I knew Sergeant Doakes well enough to know that this was not simply a rainy-day whim on his part. If he was watching me, he would keep watching me until he caught me doing something naughty. Or until he was unable to watch me anymore. Naturally enough, I could readily think of a few intriguing ways to make sure he lost interest. But they were all D E A R LY D E V O T E D D E X T E R
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so permanent, and while I did not actually have a conscience, I did have a very clear set of rules that worked somewhat the same way.
I had known that sooner or later Sergeant Doakes would do something or other to discourage my hobby, and I had thought long and hard about what to do when he did. The best I had come up with, alas, was wait and see.
“Excuse me?” you might say, and you have every right.
“Can we truly ignore the obvious answer here?” After all, Doakes might be strong and lethal, but the Dark Passenger was much more so, and no one could stand against him when he took the wheel. Perhaps just this once . . .
No, said the small soft voice in my ear.
Hello, Harry. Why not? And as I asked, I thought back to the time he had told me.
There are rules, Dexter, Harry had said.
Rules, Dad?
It was my sixteenth birthday. There was never much of a party, since I had not learned yet to be wonderfully charming and chummy, and if I was not avoiding my drooling contemporaries then they were generally avoiding me. I lived my adolescence like a sheepdog moving through a flock of dirty, very stupid sheep. Since then, I had learned a great deal. For example, I was not that far off at sixteen—people really are hopeless!—but it just doesn’t do to let on.
So my sixteenth birthday was a rather restrained affair.
Doris, my foster mom, had recently died of cancer. But my foster sister, Deborah, made me a cake and Harry gave me a 3 2
J E F F L I N D S A Y
new fishing rod. I blew out the candles, we ate the cake, and then Harry took me into the backyard of our modest Coconut Grove house. He sat at the redwood picnic table that he had built by the brick barbecue oven and motioned me to sit, too.
“Well, Dex,” he said. “Sixteen. You’re almost a man.”
I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean—me? a man? as in human?—and I did not know what sort of response was expected of me. But I did know that it was usually best not to make clever remarks with Harry, so I just nodded. And Harry gave me a blue-eyed X-ray. “Are you interested in girls at all?” he asked me.
“Um—in what way?” I said.
“Kissing. Making out. You know. Sex.”
My head whirled at the thought as though a cold dark foot were kicking at the inside of my forehead. “Not, uh, no. I, um,” I said, silver-tongued even then. “Not like that.”
Harry nodded as if that made sense. “Not boys, though,”
he said, and I just shook my head. Harry looked at the table, then back at the house. “When I turned sixteen my father took me to a whore.” He shook his head and a very small smile flickered across his face. “It took me ten years to get over that.” I could think of absolutely nothing to say to that. The idea of sex was completely alien to me, and to think of paying for it, especially for your child, and when that child was Harry—well really. It was all too much. I looked at Harry with something close to panic and he smiled.
“No,” said Harry. “I wasn’t going to offer. I expect you’ll get more use out of that fishing rod.” He shook his head slowly and looked away, far out over the picnic table, across the yard, down the street. “Or a fillet knife.”
“Yes,” I said, trying not to sound too eager.
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“No,” he said again, “we both know what you want. But you’re not ready.”
Since the first time Harry had talked to me about what I was, on a memorable camping trip a couple of years ago, we had been getting me ready. Getting me, in Harry’s words, squared away. As a muttonheaded young artificial human I was eager to get started on my happy career, but Harry held me back, because Harry always knew.
“I can be careful,” I said.
“But not perfect,” he said. “There are rules, Dexter. There have to be. That’s what separates you from the other ones.”