Finally, Mrs. Cobb returned with a bulky green album bound with black cording.
“I think the old goat will forgive me.”
She laid the album in front of me and opened it to the first page. Her breathing sounded wheezy as she leaned over my shoulder to jab at a snapshot of a baby on a plaid blanket.
The finger moved to a baby in an old-fashioned bassinet. A baby in a stroller.
She flipped ahead several pages.
A toddler holding a plastic hammer. A toddler in blue denim coveralls and bicycle cap.
Two more pages.
A towheaded boy of about seven in cowboy hat and twin holsters. The same boy suited up for baseball, bat on one shoulder.
Three pages.
A teen with palm extended in protest, face twisted away from the lens. The teen was about sixteen, and wore an enormous golf shirt over baggy cutoffs.
It was the hammer-baseball-buckaroo boy, though his hair was darker now. The visible cheek was smooth and pink and dotted with acne. The boy’s hips were wide, his body softly feminine, with a marked lack of muscle definition.
I looked up at Mrs. Cobb.
“My child. Charles Grant Cobb.”
Circling the table, she sat and wrapped her fingers around her mug.
For sixty ticks we both listened to the cuckoo. I broke the silence.
“Your son must have had a difficult time during his teenage years.”
“Charlie Junior just never went through the right changes. He never grew a beard. His voice never changed, and his—” Five ticks. “You know.”
XXY. A Klinefelter’s syndrome boy.
“I do know, Mrs. Cobb.”
“Kids can be so cruel.”
“Was your son ever examined or treated?”
“My husband refused to admit there was anything wrong with Charlie Junior. When puberty came, and nothing seemed to happen except for Charlie Junior getting heavier and heavier, I suspected something wasn’t right. I suggested we have him looked at.”
“What did the doctors say?”
“We never went.” She shook her head. “There were two things Mr. Cobb hated with all his might. Doctors and fags. That’s what he called, well, you know.”
She dug for another Kleenex, blew her nose again.
“It was like arguing with a cinder block. To his dying day Charlie Senior believed Charlie Junior just needed to toughen up. That’s what he was always telling him. Tough up, kid. Be a man. No one likes a girly boy. No one likes a pansy.”
I looked at the boy in the photo, and thought of cool guys shoving geeks in the halls at school. Of kids taking lunch money from smaller kids. Of loudmouthed bullies picking at flaws and frailties, making others bleed like unhealed scabs. Of kids taunting, tormenting, persecuting until their victims finally give up on themselves.
I felt anger, frustration, and sadness.
“After Charlie Junior left home he decided to live as a female,” I guessed.
She nodded.
“I’m not sure exactly when he switched, but that’s just what he did. He”—she struggled for the proper pronoun—“
Conspiratorial smile.
“I talked to him, though. Charlie Senior didn’t know that.”
“Often?”
“He’d call about once a month. He was a park ranger, you know.”
“A Fish and Wildlife Service agent. That’s a very demanding profession.”
“Yes.”
“When was the last time you spoke with Charlie Junior?”
“It was early December, five years ago. I got a call from a cop not long after, asking if I knew where
“Was your son working on anything in particular at the time of his disappearance?”
“Something to do with people killing bears. He was pretty fired up about it. Said people were slaughtering bears by the bushel just to make a few bucks. But, as I recall, he talked about it like it was something on the side, not an
