The Gray House

They lived in a room with shelves and shelves of toys, the boy and the man. The boy slept on the sofa, hugging a stuffed crocodile; the man, on a camp bed he had set up next to it. When he was alone, the boy would go out on the balcony, lie on an air mattress, and look down through the railing at the boys playing. He would sometimes stand up so they could see him too. The boys would raise their heads and smile at him. But they never asked him to join them down there. He was secretly hoping for the invitation, but it never came. Disappointed, he’d lie back again and look down from under the brim of a straw hat, taking in the high voices from below. Sometimes he’d close his eyes and imagine himself dozing off on a beach, lulled by the soft swishing of the surf. The boys’ voices morphed into seagull cries. The sun was turning his legs brown. The idleness bored him.

In the evenings they would sit on the carpet, the boy and the blue-eyed man whose name was Elk, sit and listen to music and talk. They had a creaking record player and records in tattered sleeves, and the boy would study the sleeves like paintings, trying to match the images on them to the music they contained. He was never able to. The summer nights walked in through the open window. They didn’t turn on the lights so as not to attract mosquitoes. Once the boy saw what looked like a rag cross the deep blue velvet of the sky. It turned out to be a bat, a mouse skeleton in a torn cape. After that he would always position himself so he could see the sky from where he was sitting.

“Why do you call yourself Elk?” the boy asked.

He was thinking of those elk who roamed the forests, with their horns lacy like oak leaves. And of deer, who were relatives to the elk but had very different horns. He’d thought about that for a long time before mustering enough courage to ask.

“It’s my nick,” Elk explained. “A nickname. Everyone who lives in the House has a nick, that’s just the way it is here.”

“I live here too now, do I have one?”

“Not yet. But you will. When they all come back and you move to one of the dorms, you’ll get a nick.”

“What will it be?”

“I don’t know. A good one, I hope. If you’re lucky.”

The boy thought about possible names for himself but couldn’t come up with anything. It all rested with them, those who were coming back. He wanted them to come back sooner.

“Why aren’t they inviting me?” the boy asked. “Do they think I can’t play with them? Or is it that they don’t like me?”

“No,” Elk said. “You’re just new in the House. They need some time to get used to you being here. This always happens at first. Have patience.”

“How much time?” the boy asked.

“Looks like you’re really bored,” Elk said.

The next day, when Elk came, he was not alone. With him was another boy, who never went out into the yard and had never before shown himself.

“I brought you a friend,” Elk said. “He is going to live here with you, so you are not alone anymore. This is Blind. You two can do whatever you want—play, go crazy, break furniture. Just try not to fight and not to complain to me about each other. The room is all yours.”

Blind never played with him, because he didn’t know how. He did attend to the boy dutifully: woke him up in the morning, washed his face, combed his hair. Listened to his stories, almost never saying anything back in reply, and shadowed his every step. Not because he wanted to. He assumed that this was what Elk wanted of him. Elk’s wishes were his command. Elk had only to ask, and he would have jumped off the balcony. Or the roof. Or pushed someone else off it. The armless boy was afraid of that. Elk was much more afraid. Blind was already grown up inside. A little grown-up hermit. He had long hair and a frog-like mouth always covered in red sores. He was pale as a ghost and extremely thin. He was nine. Elk was his god.