Red Line in My Mind

     Sammo slapped his textbook closed on his lap. He forced his hands down flat, like chubby, lop-sided starfish as out of place there as he was in arithmetic class. "This stuff ain't working, Hank."
     "Suits you, then," I said, squinting away from him. None of the kids who fished from my pier went by their given names. From his Asian face, and his girth, and reruns of that martial-arts TV show, this one took the nickname "Sammo." I guessed he couldn't find anything to identify with in Hal Roach's neighborhood.

     "It looks silly."
     "Double suits."
     "It ain't helping."
     "You ain't working it right." Sarcastic mimicry. Pretty mean to the kid, right? I had to bust him out of a pattern he'd grown into, bust him out or he was lost to the world, and worse, to himself. At least he stuck to his guns, misfiring though they were. Some kids ... some people just go with the flow, man. So, once I got Sammo resettled in his ways, he would be "good to go" for life, or until some other bastard — person or circumstance — persuaded him otherwise.
     Sammo's glare faded a bit as tears crept into his eyes, and he bunched up his cheeks to squelch them. He didn't have the best coping skills, but then again, what nine-year-old with a learning disability did?
     "I can't do it!" A minor wail bent his voice. "You know I can't do it. Everybody knows I can't do it."
     That whine was too much for Darla to ignore. She glanced up from the sheephead fish she was gutting with quick flicks of her fillet knife, then back to her work. "Back off, Hank. Sammo's doing the best he can."

     "Nope, and no, he's not."
     Spanky — one of the two black kids in the gang (the other, who went by "Alfalfa," wasn't out today for some reason; neither were eight or so others) — left his careful musing over that trawling lure and sauntered over to Sammo's side. "Hank, Hank, Hank, dissin' Sammo's not game. You know that."
     "Yeah!" Stymie chimed in without leaving his line. He studied the chop surrounding us while his finger monitored the line for the smallest quiver sent back by a curious fish. He continued in an offended tone, "You can't pick on Sammo because he's special."
     "Special in what way?" I said.
     "'Special abilities,'" Stymie quoted.
     "Retardo abilities," I said.
     "Hey!" An a-capella of rote protest. They were incensed, but not really sure why.
     "Then tell me what you mean by 'special abilities.'"
     Darla, making like Wendy the mother figure whenever any of the group suffered, said, "He just doesn't think like we do."
     "How?" I knew Sammo's disability, probably better than they did because I'd read up on it when he'd asked for help. I didn't memorize the "official" name because I'd given up that kind of allegiance to The Establishment along with my own children, my job, my friends, and visits to Elaine's grave.
     Darla appealed to Spanky with a quick look. Showing off his intellectual maturity, two years more developed than hers, three more than Sammo's, Spanky lectured me, "He can't do arithmetic in his head, can't put 2 and 2 together to make 4. Theory, he knows, what addition, subtraction, multiplication, division are for, but when he puts numbers into his brain, nothing comes out."
     "And that's different ... how?" I said.
     Spanky's glare lofted with juvenile superiority. "2 plus 3 equals 5. 12 divided by 4 equals 3."
     "What's the French word for mouse?"
     Spanky lost his glare, looked away with a shrug.
     "Darla," I went on, "knit me a sweater, maroon with gold filigree, using a Shaker style."
     "I can't, you know that!"
     "Stymie, P/E ratio for IBM?"
     Also ten, lanky legs below his shorts punctuated by knobby knees, Stymie just focused more intently on his fishing, if that were possible.
     "Then, you're all 'special'?" I asked with great wonder.
     "No!" they yelled back, confused by my unusual stupidity, muting their outrage because of it, but only a little. I might be "game" for an adult, but I was still an adult.
     "Spanky," I said, "if you wanted, for some strange reason, to know the French word for mouse, what would you do?"
     "Dictionary, in the library."
     "Darla, knitting?"
     "Ask my gramma. She's past wiz on knitting."
     "Stymie?"
     Stymie did give up the sea to send a questioning glance to Spanky, who answered for him, "Internet, newspaper, Mr. Franconelli at the bank."
     "Exactly," I said. "You use tools, outside resources, to make up for your deficiencies. Why shouldn't Sammo?"
     "But it's counting on my fingers," Sammo finally spoke up for himself. "'They' won't let anybody count on their fingers."
     "Not since first grade," Darla added.
     Intent on Sammo, I said, "Chisanbop is not counting on your fingers, and you can do it so nobody notices. Try it."
     Sammo scowled resistance.
     "Now." I pushed him toward a new future.
     He lifted his fingers slightly so none of them touched the book.
     "Fifty-two," I said.
     Sammo dropped his left thumb for fifty and his right middle finger for two. This Korean form of fingermath not only solved arithmetic problems quickly, but implanted the base-ten system in the process. He used it better than he wanted to admit.

     "He should just ax' a calculator," Spanky interrupted.
     "Stymie, would you buy fish at the store?"
     "Nuh-uh!"
     Fishing started this whole relationship. When I set up housekeeping on the "Busted Squash" a couple months ago, I essentially moved into their neighborhood. Nobody else much used the marina in the Kicker anymore. A big storm several years ago had re-arranged the sandbar that separated the Kicker from the main harbor, nearly shutting it off, ruining business for the marina. Only the thirty-foot, mastless ketch I now called home hadn't gotten toted across that bar into open water — something about a lien because the owner couldn't pay for services, but the marina went bankrupt too, and nobody knew who really owed what to whom, so I got this sailboat-that-couldn't-sail for a pittance. However, the kids came to think of the place as their own, them against the fish, which could still get in and out. Since I had never fished in my life, and they seemed to know what they were doing, I asked them to teach me as a good opening gesture. We'd gone from there. I still wasn't nearly as good as they, especially Stymie, but I did eat fresh fish a couple of times a week.
     I continued my round. "Spanky, would 'they' let him use a calculator?"
     His scowl answered me.
     "Darla—"
     "Yeah, yeah." She packed her neat fillets into an iced cooler as she sing-songed her parody of me. "'What if he's climbing Mount Whitmore and has to figure his position from the sun and his batteries go dead?'" She flung a quick smile at me, understanding my point now, granting its application to Sammo. "'What would he do? What would he do?'"
     "Exactly," I said. "He needs his basic toolkit in his head, and arithmetic's as basic as you can get." I turned back to Sammo, who seemed less sullen, more convinced. "And if his DNA didn't give him enough tools, then he can learn others to compensate. We all have to compensate, or the coy—"
     "The coyotes would eat our guts!" all four chorused.
     Hear that? They do listen to me. I prefer the ones who actually listen, child or adult, because I don't have reach out as far. If I don't reach, I don't get stuck. People are too much like Brer Rabbit's Tar-baby: it's too easy to get stuck on them, so that when they go, they take part of me with them.

     I told them, "Watch this," and turned back to Sammo. He sat patiently, expectantly. I mimed a stopwatch, then said, "Plus one-hundred forty-nine." Work that carry-the-one.
     He rippled his fingers, an effect so minor I doubted the other kids could see it, then announced, "Two-oh-one." Cheers went up behind him.
     I beamed, then pinned him with a meaningful look. "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"
     His grin flooded me with joy. "Practice, practice, prac—" He lapsed into a stare past my head. I turned to follow it.
     A woman marched down the articulated, floating pier, though its bobbling under her weight complicated her stride. She wore a rather plain suit, straight mid-calf skirt and unbuttoned coat in taupe seersucker, but the soft, opal shirt underneath flashed gaudy jungle flowers at us. The material also showed off her dusky skin, the V caught between its collar wings, her long neck, and her handsome face with dark, intent eyes under brows that frowned against the sunset. Very feminine, but was there a real woman under there, one worth taking to bed? An idle game, I knew, given my current estrangement, but habits, patterns in the mind, do die hard. I couldn't see what moved beneath those clothes well enough, so I suspended judgment pending further inspection.
     "Miz Soukouris," Sammo whispered.
     "Yeah?" I said.
     "My teacher," Darla explained brightly.
     "Mine, too," Stymie said, more sour.
     Then I noticed that a kid marched behind the woman. Jillian, banned from the dock by Our Gang, a ban I was only too happy to go along with.
     Jillian noticed us watching, and her march took on a bit of swagger, like a Cold-War spy escaping punishment in one of those across-a-dark-bridge exchanges. But the pier rolled impishly beneath her, and she stumbled some. The gloat dropped into a scowl that twisted her pale, freckled face into a more familiar expression. Her strawberry hair, cropped short despite its curls, clung to her gnarled brow and roan cheeks like a halo, a red one to match her new mood.
     "Jillian!" Stymie spat, and the others echoed his feelings, except Darla, silent rather than speak ill of anybody. She agreed with Our Gang, though; in fact, she was the one who had escorted Jillian gently, but firmly — and we had hoped, finally — to shore last week. Jillian had made several stomping, demanding raids on our little group; the gang ran her off each time with gibes or stone-cold stares. Why the redhead wanted to hang with us after sneering at so much of what we did, I didn't want to know. This last time, Jillian had targeted me like a mongoose, hyped-up, high-pitched and whiny. Her condemnation of me and my lifestyle used words so sharp and damning that she could only have been parroting some petty, fad-conscious adult, probably a parent. It pleased me when Darla had quit suffering the bent child's tantrum and gave her the bum's rush out of our lives — before I did.
     You see, I don't get involved with people anymore. This sorry apparatus that I inhabit, the various engines of my mind and body, will no longer stand up to all that give-and-take. Giving — whether it's support, advice, love, or even just things — revs reason and emotion. Taking does as well, because I must monitor the timing and amount and balance the taking with the giving. Whirling mind, whirling body. Tachometers feature red lines to caution drivers. I have reset the red line in my mind very low: don't care, it warns hotly, don't care about anybody anymore.
     And no, Our Gang of fishing kids doesn't push me anywhere near that limit. I steer them a little here and there, plus I pass them some knowledge out of a life much longer than theirs. They return it all many times over, keeping my concerns about them acceptably low.
     Unlike Jillian. She was obviously one of those who required help to get through life, maybe one of those who demanded it as their due. Too quickly, Jillian had sent my engines racing with very little to compensate ... unlike Miz Soukouris and her dark eyes ...
     She approached. Those eyes darted a searching gaze around this end of the dock, apparently unwilling to engage with the look I left anchored on her attractive form. I could wait, I thought, lingering over just another spot of natural beauty, like the sunset behind me, grand yet distant — but then her scent reached me. Shalimar crashed through the entrenched odors of brine and rot like a tall curl of green water through a sullen surf. At least one of my body's engines, long cold, turned over with scary quickness. Unsettled, I slipped away to the railing and concentrated on The Kicker's shallow breathing.
     In a moment, Miz Soukouris said, "Hello," but she wasn't talking to me. I caught her profile as she eyed each child in Our Gang and spoke the name given by family, a name I'd never heard and didn't try to remember. Silence sprang up behind her greetings.
     "Jillian tells me," the teacher went on, sending her gaze around once more, like any good public speaker, "that she would like to join your activities out here. Would that be all right with you?"
     "Yes, ma'am," echoed over the dock, then fell into the water without a splash.
     Jillian sallied forth into that coolness, her nose cocked in the air. With a smirk, she said, "Whatcha doin'?"
     Stymie snapped, "Trolling for sea monsters! Whatsit look like?"
     "Everybody!" Miz Soukouris' words reached out with official firmness. "Please put on your manners, guest and host alike. That means you, too, Jillian."
     The redhead slumped, a posture that boded tantrum, but Darla called, "Would you like to see me cut sushi?"
     So the slump turned into a slink as the girl, forbidden all her usual patterns, covered confusion with feigned interest. Darla thumped the cooler down at her side and pried it open — but then I felt those dark eyes on me at last.
     "Who are you?" demanded Miz Soukouris.
     I faced her, hoping reality would stall my engines once more. "You should call me 'Hank.'"
     "You're Hank?"
     Another engine ignited, paranoia this time, focused on this identity I'd assumed. Did she suspect? I turned defensiveness into a retort. "Who else should I be?"
     Those dark eyes skittered again, checking the kids, tracing the dock back to the shore, searching for something, but this time, they kept returning to me. As if she were scuttling one plan — a quick reconnoiter of the situation, followed by a retreat to consider new facts? — and creating another on the fly — like attacking here and now. After a moment, she shook herself into action.
     She turned her back on the kids, like they would read her lips or something. She folded her arms, dropped her chin, and jabbed at me with an up-from-under glare. "You've been helping children with their schoolwork," she accused softly.
     Since she didn't seem to approve, I just shrugged and nodded.
     She must not have liked my silence since she narrowed her eyes more and elaborated. "You helped Tiffany with her social studies, didn't you?"
     Another given name that didn't belong on the docks. I hadn't been doing this long enough to confuse my "students," so Miz Soukouris had to be talking about "Mary Ann." Tiffany! I fought a smile. No wonder "M.A." likes to go by another name with the kids. I was losing the fight, so I gave my lips something else to do by saying, "Just the history part. Once I pointed out it's just a bunch of stories — history — then, ah, 'Tiffany' could take the dates and places in stride, just like keeping track of Squibs in Harry Potter." That wasn't so much a disability, but a weak perspective, something Mary Ann's teacher — not Miz Soukouris — should've have seen and adjusted. I was glad to help.

     "And you're working with Benson on his math?"
     Sammo. Threat stirred in that great world of civilization that Miz Soukouris represented. We were talking about a true disability, miswiring in his brain, something the teaching establishment didn't like amateurs meddling with.
     I hedged, "I hope I'm not interfering with how you're treating him."
     "What? No, no." She searched my face, glanced away uncomfortably, then allowed amusement to shift her lips from serious lines into a curve more suited to their lushness. Then she returned a more friendly gaze to me with a slight lift of her chin. Something had changed behind those dark eyes, a new look that nudged the accelerator on that first engine of mine — not lust, but whatever comes before it — sensual awareness?
     "Well, actually," she went on, "I was — am! — concerned. I've been hearing a lot of 'Hank said' and 'Hank told us.' The children — at least the dozen or so that hang out here —" she raised a hand that encompassed The Kicker "— take your opinions quite seriously, so when I heard you were getting, uh, involved in their schoolwork, I mentioned it in the Teacher's Lounge." She let a short laugh escape. "Naturally, I was elected to reconnoiter, to, uh, confirm that you were young, pierced, purple-haired, and a 'bad influence.'" A frown scudded across her brow. "I wasn't counting on finding Jillian pining on the shore. I wasn't expecting to come this far out, but I'm glad I did."
     This ambiguous hint sent my engine of sensual awareness surging across its red line. I panicked and floundered after a way out of this —
     "God, no!" Jillian cried out.
     Miz Soukouris spun around. I peered over her shoulder. The kids had gathered around Darla's cooler, legs crossed like so many Hollywood Indians. She had laid out a sideboard of wasabi, sticky rice, and seaweed, then sliced off pieces of fish for them to eat with or without these condiments. Just now, she poised, knife in one hand, sunset flashing off its slickened blade. With the other hand, she held out a pinkish hunk toward Jillian.
     The redhead recoiled dramatically, draping herself along the dockside rail. "Sushi? God, no! Sushi is so year before last, so déclassé. I just couldn't bear to mouth another slimy, salty piece."
     Miz Soukouris slid her dark gaze toward me, her smooth, dusky cheek an inch or so from mine, her scent dragging at me like a maelstrom. "You should see Jillian's parents," she whispered. "Both big enough to be a float in the Rose Parade. Her mother wears dresses that could house a Dixieland band, only you couldn't find them among all the colors. Her father dresses to a gnat's eye-whisker, huge custom suits, monogrammed shirts, designer ties. Jillian runs in their wake like a minnow after whales."
     Intimate distance, intimate gossip. My red line resounded its warning. Like an adolescent, I could count every pulse in my body, temple, throat, gut, and groin, so I used an adolescent trick to fight back: I ran away from temptation. No excuses for it, though I did have my reasons, or perhaps, reason had nothing to do with it, just grief and the fear of getting anywhere near that harbinger of grief, caring. As Rod McKuen wrote, "'Hello' is the word before 'Good-bye.'"

     Jillian gave me a target of opportunity, an excuse to vent, a chance to convince her she didn't want to come around anymore ... and squash any interest Miz Soukouris might have in me. I brushed past the alluring teacher and bore down on the red-haired menace. Stalking past Darla, I called, "Hey, got some for me?"
     Darla threw a grin my way, then used both hands to follow it with pieces of fish, testing my alertness the way I constantly did theirs. I snatched at the air two times, then checked my ration. Pieces of female sheephead. Though its red hue is considered good luck in some Asian cultures, males typically taste better because they don't waste nutrients on eggs. However, on the dock, we make do with what we can catch. She'd tossed a piece of akami, red and lean meat from high on the fish's back, and a piece of toro, lighter in color, from lower on the fish. Plain, chu, or hon toro? I couldn't remember. We'd just begun exploring this part of the fish, so I took Darla's choices as acknowledgment of both our past and our present ... whether that's what she meant or not. She watched me intently, so I nibbled the toro, so its more delicate mix of flavors wouldn't have to compete with anything but my own spit. I couldn't say I liked it yet, but I could tell how fresh it was ... and how recently its former owner had swum in from the deep ocean. I was learning after all. I took a bite of akami as reward, resistant to my incisors, yet soft, rich with the sea's legacy.

     My kids were watching me with wide, attentive eyes, but I had a mission on my hands and could just feel a surprised Miz Soukouris staring after me, so I winked at them and called to Jillian. I wanted my kids as both audience and background effects, so I waved for her to stay where she stood and asked, "Do you like the way Darla takes her sashimi straight from the sea?" Unintentional alliteration, I assure you.
     Jillian wrinkled her face like Mr. Yucky on poison bottles. "God, no, this puke-green backwater. I'd rather starve." More of this speech pattern, much too old for her, but Jillian did sling it well. Especially when she was forcing everybody to take the long way around her. Well, I was going to oblige for a change, but it wouldn't be the kind of trip that Jillian liked, and hopefully, the last detour we'd have to travel with her.
     I cocked a cold eye at her. "Do you know what the word 'starve' means?" People don't go hungry just for food, though it makes a handy metaphor.
     "I'm so out of here," she declared and extended a foot toward a long stride.
     "No!" A bolt of a word, it nailed her in place. She crinkled her face with the first uncertainty I'd seen.
     "'Starve,'" I repeated harshly. "You're probably hungry now, Jillian. It's coming on suppertime, and you've rejected Darla's thoughtfully prepared snack. You're used to eating a nice meal, then settling in for the evening with a full belly. But you won't eat tonight, Jillian. You'll starve. That hunger will grow, spreading its aches through your young body, into your legs and arms, but most particularly, into your head. Starve."
     Glowering, I stepped toward Jillian, a loud, heavy step that herded her into a corner at the dock's end. Behind me, the other kids smacked their lips noisily around more sashimi, and Jillian jerked back from the sound, her gaze fixed behind me as, I'm sure, they pantomimed enjoyment, licking their fingers elaborately, then going back for more.
     I inferred a pattern of suggestibility in Jillian, set up by those sybaritic parents of hers, a penchant for bending before dominance, flying toward fad and away from critical thinking. Like so many kids these days, who are given luxuries, but no morality, by parents who spend money on the former, but begrudge time for the latter. "Wealth without work," as Gandhi put it, labeling it a deadly sin; "cake and frosting without plowing the field," as my mom put it with as much condemnation. I intended to pummel Jillian against this flawed foundation of hers until she took her preference for it away from here — and stayed away.

     So I hounded her. "You'll curl into that corner as the night settles on your lonely, pitiful body. Starve. You'll hope for sleep to take away the pain, and because you're young and well-fed — so far — it'll come eventually, creeping over you out of a darkness so complete that you won't know when your eyes are shut. Starve. But sleep won't stay put like you're used to. You'll drift in and out, and when you're awake, hunger will gnaw at you. Starve. Soon, maybe not tonight or tomorrow night, but soon, hunger will invade your sleep too. Starve. You'll toss as your stomach chews on itself for want of anything else. Starve. You'll dream of food, warm and moist, with smells like you've never known before. Starve.
     "Starve for two days, and you'll see more than food that isn't there. You'll see monsters coming to eat you." Accelerate the timeframe for emphasis. "You'll know they're not there, but you won't be sure because your mind doesn't work right. Starve. Just like your body doesn't work right. Starve. Your legs wobble." And they did. Jillian, an idle imitation of waifish supermodels, bent before my wind. "Starve. Your hands tremble." As she discovered fumbling at the rail to hold herself up. Her little cry of horror tore at me, but I couldn't let up now.
     "Darla," I ordered and reached back with an open hand, "fish me." Nothing happened. Surprised, I remembered the piece of akami in my other hand and thrust it at Jillian. She startled back, her recent reluctance fighting her current need.
     "Go on," I prompted, "eat it, eat—"
     Elaine flashed into my mind, her wasted frame laid over this slim, young one. Elaine's face sagged more, worn and splotched by her war against ovarian cancer, and her brown hair straggled unevenly, a different length for each battle against the disease. She lost the third one, and the war as well. I fought too, mostly with her at the end, trying to get her to eat, to suck down some form of energy so she could grapple with the gauntlet that even everyday life had become. Each skirmish I lost pulled Elaine further and further away.
     Young and old, diseased and healthy, they shared one thing: they both left me. Jillian ran away, shrieking with panic, dodging past me. Elaine died, shrieking with pain, scrambling away to a place I couldn't follow. I snatched at her hand, sank to a knee before its limp unresponse, and —
     Jillian squawked. I found myself kneeling, clenching her bony wrist and staring up at her, too young to be Dulcinea, but I was too young to be Quixote, wasn't I? Yet the role of crotchety old knight felt right, slow to the rescue maybe — I blamed it on my spavined warhorse, this fatigued and creaky spirit of mine — but better late than never, right? What could I tell Jillian, now that I had opened her up to suggestion? A belief from the olden times, when Elaine prospered and enriched my life. No longer true for me, but Jillian still had youth on her side. But how to segue?

     "What I was trying to say, Jillian," I whispered, "is that food is like feelings. You'll starve if you run from party to fad to trend, around and around, even if it feels like you're getting something out of it.
     "People are tricky. You have to throw yourself into their arms, completely, absolutely; otherwise, they can't really love you and you can't really love them. Like a paper airplane: you have to let go or it can't soar.
     "But sometimes, they drop you. They might not catch you when you first try, which can be okay because you don't fall as far. But sometimes, they catch you and hold you for a long time, then they drop you, and you fall very far and hit very hard because you loved them so much, holding nothing back. And sometimes, they run off and do something very stupid with the Universe and it kills them, just like anybody else who did that same stupid thing, and you can't get them back, no matter what you do. And everything she made possible, your home, your kids, going to work so you can come home again, they're all gone too. They're ... just gone."
     A bird squawked, the dock creaked, sounds that tapped this bubble of self-pity, bursting it, and abruptly, I met the world again. Tears filled my eyes, coursed down my cheeks, clogged my nose. Jillian knelt beside me, her own sobbing sync'd with mine. My words lay over us all, a glistening, fragile ribbon of truth, temporary truth anyway, for when the Universe is gentle with you. It was no longer True for me, so I could pass it on, purge myself of its seeds of hope. It needed a wrap-up, though, a sound-bite that she could lock onto and guide the next part of her life.
     "Give people everything you've got, Jillian," I said, "your joy, your sorrow, yourself, so they can return it many times over." I released her hand. "Now, go on, get out of here." I turned away to rebuild my own composure from The Kicker's dispassion, there, all around me, just beyond the dock's edge.
     Shaking with aftermath, Jillian staggered off. I expected Our Gang to applaud her departure, probably with silence, maybe with jeers. I had swatted a pest with a thundering soliloquy, returned peace to our little pied-à-terre. I doubted they heard the quiet advice that, I hoped, set it all right in Jillian's mind. Either way, she wouldn't bother us again.
     But when I looked up, the boys just crowded around Darla, all of them hunched as though scolded into regret and silence. Jillian scooted right by them into Miz Soukouris' open arms. One hand caught the small back; the other cradled the red hair. Then the woman turned on me, her glare fed by teacher authority overlaid with maternal concern.
     "What was that?" she snarled.
     Self-defense, I thought, but wouldn't admit it aloud. Instead, I spouted, "Helping with her homework, only it's her home that needs work. You know Jillian and her parents, so you know she's getting misled by them, misled into the same small-minded patterns that are making them miserable, a misery they're trying to smother with food et cetera, a misery they're passing on to their child. I took my one shot at jolting her free of that mindset, then once she was moving, I nudged her in the right direction." Mental ju-jitsu, I thought with satisfaction. "She can take it from here — if her teachers and friends help."
     "Nonsense! Why didn't you stop when I ordered you to? Your mind-slaves here—" she whipped them with a disapproving glance "— did that at least."
     In reaction, all sorts of engines raced within me, esteem to be sure, doubt also, maybe regret at losing this "Miz Soukouris." Their response obliterated the red line and convulsed my soul. People did that to me, friends and strangers alike, ripping and snorting through my insides like picador-pierced bulls. That's why I minimize their role in my life. Right then, I wanted to shout my pain, but kept it clenched in my throat. Instead, I replied moderately, "Nonsense? Not at all! Harsh, maybe, but she needed help, help nobody else was giving her, and harsh shakes up the patterns quite well, thank you." I spread an expansive gesture toward Our Gang. "And these kids understand that, apparently better than you."
     I was messing with their heads, adult and child alike. That should be considered a mortal sin, right up there with sloth and gluttony and what her parents had done to Jillian. I wondered how they say "mind games" in church Latin, but right then, any words justifying my behavior tasted like lye.
     Miz Soukouris saved me from further rebuttal. "We'll see about that," she snapped, then peeled off with Jillian under her wing. She tried for a huffy march up the dock, but it played with her footfalls so she had to use her arms for balance. Another dramatic exit spoiled by nonchalant reality.
     I averted my gaze, my last tribute to what could never have been anyway. The sun slipped behind the harbor's entrance, a pair of storm-rounded rocks the Spanish called "Cojones del Mar." (So did we and applied the name to the town as well.) Twilight took its cue and sprinkled more dark on the scene, which should have cued Stymie in turn. Usually, he switched on a lamp that hung high over the pier's end, so the kids could pack their things, wrapping up another after-school special.

     Leary, I checked why the ritual hadn't played out. They still sat en tableau. Our Gang frozen by rebuke? Surely not. Respectful in the presence, yes, but Miz Soukouris had gone. Why not soothe the wounds with some post-mortem banter? Why not get moving so they're not home late and risk coming back tomorrow? What could be —
     I tried out the pun: "Stymied, Stymie?"
     Darla replied, however: "How could you do that to Jillian? She's just a kid. You were mean!"
     Startled, I said, "You played along as the Peanut Gallery."

     Spanky broke his pose. "Till Miz Soukouris pointed out how wrong we were."
     "When did she do that? I didn't hear a thing."
     "'Course not. You were going off on Jillian."
     They were serious! More serious than anything before. "We all wanted Jillian to stay away."
     "Way over, Hank," Sammo chimed in. "You way overdid it."
     "Just like in 'Old Yeller.'"

     Spanky checked the others. All three shook their heads, so he sent me back a blank stare.
     "You've never seen 'Old Yeller'?" I asked.
     "Nuh-unh," they chimed.
     I grinned, hoping it would catch on. It didn't. "Neither have I! I've just heard that the boy in it tries to protect his dog — Old Yeller is his name — by driving him away with insults."
     "Did it work?" Darla asked, her scorn weakened by curiosity.
     "I'm not sure. I think the dog dies in the end, saving the boy or something."
     "Well, duh," Stymie said at last. "You trying to kill Jillian?"
     "No," I said with extra firmness. "I tried to pass along some 'Wisdom from Hank,' like I do with you guys every day. You heard me tell Miz Soukouris."
     Darla stepped toward me. She laid a hand on my arm and gazed up at me. "We've never talked history, Hank. What are you running away from?" Now Jillian had her doing it, talking adult.
     "I can't unload that on you." I swept up the boys with a look. "You're all too young. You don't need to witness that part of life yet, even second-hand through me. I could explain a little, though, in the hopes we can get back to normal around here, but aren't you going to be late getting home?"
     Darla checked the others with a glance. "We can be late 'on occasion,' my dad calls it."
     "Okay." I patted Darla's hand before slipping out from under it, switching on the pier lamp, and snagging my canvas stool to assume my usual Socratic position. I really wanted to re-secure "normal."

     "My wife Elaine and I were married for thirty-one years. We had three children, who are now —" I stopped to calculate from birthdates "— 30, 27, and 15." Sammo took the prize for reaction, round eyes matching mouth in his little round face, but the news jolted all of them. I'd told them nothing. "Do any of you know what a fugue is?"
     Spanky flapped a hand, gaining attention while dismissing his knowing. Modesty, not afraid of "white stuff" like some blacks are. "Music," he said. "You got your themes, then you work them together and against each other with different instruments."
     "That, too," I said, a smile applauding his erudition, "but mine was a mental thing, like getting lost in your mind while your body wanders around by itself. That's what happened to me when Elaine died from cancer, and our grief was bigger than our family, shattering us with its weight. It brought me out here." A wave at southern California sprawled behind us. "A loner, looking at no one, talking to no one. So remote from everything that it was like my bones were turning to rubber." I mimed a limpness of wrist and ankle that — finally! — brought smiles and even a giggle from Sammo. "I felt I couldn't grab anything, walk anywhere. My bones would just bend." More smiles, more relaxed.

     "So, I started looking for someplace to ... get more attached, more, but not a lot. I found this town, this boat, and you. What you saw with Jillian came out of that past. Harsh, as I said, but — as I said — I think I still did her some good. Kinda like my calling Sammo 'retardo.' Remember that?"
     A chorus of agreement.
     "That worked, didn't it?"
     "Yep," from three of them while Sammo scowled, though a smile crept into it.
     "But," I warned them, "Jillian's got more problems than any of you, maybe even more problems than me. I just hope I laid a big detour on her road to Bitch City."
     That broke them up and wrapped up this last-minute session. They all turned to their rods and tackle, quickly gathering and stashing them in the bench-chest under the lamp. Spanky threw the lock on it, waved at the others, hand-jived a parting with me, and jogged away. Stymie slipped off, leaving a brief, but wide smile fading in the dusk. Sammo shyly thumped his math book and took it home with him. Finally, Darla ruffled my thinning hair and wandered away. All without laying any of those so-called sensitive questions on me, like "Where are your kids now?" and "Do you miss her?"
     I checked my watch. An hour or so before I went to work. Between now and then, I had the whole place to myself.
     If you don't count the dead people I see in my dreams.