CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Man walked into the room with a plate in his hands. He walked right past Alex as if he wasn’t even there. He didn’t look at him, not even a glance. He just walked to the end of the room and he put the plate down on the ground.
Alex was on the other side of the room, crouching against a wall. He had his legs pulled up to his chest and his face buried into them. The Gruff was beside him. He was standing strong with his chest puffed out, one hand on Alex’s shoulder and the other flexed and by his side. He looked like a wild dog that was protecting his stricken friend. Albeit a wild dog that could stand on two feet and puff its chest out and one that had springy colored hair; still, he looked the part.
The Man swiveled his body. He looked towards Alex and The Gruff, but he said nothing. He stared at them as if they were a mark on the wall, something that he would have to clean before the day was through. He swiveled his body back and he placed a plastic fork and knife neatly beside the plate and then a plastic cup beside that. There was nothing in the cup, not yet.
The Man stood up and looked around the room. He had his hands on his hips and he moved like a ballerina in a music box except the only sound that came was from the panicked gasping of Alex who couldn’t hold his breath any longer.
The Man picked up the broken pieces of wood and collected them in his big arms. He held all four pieces in his right arm and he didn’t even care about the splinters or anything. They would have been cutting him but he didn’t flinch. He crouched down to his knees and he brushed his left hand across the floor. Not the whole hand, just the tips of his fingers.
Alex’s mother used to do the same thing when she was looking for dust. She would run her hand along the top of a cabinet or along the back of the television and she would look at her fingers afterwards. If they were grey or black, she would gripe for a bit and then she would take out a duster or a cloth and she would wipe it down.
The Man did the same except he didn’t gripe. He wiped his fingers along the floor, in the parts where Alex had wet himself. His hands almost slipped on this part. He mustn’t have been expecting that. They didn’t slip completely though so he didn’t look silly. He still looked mean and really strange, especially when he pulled his fingers up to his nose and he sniffed them.
The Man wiped his fingers on the leg of his pants. He stood up again and he gripped the wood that was in his hands a little better. It was starting to slip. It looked like it was difficult to carry because even though his arms were still and looked strong, his fingers were twitching a lot, like The Teacher’s left eye.
Alex was watching them.
Through the cracks in his hands that clamped over his face and through the tiniest of gaps in his legs that were pressed against those clamping hands, Alex could see The Man’s stubby fingers twitching away.
The Man walked out the door and halfway down the hall he stopped. He leaned over and he placed the broken pieces of wood down onto the floor. He was really quiet. He didn’t make any loud banging noises and he didn’t sound angry or rushed or anything.
Whenever Alex had to clean something – his room or the kitchen table – he would always be in such a rush, even if he had nowhere else to be or nothing else to do, even if he had to go to bed right after it. And he hated going to bed. The only thing worse than that was having to get up in the morning.
He would always rush, though. He would grumble and groan and he would pick up too many things at once and they would all clang together and it would sound like they were about to crack or break and his mother would look at him angrily and she would she would shout, “Alex! Be careful.”
And she would say it in the same tone, with the same urgency as the time he walked onto the road and he didn’t see a car coming. And that time she shouted out his name as if the car was about to hit him. Because it was. But he felt her urgency in the way she said his name and he stopped walking any further and because of that, the car zipped past and it didn’t even graze his skin.
The problem was, his mother used that tone for everything; taking too long to clear the table, taking too long to get dressed, taking too long to get out of bed, taking too long to get into bed, not saying thank you, not saying please, crossing the road without looking both ways, a plane crashing and having to get his father - who said he couldn’t hear, when things were shouted from a distance.
And Alex would always rush whenever he had to do anything that he didn’t want to do. And he would always bang the things together. And his mother would give him a shout and his father would give him the look and he would try to be quiet but it was hard to take care of something that you didn’t really like.
The Man wasn’t like Alex. Maybe he liked picking up the pieces of wood. He didn’t seem sore that they broke the boxes. He didn’t seem sore that they were out and sitting on the floor. And he didn’t even seem sore that he had to pick up the pieces and take them out and put them somewhere else.
If he wanted to use the boxes again, if he wanted to put Alex and The Gruff back in them, he would have to make them all over again. Maybe he liked making boxes. He probably liked to think while he was doing stuff. And maybe he thought about how he was going to put Alex in the box. Whether he was going to put him on his belly so his bum scratched against the lid or whether he would squeeze him into one of the corners.
Maybe he would make it bigger, so Alex could stretch his legs out and not have to scratch his knees against the nails that poked through. Maybe he would make it out of better wood, so they couldn’t escape again.
The door was wide open, but Alex didn’t budge. He had his head still pressed against his knees and he was listening to the sound of The Man breathing heavily. He was being really gentle as he placed the boards of wood down in the hallway. He didn’t just dump them down on top of each other. He took his time and he rested them so you couldn’t hear the sound of one board touching the other. If Alex was The Man, he would have just dumped them and then yelled at himself for peeing on the floor and he would have made himself clean it up.
But Alex wasn’t The Man and The Man wasn’t Alex.
The Man entered the room again and this time he had two cloths in his hands. One of them was wet and it smelled of bleach. He knelt down on the ground where Alex had wet himself and he scrubbed hard with the wet cloth in big circles and then in smaller circles and then in tiny circles and then in even tinier circles until just one of his fingers was scratching through the cloth at a smudge that wouldn’t budge from the floor. It wasn’t anything Alex had done. It was something from before and he hadn’t noticed it until now.
When he finished scrubbing, he rubbed his fingers against the floor and then held them up to his nose. He didn’t really make any kind of face. He just sniffed them and then rubbed his fingers against his pants and then walked out of the room. He was only gone for a second before he came back, this time with a pair of white pants and a white shirt. He laid them on the ground beside a plate of food.
As he went to leave, Alex looked up from between his legs. The Man wasn’t looking at him. He was looking at The Gruff. And he looked the way Alex used to look when there was something that he had to do, but he would have rather been doing something else altogether. He didn’t look like he was going to hurt Alex. He looked like he was following orders or something, like he wasn’t allowed to hurt him, not yet anyway.
And Alex felt less scared now. The Man had come in and out of the room and he hadn’t looked at him once. He’d brought him food. He’d brought him fresh clothes. He’d walked around him. He was careful not to knock him or to frighten him into running. He didn’t even get mad when he had to clean up his pee. And he didn’t say anything about them breaking his boxes.
The Man stepped towards Alex as he was leaving the room, but The Gruff grumbled and then he turned away and he closed the door, locking all of the locks behind him as he did. Alex listened to the sound of his feet shuffling down the hallway. He sounded different.
Whenever Alex was bad and h
is mother or father locked him in his room, they would always yell about what he did and they would slam the door real hard and they would storm off down the hallway. In the apartment, there was no hallway so his mother would slam the door and she would stamp her feet until she got to the kitchen and then she would open and close lots of drawers and cabinets for no reason. But she wouldn’t just close them, she would slam them shut so each bang was like the slap across the bum that she wished she had given him.
His mother and father never hit him or his brother or his sisters. They said it was bad parenting, that there was no reason to hit a child. They still got just as angry, though, whenever the kids did something wrong. And they wouldn’t hit them but they would slam doors really loud and they would stamp their feet and his father would turn the television up really loud and he would change the channels really fast and you could tell he was mad because he was pressing the buttons really hard.
Alex would always shudder when his mother slammed the cupboards. It probably would have been easier if she had just hit him. Sure, it would hurt at first but after that it would have stung for a bit and then it would have been over and he could have felt sorry and he could have learnt his lesson. Hearing her slamming the cupboards made it sound like she was smacking someone else and that sounded worse than being smacked himself.
But The Man, he didn’t knock anything about. Even when he closed the door, he didn’t just pull it closed like his mother and father would have done, he pulled it gently. And he even pushed the handle down so it closed without the little knob catching and making a loud bang. And when he turned the locks, he didn’t make a big scene out of it. It was really quiet actually.
In the movies, they always make a big deal out of the bad guys locking a door. The camera always zoomed in on the lock and you could see the key turning inside and the sound of the lock clicking was as loud as thunder and creepy, like in the prison movies when they locked the gates after the prisoner enters and they’re trapped forever.
This didn’t sound like that. It just sounded like a lock locking. There wasn’t much event. There wasn’t much drama. Alex was focused on something else. He was looking at the plate of food on the other side of the room and he was listening to the sound of The Man’s feet, shuffling down the hall.
He sounded tired.
“Alright,” said The Gruff. “I am friggin starving. Please be steak, please be steak.”
The Gruff ran to the other side of the room and lifted the plate up to his nose. He smelt the food and made a disgusted face. He scrunched his nose up and he threw the plate of food against the wall.
“Friggin chicken,” he said.
Alex was looking at the food spread across the floor. He looked disappointed.
“I told him. Two pieces of steak. A big one for me and a little one for the kid and still he brings friggin chicken. Who the fuck eats chicken?”
The Gruff was pacing in circles. He was really angry. He clenched his hands real tight and he stamped his feet up and down and he cursed, he cursed a lot. When grown-ups did it, when his father did it, he looked mad and it usually scared Alex but The Gruff was really small and when he jumped up and down and stamped his feet and when he swung his clenching fists, little tufts of steam sprouted from his ears and he looked really funny and so Alex laughed. He hadn’t even noticed what The Gruff had said.
The Gruff liked it when Alex laughed. He liked it when all children laughed. But children never laughed much around him. They were always scared of him. Mainly because he was always so angry and he was shouting all the time and he used a lot of bad words and he spat when he talked, sometimes by accident but most of the times on purpose.
Alex didn’t get scared, though.
He laughed.
“Did you really want it?” The Gruff asked. “It’s still good. I mean I can just you know, shake off a bit here and…”
The Gruff picked up piece by piece of the chicken and wiped them against his jeans and he put them back on the plate. He spat on each one and he rubbed them against his jeans as if he were shining a coin or something. Alex didn’t much want to each the chicken anymore, but he was enjoying watching The Gruff trying to apologize and do the right thing.
Alex laughed.
“What, you don’t trust me? Here, look.”
The Gruff took one of the pieces and he put it in his mouth. It tasted like bleach. He wanted to spit it out, but he didn’t. He kept chewing it like it was bubblegum. He twisted it round the sides of his mouth, pressing it against his gums, but he refused to swallow it. Alex watched him like a student. He wasn’t waiting for him to swallow the chicken. He was waiting for his reaction after he did. He just knew he was going to do something funny.
The Gruff chewed and he chewed. The thought of swallowing the chicken made him gag. But he was going to prove to Alex that there was nothing wrong with the food, that he could eat it if he wanted to. And so, like a writer circling a blank page, The Gruff swirled the chicken round in his mouth and he braved the idea of swallowing it each time it neared his tongue but each time, he flicked it back to the sides of his mouth again and each time he thought to himself, “Next time round, I’m gonna do it.”
The next time came. He looked at Alex and Alex was looking at him. He had no choice. He had to do it, for the boy. He gulped the chicken and his tongue pushed it to the back of his throat and he tried to swallow but it got stuck there and it wouldn’t budge. He tried gulping some more but nothing.
It was stuck.
The Gruff started to panic. He slapped his hands against his thighs and he started choking. It was funny at first but then when his face went red, Alex got up and ran over to where he was and he started slapping his back, not too hard, though, he didn’t want to break him.
After a couple of hard slaps, the piece of chicken flew out of The Gruff’s mouth and bounced off the wall and onto the floor. The Gruff stood up and caught his breath. He heaved over and over. He looked briefly at Alex, his friend and then he then looked back at the piece of auspicious chicken in the middle of the room.
“It nearly killed me. It tried to kill me” he said.
“I don’t think it was trying to…”
The Gruff turned and took Alex by the shoulders.
“You saved my life. I would have died were it not for you” he said.
Alex smiled. He had never saved anyone’s life before. He was usually the one who was choking or the one who broke the expensive lamp or the one who brought dirt onto the carpet. He was never the one to be deserving acclaim.
He didn’t know how to act.
He was embarrassed.
His face went red.
“You saved my life Alex. Nobody has ever cared about The Gruff. Nobody except you. Nobody has ever laughed with The Gruff. Nobody except you. Alex…’ he said, pausing.
Alex looked up.
He sounded so serious.
“Will you be my friend?” asked The Gruff.
Alex smiled.
“Of course,” he said.
Alex put his hand out to shake. The Gruff knocked it away. He looked angry as if Alex had done something stupid and Alex felt that he had. He hoped The Gruff wouldn’t change his mind and take away what he said.
‘Friends don’t shake hands” he said.
Alex felt stupid.
He had never had a friend before. He didn’t know that. He thought it was the right thing to do. He’d made his first real friend and he’d lost him straight away, just by being stupid.
The Gruff jumped at Alex. He knocked his hands out of the way and he dived into his stomach. Alex fell back. Fright overcame him. He thought The Gruff was going to tear him apart. Instead, The Gruff dived into his belly and he wrapped his arms around his waist. Alex didn’t know what to do. He thought it was a trick.
“What? You’re too cool to hug a friend?”
He wasn’t trying to tear out his stomach. He was giving him a hug, like friends, did. Alex wrapped his arms around The Gruff. His w
ere so big compared to his new friend. He squeezed him tight against his chest and he swung back and forth. The Gruff grumbled for a bit, but Alex couldn’t hear. He was so happy. The Gruff, he grumbled some more but still Alex was swinging back and forth and squeezing tighter and tighter.
He never wanted to let go.
“I can’t breathe” shouted The Gruff.
Alex heard him this time and he apologized as he unfolded his arms and let The Gruff dust himself off and get back on his feet. He sat there and stared dumbfounded at his new friend. The Gruff stared back, but with less wonder.
“Alright, Alex. First things first. Don’t trust the chicken. Second, we need to get you changed and third, we gotta figure out how we’re going to get out of….”
The lock clicked once and the lock clicked twice. Alex had been so full of wonder that he hadn’t heard the sound of The Man’s shuffling feet up the hallway and he hadn’t heard the sound of him sliding the key into the lock. He did, though, hear the sound of one lock clicking twice and then swiftly followed by the other.
He froze
He looked into the eyes of The Gruff who looked back at his. The Man entered the room and he walked up to Alex and he lifted him from under his armpits and he carried him out of the room.
The Gruff shouted.
“Leave him alone!”
The Man closed the door with one hand. He had Alex trapped in the other. He locked the door gently and then he calmly put the key back around his neck. It was tied to a black shoelace and the shoelace was tied together with five or six knots. It didn’t look very pretty.
The Man took Alex down the corridor. It was really long and there wasn’t much light. Either there were no light or he had turned them off on purpose, one or the other. Alex’s heart was beating so fast and yet everything was happening so slowly. It felt like an hour had passed before they reached the end of the hallway. Really it had only been about four or five seconds and it wasn’t actually that long, it only seemed that way to Alex because he couldn’t see where it all started and where it was going to end.
And I don’t think he wanted to know.
Alex didn’t squirm. He didn’t try to fight. He stayed there still and silent in The Man’s arms. It felt like all those other times. In school, when The Teacher lined them up so she could kiss the kids whenever they left or came back to class.
He would want to shout.
He would want to break the line.
But he couldn’t.
He would have no voice and no complaint so he would just stand and he would hide within himself and she would kiss him and she would think that he enjoyed it.
And then there were his mother’s friends and the people who were not her friends and how they would all come rushing up to him and they would want to touch his hair and would want to rub his shoulders and say how big he had gotten and then pull on his hands and his fingers and get so close that he could smell the wine on their breath and they would blow it in his face as they pinched his cheeks and said how cute he was and how much of a man he was becoming and he’d turn away. And because the world made no sense, they wouldn’t take that as a sign that he didn’t like it.
They’d just keep on keeping on.
But it was always the same thing. Be polite. Say nothing. Don’t say what you think. Don’t say you feel. Just say please and even if you didn’t want what they made you take, remember to say, thank you.
Alex stayed like the little mouse. He didn’t think of his mother and father. They were somewhere else. They didn’t help him out of the box. How could they help him here? Instead, he thought of The Gruff and he hoped that somehow he could break out the room and if The Man was going to do bad things, if he couldn’t stop him, then at least he could stay with him and he wouldn’t have to be alone, not now.
The Man flicked a switch and a bright light burned and Alex went blind for a second. He was put down on the floor and he sat there, completely still. His eyes were hurting. He couldn’t see where he was. Everything was white, though.
The Man lifted him onto his feet. Alex put up no fight. When he was on his feet he stayed. He didn’t try to run and he didn’t try to punch. He didn’t know how.
The Man put his hands on Alex’s thighs and he pulled down his underwear. He pulled them down his legs and had to push apart Alex’s knees with his other hand to get them to the floor. Alex was so scared. He didn’t realize he was pressing his knees together so hard. It must have been a defense or something.
His knees buckled and The Man worked his underwear down to the ground. Then he lifted Alex’s feet one by one and he threw the soiled underwear in a red basket. Alex stood there in the white room, holding his hands over his private parts. He was shaking so much and he was so scared. He wished he knew how to fight. His brother did. He was learning karate. He could probably kick or punch The Man and he would die and then he could escape, but not before he saved his friend The Gruff so they could run away together and his new friend could sleep at his house, with his family.
The Man turned on a hose and he ran the water over his own hand before it warmed up and then he turned the hose on Alex. He watered at his neck and he let the warm water run down his body.
Alex had his eyes closed. He tried to think of something else. He tried to imagine that he was on the street at his old house in his old city and he was watching his father riding past the house on his motorbike and his brother was on the back and he was so focused that it looked like he wasn’t really having fun. It didn’t look like he was scared. It looked like he was thinking about winning a race. And Alex watched his brother but in his mind, it started to rain and he could feel warm water running down his chest and between his legs and as much as he tried to pretend it wasn’t happening, he could feel the hand of a man, The Man, rubbing a soapy cloth on his body.
He cringed.
But he couldn’t cry.
The Man soaped Alex from neck to toe. Alex had his eyes closed so he couldn’t see that The Man had his closed too. He wasn’t looking at Alex. He was looking away from him like he felt guilty about what he was doing but for some reason, he couldn’t stop.
After Alex was soaped, The Man hosed him down. He turned Alex around so his back was facing him. He could open his eyes now. He did. It must have been easier looking at Alex’s back, not having to see his face, not having to see his lips trembling and not having to see the tiny tears escaping his eyes, the ones that he would eventually hose away.
The Man took some shampoo from beside him and he washed Alex’s hair. He massaged the shampoo into his head and waited a minute or two before he rinsed it off. When he rinsed, he made sure to keep the suds from entering Alex’s eyes. He kept his hand over Alex’s forehead and kept washing the water back over the top of his head so it ran down his back.
Alex was shaking so much that he slipped. But The Man caught him and he kept one hand around his chest while the other held the hose over his head and washed away the shampoo.
When he was done, The Man took a towel from a rack and he patted Alex down gently, drying all the excess water from his body. He wrapped the towel around him and then took a smaller towel and put it round his head to dry his hair.
The Man said nothing the entire time. He seemed bored and distant from what he was doing. It was like he was washing his father’s car or scrubbing paint off a wall.
He didn’t seem to care.
The Man picked Alex up in his arms again. He held him with two hands just in front of himself. He carried him like someone might carry a wet chair. He put Alex down beside the door as he unlocked it and then he picked Alex up again and he carried him inside.
He then set Alex down at the end of the room by the pile of clothes. He pointed them out as if to say, “Here, dress yourself.” He didn’t say that, though. He just pointed and Alex understood. As he left, The Man picked up The Gruff and then he closed and locked the door.
Alex was cold. He wanted to get dressed. He wanted to put the clothes on
, but he didn’t want to take off the towel. He didn’t want to be naked.
Not again.
He sat by the pile of clothes and he shivered. He shivered from the cold and he shivered from fear. He curled himself up into a little ball and he started to cry. He expected The Gruff to shout at him, to tell him to stop crying. He hoped that he would. The Gruff made him feel safe.
But there was no shouting.
Alex was alone.
The Gruff was gone.