THE HIDING PLACE

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I waited for him to continue.

“Except, of course, it wasn’t over. With guys like that, it’s never really over, is it? Once they set their sights on you, it becomes a compulsion, like a patch of dry skin they just can’t scratch to their satisfaction. And even though you’re cracked and bleeding—and on some level they must realize that they’ve gone too far—they simply can’t stop until something irreparable happens, until the wound is too macerated and ruined to tolerate anything further.

“The second time they came for me was in the school bathroom. I fought back hard that time—hit one of the boys, Tim Maddox, in the windpipe, putting him out of commission. Clayton Flynn took a kick to the knee that I hope he still feels on rainy days, and I kept swinging at Bret Forester’s pimply, bulldog face, trying to break his nose for the second time. But there was a fourth boy, Billy Myers, who was mean, quiet, and probably the only one of them with true lethal potential. He’s locked up in a maximum-security prison somewhere right now, I just know it, but on that day he snuck up behind me while most of my attention was on Bret and he hit me in the back of the head with something hard and metal, and that’s all I remember of the fight until I woke up to a small crowd of students around me, some teacher’s voice calling my name, and my head resting on the lower lip of a urinal.

“They took me to the hospital—my fourth visit in two months—only this time the ER doctor was a woman who made small noises I couldn’t interpret and shook her head as she examined me. They did a CT scan of my brain, which was thankfully normal, kept me overnight for observation, and discharged me the next morning with a diagnosis of concussion.”

Jason’s eyes cleared for a moment. “My sister came to visit me in the hospital,” he recounted. “She sat at my bedside and studied me, saying very little. I had other visitors, of course, but it was her presence that I remember the most. We must’ve spoken to each other during that visit, but the only thing I remember was what she said to me just before leaving. She walked over to the bed, leaned forward, and planted a kiss on my forehead—which was pretty unusual behavior for her. She drew back a bit, observed me with a calculating look. I thought she was going to give me a brief lecture, tell me something useless like how I needed to stop fighting and just stay away from those kids. But what she instead said was ‘This will not happen again.’ Then she turned and left, leaving me to wonder how she could promise a thing like that. Yet, somehow, I believed her, and a half hour later I pulled the string to shut off the fluorescent light above my bed, closed my eyes, and slept better than I had in weeks.”

“Was she right?” I asked.

“In a way,” Jason replied, and he smiled as if I’d said something funny.

About fifty feet from where we stood, Menaker’s groundskeeper, Kendrick Jones, spotted us and lifted an arthritic hand in our direction. His forearm was a tapestry of scratches, his face stained and weathered by the relentless sun. He tried to stand fully erect, but could not—his back permanently stooped from all those years tending the yard. I could see the dull, sightless opaqueness of his right eye, the result of being jabbed four years ago by the sharp end of a branch he’d been trimming. I tried to imagine how Kendrick might’ve looked his first day on the job, and whether he would’ve taken the position at all if he realized how the hospital would latch itself on to him like a parasite, sucking the youth and vigor from his body until he was nothing but a brittle, pathetic shell. I raised my hand to return his gesture, but his good eye had spied a wayward thistle near the fence. He frowned and scuttled after it, leaving the two of us alone once again.

“Three weeks went by before they came for me again,” Jason told me. “I can’t say I was surprised. I knew they would come, knew they weren’t finished with me yet, especially since I’d gotten in a couple of good shots the last time. They wanted a decisive victory, wanted to humiliate me completely. I realized there was trouble as soon as I got off the bus that afternoon. The neighborhood was too quiet, the streets emptier than they should’ve been. Right away I got that fluttery feeling in my stomach, like I wanted to giggle and throw up at the same time. I’d only covered a half block, walking fast, when Tim Maddox stepped out from the bushes onto the sidewalk ahead of me. He smiled, but there was no humor in it, and as he started walking toward me I broke to the right, running but not all-out yet, saving my wind for when I’d really need it.

“Bret lived three blocks away, and as I ran down the sidewalk he and Clayton stepped off his front lawn and into the street. Clayton had a bat in one hand, its thick end resting on his shoulder, and he looked eager to use it. I hooked left into the woods, moving through the trees until I came to the lip of a gulley. I could hear them entering the woods behind me, taunting me, calling out, ‘Wait up, we just wanna talk to ya.’ And all the while I kept thinking, Where’s Billy Myers? The stealthy one. The meanest of the four. The only one with murder in his eyes.

“I ran along the edge of the gulley, my ankle beginning to ache. The path of my flight was looping around toward home. If I can get inside the house, lock the doors, I thought, then maybe I’ll be okay. They were chasing me through the brush, shouting to one another: ‘There he is!’ ‘Up ahead!’ ‘Get him!’ But I was getting close to the house, could recognize the thatch of trees that bordered our street, and even with my messed-up ankle, they were lagging behind, out of breath, all words and no steam. I remember thinking that my escape was almost too easy. It didn’t make sense that I was outdistancing them like this. And on the heels of that I kept thinking, Where’s Billy?”

“It was a trap, wasn’t it? They were flushing you toward him.”

Jason nodded. “Billy stood waiting for me at the edge of the woods. I was pretty winded by then, and as he came hurtling toward me down the slight hill there was no chance of dodging him. He meant to tackle me head-on, but I saw it coming and at the last second dropped to one knee and his forward momentum allowed me to take him out at the legs. He hurtled over me, somersaulting once in the air, and before I heard his body crunch against the ground behind me I was back on my feet and moving up the hill.

“But he was fast, so fast, and I felt him snag my ankle from behind, bringing me to the ground. I kicked out with my other foot, caught him in the face with the sole of my shoe, but that only seemed to anger him. The others were bullies and opportunists, but Billy Myers was crazy—and he will kill me, I thought as he clawed his way up my body, pinning me to the ground, his eyes wild, spittle flying off his lower lip.

“‘You’re gonna get what’s comin’ to ya, faggot,’ he hissed in my face, and he wasn’t talking about another beating this time, because he reached into the back pocket of his jeans, pulled out a black-handled thing that he dangled in front of my face, and with the flick of a spring-loaded switch, a six-inch blade shot out from one of its ends.

“I was plenty scared then because—like I said—the look in Billy Myers’s eyes told me he had every intention of using that thing. I started bucking and thrashing beneath him, trying to throw him off me, but by then his reinforcements had arrived and they piled on top of me, too, holding down my arms and legs.

“‘Hold him still, goddammit!’ Billy instructed as he yanked up my shirt and placed the cold point of the blade against my stomach.

“‘Hey, Billy,’ Tim Maddox whispered, as if the rest of us couldn’t hear him, ‘you’re not gonna really cut him, right? You’re just messin’ with him.’ There was a pleading tremor in his voice, and I realized that he, too, was scared of Billy—of what he was, and what he was capable of doing.

“‘Just shut up and hold him,’ Billy said. He looked calm now—tranquil even—as if a thin curtain had fallen across his face, leaving him devoid of emotion. Only his eyes betrayed him, revealing the nastiness beneath, and I stopped wondering if he was going to cut me and braced myself for the silent punch of steel through the flesh of my abdomen.

“‘Excuse me,’ a female voice interjected, and I watched as all four of their faces looked up in unison. It was almost comical, the synchronized upswing of their heads, their jaws dropping open slightly. In the next second there was a whooshing noise as something cut through the air and connected with Billy’s forearm. I heard a resounding crack as the bat made contact. Billy screamed and rolled backward, clutching an arm that now hung at a grotesque angle from his elbow. The knife fell with a soft plop onto my stomach, and I looked down to see a single bead of blood welling up where the point had pressed against my skin. Billy’s arm had taken most of the bat’s force, but the follow-through of my sister’s swing caught Tim Maddox in the temple, sending him flying backward—ironic, since he’d been the one who’d brought the Louisville Slugger to the ambush in the first place but had tossed it onto the ground in order to get a better hold of me. If the bat hadn’t struck Billy first, if the bones in his arm hadn’t absorbed a good portion of the force of that swing, I’m fairly certain the direct impact to Tim’s head would’ve killed him.

“Bret made a half lunge for the Slugger, but she brought it down in an ax chop onto his outstretched hand, and there was another crunch of bone and a howl of pain. She turned to Clayton next, who was scuttling away from her in a crab walk across the ground. She was three years older than all of us, but moved like an apparition, the bat rising above her head once more as she readied herself for the next swing. She’s going to kill them, I thought. She’s going to keep swinging that thing until they’re all stone quiet and dead. I called out her name, but she didn’t seem to hear me. She brought the bat down as hard as she could, and Clayton—thank God—rolled to the left so the fat wood slammed into the earth instead of his face, and then he was on his feet and running, blubbering, slipping down the embankment in a wake of sobs and ratcheting, gasping breaths. I got up and ran to her, the knife slipping from my belly and landing, forgotten, in the leaves. I put my arms on her shoulders just as she was turning her attention back to Billy. She spun around to face me, and her eyes were just … vacant … not registering me at all. I remember looking right into that face and not recognizing her, either, wondering to myself, Who is this person? And there was … I don’t know, a moment … during which I thought she was about to turn that bat on me. Because she didn’t know me, you see? She was just … gone.”

He looked at me beseechingly, implored me to understand. I swallowed once and nodded.

“I screamed her name, screamed it right into her face. I’d forgotten about Billy Myers and the rest of his pathetic band of delinquents. I’d forgotten that, less than a minute before, he’d pressed a knife against the skin of my belly, threatened to carve into me. All I could think about was that empty, shapeless space between my sister and me. It was like she had taken an unsuspecting step backward off a precipice, and I was standing there watching her body plummet downward, her upturned face becoming smaller and smaller until I could no longer make out her features. She could have been anyone—or no one—and that scared me more than anything that had come before.

“I kept yelling her name, shook her a bit, and at last her eyes seemed to focus. She blinked and looked at me—finally—like I was someone she knew. The other boys were gone, scattered like roaches beneath the threat of her merciless foot. I took the bat from her hands, let it clunk to the ground, and we stood there in the woods—just the two of us—for a long time. ‘You okay?’ I asked, and I guess it was strange that I was the one doing the asking, but she seemed to understand what I was talking about and nodded back at me. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I’m good.’

“That was the most we ever talked about it—that day. I asked if she was okay, and she answered, ‘Yeah, I’m good.’ And that was the end of it. Billy Myers was absent from school for a week, and when he showed up again his right arm was in a cast and cradled in a sling. He didn’t look at me, didn’t say anything to me when I spotted him in the hall. None of them did. They averted their eyes when we passed one another, flinched away from me as if I were something venomous that might strike out at them again. I suppose I should’ve taken some satisfaction in that. But I didn’t. Instead, I felt sick, the nausea rolling over me in waves, my body lifting and falling in its surf. All I could think about when I saw them was the whoosh of wood through the air, the splintering crack of bone, and Clayton rolling to the left as the bat buried itself in the earth where his head had been lying a split second before.

“And the vacant expression in my sister’s eyes as she turned in my direction. That I thought of most of all.”

Part Two (#ulink_664d1ee8-0549-53b0-ae66-3fa5daaf234d)

Chapter 15 (#ulink_8b3df49e-f2a3-5dfe-84b2-5dea39d49dc1)

Marj’s Kitchen is a culinary and social mecca for locals in my town. The front entrance is so slight and unassuming that, if you arrived by car, you could easily miss it during your first lap around the block. Inside, however, the lights are turned up and the large dining area is typically awash in laughter and boisterous conversation. One interesting aspect of the place—and a likely deterrent for out-of-towners—is the communal dining. A vast wooden table stretches its massive torso from one end of the room to the other. Its flanks are lined with chairs, like ribs spreading to the floor. If you want to eat in this restaurant, you select an open spot along the rib cage of the beast and become part of the organism. The relationships among the patrons have the ease and familiarity of family. If you don’t know the person you’re sitting next to, you will soon. And because of its somewhat bohemian atmosphere, the joint self-selects for some of the town’s more colorful characters. In this way, it reminds me a bit of Menaker: a heaving band of outcasts brought together under a common roof, and somehow—almost predictably—finding friendship, or at least camaraderie, within their midst.

The food, I must admit, is mediocre. It’s simple, reliable, warm, and filling—what you’d call comfort food, I suppose. Nothing fancy or decorative, the offerings are brought to the table by the proprietor, Marj herself, in heaping bowls to be scooped onto plates and passed around in a clockwise fashion. You take as much as you want, eat what you take, make no special requests, and bring your plate, cup, and utensils to the counter for the dishwasher when you’re through. But, for most of its patrons, the food isn’t the main attraction. People come here to talk, to listen, to argue, to be welcomed, to immerse themselves in cheerful infectious animation. To be counted among the living.

To say that I’m a regular at Marj’s is a bit of an understatement. Fact is, I eat here most nights. I realize that sounds extreme, but the place simply suits my needs. I work long hours and live alone. I know how to cook, but it seems like a lot of effort to concoct a meal that will only be eaten by me. Because of patient confidentiality, I have a job I can’t talk about, and close, intimate relationships have always been difficult for me. The problem stems from the environment in which I grew up, I suppose—offspring to an emotionally absent mother and a belittling, verbally abusive father. I realize that people have to take responsibility for themselves—to resist blaming the past for their shortcomings—but honestly, who comes out of a childhood like that completely intact? So I’ve learned to rely on myself, to go it alone rather than depend too heavily on others. But there are times when I do seek social interaction, and Marj’s Kitchen is filled with people I know who will not ask for more than I can give.

I pulled up a chair between Manny Linwood and Tim Barrens. Tim was diving into a mound of mac and cheese like he hadn’t eaten in weeks, although I’d seen him polish off a similar-looking plate two days ago.

“The good doctor arrives,” he commented, his words slightly muffled by the napkin he was swiping across his mouth.

“A lady of questionable credentials, blown in from the night wind,” Manny said, and gave me a wink.

“Hello, boys,” I greeted them, offering a smile, the strain of the day slipping from my body like a river of dirt beneath a hot shower. “Can a lady get a salad around here?”

Across the table, Rob Friedlander peered at me over the slick yellow top of a piece of corn bread. “Chunka iceberg lettuce and a single tomato, maybe,” he said. “Marj don’t specialize in salads.”

A heavy hand fell on my shoulder as the subject of discussion—Marj, not the salad—materialized from the kitchen. “Don’t listen to him, honey,” she said, populating the space in front of me with a clean plate and utensils. Her voice was deep and full, her forearm thick and strong, the way a restaurant proprietor’s should be. She smelled vaguely of olive oil and freshly baked bread. “Salads are our specialty.”

At that, Rob seemed to choke a bit on his corn bread, but he said nothing, dropping his eyes to the tabletop.

“A chunk of lettuce and a tomato for the doctor,” Manny ordered, as Marj filled my cup with iced tea from a tall glass pitcher.

“You could use a salad yourself, Mr. Linwood,” she said, but Manny just shook his head.

“I’m allergic to anything green,” he advised her.

Tim retrieved a basket of corn bread from the center of the table and offered it to me, but I declined, not feeling particularly hungry this evening. Jason’s story today had upset me. In my mind, I kept hearing the soft, lethal whoosh of the bat slicing the air, kept picturing the unnatural angle of Billy Myers’s splintered arm as he clutched it against his body, his eyes wide and full of terror. I imagined—could almost feel—the bat striking the earth, the shudder of the impact ascending into the handle. I’d come here to be in the presence of others, hoping the lights and chatter would drown out those other thoughts. I did not want to be alone in my apartment tonight until it was absolutely necessary.

I looked along the length of the table at my haphazard collection of companions, and my eyes made contact with the pinched, mousy face of Janet Windsor. She glanced back at me, attempted a half smile, then let it fall away with a sigh, like a dress she kept in her closet because she thought it was pretty but never had the confidence to wear in public. I nodded to her, feeling a certain kinship in our individual struggles, but she looked away quickly.

The night drew on. A few stragglers arrived after I did. But by now it was getting late and people were standing up and finding their way to the door—to whatever evening activities awaited them beyond the confines of this place. Manny produced a ragged deck of cards from one pocket and dealt them out to Tim and me, and we played for a bit, none of us really wanting to go home. Marj stood in the doorway leading to the kitchen, her broad shoulder resting against the frame, and watched us for a while with maternal interest—a mother presiding over her children after dinner, during the final hour before bed.

Eventually, Marj dimmed the lights, signaling to us that it was time to go. We left together, but quickly split off as we continued down our separate avenues. I walked briskly, the night breeze ruffling my shoulder-length hair and sending a fleeting chill down the back of my neck as I turned the corner. I fished my keys from my pocket and let myself in through the building’s front door, crossing the lobby, taking the elevator to the third floor, then heading down the hall to my apartment and slipping inside. I was breathing quickly, trembling a bit, my heart thudding dutifully inside my chest. I went to the window and parted the curtain with one hand, looked down at the street below.

I’d felt his presence during the final two blocks. He’d been following me, pacing me, watching me in the slim light of a quarter-moon. He stood now on the sidewalk on the opposing side of the street, beneath the pale yellow cone of a streetlamp.

I couldn’t discern much about the man’s features from this angle. He wore a beige overcoat that drooped straight down from his shoulders like a wet sheet, and the fedora on his head sat at a slight angle, casting a shadow across his face. It was as if he’d stepped right off the screen from a film noir crime drama, a cigarette burning in one hand. Its glow intensified as he raised it to his lips for a final drag, then dropped it onto the sidewalk and used the toe of one shoe to crush it out. He looked up at my window, studying the crack in the curtain through which I peered. I hadn’t turned on the lights, and I didn’t think he could see me. Still, I could feel