there it remained so, forever. I never caught a glimpse of that place. The kitchen, well, you can imagine. A few pots and pans, but everything else was of plastic or paper - the plates, utensils - except for an assortment of sharp looking knives. Alan pointed them out with some pride. He used them for whittling and carving. He picked up one of the larger ones and casually mentioned it had killed a man at one time. I didn't press him for details and he put it away with some ceremony.
The walls were barren. I remember how strange it seemed to me then. I was raised in a house where the walls were practically covered with stuff - paintings by my sister, drawings by me. Posters and prints from all over. My mother even taped postcards she especially liked to the walls. Alan Belew's place was empty. Well, I reminded myself, he did say that they moved around a lot. Different place every year. Probably got tired of packing up stuff so that's why they didn't have any. He offered me some ice cream but I said no thanks, because I felt guilty to take anything. The boy had so little to begin with.
"Suit yourself", he replied, helping himself to a half-box of chocolate, then wolfing it down, scooping it out with his hands. He had ice cream all over his face and his arms and just wiped it all off on his shirt when he finished.
"Come on", he declared, "let's go back outside. There's something I wanted to show you".
I just wanted to go. I had to get home. My mother would worry, I told him. And maybe he had had enough of my whining by then, because he said "Suit yourself" one more time, and then went to his room, slamming the door shut behind him. I let myself out and tried to get ready for the yelling my mother would give me as soon as she saw my new pants.
Every school day after that, Alan Belew was waiting for me outside on the sidewalk by my home. He never once knocked on the door, or called, or even asked if I wanted to walk the five blocks with him. He just made sure to arrive there early enough, and waited. It was no use trying to avoid him. He would wait as long as it took. Sooner or later I would run out of excuses and my mother would push me out the front door and there I was, stuck. I soon discovered that getting slugged was now part of my daily routine. It was the way he had of saying hello. He'd punch me in the arm or the shoulder and without a word we'd head down the street towards school.
Along the way we crossed a bridge over some railroad tracks, followed by a detour through some weeds across a vacant lot, then down another side street to the elementary school. In those days, sixth grade was the top of the line. All your life you waited until you could be the top dog, because right after that you were shipped off to junior high, you had to take the bus and be the small fry once again. But I was always the small fry, and sixth grade turned out to be the same old story for me, only now I had a crazy sort of bodyguard, the kind that does the opposite of protect you. Hardly a day went by without Alan Belew daring me to do something incredibly dangerous and stupid, like jump off the bridge onto a train rushing by underneath, or throwing an egg at the garbage man riding the back of his truck, or sticking my hand through the fence where the mean German Shepherd was drooling to bite it. I almost did all of these things, out of the fear that if I didn't do them on my own he would push me, or throw me, or make me somehow do them. I didn't really think about the consequences. At the time, it seemed to me that any of those options would probably lead to somehow escaping the presence of Alan Belew, if only briefly. At the very last moment he'd let me off the hook with a snort and a caustic insult.
"What an idiot", he'd say. "You sure take the cake", and then pull me away from the scene of the dare.
I hated that boy. I hated his breath, the sound of his voice, the smell of his putrid old shirts. I was a virtual prisoner from the moment I left home in the morning, all day long at the school, until I got home, if he let me go home, in the evening. It turned out we both stayed for day care. Me and him and a bunch of littler kids in a room with the nasty old man who always made us play cards, Mr. Snittle. He had children as young as six playing poker and gambling with pretzel sticks. Alan was always in trouble. More often than not, he was punished with detention for things that he did in the classroom. Mr. Snittle also ran that, and he knew just how to make a kid suffer. Once he discovered that Alan had some natural mechanical talents, he started bringing in all sorts of interesting magazines of that sort, and refused to let Alan read them. He brought in Alan's favorite snacks - marshmallow rice krispie treats - and wouldn't let Alan eat them. He made him watch while the other kids got to do things he enjoyed. On our way home after a typical Snittleday, I was sure to get the brunt of his rage, mixed in with the usual assortment of improbable tales, such as the time that a rattlesnake jumped up and bit him on the elbow, or how his father felled two elk with one shot from a crossbow.
I lied to my parents about it, about the torn clothing, the bruises, the bleeding. I had become very accident prone all at once. I couldn't tell anyone. Nobody knew, and it went on like this for weeks. I didn't know at the time, but everything changed when a girl in my class took me aside at recess one day, and started to quiz me about him. I didn't really know Dana Sanderson. She lived in the gigantic apartment complex about a mile from my house - I didn't even know which floor she lived on - and we had never talked to each other before. She was almost as tall as Alan, which meant that she towered over me. She had long straight brown hair, a lot of freckles, and a couple of bumps which would turn into breasts but for the moment seemed hardly to be there at all. There was nothing special about her. She never spoke up in class. She didn't seem to have many friends or any particular interests.
"He's your friend, right?" she asked me.
"Who is?” I asked.
"Alan", she gestured impatiently at him. He was walking alone by the fence, kicking rocks.
"I guess", I replied.
"I want him", she told me directly. "Will you help me to get him?” she asked. I had no idea what she meant, but I think I had a glimmer of hope that maybe she would take him from me. It would be a clean transfer. I'd just hand him over and that would be that. I'd be free.
"Sure", I replied. "If I can."
"Good", Dana told me, and started walking away, and I stood there, wondering what that was all about.
I didn't hear another word from Dana Sanderson for several days, and began to wonder if maybe I'd just imagined that whole conversation. School days had been bad enough, but now, even on the weekends, I would wake up, peek out my second floor window, and see Alan Belew hanging around on the sidewalk across the street, waiting for me to come outside. It was just my good luck, my only luck at the time, that he was for some reason afraid to come and knock at the door. On the other hand, it meant I was trapped in my own home. I would have to wait for my parents to insist on taking me somewhere, or else sneak out the back and play as quietly as possible, making sure I didn't venture anywhere that was visible from the street. One Saturday he remained out front for nearly three hours.
When Dana did call, it was on a Sunday morning and Alan was nowhere in sight. I had never received a phone call from a girl before in my life, and I remember feeling a little flattered. I shouldn't have.
"Jimmy?” she asked, after I had come to the phone and said "hi".
"Yeah?"
I tried to sound cool.
"Do you have your shovel ready?” she wanted to know.
"My shovel?"
I was confused.
"Like we talked about", Dana replied.
"I don't know what you mean."
"You were going to come over today, and you said you'd bring your sho
vel", she told me. This was entirely news to me. I think she had played back a conversation with me in her head so many times she was convinced it had actually happened. It turned out this was very typical of her. She must have had a lot of imaginary friends when she was small, because she had a whole quiet world going on in that big brown head of hers. She didn't talk much, but when she did, she often began in the middle of some long involved story that nobody around her knew anything about. The funny part was, she didn't even notice. I don't think she had much time for other people and their little realities.
As it was, I didn't mind having an excuse to get out of the house and do something, anything, with anyone other than Alan. I told her I'd bring my shovel right over. She told me to meet her in the parking lot outside the apartment building, "on the south side", she said, as if I'd have any idea what that meant. I could never tell what the "northeast" corner or any directions were all about. Still can't. I figured I'd fake it, and find her somehow, which it turned out was easy to do, because a twelve year old girl with a shovel was easy to spot in a big old empty lot with nobody around.
Dana Sanderson meant business, and I soon discovered what business she meant. There was a small patch of woods not far from the apartment building, concealed by a huge mound of dirt that lined the lot. It was almost as if they had excavated a ten story hole, and piled all the dirt right next to the ten story building they put in there. We climbed with our shovels over that hill, and entered the woods. I