom of his nose.

            “What happened last night?” I asked him.

            “It was a house fire,” he said. The new people that moved in. The Beckams. The house of that girl you ate with yesterday.  I saw the girl and her mother in the street.  I watched as fire engulfed part of the house.  Mr. Beckam was inside, unable to get out.  It seems like he was smoking in bed and fell asleep.  I don’t see how he could have lived through it. The fire was too raging for the firemen to attempt a rescue.”

            I sat across from my father unable to say anything at first.  My first thought was that it was unbelievable. My next thought was that Leslie was going to be better off now. 

            I couldn’t develop a taste for breakfast.  The idea of putting something in my stomach was sickening.  I didn’t stay long at the table, and left to get ready for school.

            It was no surprise that Leslie was not at the bus stop.

            Most of the kids just stared at me.  For once the predators had no energy to feed off me.

            Anthony spoke up. “You know what I heard? I heard that the old man took Leslie out to the shed for a beating.  He gave her a good whooping. Then he got good and drunk and passed out.”

            Then Greg piped in. “Yeah, well if he passed out, how did he manage to light a cigarette in the bed?”

            I stood silent a moment before bursting.  “Just stop! Just stop it !” I yelled .

            Anthony and Greg looked at me and moved away.

                                                    *      *      *      *      *      *

            Leslie was not in school and I wondered when I would see her again.  I got my answer quickly as about half an hour after I got home from school she was knocking at my door.  I let her in and we sat in my living room. 

            “How’s it going?” I asked.

            “Oh I can’t even think about it.  I can’t believe that my father is gone. Most of my house is destroyed. My paintings. It’s just me and my mother now.”

            I wanted to ask her about what I heard. I wanted to know if her father beat her. I wanted to know if her father passed out. But I couldn’t ask her. Not then.  “What are you going to do? You and your mother I mean. Where are you going to live?”

            “We’re going back upstate. My mother’s sister is going to take us in until we figure it out.  But we have to stay here for my father’s funeral. I don’t think I’ll be going back to school. There’s no point.”

            “Oh,” I managed.

            “I just had some time so I came over. My mom and I are at the motel. It’s a long walk, but I just didn’t know what to do by myself.”

            “Thanks for coming over,” I said.

            We sat quietly on the couch for a few minutes.  “Do you want to watch some TV?” I asked. “It’s kind of funny because we have sound on one TV and the picture on the other.”

            “Sure,” she said. “I haven’t watched anything in awhile.”

            I turned them both on. It took awhile for them to warm up. The TV with the picture turned on first. It was a nature show. There was a shark eating a wounded fish. Its teeth were protruding and it was ripping it up pretty good.  When the sound came on, the channel was different from the picture. It was a commercial.  It said, Get rid of stains and odors. Leaves everything smelling fresh. Mr. Clean leaves a sheen where you clean.

            Leslie started to laugh. I smiled, though I was a little embarrassed at my TV situation.

            She was looking at the picture of the shark. “I’m going to paint a shark,” she said. “There is something majestic about them. Look at those teeth! I love sharks.”

            “That would be great,” I said. “I really want to see it.” I went over to the TVs and turned the dial so that the picture and the sound were on the same channel.

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