The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

Working with those Conquest boys gave me a chance to do more good than I ever did filing tax returns and setting up tax-dodge corporations in Delaware. But that wasn’t why I was doing it, only a side effect. Sometimes, Mr Bradley, I’d take one of my special boys fishing out to Dixon Creek, or to the big river, on the lower city bridge. I was fishing, too, but not for trout or carp. For a long time I didn’t feel a single nibble on my line. Then along came Ronald Gibson.

Ronnie was fifteen but looked younger. He was blind in one eye, so he couldn’t play baseball or football, but he was a whiz at chess and all the other board games the boys played on rainy days. No one bullied him; he was sort of the group mascot. His father walked out on the family when he was nine or so, and he was starved for male attention. Pretty soon he was coming to me with all his problems. The main one, of course, was that bad eye. It was a congenital defect called a keratoconus – a misshapen cornea. A doctor told his mother it could be fixed with a corneal transplant, but it would be expensive, and his moms couldn’t afford anything like that.

I went to Father Patrick, and between us we ran half a dozen fundraisers called Fresh Sight for Ronnie. We even got on TV – the local news on Channel 4. There was one shot of Ronnie and me walking in Barnum Park with my arm around his thin shoulders. Carla sniffed when she saw it. If you aren’t queer for them, she said, people will say you are when they see that.

I didn’t care what people said, because not long after that news report, I got the first tug on my line. Right in the middle of my head. It was the bad little kid. I’d finally caught his attention. I could feel him.

Ronnie had the surgery. He didn’t get all the sight back in his bad eye, but he got most of it. For the first year afterward, he was supposed to wear special glasses that got dark in bright sunshine, but he didn’t mind that; he said they made him look sort of cool.

Not too long after the operation, he and his mother came to see me one afternoon after school in the little Conquest office in the basement of St Andrew’s. She said, If there’s ever anything we can do to pay you back, Mr Hallas, all you have to do is ask.

I told them that wasn’t necessary, it had been my pleasure. Then I pretended to get an idea.

There might be something, I said. Just a little thing.

What is it, Mr H? Ronnie asked.

I said, One day last month I parked behind the church, and was halfway down the stairs when I remembered I hadn’t locked up my car. I went back and saw a kid inside it, rummaging around. I shouted at him and he was out like a shot with my little change box, the one I keep in the glove compartment for tolls. I chased him, but he was too fast for me.

All I want, I told Ronnie and his moms, is to find him and talk to him. Tell him what I tell all you boys – stealing’s the wrong start in life.

Ronnie asked me what he looked like.

Short and kind of pudgy, I said. Bright orange hair, a real carrottop. When I saw him, he was wearing gray shorts and a green sweater with stripes the same color as his hair.

Mrs Gibson said, Oh my goodness. Was he wearing a little hat with a propeller on top?

Why, yes, I said, keeping my voice nice and steady. Now that you mention it, I believe he was.

I’ve seen him across the street, she said. I thought he moved into one of the projects over there.

What about you, Ronnie? I asked.

Nope, he said. Never seen him.

Well, if you do, don’t say anything to him. Just come and get me. Will you do that?

He said he would, and I was satisfied. Because I knew the bad kid was back, and I knew I’d be around when he made his move. He’d want me to be around, because that was the whole point. I was the one he wanted to hurt. All the others – Marlee, Vicky, my father, Mama Nonie – were just collateral damage.

A week went past, then two. I was beginning to think the kid had sensed what I was planning. Then one day – the day, Mr Bradley – one of the boys ran into the playground behind the church, where I was helping a bunch of them set up the volleyball net.

A kid knocked Ronnie down and stoled his glasses! this boy shouted. Then he ran off into the park! Ronnie’s chasing him!

I didn’t wait, just grabbed up my gym bag – I took it everywhere with me during the years when I had special boys – and ran through the gate into Barnum Park. I knew it wasn’t the bad little kid who stole Ronnie’s glasses; that wasn’t his style. The glasses stealer would be as ordinary as the M-80 thrower, and just as sorry after whatever the bad little kid was planning played out. If I let it play out.

Ronnie wasn’t an athletic boy, and he couldn’t run fast. The glasses-stealing boy must have seen that, because he pulled up short on the far side of the park, waving them over his head and shouting, Come and get em, Ray Charles! Come and get em, Stevie Wonder!