The Gray House

So this one time Sphinx shows up, and he’s not alone. Climbs out of the car, cracks open the rear door, and pulls out this scarecrow. Thin as a rail, and all covered in some kind of nasty rash. All of ours already had the chickenpox and all that, so we don’t sweat it, make it look like we don’t notice even. And it’s clear as day who he looks like. Makes you feel uneasy, like you saw someone carrying a photograph of his late wife with him everywhere. You don’t exactly come out and say it, right? So we don’t. But the kids get to him right away, because he looks such a city slicker in his white sneakers and his stickered shirt, they can’t help themselves. So they gather around and start discussing his clothes, his rash, how he can’t even move he’s so scared. Teasing him.

But not that hard, you know. I decide to knock some sense into them, because he’s a guest and that’s not the way to treat guests, and I take a step toward them, and then someone, I guess it was Red’s youngest, pulls at his sleeve. And that’s when it hit the fan.

Horse

He lost his dark glasses in the melee, and then it was obvious. To anyone. I mean, anyone who’d ever seen Blind. At least that’s what I thought. I was wrong. Termite, for example, did not get it.

“Oh, look!” he said. “Blind’s little boy! Would you look at that, a perfect likeness!”

I wasn’t going to argue with him. Heredity is now one of his favorite topics. How nurture’s got nothing on nature.

The kids were so upset when they saw they were picking on an unsighted that we didn’t even need to tell them off.

But Sphinx took his boy behind the barn and gave him a good scolding. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t help it and peeked a bit, to see what was up. And I wasn’t alone. Red got there first. So we see Sphinx blabbing his head off, and the kid just stands there, calm as could be. Maybe listening, maybe not, no way to tell.

“Poor Sphinx,” I whisper to Red.

“Depends on the point of view,” Red shoots back. “Didn’t you get lectured about the proper way to behave when you were a kid? Didn’t that make you want to throw up?”

“What would you have done in Sphinx’s place?”

“Told him that it was a brave thing to do,” Red says without pausing even for a second. “And to keep standing up for himself.”

“What? You mean, him?” I say, aghast. “Tell him to keep it up? This guy here?”

Red stares at me strange like. And asks if I am really as stupid as I look.

What do you say when someone insults you to your face? I turned around and left.

Red

After we packed the goons off to bed, Horse got off the phone and I stopped fretting about the size of the long-distance bill that was bound to arrive after his intimate chat with Lary, that is, after things calmed down a bit and Sphinx and I were the only ones left out on the deck, I asked him where he’d dug up that boy.

“Where he no longer is,” he said, in the best tradition of the Fourth.

“Thank you for that informative answer,” I said. “What are you trying to prove by this, and to whom? That’s what I’d like to know.”

We were drinking hard cider, legs up on the railing. We didn’t turn the lights on, so that the nightlife wouldn’t get any ideas.

“All I want is to undo some mistakes made by one good man,” he said.

It sounded . . . normal. Like something that happens. Something that we all should be doing from time to time. Then he said that I would’ve done the same thing. If I’d had that chance.

When he said that, I had to work hard to bring my imagination to heel. Because why not? I’ve got four daughters, three of them gingers, and I know which one I love just a little bit more, and why. Even though the resemblance is mostly in my head.

“Maybe,” I said. “But this is different.”

He shrugged. I couldn’t say for certain in the dark, but I think he was smiling.

“To each his own,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “But to each not the same acquaintances.”

He flinched and spilled his cider.

“Shhh,” I said. “I didn’t say I blamed you. That was just envy, pure and simple. A very common phenomenon.”

We sat there silently for a while, finished what was left in the bottles, and I felt a sinister prophecy coming up.

“You’re going to catch a lot of grief with this guy.”

“I know,” he said. “I know that. It’s just that I wanted him to learn to love this world. Even a little. As much as I could teach him to.”

I guess it was cruel of me, because now he couldn’t have changed anything even if he wanted to.

“He will learn to love you,” I said. “And for him you are going to be the whole damn world.”

He didn’t say anything for so long that I realized he was afraid of the same thing. But he’s a stubborn guy, and it was clear he wasn’t going to back down. He’ll prove his point, to someone who would never know about it, or die trying. Funny, isn’t it.

I didn’t even ask about the rash on the boy. I got it. The House put its mark on him. In advance, in anticipation of losing him and before he could end up there. I didn’t tell Sphinx that.