Bad Men

Richie appeared in the doorway, grinning. Twenty-five, and with a mental age of maybe eight. He liked to roam the island, driving his mother to distraction, but nothing had ever happened to him, and, Joe suspected, nothing ever would. Richie probably knew the island better than almost anybody, and it held no terrors for him. During the warm summer months, he even occasionally slept out beneath the stars. Nobody bothered him much, except maybe the local smart-asses when they’d had a drink or two and were trying to impress their girls.

“Hello, Joe Dupree,” said Richie. “How are you?”

“I’m good, thanks. Richie, I told you before about keeping out of these towers.”

The grin on the face of the boy-man never faded.

“I know, Joe Dupree. Stay out of the towers. I know.”

“Yeah, well if you know, then what were you doing in there?”

“It was open, Joe Dupree. The tower was open. I went in to take a look. I like looking.”

Dupree knelt down and examined the chain. The padlock was open, but when he tested the lock by trying to close it, it wouldn’t catch, instead sliding in and out of the hole with a soft click.

“And you didn’t do this?”

“No, Joe Dupree. It was open. I went in to take a look.”

He would have to come back out here with a new lock, Dupree figured. The kids would probably just break it again, but he had to make the effort. He closed the tower door, then wrapped the chain around the handle to give the impression that it was locked. It would have to do, for now.

“Come on, Richie. I’ll give you a ride home.”

He handed the Maglite to the handicapped man and watched with a smile as he shined the light upon the trees and the top of the tower.

“Light,” said Ritchie. “I’m making lights, like the others.”

Dupree stopped.

“What others, Ritchie?”

Richie looked at him, and grinned.

“The others, in the woods.”

Danny grabbed a can of soda from the refrigerator and wandered down to his mother’s bedroom. Pieces of paper lay spread out on the bed before her, as she kneeled on the carpet and tried to sort through them. She had that expression on her face, the one she got when they went over to Portland on the ferry and she had to go into the bank or the car place.

“You okay, honey?” she asked when she noticed him standing beside her.

He nodded.

She sat back on her heels and looked at him seriously.

“Joe had to do what he did, you know? It was the kindest thing for that gull.”

Danny didn’t respond, but his face darkened slightly.

“I’m heading over to Jack’s house,” he said.

He saw the scowl start to form, and his face grew darker still.

“What?” he said.

“That old man-,” she began, but he cut her off.

“He’s my friend.”

“Danny, I know that, but he…”

She trailed off as she tried to find the right words.

“He drinks,” she finished lamely. “You know, too much, sometimes.”

“Not around me.”

They had argued about this before, ever since Jack had fallen down and cut his head on the edge of the table and Danny had come running for her, the old man’s blood on his hands and shirt. His mother had thought that he had injured himself, and her relief when she discovered the truth quickly transformed into anger at the old man for putting her through such a shock, however briefly. Joe had come along and administered a little first aid, then spent a long time talking to Jack out on the old man’s porch, and since then Jack had been a lot more careful. If he drank now, he drank in the evenings. He was also turning out paintings with a vengeance, though Marianne didn’t think much of his art.

“He just paints the same view, over and over,” she said to her son shortly after she and Danny had visited the old man for the first time, paying a neighborly call with cookies.

“It’s not the same view,” the boy protested. “It’s different every time.”

But she had merely glanced at the small watercolor that the old man had presented to the boy on their departure, the rocks on either side of the inlet a bluish gray, the sea a dark, threatening green. It was an ugly picture, she thought. All of the old man’s pictures were ugly. It was as if he were unable to perceive anything but the most mundane, dreary aspects of the landscape before him. There were no people. Hell, he couldn’t even paint birds or clouds, or if he could, he sure never bothered to place them in his pictures. Grays and greens and washed-out blues, that seemed to be the sum total of shades on his palette.

But the boy had placed the painting above his bed and was prouder of it than any of the dozens of other posters and cards and notes that obscured the walls, even prouder of it than he was of his own work, which his mother thought was far better than anything the old drunk was ever likely to produce. Marianne was never going to say that to Jack’s face, though. The old painter might have his flaws, but an absence of generosity was not one of them. The house in which they now lived was rented from him and even by island standards he had asked little for it. She had that much for which to be grateful to him.

“Please, Mom,” said Danny.