Middle School in the big old red brick building got out at 3:10 on Wednesdays for 8th graders, 7th graders got out at 3:15, the boy ran the first few blocks. It gave him a head start in case the Irish kids were chasing after him to knock him down, rub his face in the mud and ice, or just punch him in the stomach and slap him in the face.
He ran farther than usual this time, looking back over his shoulder, his heart racing. He ran past the mill houses, the triple-deckers, the small single-family wooden frame houses, two churches, an old synagogue, a Mom and Pop store.
There was nobody following him today. Good, he needed to get right home.
He found the key where it always was, under the pine bush in front of the steps leading to the porch. He unlocked the door, ran upstairs toward his parent’s bedroom. He stopped on the way up to go to his room and take out the hammer he kept hidden beneath his bed.
He knew no one would be home. His father was never home in the daylight, or most evenings. His mother worked for his Uncle Harry at a fabric story in Cresthaven three nights a week. She kept the books. When the doctors came to the school to give shots, or he was afraid of the gym class, the boy skipped school, ran home home and hid in the downstairs closet. He forged sick notes with his mother’s pen and stationery. He took his brother’s rifle out of it’s hiding place and fired bullets out the upstairs window once or twice at his neighbor’s oak trees, sometimes at the laundry hanging off their clothesline.
He had never been caught, not once. He hated to steal, it never felt good. He couldn’t help it sometimes, he almost hoped the would catch him. Why didn’t they notice?
He took the hammer and went into the big bedroom and opened the bottom drawer of the dresser. Underneath some of his mother’s sweaters, he found the leather box and shook it. It was full of silver dollars his grandmother had left to his mother. She had left him some too, they were long gone. He put the box up on top of the dresser and swung the hammer to the side of the box, it’s spine. He had done this many times before, the hammer marks were visible to anyone who wanted to look. No one had.
The box popped open, he scooped up a handful of silver dollars and stuffed them in his pocket, snapped the box shut, and put it back underneath the sweaters. He put the hammer back under his bed, ran down the stairs and ran the two blocks to Main Street, where he stood waiting for the bus downtown. He was tired, he had wet the bed the night before, he had had little sleep, as usual, and his heart was pounding so hard it frightened him. He often stole from his mother, sometimes from her purse, sometimes from the boxes of silver dollars she had hidden around her bedroom, but never touched or looked at.
She never seemed to notice, and if she did, she never said anything. He wondered if she just didn’t want to know.
With his silver dollars, he had managed to buy three or four fish tanks and created his secret worlds, four 25 gallon fish tanks that lined the walls of his small bedroom. It was a cozy and beautiful thing, the tank lights reflecting off of the colored gravel, the colors shimmering off the wall, his dozens of fish swimming back and forth in a steady stream, day and night. It seemed such a safe place, those tanks, it was his own world, no one understood a thing about it but him.
It was the safest place in the world for him, that room, those fish. He spent hours cleaning them, scraping the glass, feeding the fish, testing the water.
His parents never mentioned the tanks, and never asked him how he got them, from who, or with what money. They never asked him anything about his life – where he went every afternoon, why he set fire to trash cans in the house, how he felt about wetting his bed, why he got such poor grades, why his teachers worried about his poor attendance at parent-teacher conferences, why he was so terrified of gym he hid out in the bushes all day in the winter cold to avoid the classes.
His fish were his alternative universe, he was their father and their mother, he took scrupulous care of them. The bus came shortly, he climbed towards the back, looked out the rainy window as the bus whined and groaned its way downtown. At the end of the line, he got out, walked five blocks to the grimy story with neon windows that said “Tropical Fish, Snakes, Worms, Mice.” Inside, he walked up the one-armed man who ran the fish department, the old man – he wore his World War II ribbons on his white shirt pocket – nodded to him, and smiled.
They saw one another often, at least once a week, maybe for a whole year. He always came with silver dollars, the old man always held the best Guppies and Neon Tetras and Betas for him.
The boy took out five silver dollars and went over to a small bowl and pointed to the Beta, the Siamese Fighting Fish, a beautiful male with a radiant red color, proud and defiant. “He’s a good one,” said the old man, so deftly handing a fish net with his one arm, he swooped the red fish into the net, flipped it into a plastic bag filled with water that hung open in a special holder at the side of the tank. “I held him, for you,” asked the old man. “I still don’t know your name, son.” It was a statement, not really a question. The old man knew the boy well by know.
“Will you have some babies to sell me soon.” The boy nodded, he intended to breed this new male, he had a fertile female, and he would bring the babies to the old man and sell them to him for $1 apiece.
He didn’t want to tell the old man his name, he never told anybody his name. He moved all over the city, almost every day, on busses and on his own feet, he rode and walked around for hours, nobody ever knew his name.
He gave the one-armed man his last two silver dollars for some special food for his fish, to keep him strong and in good color. He had just enough left for the ride home. “Keep the bag warm and still,” the old man cautioned, as he always did. “They are not as strong as they look.”
On the way out, he turned to look back at the old man and decided to call his fish Jake. The old man waved to the boy with his one arm, and then, when he thought the boy was no longer looking, he would shake his head, as he always did. And the boy was always looking.
The boy felt paralyzed around the old man, he could hardly bring himself to speak to him. He nodded goodbye, took the plastic bag and left the store, walking back to the bus. It was cold and raining, a nasty New England winter night. He was so tired. He wet his bed almost every night, most nights he kept awake, looking at his fish, cleaning their tanks, so that he wouldn’t wet his bed and get a lecture in the morning from his father, who told him he was disappointed in him, he worried that he was weak and a sissy for not controlling himself.
But most nights, he fell asleep.
The boy sat at the back of the bus, and in a minute, he fell asleep, holding the bag with Jake in his arms. He woke up when a big man came and sat next to him, he opened his eyes and was frightened, the fear shot all through his body, as it did when he woke up every night and felt the cold wet and smell of his bed. He looked out the bus window and saw strange houses and streets, he knew he had slept way past his bus stop. And it was night. The bag with Jake had rolled to the floor and was rolling back and forth between the seat and the side of the bus.
He saw there was no one else on the bus, and felt a surge of fear, he didn’t understand why the man was sitting next to him.
“Hey, what’s your name?,” asked the man, he wore a beat-up leather jacket and dirty jeans. He smelled odd, like the smell in a greasy diner. The boy said nothing and looked desperately around him. He had no idea where he was, but it looked unfamiliar and felt far away, a different place he didn’t know. He didn’t like the man, he was terrified of people touching him, especially his mother. The driver was way up, far away. The man was leaning closer. He felt the terror rise up from his stomach, into his chest, up to his throat. He heart was pounding.
It was pitch black outside, he had no idea what time it was, how much time had passed. Was he all the way to Boston?
He froze as the man’s hand rested on his knee, and then moved slowly up his right thigh, squeezing his leg. The man squeezed harder, moved his hand farther and farther up, was breathing harder. He heard the loud scream, but did not recognize it as his own voice, not right away.
“Stop,” he yelled, “stop. Don’t do that!” It was almost as if someone else had taken over his voice.
The man was startled, stopped, punched his leg hard, took his hand away, moved quickly to a seat across the aisle. The boy was sweating, gasping for breath, He knew the awful warm feeling down below, he had had an accident, his pants were wet. His face was hot with shame.
He saw the driver look in his mirror, stop the bus, pull it over. “Everything all right back there?” The man nodded, “sure, we were just talking, nothing happening.” The boy couldn’t speak, he said nothing.
The boy, still clutching his fish, ran to the front of the bus, asked to get off. Before he could, the other man got up and stood at the side door, pulled the string to sound the buzzer. The driver opened the side door, and driver then looked at the boy awhile.
“Where do you live, son?,’ he asked.
The boy, still clutching his fish, tried to catch his breath, tried to keep his jacket from revealing the stain he knew was on his pants, tried to understand what to do or say. He said nothing.
“Do you know where we are?,” asked the driver. The boy looked out the window to see the man in the leather jacket rush away and out of sight. “This is Woonsocket. Do you mean to be here, I picked you up back in Providence.” The boy started to stutter, he stared to cry a bit, and then got control of himself. Crying was never good, it never came out right, he felt foolish and weak and naked. He didn’t know where Woonsocket was, he said, he meant to get off way back in Providence, on Rowe Street.
You go sit down, said the driver, we have to go back that way, this is the turn-around, right ahead. “Do you want me to call your parents, tell them you got lost, that you are okay?,” he asked.
The boy shook his head, nobody home, he mumbled. This time, he didn’t sleep, and he looked anxiously at the plastic bag. Jake had been in the closed bag a long time, been rolling around the cold floor, he looked pale, his fins were pulled close to his body.
It seemed a long time but the streets started to look familiar, and he saw the driver looking at him curiously, as if wondering whether he should talk to him or do something. Maybe call the police. The boy knew he wouldn’t, nobody ever did. He didn’t know what had happened, what it meant, he felt he had done something wrong, had failed to be strong again.
He didn’t know what to say or think about it, he had no name for what had happened. He just knew it was something he must never speak about, never.
He realized he didn’t have any money, he was ready to run off of the bus and take off if he had to, he had to get Jake home.
When the bus got to his stop, the driver opened the door. “It’s on me,” he said. “take care of yourself. You sure you’re all right?”
The boy nodded. He thanked the driver, who stared after him until he was out of sight, then ran the two blocks to his house. There was nobody home yet, he got the key out from under the bush and let himself in. He ran up to his room and opened the bag, but he knew Jake was dead, he saw him lying on his side in the bag in the bus, blowing some sickly bubbles. He had run out of air, maybe gotten to cold. These fish needed to be warm, the one-armed man had said so a thousand times.
He got his own net out and fished Jake out of the tank he had occupied for such a short time, and he took him into the bathroom and flushed him down the toilet. He had no words to say. He fed the fish, got undressed, looked at the purple bruise on his thigh, took his pants down to the laundry room, crawled into bed and pretended to be asleep when his mother, then his father, came home.
In the morning, he came down for breakfast, His father had breakfast with friends every morning, he never ate breakfast at home. His mother gave him a bowl of cereal. “How was your night?,” she asked.
“Good,” he said.