If You Go Down to the Woods. Seth C. Adams

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СКАЧАТЬ can take care of myself,” I finished.

      “I don’t doubt that, son,” he said, and though he hadn’t raised his voice yet, his face was flat and stern, like a slab of rock with eyes, ears, a nose, and mouth. I knew he would only let me go so far. He wouldn’t lose his temper at work either. He’d wait until we were both home, then there’d be that disappointed look, he’d verbalize it, and I’d trail down the hall to my room with my tail between my legs. “But you know how I feel about fighting. There’s no reason for it—”

      “Unless there’s no other option,” I finished for him.

      “That’s right.” He ignored my mildly mocking tone. “And here we have an option. And that option is to call the police. Now, Bobby,” and here again he turned to face my new fat friend, “can I have those boys’ names please?”

      Dad, poised over the office tabletop, pen in hand.

      Bobby, head bowed, not looking at my dad.

      Me, thinking Bobby doesn’t know what he’s doing. Son or no son, it doesn’t matter. My dad wants something from you, you better give it over.

      “Bobby,” Dad said, his tone prodding and urging, but uncompromising at the same time, “where I come from, when an adult asks a kid something, the kid gives a response.”

      The quiet between them stretched for a few moments more. The ticking of a clock somewhere could be heard. I thought if I farted it would be like a bomb blast in peacetime.

      “Bobby?”

      Dad’s gaze penetrated like a drill.

      I looked at Fat Bobby and saw his double layer chins quiver. I saw that glimmer of a tear in his eye again. This kid is a real waterworks, I thought, again with a hint of disgust, and quickly on the heels of that, shame at the thought.

      “I … really don’t want you to call the police … sir,” he said without looking up.

      “Why on earth not?” Dad asked. He was leaning forward in what he probably thought was a confidential, comforting manner for Bobby. But a large man, muscled and burly, leaning towards you in such a way would seem like a mountain with a face leaning over you, towering over you. The shadow would probably eclipse the sun. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

      The quivering chins flapped faster. I remembered something on The Discovery Channel about Hubble or other telescopes picking up the wobble of distant stars. Fat Bobby’s wobbling chins would have short circuited NASA’s instrumentation.

      “I … don’t want my dad … to find out,” Bobby said. A single tear began to roll down his cheek.

      Dad looked at me, and I shrugged. I saw the same look of mixed concern, mild disgust, and shame at his disgust that I’d felt many times around Bobby in the short time I’d known him, pass over my dad’s face.

      “Again, I ask the same question,” he said. “Why not? You haven’t done anything wrong.”

      Whatever dam had been holding it all back finally gave way under the pressure, and Fat Bobby really started crying. Embarrassed, but also saddened without knowing completely why, I reached out and swung the door to Dad’s office closed. In the room with the door shut and the wider world cut off, it was only the three of us, and Bandit too, who again stood and moved to Fat Bobby’s side and rested his head on the fat boy’s leg.

      Dad scooted his chair closer to the crying boy and something amazing happened, something I’d never seen before outside my own home and my own family: he leaned over, pulled Bobby close, and engulfed the large boy in his larger arms. Those arms that had held me before in the aftermath of nightmares or scoldings or the various and countless other things in a boy’s life.

      “It’s alright, son,” he said to a boy not his son, and I knew as never before my dad was a great man. He tried to keep his voice a whisper, but it was a soft rumble like a swarm of bees. “It’s alright, everything will be alright.”

      And because my dad said it, I trusted it to be true.

      2.

      Dad gave us ten dollars each and told us to get some comics with it or a drink from the café. With the ten dollars in his hand, you would have thought Fat Bobby was holding the Holy Grail or something, his face was beaming so. His sudden and simple joy made my dad smile, and when Bobby and I made as if to leave the office for the sales floor, Dad stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. I called to Bobby and told him I’d meet him in the comics aisle. He waved, still clutching that ten dollars like it was something magic from a fairy tale.

      “You’ve never chosen your friends easily, Joey,” my dad said. “You march to your own beat. Always been a bit of an outsider that way, and I can respect that. If you and Bobby are friends, then he must be a pretty okay kid.”

      Knowing he wasn’t done yet, that he was working his way to what he really wanted to say, I didn’t respond. Just nodded my head where it felt appropriate.

      “I know you already know this, son,” he said, me looking up at him like I was looking up at a skyscraper, “but I want to say it anyway.”

      I nodded again, waiting.

      “It’s never okay for a man to hit either women or kids.” His hand squeezed my shoulder gently. “A man that does that isn’t really a man at all.”

      Still I didn’t say anything, knew I wasn’t really supposed to. He was telling me something, something important, and it was for me to listen and take it in. Nothing else.

      “I won’t call the police this time, Joey. But I want you to stay away from those three guys. They’re nothing but trouble. And if you come across them, walk away, head the other direction. Got it?”

      I didn’t want to, felt like I was already relinquishing my manhood and I wasn’t even a man yet, but I nodded and said: “Yes, sir.”

      I started to walk out of the office, and his hand on my shoulder stopped me again.

      “But to be on the safe side …” he began, then paused.

      “Yes, sir?”

      “Keep Bandit with you all the time,” he finished, and smiled.

      I smiled too, and ruffled my dog’s coat and slapped him on the flank.

      “Yes, sir. You can count on that.”

      Then I was out the door, through the break room, and into the bookstore, a maze of covers and bindings and that smell of new leather and paper—something akin to what I imagined heaven must be like—I breathed it in, and went looking for my new sad friend in the comics section.

      * * *

      Comic books and how to read them, and which ones to read, is a thing of intricacy bordering on something like art. You have to read certain storylines to make sense of other storylines, and you have to understand the relationships between characters for those stories to make sense. Furthermore, add in variables like the creative teams, the artists and writers who put together the stories—some of whom shouldn’t be doing anything СКАЧАТЬ