Rathalla Review Spring 16

It was like Jess and Chad were having their own conversation. So many couples seemed to form a shell.

Maybe I was going to crack.

“I don’t know if drugs were the problem for Alecia,” I said. “They might have been the symptoms. I think a demon got her.”

“Apparently,” Jessica agreed, but she had no idea what I was talking about.

We had to leave for the funeral in a few minutes, and I definitely wasn’t going to bring up the Pervert.

The same inglorious summer as the antique shop sneak, I was out riding my bike alone, something I often did when I wanted to think. The long empty roads around Clayton wound up and down the rolling green hills. I pedaled hard up the hills, thighs burning, teeth clenched, then cruised down, exhilarated, wild, gliding to a gentle stop.

Since peering into the abyss of the Book, sex had been on my mind. In school they had taught us the nuts and bolts, so to speak, in a grossly selective, Christian-flavored affront to sexual education that left most of us (I imagine) with more questions about sex than answers. My peek at the Book told me there were questions far beyond the scope of sex ed. I had developed a crush on a boy that summer, Tom Higgins, a kid who threw pebbles at younger kids on the playground. And that was the summer of the Pervert.

Everyone in Clayton was in a thinly veiled huff about Albert French, who had inherited his deceased parents’ dilapidated farmhouse out on the Old Winthrop Road. I don’t know how the grim truth of Albert’s past first leaked, but I remember my mother coming home from a PTA meeting in a steely-eyed tizzy, her limbs flailing with more angry conviction than usual. “Well, we have a child molester living in Clayton,” she told my father. The rumor mill churned out the rest. He had exposed himself, he had touched a girl, he had touched a boy, he had done time, he had not done time, he had been institutionalized, and he was on parole. Small towns contained no shortage of speculation about matters sordid and unknown.

None of us kids had ever seen the Pervert. No one knew what he looked like. But we kept our eyes peeled around town. And we knew where he lived.

I was still on my invincible girl streak. My older sister Corey was in eighth grade, and had dated two boys, and so knew everything about boys, and talked incessantly about her boyfriends. She literally ran to answer the phone when it rang. And I went for bike rides thinking about the penises I had glimpsed in the Book, my heart clenched in a tight, nervous fist. The penises had scared me, especially in the image where the woman was gleefully gripping two of them, but they also excited me, and I desperately wanted to see one, if only to wipe that know-it-all grin off my sister’s face.

To make matters worse, Jess had already seen a penis, three weeks earlier, at a birthday pool party I had missed because I was grounded for sneaking into the antique shop. Bobby Callahan took down his bathing suit behind the pool when the other kids were swarming the birthday cake, and since then Jess’ mischievous grin lingered a little too excruciatingly long when she smiled at me.

I sort of knew what I was doing when I pedaled my bike up the Old Winthrop Road, and I sort of had no fucking clue. The Pervert lived on the downslope of a hill, a small house set back from the road. It badly needed a paint job. I imagined myself the very picture of bravery as I prepared to ride by, the little girl defying the Pervert. Jess would not have dared ride her bike up the Old Winthrop Road—and chicken-hearted Little Lecie? Forget about it.

I lost my nerve as I cruised down the hill, just before I passed the crooked mailbox. Panic seized my chest and I pedaled hard in low gear, tripping up my feet. The handlebars swerved in my sweaty grip and I veered into the ditch, held on as I hit the embankment, but lost the bike as I vaulted over the stone wall. I may have blacked out for a split-second, and I remember feeling grateful that on that occasion I was wearing a helmet. Both my knees were torn and bleeding. I don’t know how long I sat in the tall grass, not crying but more like scolding myself.

“Looks like you took a spill.”

I was more embarrassed than scared as I looked up. He stood about ten feet away, arms crossed, wearing grass-stained jeans, a flannel shirt, unlaced boots. I thought the boots being unlaced was strange.

“Come on inside, I’ll fix you up,” he said.

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