Embracing Darkness (57 page)

For our part we all stayed away from the stranger after we saw what he had done to little Ziggy. If he was that mean to a five-year-old, we didn’t want to think of what he could do to children our age. Our first real skirmish with Jack White came relatively early during his tenure at St. Andrew’s. It all started because he had our only baseball and had been bouncing it against the side of the Benson house. Gabe, Dylan, and Charlie had come outside with General Lee to play a game of Monkey in the Middle but couldn’t find the ball, at least not until they heard it thumping against the Benson house. The three ran over and told the stranger to stop, citing Sister’s bedridden state.

“Get lost,” he said to them.

“But mister,” Charlie said innocently. “Sis is sick; she’s not feeling good at all.”

“Yeah,” Dylan agreed, nodding. “We were told to keep real quiet. And besides, we want our baseball.”

“YOU’RE ALL LITTLE PIGGIES!” shouted the man before again launching into his favorite ditty with a pronounced southern accent…

Here they are, they’re big fat piggies, shittin’ out their brains! Hear them fartin’, poopin’, crappin’, shittin’ out again! Pissin’ on themselves, just watch it happen!

General Lee, who always barked at the man more than he barked at anyone else, had to be held back by all three the boys while the man taunted them.

He stopped singing and smiled. “Here fellas. You want your ball?” He extended it to Charlie.

As Charlie approached to take the ball, White pulled it away, kicked Charlie in the testicles, and threw the ball far beyond the maple. When Charlie collapsed near the stranger’s feet, succumbing to the immense pain and burying his face in the grass, General Lee broke free of Dylan’s grip and charged the man, who booted the dog hard in the side. General Lee yelped loudly and fell not far from where Charlie lay.

Dylan and Gabe lunged at the man, screaming incoherent things, while Charlie clutched his crotch, fighting off waves of gut-wrenching nausea. Meanwhile the stranger just giggled. “C’mon, little piggies,” he growled, holding them back with the heels of his hands pressed against their foreheads as they swung into empty air, missing him by several inches. “You can’t hurt me, you piggly wigglies! You’ll get yours, I promise. No one touches me. You’ll be sorry if you touch me, piggies!”

Just then Theo came running out of the rectory. He’d been up in his room, which faced the Benson house, and he’d heard the baseball’s thumping. He also had seen Charlie, Gabe, and Dylan approach the man, although he couldn’t hear what they were saying. Theo had observed, however, that Gabe and Dylan were attacking Jack White, who was taunting and laughing at them. Both boys were finally able to strike a weak blow or two at White’s firm stomach. “Oh, you’re in trouble now, you little assholes. No one touches me.” said Jack White, and paused to guffaw. “You just wait.”

When Theo intervened, pulling Dylan and Gabe away, the man’s eyes lit up in a fury. The stranger pulled his hand back in a fist and punched Gabe in the mouth. When Gabe fell hard to the ground and saw the blood streaming from his jaw, the man merely laughed.

“Hey!” yelled Theo. “He’th only a boy.”

The stranger’s eyes were still wide and angry. “Oh, ith that tho?” Jack White said, mocking Theo’s lisp.

Theo overlooked the insult. “Yeth, that’th tho,” he said. “I’m not afraid of you, mithter.”

The stranger’s eyes narrowed as he walked slowly over to Theo and took hold of his arm. “You should be afraid of me, piggy,” he whispered to Theo.

“Well, I’m not,” Theo said bravely, although the stranger could hear a tremor in the boy’s voice.

“Then you’re even stupider than that lisp of yours, pig shit.”

“I-I’ll tell Father Fin,” Theo said, now clearly frightened as the man’s grasp around his arm tightened like a blood-pressure cuff.

“You do that, piggy, and I’ll slash all the throats of all the piggies in their sleep! I’ll start with the littlest piggy.”

“Thiggy?” Theo said, now on the verge of tears, his chest beginning to heave.

“Yes,” the stranger whispered. “Ziggy the Piggy. I’ll kill
him
first. Then I’ll go into all your rooms and do the same. But
you
, I think, I’ll kill last. And do you know why that is, pig shit?”

Theo didn’t answer. He just stood frozen with absolute terror in his eyes, which were now pooling up with tears. The stranger’s yellow eyes were so close to his own that they frightened Theo to the point of wetting himself. The boy moaned from the painful hold that Jack White had on his arm.

“Because then I could show what
you
made me do. If you tell Father Fuck what I did, he’ll send me packing, but that won’t be the end of me. No sir!”

Amid all his horror Theo was still coherent enough to notice that the man’s accent was different than it had been before. He now sounded like Sister Ignatius when she would mimic a Confederate soldier during her lesson on the Civil War.

“I’ll come back in the dead of night, little piggy,” the stranger continued. “I’ll take my switchblade that I keep right here in my back pocket, and I’ll use it to slit every throat on this goddamn hill. I’ll even kill the dog.”

Theo squeezed his eyes shut to hold back the tears that were already dripping down his face while down his legs ran thin streams of warm piss.

“What’s going on here?” a voice in the distance called. Zachary Black didn’t move an inch. It was Father Poole.

The man turned quickly back to Theo, whose eyes were focused on the approaching priest. “Look at me,” his assailant growled, stepping in front of Father Poole’s view of Theo so that he couldn’t see Jack White grab Theo by the collar. The stranger pressed his knuckles hard up against the boy’s Adam’s apple. “You remember what I said. You let me do all the talking. And don’t say a word unless it’s to agree with what I say. You understand me?”

Theo nodded anxiously so that the man would release his grip, just in time for Theo to intercept a geyser of vomit that had rushed up his throat.

The stranger let go of Theo’s shirt just as the two heard Father Poole yell, “What in the name of heaven happened to
you
, Gabriel Sparks?”

Zachary Black and Theo walked back toward the three other boys as Father Poole knelt by Gabe and Dylan.

“What happened, Gabe?” Father Poole asked again, dabbing the boy’s bleeding lip with two embroidered handkerchiefs.

Before either Gabe or Dylan could reply, Theo spoke. “We were playing catch, and… and Dylan pitched the ball to Gabe and hit him right in the mouth.” Theo glanced up at the stranger for a split second as if to check for approval of what he’d just said.

Dylan and Gabe looked bemused. They tried to contradict Theo’s explanation, but as they were about to speak Father Poole turned to Charlie. The boy was lying on the ground, still holding his crotch. Phineas noticed the tears on Charlie’s cheeks.

“And what happened to Charlie Ryder?” the priest asked.

Theo was about to answer, but this time Jack White spoke first. “It was just the craziest thing you ever did see a ball do, Father Fin,” he said in a southern drawl. “I pitched the ball to Charlie here, and it curved down. You know how baseballs sometimes do? It cracked the little bugger right in the nuts!”

White began to laugh, but Father Poole didn’t find it funny at all. He paid no heed to the man’s cackling and walked over to Charlie, whose grip tightened on his crotch as if he were afraid that Father Poole was about to perform testicular surgery on him.

“It’s alright, Charlie,” Father Poole said as he tried to pry Charlie’s hands away. “You know that I only want to help. Is it that bad?”

Charlie squeezed his eyes shut and began to nod his head in answer to the priest’s question.

“Alright, boys. I think you’ve had enough play for one day. Theo, why don’t you take the General for a walk. Gabe, go up with Dylan and Charlie to your rooms and change.”

Charlie got up with the help of Father Poole, then joined Gabe and Dylan as they walked back to the rectory. Father Poole took a clean area of his handkerchief and began rubbing Gabe’s blood off his hands. At that moment, instinctively knowing that he was being watched, the stranger slowly turned in Theo’s direction and grinned.

“C’mon, boy,” Theo said in a low voice, tugging at the dog’s collar.

“Didn’t you find it funny?” Dylan asked his two injured brothers.

Both Gabe and Charlie appeared ready to give Dylan a dose of the beating they’d endured and from which Dylan had been lucky enough to escape unscathed.

“What?” Gabe said angrily, his voice muffled by one of Father Poole’s handkerchiefs pressed firmly against his mouth.

“The man,” replied Dylan. “He spoke funny.”

Gabe and Charlie exchanged glances. “Yeah,” Charlie said in a shaky voice, “but so what? You gonna go up to him and tell him he was talkin’ funny?”

“That’s just it,” added Dylan. “Father Fin’s not afraid of this guy, and
he
didn’t say anything either.”

I think it’s safe to assume now, after the incident involving the baseball, that, if Father Poole had been told by Jack White himself that he was really Zachary Black, it wouldn’t have made any difference. The priest couldn’t recognize a potentially dangerous man who was once an animal-murdering, lying, and conniving child. All he saw was a man much like the boy who got away from him, the one he believed that he had failed.

Billy Norwin and Jessie lingered patiently atop the maple, waiting for the stranger to go back up to his room in the rectory. He had been allotted a tiny room on the second floor opposite the boys’ rooms. In fact, it had once served as Sister Ignatius’s paint room, a place where she’d once caught Zachary Black sleeping.

Billy breathed a sigh of relief, though not loud enough for Jessie to notice, as Jack White finished his apple, tossed the core as far as he could past the maple, and went back around to the front of the rectory.

Jessie was almost sorry to see him go. Although she’d never admit it to Billy, something about the stranger had an almost hypnotic effect on her. Possibly it was the confidence with which he carried himself. There was something forebidding and mysterious about him. It was the same thing the rest of us felt, although not with the same attraction as Jessie. Whatever it was, for Jessie it was thrilling.

The two quickly climbed out of the tree and stole back to the Benson house. Because the front door was locked, Jessie was forced to climb back up the lattice with Billy Norwin behind her. Halfway up, as she turned slightly, her left hand lost its grip. Jessie screamed the instant she realized that she was going to fall. Billy reacted promptly, grabbing her robe, but her weight and momentum were too great for the small piece of wood to which he was clinging. The two fell together onto the grass.

All the commotion roused General Lee from his sleep. Billy and Jessie surveyed themselves, looking for cuts, tears in their clothing, or more serious damage such as broken bones, but they seemed fine albeit a little shaken. As General Lee’s barking grew louder, they heard him running anxiously down the stairs.

Jessie ran up the porch stairs to the side panel of glass beside the front door so that General Lee might see her. Still his barking continued. When she thumped gently on the glass, the yelping ceased momentarily, and his face appeared through the thin lace curtain that covered the glass pane. “General, it’s just me,” Jessie whispered. “I want you to keep real quiet. Sis is upstairs, probably still sleeping, and I don’t want you to… .”

A voice interrupted her from behind them: “Don’t want him to do what?” It was the man they’d come to know as Jack White.

Upon hearing his voice, Jessie jumped up and spun around. Billy was equally startled, although he only turned to face the stranger and said nothing.

“What are you two doing?” the man asked. His accent was back to its New England version.

Jessie walked to Billy’s side and took her beau’s hand in hers, though her wrist trembled. She was captivated by the stranger’s striking features, but his eyes were so troubling to her that she could never look straight at him for too long. When she did, she concentrated on his nose, mouth, and perfect teeth. His eyes caused an unease in her that made Jessie’s heart pump as fast as it would have had she run up and down Holly Hill six times.

As Jessie and Billy observed the man, she thought of how a short while ago they were ensconced in the maple. There, while in Billy Norwin’s arms, she felt safe from the stranger. Now, frozen on the Benson porch, she couldn’t wait to be rid of the man. As he stood before her, she felt as vulnerable as she had ever felt in her entire life. To Jessie, Jack White ignited an erotic spark in her, but it was as if the cost would be a high degree of fear and uncertainty.

She tightened her grip on Billy’s hand as Jack White spoke. “I asked you two a question. And seeing as how I’m the adult and you are children, I believe it’s only proper for you two to answer to me.”

Jessie was about to speak, but Billy interrupted her. “Never you mind what we’re doing. This has nothing to do with you, mister. Just take yourself back over to the rectory where you belong and leave us alone.”

The stranger’s face revealed no expression. He simply continued to stare at them without so much as a twitch of his mouth or a blink of his eyes.

Billy stared back the same way, but after twenty seconds his eyes began to burn. The stranger didn’t blink once, even after Billy had retreated a step. Within seconds the stranger began to walk up to them. He climbed the first step slowly, then the second. The two backed up. They could hear General Lee start to bark wildly again as he took note of the approaching stranger.

“I don’t like people staring at me, boy. And
you
, missy! You shut that dog up,” the man said in a southern drawl, “or I’ll rip his lower jaw right off his head.”

Billy jumped in front of Jessie as Jack White came within almost three feet of them. “Aren’t you a little too old to be picking on young kids and old dogs?” Billy said bravely.

“Why,” the stranger began, “I was just kidding with you all. Shit! Can’t a fella have any fun around here? You two are easy prey for any guy with a sense of humor, that’s for sure.”