He looked at me. I had not been looked at so intently in quite some time. I felt the warmth rising into my cheeks.
You will see, he said. I will help you see. He is no good. I am off now, to seek a different method.Une approche alternative.
He gave a curt bow and burst out through the wall, contorting himself into the balled-up configuration of someone leaping into a pond for relief from the heat.
Only to thrust his head back in again seconds later, tears running down his face.
Honesty compels me to admit, he said. It was also of my doing. I had a hand in the invention of the beast.
What beast? I said.
Quelle horreur!he cried.
And then was gone again.
—
Reentering the orb of my charge’s thoughts, I found him attempting to counteract the unsettling effects of the Frenchman’s intrusion by recalling his childhood kitchen and its associated smells:
Lard, iced tea, fried meat, bleach.
In a patch of untended weeds outside the back window lay the familiar burn pile. So many happy moments had been spent at that small homebuilt table, the six of them talking, laughing, playing Nail Your Neighbor for pennies.
He let his mind roam over the pile, imagining certain items that had accumulated there over the course of his childhood: a rimless tire, a rusted length of dog chain, the nicked brim of a baseball cap, the pink arm and head of Minky, beloved doll ofhis sister Willamina, who had one day, for reasons unknown, torn the thing apart in a rage.
I’m gonna need that sink, handsome, said his mother.
His father was washing up, sleeves rolled back, face red with sun, chaw tin in his back pocket.
My charge was a child then, a dreamy child resting one hand on a familiar kitchen counter of warped, stained plywood.
What would he do with his life?
What did he want to be when he grew up?
Wake up, bub, Father said. Tables don’t set themselves.
And why’s your mouth hanging open like that, said Mother.
These memories were having the desired effect of driving away that vision of a crazy foreigner dancing on his feet talking nonsense. They stemmed from that period when he’d first realized he’d probably always be the shortest.
Did I look the shortest? he’d asked after his eighth-grade recital.
You looked fine, Mother’d said warily.
But that night from his bed he’d heard them talking.
We might think about some taller shoes, Father said.
Five inches taller? Mother said.
Then there’d come a silence that felt like shared stifled laughter.
He’ll grow, Mother said.
Hope so, Father said. Seemed like a third grader’d somehow snuck up there.
Well, Father had since met three governors. Had shaken hands with the great Bob Feller. Mother’d once had coffee with Charlton Heston.
