Mystic River

She put her hand on Jimmy's knee and said, "How you doing, G.I. Joe?" His mother was always calling him by different nicknames, often made up on the spot, Jimmy half the time not knowing who the name referred to.

He shrugged. "You know."

"You didn't say anything to Dave."

"You wouldn't let me move, Ma."

His mother lifted her hand back off his knee and hugged herself in the chill that was deepening with the dark. "I meant after. When he was still outside."

"I'll see him tomorrow in school."

Her mother fished in the pocket of her jeans for her Kents and lit one, blew the smoke out in a rush. "I don't think he'll be going in tomorrow."

Jimmy finished his hot dog. "Well, soon, then. Right?"

His mother nodded and blew some more smoke out of her mouth. She cupped her elbow in her hand and smoked and looked up at Dave's windows. "How was school today?" she said, though she didn't seem real interested in an answer.

Jimmy shrugged. "Okay."

"I met that teacher of yours. She's cute."

Jimmy didn't say anything.

"Real cute," his mother repeated into a gray ribbon of exhaled smoke.

Jimmy still didn't say anything. Most of the time he didn't know what to say to his parents. His mother was worn out so much. She stared off at places Jimmy couldn't see and smoked her cigarettes, and half the time didn't hear him until he'd repeated himself a couple times. His father was pissed off usually, and even when he wasn't and could be kind of fun, Jimmy would know that he could turn into a pissed-off drunk guy any second, give Jimmy a whack for saying something he might have laughed at half an hour before. And he knew that no matter how hard he tried to pretend otherwise, he had both his father and mother inside of him? his mother's long silences and his father's sudden fits of rage.

When Jimmy wasn't wondering what it would be like to be Miss Powell's boyfriend, he sometimes wondered what it would be like to be her son.

His mother was looking at him now, her cigarette held up by her ear, her eyes small and searching.

"What?" he said, and gave her an embarrassed smile.

"You got a great smile, Cassius Clay." She smiled back at him.

"Yeah?"

"Oh, yeah. You're gonna be a heartbreaker."

"Uh, okay," Jimmy said, and they both laughed.

"You could talk a little more," his mother said.

You could, too, Jimmy wanted to say.

"That's okay, though. Women like the silent type."

Over his mother's shoulder, Jimmy saw his father stumble out of the house, his clothes wrinkled and his face puffy with sleep or booze or both. His father looked at the party going on in front of him like he couldn't imagine where it had come from.

His mother followed Jimmy's gaze and when she looked back at him, she was worn out again, the smile gone so completely from her face, you'd have been surprised she knew how to make one. "Hey, Jim."

He loved it when she called him "Jim." It made him feel like they were in on something together.

"Yeah?"

"I'm real glad you didn't get in that car, baby." She kissed his forehead and Jimmy could see her eyes glistening, and then she stood up and walked over to some of the other mothers, kept her back to her husband.

Jimmy looked up and saw Dave in the window staring down at him again, a soft yellow light on somewhere in the room behind him now. This time, Jimmy didn't even try to wave back. With the police and reporters all gone now, and the party so deep in swing no one probably remembered what had started it, Jimmy could feel Dave in that apartment, alone except for his crazy mother, surrounded by brown walls and weak yellow lights as the party throbbed on the street below.

And he was glad, too, once again, that he hadn't gotten in that car.

Damaged goods. That's what Jimmy's father had said to his mother last night: "Even if they find him alive, the kid's damaged goods. Never be the same."

Dave raised a single hand. He held it up by his shoulder and didn't move it for a long time, and as Jimmy waved back, he felt a sadness weed its way into him and go deep and then spread out in small waves. He didn't know whether the sadness had something to do with his father, his mother, Miss Powell, this place, or Dave holding that hand so steady as he stood in the window, but whatever caused it? one of those things or all of them? it would never, he was sure, come back out again. Jimmy, sitting on the curb, was eleven years old, but he didn't feel it anymore. He felt old. Old as his parents, old as this street.

Damaged goods, Jimmy thought, and let his hand drop back to his lap. He watched Dave nod at him and then pull down the shade to go back inside that too-quiet apartment with its brown walls and ticking clocks, and Jimmy felt the sadness take root in him, nestle up against his insides as if finding a warm home, and he didn't even try to wish it back out again, because some part of him understood that there was no point.

He got up off the curb, not sure for a second what he meant to do. He felt that itchy, antsy need to either hit something or do something new and nutty. But then his stomach growled, and he realized he was still hungry, so he headed back for another hot dog, hoping they still had some left.

* * *

FOR A FEW DAYS, Dave Boyle became a minor celebrity, and not just in the neighborhood, but throughout the state. The headline the next morning in the Record American read LITTLE BOY LOST/LITTLE BOY FOUND. The photograph above the fold showed Dave sitting on his stoop, his mother's thin arms draped across his chest, a bunch of smiling kids from the Flats mugging for the camera on either side of Dave and his mother, everyone looking just happy as can be, except for Dave's mother, who looked like she'd just missed her bus on a cold day.

The same kids who'd been with him on the front page started calling him "freak boy" within a week at school. Dave would look in their faces and see a spite he wasn't sure they understood any better than he did. Dave's mother said they probably got it from their parents and don't you pay them any mind, Davey, they'll get bored and forget all about it and be your friends next year.

Dave would nod and wonder if there was something about him? some mark on his face that he couldn't see? which made everyone want to hurt him. Like those guys in the car. Why had they picked him? How had they known he'd climb in that car, and that Jimmy and Sean wouldn't? Looking back, that's how it seemed to Dave. Those men (and he knew their names, or at least the names they'd called each other, but he couldn't bring himself to use them) had known Sean and Jimmy wouldn't have gotten into that car without a fight. Sean would have run for his house, screaming, probably, and Jimmy? they'd have had to knock Jimmy cold to get him inside. The Big Wolf had even said it a few hours into their drive: "You see that kid in the white T-shirt? Way he looked at me, no real fear, no nothing? Kid's gonna fuck someone up someday, not lose a night of sleep over it."