the next morning. That’s if you have to go outside at all, which Dad does about once a week. The worst parasites still prowl at night and sleep late into the morning. Yet Keith lives outside.
“I got a room in a building with some other people,”
he said. Translation: He and his friends were squatting in an abandoned building. Who were his friends? A gang? A flock of prostitutes? A bunch of astronauts, flying high on drugs? A den of thieves?
All of the above? Whenever he came to see us he brought money to Cory and little gifts to Bennett and Gregory.
How could he get money? There’s no honest way.
“Do your friends know how old you are?” I asked.
He grinned. “Hell, no. Why should I tell them that?”
I nodded. “It does help to look older sometimes.
“You want something to eat?”
“You going to cook for me?”
“I’ve cooked for you hundreds of times. Thousands.”
“I know. But you always had to before.”
“Don’t be stupid. You think I couldn’t act the way you did: Skip out on my responsibilities if I felt like it? I don’t feel like it. You want to eat or not?”
“Sure.”
I made rabbit stew and acorn bread— enough for Cory and all the boys when they came in. He hung around and watched me work for a while, then began to talk to me. He’s never done that before.
We’ve never, never liked each other, he and I. But he had information I wanted, and he seemed to want to talk. I must have been the safest person he could talk to. He wasn’t afraid of shocking me. He didn’t much care what I thought. And he wasn’t afraid I’d tell Dad or Cory anything he said. Of course, I wouldn’t. Why cause them pain? I’ve never been much for tattling on people, anyway.
“It’s just a nasty old building on the outside,” he was saying of his new home. “You wouldn’t believe how great it looks once you go in, though.”
“Whorehouse or spaceship?” I asked.
“It’s got stuff like you never saw,” he evaded. “TV
windows you go through instead of just sitting and looking at. Headsets, belts, and touchrings…you see and feel everything, do anything. Anything!
There’s places and things you can get into with that equipment that are in-sane! You don’t ever have to go into the street except to get food.”
“And whoever owns this stuff took you in?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
He looked at me for a long time, then started to laugh. “Because I can read and write,” he said at last. “And none of them can. They’re all older than me, but not one of them can read or write anything.
They stole all this great stuff and they couldn’t even use it. Before I got there they even broke some of it because they couldn’t read the instructions.”
Cory and I had had a hell of a struggle, teaching him to read and write. He had been bored, impatient, anything but eager.
“So you read for a living— help your new friends learn to use their stolen equipment,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“And what else?”
“Nothin’ else.”
What a piss-poor liar he is. Always was. He’s got no
conscience. He just isn’t smart enough to tell convincing lies. “Drugs, Keith?” I asked.
“Prostitution? Robbery?”
“I said nothing else! You always think you know everything.”
I sighed. “You’re not done causing Dad and Cory pain, are you? Not by a long shot.”
He looked as though he wanted to shout back at me or hit me. He might have done one or the other if I hadn’t mentioned Cory.
“I don’t give a shit about him,” he said, his voice low and ugly. He had a man’s voice already. He had everything but a man’s brain. “I do more for her than he does. I bring her money and nice things. And my friends… my friends know she lives here, and they let this place alone. He’s nothing!”
I turned and looked at him and saw my father’s face, lighter-skinned, younger, thinner, but my father’s face, unmistakable. “He’s you,” I whispered. “Every time I look at you, I see him. Every time you look at him, you see yourself.
“Dogshit!”
