by twenty percent, standing with a man who looked to Carelle like her idea of a caveman that somebody had stuck into jeans and given a quick shave and haircut. The boy was pale in a way no white boy should be in mid-summer. There were black bags under his eyes and even the areas above the eyes looked as if they’d been daubed with coal. The eyes themselves were dead. They weren’t staring, they weren’t looking around the way any normal boy’s eyes would be doing, they were just-there. Stuck in his head as if somebody had placed them on the face but forgot to turn them on. The boy stood there like it was all he had the strength for, like some creature Carelle had seen in the movies, one of the living dead or one of Dracula’s victims. As if all his blood had been drained out, she thought. And skinny? The boy was not healthy.
His mother, on the other hand, would not hold still. The woman jabbered like she was on the hustle, she talked so fast Carelle would have held on to her purse with both hands if it wasn’t locked away in the back room. Or like she was on speed, more like it. Carelle didn’t much like looking the customers directly in the eye, but she didn’t miss much, either. This woman’s pupils weren’t dilated, but her eyes had a gleam in them that looked weird to Carelle.
And she didn’t know anything about kids’ sizes, either. She was trying to dress the boy in clothes that would ride him like a tent. Asking for a ten-twelve for that poor little thing.
“You talking about that boy?” Carelle asked, moving her head toward the boy.
“That’s him, that’s my Tommy. Isn’t he beautiful?”
“He’s a beautiful boy.” Carelle said without enthusiasm.
“Isn’t he beautiful?”
The woman waved at the boy as if he was all the way across the store, not just a few steps away. The boy waved back and put some kind of look on his face that was maybe a smile. The caveman just stood there with his paw on the boy’s shoulder, like he was holding him upright.
“Yes, ma’am. He sure is.” Carelle thought of her own boys with their bouncing energy, their eager eyes. “But he can’t wear no size ten-twelve.”
“Of course he can,” the woman said. “I measured him myself.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sure you did, but I can tell without measuring him he ain’t no ten. He too skinny for a ten.”
“Skinny? My boy is not skinny.” The woman sounded horrified, as if the thought had never occurred to her. Carelle wondered what the woman saw when she looked at the boy. Couldn’t be the same thing Carelle saw.
“Didn’t mean skinny.” she said. “Just thin. He be thin.”
The woman was studying the boy now, looking at him as if she had never seen him before. Carelle could see her face twisting all up in a dangerous-looking way.
“He’s only as thin as he should be,” the woman said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“He’s thin the way a boy ought to be.” Her face did not look as if she were convinced.
“That’s probably it,” Carelle said.
The woman took a step toward the boy, who jerked backwards as if he were about to be hit. When she turned to face Carelle again the woman’s face was blushing red. It wasn’t shame, Carelle thought. It was pure anger, but it wasn’t directed at Carelle. It seemed to Carelle that the woman was mad at the boy.
“I’ll just see if we have a ten in that color,” Carelle said.
Her supervisor was behind the woman, suddenly. Carelle had noticed Ellen moving in her direction a while ago, then she had lost track of her while watching the woman and the boy. Normally Carelle knew exactly where her supervisor was at all times, because most of the time it was right behind her, peering over her shoulder as if she couldn’t be trusted. This time, however, Carelle was glad to see her, let her take a little heat off the crazy woman who looked like she was about to explode. Ellen was good at dealing with the white customers; they seemed to think she understood them better than Carelle did.
“Is there a problem?” Ellen asked, folding her hands together in front of her, the way she did, like she was holding on to a knife that was sticking out of her chest. Like it pained her but she was going to go right on ahead and do a good job anyway, just keep smiling, never mind her.
“Wants a ten-twelve for that boy,” Carelle said, her voice falling into a mumble the way it did when there was trouble coming. “Getting her a ten-twelve, that what she wants, but he ain’t no ten.”
The supervisor was about to speak sharply to Carelle when she noticed the boy.
“I think I should know his size, after all,” the customer was saying. She talked on and on, an edge of something to her voice, a franticness, something close to hysteria, but Ellen listened with only half an ear. She stepped closer to the boy and the huge man with him stepped away from her. This went beyond business, this wasn’t about selling another shirt. This boy was deathly ill, and anyone could see it.
Ellen looked from the boy to Carelle, who was watching her from under her brows, then to the customer, who had stopped talking abruptly.
“This boy needs a doctor,” Ellen said, surprising herself with the effrontery but feeling compelled to speak.
The man and the boy had already turned and were walking away swiftly, the man’s big hand in the middle of the boy’s back, propelling him.
“Oh, really?” the customer said. “Thank you so much for your opinion, but I think I know what my boy needs.”
The customer stormed off, a look on her face that was ready to kill. Ellen watched them go, sensing Carelle moving up beside her.
“You right about that much,” Carelle said.
It was the first moment of solidarity Ellen could remember having felt with the clerk.
“Well, any fool could see it,” Ellen said.
“That’s what I mean,” Carelle said.
Reggie saw the headlights hit her ceiling, then vanish, then heard the crunch of tires on gravel. She lifted herself to her elbow and peered out the window in time to see the darkened car, wraithlike, come to a halt outside cabin six. The monster with the legs of a man and the body of two people hurried from the car and into the cabin, his form lighted briefly by the flicker from the television set.
Reggie watched the cabin for several minutes before easing herself back down on the bed, trying to divine its secret from the noises of the night. She was feeling better. Tomorrow she would be able to get out of bed, she was sure of it. There would be so much work to do, so much that George had left undone, or done wrong, but she had never minded hard work, thank goodness. And when her work was done, she would pay another visit to cabin six, but this time when someone was there. Whatever their dirty secret was, she would find it out and clean it up.
Dee moved in her sleep and touched Bobby and he was immediately wide awake. Almost as soon as he was aware of where he was he was weeping. Dee liked to fall asleep on her side with Bobby spooned in behind her, one of his arms over her body. Later, when she slept, he could roll away and try to find sleep in his own position, a pillow clutched to his chest, his legs tucked into it, but if she stirred in the night or became aware of his absence, she would moan and reach out for him, demanding some touch and reassurance of his closeness before drifting into unconsciousness once more.
He wept silently, the pillow pressed against his face. Moving as slowly as he could, he rolled to his other side, away from Dee, so that he could face Ash, who sat against the door, watching television with the volume turned down. Just seeing his big friend was a comfort to Bobby and sometimes they whispered to each other in the night while Dee slept. Sometimes they would giggle at the sounds she made in her sleep, the little puffs and snorts and sighs that made it seem as if she were having a conversation with her dreams. Occasionally she would emit anguished cries and sit up, startled and sweating, eyes rolling in terror. She would cling to Bobby then as he clung to his pillow until the terror passed. He would have to tell her again and again that he loved her and that he would never let anyone hurt her, never, never, never.
But mostly she slept through the night as if exhausted by the ebullience of her days. Bobby and Ash could whisper together then and the big man would tell him the stories from the television. Bobby could not get out of bed to watch with him because that was not allowed, but he could listen to Ash’s stumbling, garbled versions and
