An Online Short Story

                                     DOWN BY THE RIVERSIDE

                                                                          by

                                                               Billie Sue Mosiman

Copyright @1994 by Billie Sue Mosiman

First published in SOUTH FROM MIDNIGHT, Southern Fried Press, edited by Richard Gilliam, Martin H. Greenberg, Thomas R. Hanlon

More than anything in all the world, Jeb Martin missed his wife Lily Ree. He wondered idly if he'd get to see her again. If the pneumonia she caught had been seen about in time, she might still be alive and he wouldn't have to be wondering such things. That's what the doc said when Lily Ree lay dying. He scowled hard at Jeb, told him he waited too long, blaming him for being poor and ignorant, things he had no control over. But then Jeb came to realize the older he got that a person didn't have much control over anything anyway. Why, look at Baby Boy. If he and Lily Ree had known what kind of child they would have, they'd never have tried for a family.

Not that Jeb didn't love Baby Boy, he loved him all right, the way somebody loves a defenseless puppy or a newborn calf, mainly because little live things were so innocent and needed looking after. But when truth was spoke it had to be said that Baby Boy was a real heavy burden, heavier as the years passed and Jeb aged, heavier than being left alone wifeless. Here Baby Boy was forty-four years old and no older than six in his mind. He had to be watched as closely as a snake in a hen house. It amazed Jeb what all Baby Boy could get up to when left to his own devices.

"Pop, where's them cookies? The chocolate ones you got from the store?"

Jeb set down the front legs of the chair he had leaning against the front porch wall. The thump of wood against wood echoed like gunshot across the river. He expected Baby Boy had pulled out all the coffee cans in the kitchen looking. He had surely made more messes that would have to be cleaned up.

"They're all gone, Baby Boy, you remember? You had the last cookie yesterday."

"Aww, golly, Pop. I done clear forgot. I sure was wanting one of them cookies, they taste so good."

"I'll get you some more when I get into town."

Jeb didn't get into town much. It was twenty miles and the truck hadn't been acting right lately. It coughed like an old man with consumption. Once he got it started, that is. Getting it started wore out his leg pumping the gas pedal. The choke always stuck and it was taking longer and longer to get it sparked to life.

"How much of a mess you make in the kitchen?" Jeb asked, wearily opening the screen door and pushing past Baby Boy into the shadowy cool house. He didn't know why he bothered cleaning up after the boy. It really wasn't all that important.

"I didn't, Pop, I didn't do nothin."

"Well, let's go see. You know I purely hate Lily Ree's kitchen to get all fussed with."

He found the slab oak cabinet doors gaping like dark mouths, pots and pans and dishes and canned goods scattered across the counter and filling the sink. "Now haven't I told you..."

Baby Boy whimpered. Jeb turned to admonish him, but saw just his hunched back and floppy overalls as he scurried from the kitchen into the bowels of the house.

"Baby Boy! I was talking to you."

He waited for an answer and when none came, he sighed and turned to the task of replacing everything his son had hauled from the shelves looking for the cookies.

Baby Boy didn't show up again for an hour. He came around the side of the house while Jeb sat leaning back in the porch chair, staring out at the brown waters of the Conecuh River, contemplating the thought he might miss it a lot when it was his time to pass on.

Jeb saw him down there, around the pilings, but didn't say a word about his cookie hunting expedition. The boy wouldn't remember what he'd done; it made no sense to remind him of it. Lily Ree's kitchen was straight again, it didn't matter now. He did have to talk to him, though. Not about messes. About going to live with someone else soon. He couldn't stay in the old house on the river alone.

"Come on up here, I got something to discuss with you."

"I found a caterpillar, Pop. It's fuzzy black with red spots. You want to see it?"

Baby Boy came crawling up the wooden ladder to the porch. He carried a capped Mason jar with the caterpillar in it. He probably forgot to punch holes in the lid, Jeb thought. The thing will be dead soon and he'll wonder why.

The ladder squeaked and the rungs gave with Baby Boy's weight as he climbed. The house had started out on stilts by the riverside and through the years, with nothing else to do once he had disability checks coming in from the government for his bad ulcers, Jeb took his time about expanding the house into surrounding trees. The progression of the separate levels followed the natural growth of the largest trees closest to the house. On foggy nights, looking at it from a boat out on the river, the house looked like a crouching multi-legged and multi-armed monster emerging from the thick pine forest. Clive, Jeb's last remaining brother, said Jeb was crazy building a house into the trees that way, what if lightning hit or a big wind came down and shook it loose? Jeb didn't care what people said. Not after forty-four years of raising Baby Boy and hearing all the unkind things said about him, sometimes right in front of his face like Baby Boy didn't have ears and eyes, didn't hurt when called names or talked about as if he was a stick of scarred furniture.

Jeb liked his stilt-treehouse. He loved how the wind blew through smelling of pine sap, how the rain dripped all around the open windows, how the birds settled in the eaves and made nests in roof crannies. Baby Boy, he knew, was going to miss it something awful.

"See?" The jar was held out for Jeb's inspection. Inside a colorful caterpillar twitched. It stood up on its back legs, seeking purchase on the slick glass.

"It'll die. You need holes in the lid for air."

"Oh! Oh yeah." Baby Boy turned immediately to the ladder.

"Don't go get a hammer and nail right now, Baby Boy. I want to tell you something. I've been putting it off, but I can't wait any longer."

"But the air..."

"Unscrew the lid. It won't get out."

Baby Boy did as he was told. He sat down at his father's feet, crossing his legs Indian style. He kept his gaze on the jar, but Jeb knew he was listening.

"See, there's something wrong with me...." Jeb began.

"You got ulcers. Sores in your stomach."

"Yeah, that's right, but they've gotten worse. Thing is, they've turned into something else now."

"What they turn into, Pop?"

Baby Boy stilled watched the jar, but he was frowning in concentration, trying to get the meaning of Jeb's words.

"It's a thing called cancer. It's eating me up, Baby Boy."

"Then kill it, Pop."

"I can't kill it. It's killing me. I won't be here to take care of you. You're gonna have to go live with your Uncle Clive."

"No, I can't do that." Baby Boy picked up the jar and held it to the side so that the light would shine through it.

"You have to. You can't stay here alone...when I'm gone. I've already talked to Clive and he said it was all right. He's always liked you and I made him swear he'll treat you right."

"I don't like him. I like you, Pop."

"I know, I know. But you'll learn to like him. Once you're over at his house, you'll get to know him better."

Baby Boy turned glazed light blue eyes on his father. "His house?"

Jeb nodded. "Not here. No one wants to stay in this place. I'm trying to sell it so you'll have some money in the bank to take care of you."

Baby Boy knocked the jar over and scrambled to his feet. He flung open the screen door and disappeared into the house, crying loud, heartbroken. He might not understand cancer or death, but he understood leaving his home, he understood things were going to change.

Jeb rocked back against the wall again and peered out at the Conecuh. At this time of day with the sun setting, the water took on a bronze look. It might be molten gold, pouring a fountainhead of treasure that rolled along mossy green banks toward the sea.

If he had a sailboat, hell, even a raggedy-ass outboard, he could get it aimed in the right direction and float down to the ocean and be swallowed into the great silence there.

Then he wouldn't have to hear his son weep and wonder if Lily Ree really waited for him on the other side. Life was hard. It was way too hard for living.

#

I know how things eat, Baby Boy thought. They use their teeth and they grind stuff up and swallow it down. Something's eating my Pop like that. Something bad in his stomach. He called it a name, but that ain't its real name. Its real name is bogeyman and he must have slipped in Pop's mouth when he was asleep, snoring, when he wasn't awake to notice.

I had a fly do that once, he recalled. It crawled right over my bottom teeth one time when I was sitting looking at spider webs in the fig tree. I almost ate it. Do flies eat people when they get inside?

I know bogeymen do. They hide behind doors and in closets and under beds and when they get a chance they slide in your ears or your nose or your mouth and they eat you up, inside out.

I bet it's the bogeyman got into Pop's sick stomach.

I know one thing. I don't have Pop here, I ain't going to live with Uncle Clive. He always thumps me on the head when nobody's looking. And then smiles like he ain't done nothing. One time he picked up a hunting knife Pop was sharpening on the whetstone and when Pop had his back turned, Uncle Clive shook the knife at me and it made me shiver all over. He's got the bogeyman behind his eyes, but he don't trick me none. I saw him in there plenty times. Even if Uncle Clive's smiling, his eyes ain't, they're thinking about doing something mean where nobody can see it and tell.

This is my house. This is where I live. If Pop goes to heaven, I'm staying here. If Uncle Clive comes round trying to get me to leave, I'll...I'll...

"Baby Boy, stop that wailing. What in tarnation you want me to do, go out in the woods to get away from it?"

Baby Boy paused, holding his breath. He was making Pop mad. He'd get hold of the tears in a minute. He'd squench up his eyes and dam up the water, hold it in till nighttime when Pop couldn't hear him. He done that lots of times, turning his face into the pillow so it was quiet. He did it when he thought about his Mama and how much he missed her. He did it when his old dog Snow died and Pop made him bury him.

"I'm going out to play, Pop," Baby Boy called, his voice all whiny. He couldn't help that, water was clogging his windpipe.

"Stay nearby. Don't go to the river."

"Okay, I won't." He'd been going down to the river since he was little, but Pop didn't know. He'd whip him if he knew. Pop said the river had a bogeyman in it and if he got too close to the water, the bogeyman would grab him and pull him under to drown. Baby Boy knew he was right. He'd seen the bogeyman down there before. He rose up like a tower of water, spraying white foam everywhere from his shoulders and his long hair, and he had reached out for Baby Boy with claws like railroad spikes, trying to catch him, but Baby Boy was fast. He might not be smart, he knew he wasn't smart like other people, but he made up for it in how fast he could move. He could outrun a deer in an open field when he put his mind to it. One time he outran a wild boar, but he didn't dare touch it. It had turned when he got up on its backside and its black eyes pinned him and its snarl made the hair stand up on Baby Boy's neck. He had to run for all he was worth to get to a limb and swing up in order not to get himself gored. He never ran down a boar again.

Down by the river, with his bare feet in the water up to his ankles, with the cuffs of his overalls rolled so they wouldn't get wet, Baby Boy dared the bogeyman to come out. He silently shook his fists and twisted his torso, trying to lure him forth. If he could kill him, maybe he wouldn't take Pop away.

Maybe if he could find the bogeyman and kill him dead, he wouldn't be left alone with nobody to talk to all the rest of the days of his life.

#

Jeb heard Clive puttering around in Lily Ree's kitchen trying to make a pot of coffee. There was the sound of the drip pot clanging on the stove burner, the sound of the water from the faucet. He hoped Clive didn't get Lily Ree's "precious cups," the ones with the saucers in the green and white dogwood pattern she had inherited from her grandmother. He should have put those up already, packed them in a box and stashed them in the attic.

Baby Boy sat on the end of the bed, jiggling his feet over the side. The bed heaved and creaked until Jeb said, "That makes me hurt, will you stop it?"

"I got to pee."

"Well, you know what to do."

Baby Boy hopped down from the high mattress and made for the door to the hall.

"And don't forget to zip!"

Who was going to remind his son of these things when he was gone? Was Clive really going to treat him right, was he going to make sure Baby Boy ate carrots and cabbage, that he zipped his britches after going to the bathroom, that he stayed clear of the river? Oh God in heaven, even when a man was facing the unknown the burdens just never let up. They evidently followed a body to the grave and made him toss and turn. They said there was no rest for the wicked, but he had not been a wicked man. He had done his best. He had never lied or cheated, never said a bad word about a man, never broke a promise. He deserved to rest. He deserved to forget.

The pain came down like a sudden hailstorm from an overcast sky. It battered Jeb, peppering him with bullets shooting from the center of his gut up through his chest and down into his groin. It took away his breath and dimmed the room to a somber uniform gray.

From far off in the distance he heard someone call, "Pop? Pop?"

Jeb rode a wave of subsiding pain and drew in a lungful of moist air. He wondered if it was raining. The air was thick and musky smelling; it was like drawing in wet gauze. "I'm okay. Just give me a minute."

He felt his son's warm biscuit-smelling breath near his face. He heard, "Pop, I ain't going to live with Uncle Clive. Uncle Clive's got a bogeyman in him. He hates me."

Jeb endured the last bite of the jaws squeezing his stomach then he whispered, "He don't hate you. He's your uncle. Your only living relative. You got to go."

"He tried to scare me this morning when you were sleeping, Pop."

Jeb strained to stay in the present. It was becoming increasingly easy to wink out and dream of a blissful beyond where worries were forgotten and balm was applied to the rents in the fabric of the soul.

"What'd he do?"

Baby Boy leaned in even closer so that his lips almost brushed the tips of Jeb's ears. His voice was clear then. So clear it sounded like a man holding a microphone and shouting. "He said if you died tonight, he was going to call the morgue and tell them to come get you and then he was going to take me out on the river around midnight in a rowboat and dump me over the side. See if I could swim. Pop, I can't swim. The bogeyman will drown me."

"Ca...call Clive in here..." If God was good, he'd let him handle this one last problem. Baby Boy might be making up stuff, but if he wasn't, Clive needed a threat to behave.

"What's wrong?" Clive boomed from the doorway.

Baby Boy hunkered near his father's bed, holding tightly to his hand. Jeb tried to move, to straighten up in the covers, but they were too heavy and he was too weak. He called upon the last of his strength, willed his tongue to work and his mind to stay with him just a while longer. "Clive...Clive, you scared Baby Boy. I have to trust you to take care of him..."

His breath ran out. He tried to lick his lips and could not find enough spit in his mouth. He couldn't see a damn thing. The room was rapidly shrinking, the walls moving in like blocks of blackness creeping closer. "Lily Ree," he whispered. "Is that you?"

"What the hell you talking about, Jeb? Baby Boy, get away from there and let your old man sleep. You're suffocating him."

"Pop, please, Pop, wake up."

Jeb felt his hand being shaken, the wattles of his upper arms flapping like...like crisp sails in a stiff sea breeze.

He was going on a voyage to sea at long last, there to meet his Lily Ree.

#

Baby Boy paced the empty rooms, spooked by the echoes of his footsteps. He had to keep turning around and looking over his shoulder to make sure the bogeyman had not come from the river and snuck into the house just because Death had entered to steal away Pop. In fact, the bogeyman knew now there was just one left, an easy one, one who didn't have all the knowledge or know all the rules to stay out of his reach. He might slither in undetected and be hiding anywhere.

Baby Boy hurriedly locked the doors, fastened the windows down tight. He had found Pop's shotgun where he kept it behind his headboard. He checked to see if it was loaded, but only after many minutes of trying to figure out how to open the chamber without killing himself. There were two fat red-cased shells inside. They blew big holes in things. He had seen what damage the shells made when Pop brought down a polecat that took up residence beneath the stilts. It stunk up the house for days, but Pop said it was worth it, at least they knew that would be the end of it and they wouldn't be waking up in the middle of the night smelling stink so bad it made them gag.

Uncle Clive had gone to town to get the people who would take Pop away. When he got back, Baby Boy wasn't going to let him come in the house. He'd let the people come in who had to take Pop to get buried, but he wouldn't let Uncle Clive step a foot inside the door. He tried, he'd find his head down by his feet, blown right off his mean ugly bogeyman neck.

Outside on the porch, Baby Boy cradled the shot gun in his lap, leaned Pop's chair back until it bumped the wall, and waited for the black hearse that had come once before to take away his Mama.

The rain had stopped, but the river swirled madly against the high banks, rushing with the noise of a water falls past the house. The pines sighed as a passing wind shook the long green needles and silver tears swelled together to cast abrupt showers to earth. A woodpecker tapped at a knothole, tediously, without tune or rhythm. A bobwhite called for a mate who did not answer and Baby Boy wanted to whistle to it, to lure it closer, but he could not this time, not now when he was just as alone as the quail, just as alone as the river and the woods bordering it, alone as the dead man lying in his father's bed.

It was full dark when Uncle Clive returned, pulling beneath the house in Pop's old truck that sputtered and grumbled. The hearse parked in the road behind it, the headlights cutting through the dark and blinking over the river water. Baby Boy pushed the chair to the floor and stood up straight and tall as he could. He put his finger on the trigger and let it rest there, gently.

The first one up the ladder was Uncle Clive.

"You get down," Baby Boy said. "I got a gun."

Clive halted. In the mellow light from the living room, Baby Boy saw his black bogeyman eyes dance and his lips pull up over his teeth. "What's got into you, boy?"

"I'll let them come get Pop, but you ain't coming in."

Clive watched him a moment longer then he nodded as if finally understanding and went down the ladder again to the ground. Baby Boy heard him explaining, with a pack of lies, to the men from town. "My nephew ain't right in the head. He's a little upset, but he won't hurt you. Just go on up and get Jeb, I'll wait down here till you're done."

While the two men packaged up Pop in a bag and maneuvered him to the porch and down the ladder, Baby Boy kept watch to be sure Uncle Clive didn't sneak away. There was no conversation between them until the hearse had pulled from the road and made a U-turn for town.

"This is my house now," Clive said. "And you're my responsibility. Didn't your daddy ever teach you to do what your elders tell you?"

"This ain't your house. Pop built it and it's mine. If you come up here, I'm gonna have to shoot you in the head."

"Hoo-whee, what big talk from such a small pea-brain. I didn't know you had that much spunk, Baby Boy."

"I got shells," he said. "And I know how to pull a trigger. Now you get gone." You bogeyman, he added in his thoughts.

"All right. You win this one, but I'll be back. I got a buyer for this place and it's a right smart offer. If you think a shotgun in the hands of a retard is going to stop me, you got another think coming."

Baby Boy began to shake, the name-calling getting to him. He wished Pop could hear Uncle Clive, then he wouldn't think he was such a nice man. He'd know for sure he was nothing but mean to the bone. Pop didn't let people call Baby Boy names. He said it meant the name-caller was stupid and needed a good whipping to set him straight. He said God didn't like people to call names because that was the Devil's job. The Devil had a lot of names, though Baby Boy couldn't remember them all, Beezle..something and Lucif...something, they sounded so funny, but God only had one name and man had one name and anything else was fostered by the Devil, the worst bogeyman of all.

Baby Boy wanted right then to pull the trigger and discharge both barrels in the bogeyman's face, but something stopped him. Some small distant voice that advised, "Bide your time, Baby Boy."

That night he didn't sleep well. He kept vigil from the living room sofa, the shot gun wrapped in his arms like a lover. When dawn broke, he struggled up from sleep, fighting for his consciousness as if it were a blanket held down over his face.

He didn't know what to eat. Pop never let him cook, said the stove could burn him. He rummaged in the shelves and found a box of corn flakes that he ate dry and two hard biscuits that were two days old. He yearned for chocolate cookies, but he thought he might never get any again now without Pop to go to the store for him.

Uncle Clive didn't come back that day. It tired Baby Boy out to keep watch. He spent all his time going from window to window, from one level to another in the treehouse portion of the house just to see if Clive was trying to come in by climbing up the tree trunks. By suppertime he was hungry and talking to himself, he was so distraught.

"I wonder how to cook these sweet potatoes. I wonder if they're any good raw. I know Pop put them in the oven and turned this switch on, but to get it to work, he got down on his knees with a lit match and made the burner catch fire. I don't mess with matches. One time I did and it made my finger black and hurt bad for a long time. Pop put butter on it and told me never ever to touch matches again. Wonder if I can eat sausage raw. If I take a bite of sausage and a bite of sweet potato, mush it all together, maybe it won't taste too bad..."

He tried out the idea, but the taste was so greasy and nasty tasting that he had to spit it out on the plate. He sat at the table staring at the uncooked food, angry with it for not being edible. He found a glass and poured buttermilk into it, accidentally slopping it over the rim onto the counter. He always made messes! He didn't mean to, tried not to, but things filled before he thought they would, they slipped from his fingers when he thought he had a good hold on them, they just deliberately would not work with him no matter how hard he tried. The harder he tried, the worse the mess, he had no idea why.

He found some crackers and crumpled them up in the glass of buttermilk and ate it all with a spoon. It killed the hunger gnawing at him and for that he was grateful. His stomach hurt afterwards, but he could stand it without crying. Pop told him if it wasn't bad enough to cry, it could be ignored till it went away.

That night he slept soundly and woke with a crick in his neck. He had been hugging the shot gun so hard his fingers ached. He found out how to open a can of corn in the kitchen and had that with bread and butter for breakfast. Cold stuff sure didn't taste the same as when it was heated up. He would simply have to take a chance on burning his fingers with the matches sometime today. The burners didn't catch into flame without help.

Around two o'clock, just as the sky brightened to washed amber, the sun peeking like a shy child from behind the cloud curtain, Uncle Clive drove up in Pop's truck.

Baby Boy slammed the chair to the porch and stood up, the shot gun at ready. He stared down at his uncle. "You better git."

"There be bears out here, boy."

"What're you talking about?" Maybe it was a riddle and that wasn't fair.

"There's bears out this way, I tell you. You ain't safe here."

Baby Boy looked out over the river to the other side where impenetrable forest grew. He turned his head slightly and stared into the stand of pine that helped support part of the house. "You're just trying to scare me. Pop didn't say there were no bears here."

Clive nodded smugly. "He didn't want to scare you, that's why he never said. There was some hunters come across tracks just west of here. It's a big 'un, might weigh fifteen times what you do." He paused. "Bears get hungry, they get into houses, you know. They can climb."

Baby Boy didn't know what part of this information might be true, if any. Big animals scared him all right. He didn't mind squirrels or fox or rabbit, and he had run down that boar until it turned on him, but really big animals were something else again. He said nothing, but kept the gun trained on the man on the ground.

"We got to sell this place and get rid of it. Bears tear up the place, it won't be worth squat. They rip you to pieces here, people might be too superstitious to buy it. I need you to come down from there and let's go to my house. Ain't you hungry yet?"

Baby Boy thought about baked ham with pineapple slices and red-eye gravy. He thought of pecan pie and chocolate cookies and cold creamy vanilla ice cream. He thought of hot biscuits leaking butter and honey. His mouth watered and a little dribble got past his lips to slide down his chin. "I'm all right," he said.

"No, you ain't all right, Baby Boy. You need looking after. I promised your daddy I'd do that. Now why do you think I'm gonna hurt you? I won't hurt you."

"You said you'd take me out in a boat and tump me over."

"Oh hell, I was just poking fun. I was making a joke, that's all. I wouldn't take you on the river. It's too dangerous. Now come on down from there and let's go into town. I'll buy you a milkshake at the drugstore before we go home."

He was tempted, sorely tempted. He was indeed very hungry. He didn't know if there were bears in the woods who might break into his house and kill him, but even if there was a chance of it, the thought made him quake inside. Could you kill a bear with a shot gun? Would it blow the big animal's head off? What if Uncle Clive was just mean and he had been making a bad joke? Could that be true?

He stared carefully into Uncle Clive's eyes and he found the answers he sought.

"You got a bogeyman in you," he said quietly. "He'll get you to kill me. I ain't going no place with you."

Clive laughed, then stopped just as fast as he'd started. He said, "You don't come down and go with me right now, I swear to God I'm going to make you regret it."

"Just try."

"I won't bring the police and I won't sic the welfare on you. I'll put you out of the way so I can sell this place and not have to bother with you anymore. But if you come peacefully, I'll find somewhere you can go, they got state schools and all might take you. You'll be fine there. Baby Boy? You listening to me, you goddamn moron?"

Baby Boy swung the shot gun three yards to the right of Uncle Clive and pulled the trigger. The shock of the recoil made him stumble back until he hit the wall. It almost knocked him senseless. When he got back to the porch edge, Clive was gone.

Baby Boy smiled for the first time since his father died.

#

There had been storms and tornadoes, swelling the river high, turning the sky purple black. The nights were long and troublesome. There were noises he could not decipher, creaks and groans from the swaying of the trees and the giving of the boards of the house. The tin roof clanged and pinged in the night when pine cones fell and struck it. Windowpanes rattled with gusts of wind and the river burbled all the time, sweeping past the house in a swollen raging torrent. South Alabama had not experienced such violent weather in years.

Baby Boy hardly slept at night so he found himself nodding off during the day, the gun in his lap. He stayed indoors, pacing or sleeping, wishing for the sun and for someone to talk to about his fears. He had finally, after numerous attempts and uncountable burned fingers, discovered how to light one burner on the gas stove. He even learned how to slice up the sweet potatoes without cutting himself and to fry the pieces in a pan of hot grease. It had occurred to him that one day soon he would run out of food supplies and he had no way to get to town save walking. He didn't know how to drive the truck, even if he had it, which he didn't because Uncle Clive had taken it. But once he walked or hitchhiked to town what would he buy the supplies with? He searched and found three dollars in one of his father's coat pockets in the closet, but would that be enough? Pop got checks in the mail and these he took once a month to town to cash. Were there any checks in the mailbox down by the road and if there were, how did one go about cashing them?

Things were slowly becoming desperate and Baby Boy spent all his waking hours trying to decide what to do about it. His plans were not any good, he knew that, because they usually entailed depending on strangers to help him out. Strangers who he imagined gave him a ride the twenty miles to town, strangers who took him by the hand and led him to the building where he could get money in exchange for the checks, strangers who pointed him in the direction of the grocery stores and who took the correct amount from his hand when he had to pay.

What if the strangers would not help him? Or what if they called his Uncle Clive to come get him?

One day, during another rainstorm, a white compact car splashed muddy, but still managing to look new, drove up the road and parked at his house. A woman came from the car wearing a raincoat and a felt hat pulled low over her face. She found the ladder and Baby Boy stood back, the shot gun hanging at his side as she climbed to his porch.

"You're not going to shoot me, are you?" she asked.

She was young, younger than him, and pretty. He smiled at her. "I ain't gonna shoot nobody."

"Oh, that's good to hear. My name's Abigail Baker. I'm from the Human Resources office. Your postman dropped by our office and said all your mail had piled up in the mailbox and no one was picking it up. He said your father had died and you were living out here by yourself. I thought I'd come to see if you needed anything."

That darn mail, Baby Boy thought, scowling now. "I don't need nothing."

She squinted at him, cocking her head the way a squirrel will when it waits to see if you're going to rush it to steal its acorn. "You don't need any food...or...well, anything?"

He thought it over. He had never told lies before, not very big ones. "I guess I'm running out of stuff. I was thinking I ought to walk to a store and get me some sweet potatoes and things."

She nodded and moved closer. "I'll be glad to carry you to town and help with your shopping. That's what we're here for."

"You would? Oh, golly, that'd be real nice."

He forgot all about the three dollars and the mail and the checks until they had reached the outskirts of Andalusia. He had to tell her, but he was embarrassed to let her know he forgot so many important things other people always remembered. Once in the store, with her leading the way with a cart, he knew he had to say something. "Uh...I don't have no money."

She turned to him and her look was so sad he thought she might cry. "You've never been shopping for yourself, have you?"

He shook his head. He felt naked. Not just because she was prying, but because he had left the shot gun home and now he worried that when he returned it might be missing from its place behind Pop's headboard.

"It's all right," she cooed, coming to him and linking her arm through his. "I'll use my money and fill out the papers so the department can repay me. Let's go."

In the car again on the way home, the backseat full of grocery sacks of food she had picked out for him, she said, "There might be someone else coming out to see you this week. You shouldn't worry about it, but I think you're going to need some help. They'll want to test you and then they'll either decide to send out someone for periodic visits or maybe they'll know of somewhere you might like to stay, with other people you can talk to and have fun with."

Baby Boy kept silent. He didn't know if he wanted to see anyone else and he sure didn't want to think about tests or going to live with other people, but the lady was so nice, her voice soft and pearly and sweet like the sound of a dove.

He almost told her about the roaming bears that frightened him and about his Uncle who was out to get him one way or the other so he could sell the house, but at the last moment he couldn't do it, it wasn't anything she could help him turn aside or change.

That night, while he dozed on the sofa, replete after a good meal of canned ham and french fries and raw onion, he began to dream of the lady, how she looked at him from beneath the brim of her hat, how her voice soothed and calmed him. He dreamed she cooked for him and saved him the task, dreamed that she came near, just once, and pressed her lips against his cheek, her breath like cherry blossoms, her heat like blue flame.

He woke startled, his heart tripping wildly, and he was choking. Standing over him was Uncle Clive in the light of the moon, his bogeyman eyes cold as river bottom stone. He had the stock of the shot gun across Baby Boy's throat and his knees on either side of his chest, pinning him down.

"I've had just about all I'm gonna take from you, Baby Boy. It's time we go for a little boat ride down the river."

He lifted the gun, climbed from atop Baby Boy's body, and motioned for him to stand.

"Why do you hate me, Uncle Clive?" He heard the cry and felt the rush of tears, but inside he felt new anger spring up that he had been caught sleeping, taken from a dreamland of normalcy into the harsh light of the moon to face the Devil. How unfair did life have to become before it was not life anymore, but some kind of no-life, some kind of nightmare that broke the mind and split it into shards, like mirror glass fallen from the wall?

"Where's my mama?" he said, not realizing he spoke the query aloud. "Where's my pop?"

"You loony, get the hell out the door. Move it!"

Fear swept him along before it, pushed him through the screen door and onto the porch, forced him down the ladder and to the ground, carried him across the yard to the river edge and there, with yellow peels of moonlight stippling the small paint-flaked rowboat, it took him to his knees in the bow. He blubbered into his hands, shaking with his sobs, heaving with grief that he was so alone and the night so menacing.

He did not hear the growl when first it came, nor did he recognize, once he did hear it, what it might mean. He brought his hands from his face, raised his head to see what it was Uncle Clive asked of him now and that's when he saw the bear, rising up into the sky taller than the bogeyman from the lake, taller than the house, the pines, taller than God. It couldn't be real. It had to be a bogeyman. It was too big and too awesome to live in this world.

Uncle Clive screamed and swung the barrel of the gun, but it was knocked from his hands and at the same time Clive was thrust back onto his heels so that he fell to the soft ground near the flowing river.

Baby Boy sat unmoving for a few seconds, only long enough to see the bear swoop over his prey, and then he had leapt from the boat, passed by the bear entangled with the bloody flesh of his uncle, and he was fleeing for the ladder and his house, for the porch, and his door, for his closet in his bedroom where he shut it closed at his back and knelt praying that the bogeyman did not find him, ever.

#

The woman introduced herself again to Baby Boy, Abigail Baker, she said, and she had come out to help him.

The hearse had already taken away Uncle Clive, what was left of him they could find and could dredge from the river. Two county policemen stood around the site, kicking at the ground, shaking their heads and talking in mumbles. They didn't know of any bears in these woods, they said earlier. The bears had been gone from here for decades. How the hell did a bear stumble out onto the river and eat this man? A tall skinny fellow with a camera took pictures of the mauled ground, the broken rowboat, the tracks leading back into the woods.

"Will you trust me, Charlie?" Abigail asked. "I'll make sure you're happy."

"My name's Baby Boy," he said. "No one ever called me Charlie Martin."

She smiled so sweetly and he loved her truly, deeply, loved her as much as he loved his Mama and as much as he loved his Pop. She was a savior come to rescue him. She had been the one to find him in the closet, head to his knees, shivering and praying. She had not made fun of him, not at all. She led him to the sofa and gave him a glass of milk. She explained to him how the mailman had found Uncle Clive and called her, how she had called the police, and how it was going to be all right now, he had nothing to be afraid of, she wouldn't let anyone bother him.

"Well, Baby Boy, do you trust me?"

"Oh, yeah, I sure do," he said, feeling real silly because he could feel his face splitting in two with his big goofy grin that he could not control.

"Then let's be off," she said. "I know you love your house and all, but we're just going to take a ride somewhere and I'm going to show you a new place, with lots of nice people in it."

"Will you be there?"

"I'll come visit you often," she said, taking his hand and leading him onto the porch. "You know, your father did a fine job constructing this house. I've never seen anything like it."

Baby Boy glanced around, trying to see what she saw, trying to remember and not forget in case he didn't get to see it again. "Yeah," he said. "Pop was a smart man. I sure miss him. He cooked better than me, too."

The police car was gone. The rain had stopped. The storm was over.

On the way out of the drive, Abigail stopped at his mailbox and took in all the jumbled mail while Baby Boy turned to the window and made a face at the river, and a face at the woods, just his way of saying good-bye and good riddance to all the bogeymen who had to stay behind without him to torment as their plaything.

He knew something his Pop, his uncle, and all the other people who had come around didn't know. There were bears when you needed them, there were river men who lived under the water and came up when you least expected, there were just terrible things out there waiting in the dark for someone to stumble on them.

He turned to look at the lady driving her nice white car.

Sometimes there were angels too.