Three
Wallace McFerguson tried sleeping on a bed of leaves
and pine needles in the woods behind the house and discovered the woods
infested with mosquitoes and other carnivorous bugs intent on eating him
alive. He returned to his room an hour or two before dawn covered with
welts, and awoke later in the morning to a soft hand caressing his
forehead.
While still cocooned in a very pleasant dream, the
hand belonged to the lovely Sasha Abdul. Gentle fingers drawn across his
brow drew him from the depths of sleep and he thought it more likely that
the hand belonged to the equally beautiful Sylvia Carleton-Abdul, Sasha's
mother, as he lay injured and unconscious at the foot of the toppled
sapling.
But he opened his eyes to bright sunlight
and the
familiar confines of his bedroom, and Aunt Bernice's worried face hovering
above him. "What did that wicked woman do to you, my poor boy?"
Wallace looked down at himself in horror. A
nocturnal hard-on strained the fabric of his briefs. He sat
up in alarm and stuffed his pillow into his lap.
Bernice beamed a benevolent smile, practiced at
refusing to acknowledge offensive bits of reality. "Such a handsome
boy. If only you would allow Brother Sebastian and I to counsel you on
the temptations of the flesh and help you follow in the footsteps of our Lord."
She leaned across his mussed bed, her eyes bright
with fervor. "Satan tempts us all, Wallace. Truly, he does. Only those
whose souls are already condemned to everlasting hellfire are free of his
vile offerings. Temptation is the hallmark of the godly."
Wallace leaped to his feet. He turned his back on
his aunt and pulled on his dew-dampened pants. He shoved his bare feet
into his tennis shoes and grabbed his comb and wallet from the dresser
before rushing from the room.
"Wallace, are you hurt?" Bernice called after him.
"You took a terrible fall last night!"
A terrible fall taken by a total fool.
"Wallace, where are you going?"
Nowhere, he decided. The incipient panic in his
Aunt's voice restrained him. If he ran away now, she'd panic and call the
police. "I'm just hungry is all," he called over his shoulder.
Breakfast was waiting for him downstairs. He sat at
the kitchen table and ate. Aunt Bernice prattled on about the evils of
foreign woman, the temptations of the flesh, and the wisdom of her only
ally in life, Brother Sebastian Grieg of the Willington Last Days of Our
Lord Penance Church. Wallace tolerated her lectures with as much
compassion as he could muster. She had been alone in the world for so
long, whose business was it if she had gotten a bit eccentric along the
way?
"Brother Sebastian told me that Mr. Nicholas is
looking for a boy to sweep the hardware store after hours. I asked that
he put in a good word for you."
Implying that idle hands were the devil's tools. Not
that Wallace enjoyed his idle days and sleepless nights worrying about
upcoming college. "I'll take it if I can get it," he assured her.
It hardly mattered at this late date. The fall
semester started in another two weeks, and he had his parent's trust fund
to see him through a degree in business administration, just as they had
suggested in their will. The future seemed secure, if a bit droll and
tarnished following their death.
For the immediate moment, his thoughts were still on
Sasha. For one night alone with Sasha and the opportunity to satisfy his
every adolescent fantasy, he'd give up the balance of his very life.
"Coming to church with me tonight?"
He glanced up at her from his plate of sunny side
down eggs and pork links, irritating by her mildly challenging tone of
voice. "I don't believe in that stuff, Aunt Bernice."
"But Wallace, the Bible says..."
Another particularly stern look stopped her. She sat
and primly folded her hands on the table surface. "I have been told that
I must be patient. If only your mother and father had set you on the path
to the Lord before..."
The sound of his fork striking the china plate
stopped her. His mother and father had died in a plane that had exploded
at thirty-six thousand feet somewhere over the Rocky Mountains. Five
years had passed since that terrible day. He could discuss the facts of
the incident calmly, but his tolerance of Bernice's criticism of his
upbringing was nil.
Bernice folded a napkin in her lap. "My, but it's a
pleasant day today. Would you mind picking up a few things at the store
while you're out and about?"
He picked up his fork and continued eating. "No
problem," he said, and Aunt Bernice knew better than to mope over her
transgression. Once, five years ago when he had been caught up in the
throes of grief, he had slapped Bernice, his mother's sister, for a
careless remark about his dead father. Afterwards, he had hid in the
woods for three long and cold February days wallowing in remorse. Three
days in the hospital recovering from exposure and frost bite taught him to
control both his grief and his temper. And Aunt Bernice had learned to
quit before she tested his new level of self-control.
"Good food," he said.
Bernice beamed. "The Lord doth provide."
She had a grocery list ready when he finished, and he
determined that everything would fit in the baskets he had fitted to the
sides of his old ten-speed bicycle. Rather than waste part of his trust
fund on a car, he had let Bernice save the money for her own living
expenses when he was gone
It would be over soon, the pennies saved and life
with Aunt Bernice in general. An entirely new existence awaited him at
college. He didn't much look forward to being thrown cold turkey into
complete independence. Neither could he endure the tension-laden
atmosphere of Aunt Bernice's anxiety much longer.
When he left for the store, he rode past Sasha's
house without risking a look. He had window-peeked enough and had been
caught at long last. For the rest of his life, he'd have to make do with
memories of Sasha tainted by guilt and humiliation. Sylvia and her
beautiful young daughter had tempted him beyond the capacity of any
nineteen-year-old to resist.
A rusty beige pickup parked out front reminded
Wallace that Sasha had a boyfriend to boot, a shaggy blonde bully named
Duke. Wallace looked about in alarm for the husky twenty-year-old,
assessing his chances of reaching the top of the street uninjured as nil
should Duke take notice of him from inside the house, particularly if
Sasha or her mother had tattled on him.
He tore up the short hill, turned onto the boulevard
and peddled furiously. His adrenaline level eased off a bit a block or
two away, but his heart sank in his chest when he heard the familiar roar
of the worn truck engine coming up from behind him. When he could see the
dented fenders in his rear view mirror, he pulled in between some parked
cars and slowed down. Hopefully, the young tyrant would drive on by and
leave him in peace.
No such luck. The truck stopped in a shriek of worn
brake linings.
"Duke, don't you dare!" Sasha cried out from behind
the dusty windshield. "I told you it was none of your business!"
Wallace raced away with the truck door slamming in
his ears and heard Duke's boots pounding the pavement. Given another few
seconds, he would have built up the speed to make a clean getaway. Shy of
that brief moment, Duke struck from behind.
Stunned by Duke's fist striking the side of his head,
Wallace lost control of the bike. The front tire struck the curb and
tossed him over the handlebars. He hit ground at an awkward angle.
Stunned by the impact, he was helpless when Duke gathered a fistful of his
shirt and dragged him to his feet. Wallace was swung bodily around and
slammed him against the trunk of a nearby tree.
Duke's face twisted with a sneer filled his field of
view. "Get an eyeful, pervert?"
"Duke!" Sasha screamed, "I said no!"
"Fucking creep."
A fist slammed into his gut with devastating impact.
Duke then threw him to the ground. Wallace looked up in time to see Duke
studying his fallen bicycle with a twisted grin.
"Not the bike!" he cried.
Duke kicked in the spokes of both wheels, then turned
back to the truck with amused satisfaction. Sasha began a screaming
tirade of verbal abuse and fought with the passenger door to let herself
out.
"Okay, so I'm not going to waste him!" Duke assured
the girl. "I just want to teach the creep a lesson!"
"But you had no right! Let me out of here this
instant!"
Wallace never saw the struggle that transpired in the
cab of the truck. Sasha apparently lost her bid for freedom. The rear
wheels burned rubber and he could hear her shrill protest for half a block
before the truck turned a corner and was gone.
Wallace dragged himself to the curb and took a seat.
He looked about to see who had witnessed his humiliation. None of the
passing traffic slowed to lend aid, so he dipped his head and let a few
tears spill to the ground.
Sasha had been enraged by Duke's behavior. She
wasn't at all afraid of the bastard. His own cowardice made his disgrace
that much more painful.
Sasha and Duke made a good couple, self-confident and
good-looking with families that had the money to buy luxuries that they
took for granted and chalked up to their own personal genius, cars and
clothes and the gobs of unthinking arrogance that went with it.
Wallace climbed to his feet and brushed himself off.
The spill on the bike had hurt worse than the punch to the gut, but the
ruined wheels hurt worse of all. He stood over the battered bicycle
fighting back his tears.
Why was he so different from Duke and his friends?
He had seen them passing condoms around like candy at school. They
probably had all the sex they wanted. How long had it been since any of
them had bothered peeking in windows, or jacking off behind locked
bathroom doors in the middle of the night?
Wallace wheeled the crippled bike back home, hiding
it in the trees around back. Then he walked to the store. When he
returned to the house with two bags of groceries an hour later, he could
hear Bernice praying behind the closet door in her bedroom. Personally,
he could thank God for Brother Sebastian who seemed content to allow him
to claim himself an agnostic. According to Brother Sebastian Grieg,
agnostics were potential believers, and Bernice needed to learn patience
if she hoped to save the soul of her wayward nephew.
Wallace put the groceries away in the kitchen and
went out the back door to spend some time alone in the woods. He wended
his way deep into the woods behind the house to the magical grotto where
he had played for so many summers of his younger years.
Sunlight sparkled through the dense canopy of oaks.
Countless little spotlights shone down into the gloom and illuminated
carpets of ferns and mushrooms and tiny blue flowers. Slugs and toads and
countless species of spiders and beetles with iridescent carapaces
inhabited the exotic flora. He sat on a ledge of shale overlooking its
sparkling beauty. This was his favorite place in the world. Here, he was
confident that whatever God might exist knew what he was doing after all.
He spotted a mushroom just below his position.
Eat me, it read on its pinkish surface. Alice in Wonderland, he
thought to himself. Wouldn't it be great? He dropped down to the ground
and reached for the mutant fungi, chuckling in nervous amusement.
Gooseflesh rippled across his
back. Eat me, it said, and calling to him as it did
from the mysterious depth of nature, it was indeed the commanding voice of
an unknown God.
