off her, laughing, coming at me, his arm out, as if to put it around my shoulder.
“Lord, sweet Lord.”
His mouth a dark, stinking hole. Fingers twitching. A wave of odor, like a dead dog I’d once found by the roadside.
“Adam and Eve!” he shouted. “Eve and now Adam.” He leaned forward, bent low until he looked like a huge rat. “Let us pray.”
He repeated the same words, over and over. “Let us pray. Let us pray. . . .” Until they bled into one high-pitched cackle that ended when he was mere feet away. Then with curled lips, he changed the words, and spoke them slowly. “Let us play. . . . Let us play.”
Then his fingers were on me, and I began to scream.
But even as I screamed, I swung the rock, hit him somewhere, but he just laughed harder. I tried to hit him again, but he pulled the rock from my hand and tossed it down. I heard it splash, as if down a very deep well. Then my face hit the wall and I tasted blood. Again and again, until I could no longer scream. I felt his hands on me, all over me, but I couldn’t move. I was barely there, just barely, but still . . . I felt his hands. The slickness of his tongue on my cheek.
. . . And I was sobbing.
But then there was flashing light, and distant shouting voices. I saw him squint, lips pulled back, tongue out like meat gone bad. Then he looked back down, caressed my face with one hand.
“You a lucky little boy,” he said. “Yes, Lord.” Then he dropped me in the water. My head cracked the wall again, and I saw stars. When they cleared, he was still there, crouched over me, eyes glowing but scared, his hand on my crotch, squeezing. “But I’ll remember you. Adam on a cross . . . oh yes. You’ll always be my little Adam.”
Then he was gone, shambling down the tunnel, away from the light and the voices, which seemed so far away, but coming closer. I thought of the girl, naked and helpless, but this time it was different. I crawled through the mud and pulled myself up. I gathered the shreds of her dress and closed them about her. I placed her hands on her stomach, closed her bloodied legs.
That’s when I saw that she was looking at me, the blue gleam of one eye just visible through the swollen flesh.
“Thank you,” she said, and I could barely hear her.
“He’s gone,” I told her. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”
But I didn’t believe it, and I didn’t think she did, either.
I thought I was done, thought that it was safe, but another memory, like a predator, followed fast on the heels of the last.
It was something my father had said. I was in bed; it was late, but I couldn’t sleep. I hadn’t really slept in the two weeks since they’d pulled us out of that hole and into the wide-eyed crowd that pointed like we couldn’t see them. The girl, broken, held together by the jacket they’d wrapped around her. Me, bloody teeth chattering, trying not to cry.
My parents were arguing in the hall, not far from my door. I didn’t know what started the argument. I heard my mother first.
“Why do you have to be so hard on him, Ezra? He’s just a boy, and a very brave one at that.”
I crept to the door, cracked it, and peered out. My father had a drink in his hand. His tie was loose and he made my mother look very small in the dim light.
“He’s no fucking hero,” my father had said. “No matter what the papers say.”
He knocked back the drink and put a hand on the wall above my mother’s head. Somehow he knew my shame, the burning in my mind that kept me up at night. I didn’t know how he knew, but he did, and I felt hot tears slide down my cheeks.
“He’s having a tough time, Ezra. He needs to know that you’re proud of him.”
“Proud! Ha! He’s just a dumb-ass kid who should have known better. It’s sick the way you coddle him. . . .”
I didn’t hear the rest. I closed the door and climbed back into bed.
He didn’t know.
Nobody did. Just me. And him.
I seen you watchin’. . . .
I opened my eyes, done because I could do no more. Now I had to tell Vanessa how