Hearts In Atlantis

head massaged by big cops with hard hickories. A person who would do something like that to a woman deserved no better. A person who would do something like that to a woman had no business running around loose. That was Burton’s opinion.

Bobby thought Ted would put Carol on the couch, but he didn’t. There was one straight-backed chair in the living room and that was where he sat, holding her on his lap. He held her the way the Grant’s department store Santa Claus held the little kids who came up to him as he sat on his throne.

“Where else are you hurt? Besides the shoulder?”

“They hit me in the stomach. And on my side.”

“Which side?”

“The right one.”

Ted gently pulled her blouse up on that side. Bobby hissed in air over his lower lip when he saw the bruise which lay diagonally across her ribcage. He recognized the baseball-bat shape of it at once. He knew whose bat it had been: Harry Doolin’s, the pimply galoot who saw himself as Robin Hood in whatever stunted landscape passed for his imagination. He and Richie O’Meara and Willie Shearman had come upon her in the park and Harry had worked her over with his ball-bat while Richie and Willie held her. All three of them laughing and calling her the Gerber Baby. Maybe it had started as a joke and gotten out of hand. Wasn’t that pretty much what had happened in Lord of the Flies? Things had just gotten a little out of hand?

Ted touched Carol’s waist; his bunchy fingers spread and then slowly slid up her side. He did this with his head cocked, as if he were listening rather than touching. Maybe he was. Carol gasped when he reached the bruise.

“Hurt?” Ted asked.

“A little. Not as bad as my sh-shoulder. They broke my arm, didn’t they?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Ted replied.

“I heard it pop. So did they. That’s when they ran.”

“I’m sure you did hear it. Yes indeed.”

Tears were running down her cheeks and her face was still ashy, but Carol seemed calmer now. Ted held her blouse up against her armpit and looked at the bruise. He knows what that shape is just as well as I do, Bobby thought.

“How many were there, Carol?”

Three, Bobby thought.

“Th-three.”

“Three boys?”

She nodded.

“Three boys against one little girl. They must have been afraid of you. They must have thought you were a lion. Are you a lion, Carol?”

“I wish I was,” Carol said. She tried to smile. “I wish I could have roared and made them go away. They h-h- hurt me.”

“I know they did. I know.” His hand slid down her side and cupped the bat-bruise on her ribcage. “Breathe in.”

The bruise swelled against Ted’s hand; Bobby could see its purple shape between his nicotine-stained fingers. “Does that hurt?”

She shook her head.

“Not to breathe?”

“No.”

“And not when your ribs go against my hand?”

“No. Only sore. What hurts is . . .” She glanced quickly at the ter-rible shape of her double shoulder, then away.

“I know. Poor Carol. Poor darling. We’ll get to that. Where else did they hit you? In the stomach, you said?”

“Yes.”

Ted pulled her blouse up in front. T here was another bruise, but this one didn’t look so deep or so angry. He prodded gently with his fingers, first above her bellybutton and then below it. She said there was no pain like in her shoulder, that her belly was only sore like her ribs were sore.

“They didn’t hit you in your back?”

“N-no.”

“In your head or your neck?”

“Uh-uh, just my side and my stomach and then they hit me in the shoulder and there was that pop and they heard it and they ran. I used to think Willie Shearman was nice.” She gave Ted a woeful look.

“Turn your head for me, Carol . . . good . . . now the other way. It doesn’t hurt when you turn it?”

“No.”

“And you’re sure they never hit your head.”

“No. I mean yes, I’m sure.”