The dog was the problem. It was always there, next door, sometimes on a chain, always behind the hurricane fence, but it seemed to hate young Patrick Hurley with a fury that made both leash and fence doubtful deterrents. When he left for school and when he returned, when he ventured into his own front yard for any reason, the animal hurled itself against the woven wire, teeth bared, saliva flying, snarling like death's last warning. A year earlier, when they had first moved to their new home, Paddy's fear was so great that he frequently wet himself as he stood, paralyzed, eyes closed, even his vocal cords frozen, halfway to the perceived safety of his porch, until his mother, summoned by the dog's rage, came out and rescued the boy. It was only when he was safely indoors that the shame of having peed in his pants would hit him.

"He can't really get at you," his mother would say. It was small comfort to a boy of eight.

"I know."

"He's just, I don't know, excited. He's never that bad with anyone else."

But then no one else was quite as terrified as he, Patrick thought. The dog was a bully and recognized weakness in his victims.

"I know."

"I've spoken to Mr. Gault." Gault was the neighbor, the dog's owner, scarcely less intimidating to the boy than his dog itself. The boy had watched with wonder as the man had stood at the length of the dog's chain and waved a rag just beyond the animal's reach. On his knees, snarling and taunting the dog as it lunged and snarled at him, Mr. Gault had seemed to be of a kind with the beast, vicious, dangerous, ravenous for something he could not quite get at.

"He's certain the dog won't hurt you," his mother said.

His mother was also certain there were no ghosts in the closet, no goblins under the bed. Such certainties from an adult were worse than useless; they not only made him feel foolish for expressing his fears but also cast all grown-up assurances in doubt.

The dog became a phobia, a waking nightmare from which even his mother could not release him. Although he was one of the blessed children who liked the structure of school and whose mind eagerly absorbed transmitted knowledge, on his worst days he would feign illness just to avoid passing by the fence, the sudden, explosive rush of fury, the rage for his blood that strained, always, only a split second from his throat. At night the dog pursued him in a thousand venues and hurled itself at him in a thousand ways, but never did it transmogrify into spectral shapes or other horrors of sleep. It was always just the dog, the same dog, as if the demonic maker of his dreams could manufacture nothing more horrifying than the beast that lived next door.

On the worst of nights his mother took him into her bed, cuddling him and stroking his head until he fell asleep. As both of them became accustomed to the new arrangement, Patrick's "worst" nights became more frequent until he would routinely start the night in his own bed and within an hour snuggle up against the warmth of his mother's body.

This was before his father returned to them. He had been gone during Patrick's earliest years, away on assignments that took him all over the country for extended stays; and then there were the months in the hospital when Patrick and his mother would travel three hours each way to Omaha to visit him in his hospital bed. The older man's greeting was often little more than a weak smile for the boy, once or twice a tousling of his hair, with scarcely more animation spared for his wife.

"He's getting better," his mother would say on the long ride home. "Every time he's a little better than before. You can see that, can't you, Paddy?"

He could not, but said he did to please her. The lengthy absences had rendered his father a stranger and whatever had consigned him to a hospital had also made him a sad, moribund specimen of the half living. He reminded Patrick of the drained, depleted victims he had seen in vampire movies, or the lethargic zombies who moved in slow, impassive motion on their quests through the grave yard-except his father never left the hospital bed.

"He'll be back home with us again real soon," she said often. "Don't worry."

"I'm not worried."

She looked at him sideways.

"He's a very brave man, you know. He's a fighter. He's going to make it back."

Patrick didn't know what foe his father was fighting, his mother was never specific, and he was not worried because he didn't really care if the weary man from the hospital came home or not. He was an alien being to the boy, promoted by his mother as an idealized notion of courage, nobility and power, but not anyone Paddy could really concern himself about. But his mother cared. Tears would fall silently on the drive home and he could hear her crying in the night although her attitude was always positive and her expression, even as she wept, was twisted into a brave smile for her son.

And then one day his father was home. The patterned hospital gown had been exchanged for the pale brown of an Ashford policeman's uniform and he stepped out of a squad car, miraculously whole and healthy. Only a complexion pale as the daylight moon and a certain hesitancy in his stride remained as reminders of the man who had lain in bed for a year.

The uniform was a happy omen. Policemen were good, Patrick had always been told, policemen were his friends, policemen would protect him. If ever he was lost, his mother said, he should tell a policeman.

Even more amazing than the reincarnation of his father as a policeman was the gun he wore on his hip. His father was a hero after all, just as his mother had always said, a giant who had returned from the hospital, armed and more than an equal to Gault and his beast. A gun could relieve Patrick's life from fear and shame. A gun could kill the dog.

Monster? Puh-leeze. Me, the Monster of Mayfield? Hardly. The title is nothing more than some half-witted headline writer's attempt at alliteration. Newspapers will say anything and those tv people with their make-up and architectural hair! Shallow, dishonest and sensationalist. "What has the Mayfield Monster done now, a full report after this! Like calling a bureaucrat "the Butcher of Buchenwald"; too easy, too simple, no awareness of the complexity of things. A human life is complicated, it can't be summed up in a headline. A couple of indiscretions do not a monster make. I am as human as anyone, the difference being I'm not afraid to act like one when the time requires it.

I'll tell you what a monster is. A man who invades a nation without provocation and instigates the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians in the ensuing wars. That's a monster. There's no blood dripping from his fangs, just a politician's shit-eating grin. He doesn't hide in a cave, he doesn't stalk by night, he doesn't transmogrify into a creature with talons or wings or bay at the moon. He just smiles and lies and connives and makes deals. That's a monster. Who am I talking about? How many wars have we been in during the last 65 years? How many of them were to defend our shores? None. Take your pick of monsters.

...Well, never mind. I'm not that interested in politics. I'm just saying we should keep a sense of perspective on this monster business.

Me, I'm a pacifist. World view. I'm not saying that there isn't a place for violence in society, but limited and specific. I've been to war, I know what I'm talking about. Do onto others what they've got coming to them but don't go slaughtering everyone else in the neighborhood. Mass murder is just plain sloppy and barbaric and I'll have nothing to do with it. On that scale.

Three people in Mayfield spread over five years. Come on. That's pinpoint accuracy. Nothing excessive, nothing massive about it. And each one fully justified, believe me.

Anyway, now the whole community is panting like a pack of dogs eager to be unleashed. A mortal passing here, a disappearance there. A hastily buried corpse discovered in a corn field--slipshod work in that case, I accept the blame, early days, live and learn and so forth--and suddenly everybody in town is acting like it's an epidemic of premature demise. Well, I don't think it was premature, but never mind. That's a drawback to a small community like Mayfield, a slightly accelerated culling of the flock causes paranoia in the streets, everyone watching everyone else's every move. Not a pleasant atmosphere. Ultimately not a place you feel secure. If it happened in a real city, New York, say, or even Omaha, no one would notice, but in a little town--pandemonium. Which is too bad because I like small towns, I grew up in one. But, sadly, it's time to move on. Fortunately my good old Dad has had a bit of a health crisis. Time for me to go back to Ashford and take care of him. Everyone understands that, hate to see me go, I've been a valuable member, pillar of, etc., etc., but family comes first and blah-blah.

So I'm off to tend to matters in my old hometown where peace and security reign. I have some mild ambition for when I get there. A man must have his dreams.

For several weeks Patrick studied the older man, this wan Lazarus who usurped his place in the warmth of his mother's bed and snored through the night with ripping, startling noises that Patrick thought must surely wake them both yet rose again each morning to appear in the kitchen in his crisp uniform, the fascinating weapon riding on his hip. His mother seemed very happy as she poured his coffee, buttered his toast, and generally catered to him with a doting attention that Patrick thought rightly belonged only to himself.

Patrick watched with a welter of emotions, jealousy, awe, caution, pride, curiosity--and always with envy of the pistol. He imagined his father wielding it like Excalibur, striking down his son's mortal enemy, protecting his only child as his mother always said he would.

Spying on his father without detection was easy enough. When her husband was present, his mother had eyes only for him and for his part he scarcely seemed to notice Patrick at all, as if his son were part of the new ambience to which he was accustoming himself, of no more real interest than the squirrels scampering across the yard from tree to tree, or the invalid patients that had shuffled past his room in the hospital.

"He's still getting used to you," his mother explained. "Remember, he hasn't really known you for a long time. And you're still getting used to him, too, aren't you?"

"What's wrong with him?"

"There's nothing wrong with him," she said sternly.

"Why is he so white?"

"He was sick, you know that. His color will come back."

"He moves funny."

Rising and sitting down his father exercised a caution the boy had seen only in the elderly, and he negotiated his way around the house as if the furniture could not be trusted to remain stationary, touching the backs of chairs, counter tops, the sides of tables and doorways, before easing past them. In the open there was a slight list to his walk and a hesitancy that suggested he was learning the process anew.

"He does not move funny," she said with annoyance. "He's your father. He was in bed for a long time, that's all. Now stop this silliness. He loves you and you love him." After a pause, as if to herself, she added, "Everything's going to be fine."

Patrick knew that he loved his father because his mother had been telling him that all eight years of his life. He knew that his father loved him because of the same, insistent, maternal message although he had yet to feel the warmth, the affection, or even the interest that he associated with his mother's love.

The warmth and affection never came, but the paternal interest arrived in a sudden, life-altering blast.

Well, I'm home again, hippety-hop.

Back in the bosom of my family, such as it is. And as it is, it's good old Dad, confined to a wheel-chair, chomping his gums and drooling onto his bib...Not very dignified, Dad. Not a very good way to end up, especially after the riotous life you've lived. Makes you rather exposed, makes you vulnerable to your enemies, of which I could name a few. Well, one, at least. I could certainly name one. I knew him well, Horatio.

Good old Dad's in my old room, tucked under the eaves. I moved him up there so he wouldn't be bothered by visitors. If a man is sitting in a puddle of pooh, dripping juice like a rotting tomato, he doesn't want passersby peeking in the windows at him, gawking. He wants his privacy, I think. At any rate, that's what he's getting. Not very convenient for the nurse who has to drag her obese frame up all those stairs, but then, when you get right down to it, who cares about the nurse? Well, maybe Dad does, but who can say since he can not communicate in any way that anyone has yet discovered. A stroke can do that to you. Cruel thing, a stroke, a mild electrical disturbance, nothing strong enough to kill you, just to reroute the circuitry a bit, burn out a few sensory areas of the brain, erase the odd memory byte here and there and leave your noggin a mess of pottage, to be Biblical about it, while your determined old heart just keeps pumping away, oblivious. They call it a vegetative state, but that does discredit to a vegetable. A flower can lean towards the sun, a tree can re-route its branches, a plant can release toxins to fight off invading insects, ooze sap to encapsulate them in amber for history's edification--which is actually jewelry making if you think about it. Pretty good for a vegetable. But old Dad can't do any of that. He's got plenty of toxins in his system, god knows, but no way to get them out now. The only thing he's oozing is spittle and the odd tear or drip of mucus. Not very attractive, Dad. Not the kind of thing I want to look at, so god bless the big fat nurse and her daily labors up the stairs.

Naturally I hurried home as soon as I heard the news. Or at least as soon as I verified that his incapacitation was complete. He's a very dangerous man, old Dad, no matter what his age, and at 58 he could still break my bones if he could get hold of me. He used to do a thing with just his thumb that would paralyze me with pain and dissolve my bowels to water. Oh, he was good, he was skilled, and he never left a mark. Nothing to show the doctor, nothing to get the school authorities excited, nothing to bring the social worker on the case. Smack somebody on the head with a phone book and there's nothing to betray the blow except your scrambled brain and bright lights and stars in your vision. And pain, of course. Smack him on the chest and you'll induce fear of a heart attack and impending death. A rolled up newspaper will do the trick almost as well if the phone book isn't handy. There's a good reason your pet cowers when you rattle the paper at it. Dad knew a good many more tricks than those, of course. That's bush league stuff and Dad was a major league pro. You can dislocate a finger or a shoulder and then snap it back into place after it has served its purpose, if you know what you're doing. And who's going to believe good old Dad could, would, or did do that to some sniveling pre-teen? Nobody. Or at least nobody I could find. Good old Mom didn't believe it, or so she said. But then I didn't believe good old Mom most of the time, either. After all, she was the one who kept trying to reassure me that good old Dad really loved me and that if he was a mite hard on me now and then, it was for my own good.

Well, I'll say this. It might not have been for my own good, but it was certainly for my edification. I won't say that everything I know I learned at my father's knee--I was an M.P. in a war zone, after all--but I learned everything he had to teach. The rest I've picked up on my own. It's my turn to instruct the master.

Coming home from school, running past the fence, Patrick tripped and stumbled as the dog launched itself towards him. He fell towards the fence and landed on his side, facing the snarling animal only feet away, closer than he had ever been. Immediately he pulled himself into a fetal position, eyes closed, certain that the beast would get him this time.

"What the hell is this?"

Patrick barely heard the voice over the sound of his own whimpering. He squeezed his eyes more tightly shut but could not escape the last image emblazoned on his retina, vibrating in black and white--the muzzle of the dog, slavering for him. He tried to cry out to his mother for rescue but his throat was sealed shut.

"You hurt?"

The voice was directly over him now, but he knew it was not his mother. Strong hands grasped him under his arms and lifted him. Patrick flung himself onto his father's neck.

"Jesus Christ, what's wrong with you?"

"It's the dog," his mother said. "He's petrified of the dog."

"The dog? That mangy thing? Christ."

"I'll take him," she said.

Patrick reached out for her but his father pulled him back roughly.

"Come here. You're scared of this mutt?"

Patrick managed to nod agreement, still reaching hopefully for his mother.

"I'll take him," she repeated. "It's all right."

"It's not all right, Teena." said his father. "I don't accept it and I'm not going to put up with it."

He turned Patrick's shoulders until the boy was face to face with the dog that was still howling his thirst for boyish blood.

"No, no," his mother said. "He's too young."

"He's too old. No kid of mine..."

Patrick tried desperately to wrest free but the grip on his shoulders was too strong.

"Let's get over this nonsense now," his father said. He grasped the boy's head in one hand and held it facing the dog. "Open your eyes. You got to face it. Open your eyes."

"Please, I'll take him," she said.

"I'll bring him in the house when I'm through. You can wipe his nose then."

His father knelt beside the boy, his breath on Patrick's ear.

"This isn't going to end until you open your eyes, so you might as well do it now."

Patrick squeezed his eyes even tighter. Flecks of froth from the excited animal hit him on the face.

"Open them and it's over," the man said, shaking the boy. "Do it!"

If he opened his eyes the dog would be gone, he told himself. His father would be replaced magically by his mother who would take him in her arms and comfort him.

"Open your eyes! You got to look at what you're afraid of. You hear me? You have to face it."

Do it and it will be gone, Patrick told himself. Just squint, peek at it and it will vanish. Like the demons in the closet when his mother turned on the lights, the monsters in the shadows, banished by the light.

"Open your eyes or by god I'll open them for you!"

Patrick opened his eyes and saw the dog's foam-flecked muzzle and savage teeth inches away. He screamed and his bladder released.

"Jesus H. Christ," his father said with disgust. He carried the boy at arms' length into the house. "What the hell did you do to this kid, Teena?"

"He's so young..."

"No child of mine is going to be such a coward," he said. "He's getting over this, and fast, if I have to beat some courage into him myself."

Hideeho and up I go to visit my good old dad. None of that huffing and puffing like fat nursie, I leap up those stairs two at a time, can't wait to do a bit more bonding with the pater.

"Hello, Daddy," I say. "Hello, Pap. Look what I brought to show you. I'll bet you think it's another report card of straight A's that you can sneer at, don't you? Well, surprise, it's even better."

I show him the phone book. Lightly, just to get his attention.

"Let's look someone up, shall we? Just for old time's sake? Who shall we look up, who's still in town after all these years? How about Mr. Gault? Remember Mr. Gault, Dad? Maybe not, he was never as important to you as he was to me. He doesn't live next door anymore, I can see that. The fence is gone, there are kids in the yard. I hope that just means he's moved to more commodious digs. He needs room for himself and his dog. Remember his dog? I do. Oh, yes, I do. Of course, that particular dog is gone. Dog gone, doggone it. Too bad, Dad. That good old dog was a way for you and me to get to know each other better. 'Course you'll be getting to know me a lot better now that I'm home and have you at my disposal any time I want, so we'll probably just continue to bond for as long as I like, or as much as you can take, whichever comes first, even without that particular doggie. Maybe you remember the way that doggie died? It caused a bit of a stir at the time. Awkward questions but they never found the culprit, did they? Assuming there was a culprit, assuming old Fido didn't do all of that to himself. You'd have to have a pretty low self-image to do that to yourself. A good deal of self-loathing required there. Even for a dog. But maybe he did. Hey, you were the cop and you never found the villain, did you? Makes me wonder how good a cop you were.

"Let's just look up Mr. Gault, for old time's sake. I sure hope he isn't dead. Yet. Shall I look up Mr. Gault in the phone book, Dad? Yes? No? Give me a sign. Any sign at all."

I showed him the phone book again. Some spittle flew onto the floor. Messy old dad. One bubble persisted, just sitting there on the pine as if it didn't know it was born to burst. I watched it for the longest time. I do that sometimes, get so concentrated on the smallest detail that I just float off, letting my mind disconnect and sit there in a stupor, like Buddha. Or good old Dad. I think I stayed that way, mesmerized and not thinking about anything really, until the bubble finally popped, or even past that. It's hard to say, I lose track of time when I'm like that. When I was a kid I did it a lot. When they had me locked in the basement, I would loose my moorings and drift. It isn't unpleasant, it isn't pleasant, either, it's completely neutral but hypnotic, like sleep without the dreams. Thank god it's without the dreams.

The phone book dropped from my hand and jarred me back to my situation. I had been rocking ever so slightly. Funny, I'd pretty much forgotten about the rocking.

"Here he is, Dad! I found Mr. Gault. Still kicking. Or at least still phoning. A younger man might have replaced the house phone with a cell by now, but, fortunately, not Mr. Gault. You old guys are slow to keep up with technology, aren't you? And here's his address, right here so anyone can find him. Now there's a good reason to stick with the hard-wired phone, don't you think? Your old friends can always pay you a visit."

Old Dad just staring at me. Or in my direction, at any rate. Hard to say if he's really paying attention.

"Shall we look up anyone else, Daddy? What do you say? Give me a sign...I tell you what, if you want me to show you the phone book again, just keep staring at me. If you don't want to see it anymore tonight, blink twice."

I waited a decent interval. I did. Then I showed him the phone book again, since that's what he wanted. Then I went off to see how Mr. Gault is getting on these days.

The lessons began with daily visits to the fence. Usually his father came home by dinner time, but even on the days when he worked late Hurley would drag the boy to his confrontation with the dog in the dark. It didn't matter to the dog, night or day it was dependably present, snarling, eager for the boy. Hurley held Patrick in place until the boy could stare at the dog for a count to ten without crying out or turning away. Over the weeks, as Patrick mastered the count of ten, the number went up.

Gault, the dog's owner, became aware of the daily spectacle and would arrive with a regularity rivaling his animal's. Standing several feet away, beyond the reach of the dog's chain, he would watch with amusement. It seemed to Patrick that Gault took pleasure from the events in proportion to the animal's fury and Patrick's cowardice.

"Couldn't do it today, could he?" Gault would snicker on the occasions when Hurley lost his patience and dragged Patrick away, the magic number never reached. "You got a real hero there, Officer Hurley. Following in his father's footsteps, isn't he?"

The taunting by Gault would increase Patrick's punishment at the hands of his father.

"You shame me, boy. We'll put a stop to that, by god. When I'm through with you, you won't be afraid of anything on earth-except me."

Patrick came to welcome the exile to the pitch black basement as release from his father's torment. As the bolt snapped shut atop the stairs, Patrick could occasionally hear his mother's feeble and futile protests.

"I won't have a coward," his father would say. "I won't have it. No child of mine is going through life on his knees."

The boy would tremble for a time, his system still agitated, his fear of the dark as great as his fear of the dog, but he soon learned that crying out for help would only lengthen his imprisonment. His hope for release lay in the narcotizing hypnosis that would come over him in time. He found that thoughts of his mother would calm him enough to allow the mesmerizing nothingness to arrive. He would think of the comfort she would give him when his father was gone, the warm embrace, the clasp to her breasts, the enchanting odor of her powdered flesh.

I took a walk today as a break from the digging. I like the digging, I do, it's great exercise although a bit hard on the back after awhile, but I like to stay in shape and if that calls for some pain, well, I'm used to that. I like the digging, I like the planning, I like the trips to buy the supplies and equipment, but that isn't all there is to life. I'm not that obsessed. Well, I say "obsessed" jokingly. The shrinks would call it that, they have called it that, and worse, those obsessive old shrinkers, but I prefer to think of it as diligence. Stick-to-it-iveness. There's a good old Mid-Western virtue, for you. If you start a thing, finish it. A job worth doing is worth doing well. Nose to the grindstone, shoulder to the wheel. Not that anyone will appreciate my efforts. Or know about them. Well, I will, and good old Dad, I'll be sure to keep him up-to-date. And she will, of course. When the time comes. I'm doing it for her, after all; she'll appreciate it. Once she gets used to it.

Anyway, my back was aching so I took a walk. It's the first time I've actually strolled through town since I returned. There've been a couple of night time trips by car and the supply runs now and again, but otherwise it's been just me and good old Dad, reminiscing. And the digging. So it was good to ease my back, stretch my legs and see how the town has held up in my absence.

Ashford is shrinking, I'm sorry to say. It's like one of those little old men who are withering down to nothing as they age, faces like dried apple dolls, spines bending, feet splaying out. Mr. Gault--one of those late night trips--was like that when I went to visit him. Buckling and curving into a human question mark. Even so, I was glad to see him. It's always nice to see a familiar face. I'm sure he was surprised at how much I've grown and why not? I was startled to see how much he's shrunk. He was probably grateful for my visit, in the long run. I provided him with some diversion. A bit of change from his humdrum existence. He didn't say so, of course. They never do. Pride keeps them from it, I suppose. Who wants to admit that his life is so boring the he welcomes what I bring? He made a great deal of noise, but not a single word of thanks. I'm used to that, it didn't bother me.

I was probably observed on my stroll so I'll need to apply for work now that I've been seen. Didn't want to check in with the police until I'd got started on my digging, get everything in place before the scrutiny. People look at cops, they check them out. People are so guilty in their souls they want to be sure they know what the cops are doing at all times. If you're nobody, just another shape on a dark night, people don't pay any attention. It's important not to skulk, of course. Don't loiter, just move along purposefully and people take no more heed of you than they do of hotel maids. Not that they're not nosy, oh, our fellow citizens are nosy, they want to know everything, but not indiscriminately. They want to know everything about some people and don't care about the others. A cop is never one of the others.

It was such a lovely evening, the kind we get sometimes in early spring when the air is suffused with a gentle warmth, not heat but balm, like the touch of soft flannel, like a mother's breath upon your naked skin. That rare weather that serves as an anodyne for the long sting of winter. Weather that can heal. Weather that can make you forget. Or remember; and for me the softness of the evening brought back some of the sweetest memories of Ashford.

I walked along Lane Street. It's always been my favorite. It's not really a lane but an actual boulevard with center islands in the middle of the road, all with grass, some with flowers, some with trees. I walked it often as a child, part of my detour from school via the public library. It gave me another half hour before returning home, a precious delay. I would read as I dawdled along the boulevard, filling my head during that brief respite from reality with writers' fantasies of adventure and romance. Swash-buckling pirates, skilled in their violence, yet pure in heart as they rescued beautiful women from evil dukes and dandies on the high seas. Hard-working boys who rose from humble beginnings, young girls and their beloved horses, warm families with playful siblings and doting parents, deserving peasants who discovered great treasures and won the hearts of princesses. I read them all, believed them all, put myself in the stories as easily as into a dream. Life overtakes you eventually, but how sweet to dream.

It was on Lane Street that I first met her. She was new in town, new in school, and the teacher brought her in and introduced her as she stood in the front of the classroom for several embarrassed moments before she gratefully slipped into a seat. She was...it's hard for a grown man to describe the exact emotions of an eight-year-old with an adult vocabulary. I don't think beauty was a concept that I employed at that age. She was...she was Jennie, and it made my heart swell to look at her.

A week later I asked if I could carry her books after school. What sort of affectation was that? Surely inspired by something I read, some tale of children generations removed from my own; it was certainly nothing any of my peers would think to do-but then I was always more sensitive, more sophisticated, than others in Ashford. The agonies of indecision I must have felt, the raw courage it took to speak to her-I have forgotten them although I applaud myself for my triumph over my cowardice.

What I remember is that it was raining lightly and Jennie had an umbrella, a sign of unusual parental protectiveness when the rest of us made do with hooded slickers, and we walked together side-by-side under that cheap pink plastic parasol. I would have run naked through a hurricane for her but I feigned a refinement and calm I did not feel and after a bit she slid her arm through mine. I thought I would die. So happy, so nervous I could barely speak, I would have walked forever.

How clear that memory is still, almost three decades later. The courtship of a third-grader. Ridiculous. Unforgettable. I was as inalterably imprinted as a newly-hatched gosling that follows the first thing it sees, dog, cat or human, believing it to be mother goose. Psychoanalysts call it an imago. Romantics call it first love. I call it Jennie. I know what I'm dealing with here, I know there's an element of delusion involved, but who wants to live a life bare of illusion?

Lane Street is also where I had my first experience of human kindness. It's where I encountered Johnny Becker.

The stench was overwhelming and all too familiar, but so out of context that it took everyone a few minutes to realize the ugly truth. They looked at one another to see if they were the only ones who smelled it, hoping they were wrong, hoping it would just go away.

"Ohhh!" said one of the children finally. He pointed an accusatory finger at Patrick. "He pooped his pants."

The teacher was on him in a moment, her face contorted in an involuntary wince at the smell as she led Patrick out of the classroom, his shame obvious in his blushing face.

"Patrick has had an accident," the teacher said when she returned. "It could have happened to any of you. We won't say anything about it when he comes back."

The girls were shocked although willing to forgive but the boys were outraged, their fine eight-year-old sense of propriety deeply offended. That the teacher had suggested that such a transgression against all grown-up-boy decency could have happened to them was worse than insulting and the closer to the truth the more inflammatory the accusation. As condemnatory as a congregation of fire-and-brimstone Puritans they clustered at recess and spoke of punishment, competing with one another in the degree of their righteous indignation, each more offended than the other, until they boiled into action. Something had to be done and it was clear that the teachers weren't going to do it. There was a leader, of course, a boy named Corcoran, but only by a fraction and it hardly mattered who, they would have acted regardless, taking courage from one another, a classic mob in miniature.

Inside the school, oblivious to the growing storm in the playground, the teachers spoke of emotional problems. A pity, the boy was smart, he had potential, a certain shy charm as well, but something was upsetting him. These things usually came from the home life, that was well known. There were other troubling signs of late, too. Shadowy marks on the boy's cheeks and forehead, not quite bruises. A suggestion of smudged printer's ink, but not quite that, either. The teachers had seen signs of abuse before-or accidents, as they were usually called in a community and era when violence in some form was ever present-but this was something more subtle, too vague for definition. None of them was willing to suggest that a local police officer, an upstanding member of the community, or his wife, a sweet woman who drank perhaps a bit too much and too often yet retained her lovely disposition, could or would inflict physical harm on their eight-year-old. Discretion dictated that they keep their suspicions to themselves, anything else would be malicious gossip, and foolhardy as well. Everyone knew that the police had ways of turning the outcome of any conflicts their way and Officer Hurley was not only an officer, but a wounded one, something of a hero. Besides, none of the teachers would have called their thoughts suspicions. Something about the boy's transformation of late gave them a "funny feeling," nothing more concrete. He had gone from a happy, outgoing child to someone much more withdrawn, almost wary, within a matter of weeks. They shrugged sympathetically. These things happened.

Standing isolated from the cliques of both boys and girls, barely able to lift his head for the shame, Patrick saw the young males moving towards him across the hard-packed turf, the anger and resolution unmistakable on their faces. Surrounded by the posse like an outlaw in a Western, he gave himself over to the inevitable. There was no place to run, in any event.

On the other side of the playground stood the girls, milling excitedly and with discreetly vicious delight in anticipation of his looming punishment. On their outskirts was Jennie. Patrick caught her eye and for a moment thought he saw compassion. But then she suddenly looked away with something like a flinch of embarrassment and he knew, with a pain greater than his fear of further humiliation, that the sun had withdrawn from his life.

Then the boys were upon him and the taunting began. In ways more subtle and insidious it would continue for the next ten years.

Naturally I hurried in to tell old Dad the good news. Who else would appreciate the sweet irony of it, if not good old Pap?

I got his attention first, not a hard one, just enough to get him to focus, then I sprang it on him.

"Guess what, old-timer? They took me on the force. Chief Bisno was delighted to have me. Overwhelmed, I'd say. 'Another Hurley? Outstanding.

I know you'll carry on in your father's footsteps, blah blah, proud to have you with us, great asset, all the usual crapola.' Of course I have the credentials with my years of service on the Mayfield force, they would have hired me regardless, but the cachet-oops, almost said stigma-of following in my old man's footsteps didn't hurt. Got to give you credit, good old Dad, you had them all fooled. Everyone but me...So, what say, aren't you excited?"

He didn't look excited. He didn't look much of anything except maybe stupid. So just to inject a bit of pep into the proceedings I gave him another tap. He sprayed a bit more spittle on the floor and on himself. I take that as his way of expressing joy and delight over his son's success.

"So, Officer Hurley, meet Officer Hurley. Ain't it grand?...I said, ain't it grand?...A little reaction would be nice," I said. As usual, he offered no reaction whatsoever, so I helped him out again, jolted him into it, as it were. I wonder if there's some way to read meaning into where his spittle comes to rest. Like reading tea leaves after giving the dregs a good swirl in the cup. Maybe I could draw a grid on the floor and give points, like a dart board. A clever fellow could read auguries that way, if only he knew how. It would be communication of a sort because right now there's none. Zero. I've studied my good old pappy for any sign of awareness but, although he may be churning with happy thoughts and congratulations inside, nothing, but nothing, is showing on the outside.

"The Chief asked after you, Daddums, yes he did. 'How's your old man?' he said, by way of inquiry. He was dead keen to see you, I could tell. 'I'll drop by and check up on him one of these days', he said. I said that would be swell. You'd like that, wouldn't you, Daddy? Reminiscing with an old colleague again after all this time? Not too many visitors since you came home from the hospital, eh? In fact, none. Why is that, do you suppose? Anything to do with the old winning personality? Or don't people enjoy talking to a zombie these days? Well, not to worry, old Dad. You've got me, your loving son. I get a great kick out of talking to you, yes, indeed, I do. You get a kick, too, don't? A real kick in the head, as they say."

My poppa is amusing, god knows, but just a bit repetitious after a while. Not a lot of variety to his act. Paralysis does that to a man, it seems. So after giving him a few more jollies I went back to the digging. Almost done down there. Almost time to show it off.

Patrick remembered only the chaos of angry faces surrounding him as the boys pressed forward, then the insults and the few jarringly anomalous obscenities coming from innocent mouths as the bolder ones among them tried out adult curses for the first time. The words were the prelude, then came the touches, the nudges and jabs as they felt him out. When it was clear that he was going to cry, some of the more sensitive boys fell back, alarmed at the result, fearing they had gone too far, but the remainder moved in closer, like wolves sensing their moment to take the first bite.

When the girls started screaming the teachers parted the crowd of boys and saw the blood and dragged Patrick into the safety of the schoolhouse.

He sat on the edge of the cot in the school nurse's office like an stunned and exhausted accident victim waiting for someone--anyone--to take charge and restart his life for him.

The nurse made a phone call, ready to suggest that his mother come and take young Patrick home.

"We'll just tell people you were running a little fever, all right?" A fever was the nostrum for getting children out of her office. Parents didn't question it nor did they wonder that it had passed by the time the child came home. If doubtful, they blamed the child for deceit, not the nurse.

The nurse seemed eager to enlist him in her deception and he wanted to please her although the only fever he was aware of was the disorientation burning in his brain. He had been sucked into the maelstrom of angry classmates, whirled to senselessness and spat out.

"Just a little white lie," she said. Kindly. At least her voice sounded kindly. She was not as successful in keeping the disdain from her expression. For too many years and for too little pay she had seen too many children who needed nothing more than a little bracing discipline. It was easier to send them home than to deal with their sniffles and belly aches and excuses. Patrick had been rushed in to her by one of the younger teachers with some garbled tale of the boy soiling himself and a fight in the playground. It was all quite distasteful and her patience had been severely eroded by the years.

"Just a little one," she said. "And you can have the rest of day off. That will be nice, won't it? You can be with your mother and have a little time off from school? I think that will be all right, it's only a little white lie..."

She kept talking even though Patrick nodded assent. It occurred to him that he made her nervous, that she was perhaps even a little afraid of him, absurd though that notion seemed to him. No one was afraid of him. It was all he could do right now just to keep from crying as he sat on the cot in her office squeezing his hands between his knees.

The nurse hung up the phone.

"Your mother's not home," she said disapprovingly, as if it were his fault.

"She works sometimes," he said in a muffled voice. His mother never worked, but often she drank and it was difficult to wake her. He could think of no reason to tell the nurse that.

The nurse studied him for a moment, pursing her lips. She knew he was lying. "Well, I'll keep trying, anyway. All right?"

Patrick nodded mutely.

"We don't want to bother your father with this, do we? A policeman has better things to do, I'm sure."

It was the first time that Patrick realized that other people were afraid of his father, not just him, not just his mother but people in authority like the nurse, people who did not live with the man. The thought flew though his mind that perhaps there were other dogs elsewhere and other people, grown-ups, whom his father had to teach about courage for their own good.

"Meanwhile, you just lie down on the cot and we'll see what we can do about that scratch on your hand."

Patrick looked down and for the first time he noticed the slow and monotonous drip of blood falling from his clenched hands and puddling on the wooden floor.

"Open your hands," she said. "Open your hands so I can see."

She removed his clenched hands from between his knees but he kept them tightly together as if in fervent prayer. Some blood fell on his shirt and he feared he would be punished for that, too. Involuntarily, he began to whimper.

Openly annoyed now, the nurse said, "Open your hands for heaven's sake, boy, so I can see what you've done to yourself. I'm not going to hurt you."

She started to pry apart his fingers and he abruptly gave up his resistance as his palms opened like a shucked oyster. She dabbed at the blood, then looked at Patrick with disapproval.

"There's nothing wrong with you, not even a scratch. What was all that to-do about?"

The boy shook his head. He had been only vaguely aware that there was something to hide.

"You need to stiffen that spine, young man. I don't see a mark on you."

She wiped the last of the blood from his palm then noticed a drop of scarlet at the corner of his mouth.

"Did you get hit in the mouth?"

Again he shook his head. He didn't remember being hit, didn't remember anything beyond the sense of being crushed by the crowd of boys.

"Open up and let me see," she said. Her fingers waggled with impatience.

"Do we have to go through this again? Open up so I can help you."

She grabbed his chin and pulled it down.

"What you got in there?" she demanded. "There's no gum allowed in class, you know that. Spit it out. Come on, spit it out."

Something wet and surprisingly solid fell into her cupped hand. It took her a moment to compose herself and remember her training.

"What is that?" she asked in a troubled voice.

Patrick looked at the object in her palm, as puzzled as the nurse. He had no idea what was cradled there, the blood already crusting.

"Good god, boy! What have you done?"

She poked at the bite size chunk of gristle in her hand as if it were a section of Satan's tail, then up at Patrick who was regarding her with a face of puzzled innocence. He did not know what he had done or why she was so alarmed; only that he had done wrong. Once again.

"Whose ear is this?!"

Heaven help me, I do believe the giant nursie is flirting with me. Her features are so buried in blubber that it's a little hard to tell, but I'm pretty certain I recognize those kittenish glances from a demurely down-turned face, those little twitches of the lips, not quite smiles, shy thing that she pretends to be.

And I don't think it's my imagination that her uniform is open one notch more than when she first showed up. There's enough cleavage there to lose a cat in. She's certainly not showing herself off for old Dad, so it's got to be for my benefit.

All I did was pass a few polite and fairly predictable pleasantries with her.

"You're an angel of mercy," I may have said while trying to squeeze past her on the staircase. As much to ease the awkward face-to-face passage as anything else.

All right, there was a lot of bodily contact, it couldn't be avoided what with her taking up the space of three people, but why anyone but the most desperate case would take that for an overture is beyond me. Nice time I'll have to grease up so I can slip by her faster.

"Just doing my job," she said, smiling, simpering, the nasty old coquette.

"You're doing it extremely well, above and beyond the call" said I as I levered my way past some part of her-stomach, bosom? Whatever precedes her the farthest as she goes forth. She blushed. I think. She tends to be porcine pink all the time so it's hard to tell. And she batted her eyebrows. Please, what was she thinking? I popped out the other side of our vise-like communion like a watermelon seed and tried not to breathe an obvious sigh of relief.

Was that little encounter what started it? For several days running every time I've been on the staircase she somehow manages to be there, too, and we go through our squashed ballet again. All of this just to provide a little bit of frontal friction for nursie? She may be loving it but I'm afraid to gain an inch on my waist for fear of being stuck forever in an impasse, nose to nose with a ball of lard. I fear that in perfect innocence I may have won her overstressed heart.

I am accustomed to this sort of unsolicited attention. I have a way with women, always have. My first wife called me "winsome". She was a delight, my first wife, a lover of words, always putting things in a way that was slightly off-kilter. A conversation with her was filled with little verbal jolts, like the unexpected sparks from walking across a carpet in the winter. It wasn't what she said-mostly the usual female drivel-but the way she said it. Certainly I haven't been called "winsome" by anyone since. But then who has?

She had a habit of starting off as if the two of us were having an extended conversation in her head and that I knew all about it, so she'd leap in, mid-thought, out of the blue, with something like, "your next wife is going to be so grateful to me,". She might have been referring to something we'd talked about the previous day, something I had just done, who knew? It was confusing, but I liked it. I liked her, I learned a great deal about women from her.

She had a little tail. A pad of fat just above the crease in her buttocks that I thought was cute-until I thought that it was a sign of something else. But then that's the way I thought about her in general, cute as a button, totally and endearingly quirky--until she wasn't. Until I wanted a life a bit less quirky. Until she started asking questions with a real purpose instead of conversational gambits. Where had I been, what had I been doing, the usual currency of female questions. Because, much as she thought she knew what I was thinking at all times, much as she thought we were in some kind of mind-meld of loving togetherness, we weren't. Men and women are different, we think differently, that's just the way it is. And I have much deeper thoughts than most men in the first place, so how could she presume to know what was in my head? I had thoughts that were solely mine, just as I had certain activities that had nothing whatsoever to do with her. When she refused to accept that...Well, I was sorry to see her go. She was a bride I picked up while in the military, not officially a true wife, so when I was discharged from the Military Police and came back to the States she got lost in the shuffle. No tedious explanations necessary because there was no record of her and she went unrecorded and unmissed.

She is not unmissed by me, however. She was a good sport and good company until just before the end and I remember her fondly. Occasionally I will see a woman with cropped blonde hair and a teasing but determined look to her and I will think, with mixed delight, it's her, Michelle, she's somehow returned, she's back...but then, of course, I remember that she'll never be back, she's as gone as gone gets. At those times I will wonder if I did the right thing, if I could have managed our parting differently. Would I do it with less finality if I had it to do over? Could I have kept her in reserve, so to speak, in case I changed my mind? Ah, well, water under the bridge now. I did what I thought I had to do, and can any of us do better than that? Out of respect for what we once had together I was careful not to hurt her. I believe the only pain she felt was in the sudden realization that I had changed my opinion of our relationship.

But she was right, my next wife will owe her a lot. I call her my first wife because I plan to have another. Very soon.

I think nursie hopes it will be her.

Last week I happened to be heading up the stairs as nursie was coming down and we had the cheery little squeeze-by that she seems to like so much. I had my arms at my side, the alternative being to hold them over my head in the sign of surrender which seems to me would have embarrassed her, and as my hands innocently brushed her legs she leaned into me-or has she gained even more weight?-so that my fingers were pinioned against her thighs. She was carrying that enormous illustrated bible she uses to torment poor old dad with, reading out gibberish about the ancient Hebrews more or less at random and finding revealed truth in the doings of shepherds and goatherds and their wives. She held the book across her chest as she leaned into me which had the effect of pushing her massive bosom even more firmly against me. So there I was, captive as a mouse under a doormat, stuck in place by bible, breasts, stomach and thighs, mashed for all the world like a lover in a sandwich when she suddenly crooned, "Things are looking up."

I blinked. What on earth could she mean? I wriggled my fingers against her thighs, thinking I needed to restore circulation. She clamped her teeth on her lower lip and sucked in her breath-there was no chance to suck in her stomach, those days are long past. Good Lord, I thought, did she think it was intentional? Did she imagine I was trying to send a message? Did she imagine I was a staircase masher? A subway butt pincher?

I don't know what went through her mind, but ever since then she has taken to wearing scarves. To add a bit of color to offset the monotonous blue of her uniform, or to hide the wattles in her neck? And is that a little make-up I see? Some added purple darkness to her lashes, peculiar bronze patches on her cheeks as if she's been rubbing her face with brass? It even seems that her hair has changed. I can't say how, exactly, but something seems different. Has nursie been hying herself to the salon to beautify herself for me? I am not flattered, believe me. I'm only guessing at these transformations because it pains me to look her directly in the face and I do so only during our staircase encounters when she will breathe some inanity and I will try to keep the panic from my expression. Yesterday I tried to pass her with my arms crossed over my chest like a vertical corpse. Unfortunately, unavoidably, they brushed against her gargantuan breasts.

"We're coming along very nicely," she said with a cheeriness that made us both gasp.

"You're an angel," I said. (It's my duty to say such things. You have to keep the help happy.)

She made a semi-choking sound as if stifling a giggle.

I swear she's lying in wait for me, listening for my approach, because I never go on the stairs but what she is there, too. That stretches coincidence beyond the breaking point. When I go up, she comes down. When I decide to go back down, up she comes. I feel assaulted. I have a good mind to...well, deep breaths, think purifying thoughts. Practical nurses are hard to come by in Ashford. Waste not want not.

At first they called him "Mad Dog", titillated by their own courage in baiting him, growling and snarling derisively when he passed, but never face-to-face, never without the safety of a group for there remained the uncertain fear that he might indeed leap at them with sudden canine ferocity. It was respect of a sort, however distancing, but Patrick took no comfort from it. He was as bewildered as his classmates by what he had done but unlike his peers, he felt no grudging admiration for his savage act of self-defense. Without memory of it, he could not assume the swagger of threat that might have earned him a kind of positive regard from some of his classmates. Instead, he was simply a pariah. As time passed and the children came to realize that there was nothing to fear from this timorous, undersized boy and that his one act of viciousness was an unrepeatable aberration, his nickname changed and he became known as "Stink". They said it with impunity and without misgivings that he might react against them; initially he winced inwardly at the word as if he had been lashed but he took it in silence and did not protest, like a slave enduring random blows from his masters without complaint. He took it from them because they thought he deserved it-and because he loved them. The children were the substance of his world, more real, more embracing, more important to him than the turmoil of his home. He had no choice but to love them whether the love was returned or not because his peers were his life, and if they were unanimous in despising him, then they must have seen something horrible about himself that he could not. In time he came to accept their judgment; the opinion of his peers defined him for himself as well as for them. Like his father, they found him unworthy. He saw that he was doomed to live as an exile, somehow different from other people, a perpetual outsider. He must watch their lives from the periphery and live his own in the only place he could call his own-his mind.

He walked in shame, he lived in shame, shame followed him like a cloud long after the original source was forgotten, shame covered him like a suffocating, enervating cloak, in school, out of school, every place in life but one.

His mother.

Teena Hurley was a nervous woman by nature. Life had played a number of bad tricks on her and it had become her habit to proceed as if looking over her shoulder for the next cruel event creeping, or rushing up, behind her. The return of her husband from the hospital and his subsequent volatile and erratic behavior had done nothing to improve her frame of mind but the effects on her son were far more troubling. She watched with growing alarm as her sweet boy turned inward, pulling the corners of his mind to form a shell around himself. Like his father, Patrick could still be disarmingly charming at times but he smiled less often and retreated quickly into himself and stayed there for longer and longer periods. Once she felt that she knew his every thought but now he had withdrawn into a darkness of his own making. He was no longer a happy child, something had changed but he told her nothing, gave her no clues to his feelings. It rent her heart to see him in such pain but she could see no way to help him, no way to stop his father's punishments of the boy.

When she wasn't drinking, she was conscientious and primly efficient in the house, fearful of her husband's disapproval and determined to control what little she could in her life. She became a different person when she drank, which she had started to do shortly after her husband's return from the hospital. Alcohol soothed her nerves and she let herself fall into inebriation as though it were a cushioning wave of well-being. By the time Patrick returned from school each day she was already well on her way.

Patrick did not mind his mother's drinking. In the mornings she would worry about him, fluttering and fussing in a vain attempt to encourage him in his battle against the anxieties of his life which she only dimly understood; but in the afternoons she was all affectionate praise for her returning champion, her "wonderful little man". Before she slipped into total unconsciousness she would lavish him with watery sentiment, her lips warm and wet and lingering as she pressed her son against her soft, fragrant bosom, part child, part pet, part paramour.

Patrick loved cuddling against her until she ceased whispering sweet things to him and drifted into sleep but later, after he had carefully slipped from her inert arms he would stand next to the bed and look down at her, confused by his feelings. Her features were blurry as if seen through squinted eyes and her whole body looked somehow smudged, spreading and loose. Sometimes he would pull a blanket over her or even rearrange her limbs if they had fallen into odd angles. Sunk in drink, she was vulnerable before him, a doll without volition, without resistance; he could make of her what he would. She was so defenseless he felt embarrassed for her, and with the embarrassment came disdain. She was weak and he had to protect her because he was dominant over her. She was helpless, he was in control. He sensed a surge of mastery over the slumbering woman who moments ago had lavished him with her welcome attentions.

At those times he felt a radiance enter the room, seeping from her to himself. He understood this to be love. Patrick Hurley loved his mother.