The boy’s lips quivered and his eyes blinked rapidly as he fought the urge to cry. “I don’t know. It was far and we turned away and when we looked back, it was gone.”
Tim rose from his chair, as if emerging from a cocoon of ice, crackling and stiff in his joints. Anger contorted his features, and he stepped between Nick and his father to confront the boy. “But you saw him, clear as I did. You saw him today and you saw him that night.”
Nick chewed his lip and stared at the floor.
“Tell the truth, boy. A man, wild and naked.”
Everyone now watched Nick for some affirmation or denial, but the boy was in a panic that threatened to drown him.
From his crouch, Jack Peter listened as they questioned his friend, saw how scared he looked, and jumped up to save him. “He didn’t have a pecker.”
In unison, their heads swiveled to face him. Mrs. Weller laughed at the comment.
“That’s what Nick said.”
His father croaked a warning. “Jip—”
“I never said that.”
“You did,” Jack Peter said. “You saw the drawing and you said he had no penis.”
The adults, even his father, laughed again. Jack Peter hated it when people laughed at him, and he wrung the bloody towel in his hands and waved it to make them quit. When he saw the shock on their faces, he stopped and clasped his hands behind his head to keep still, to show them they should not be afraid.
His mother entered the room, bearing the first-aid kit, and she came at once to his side. “I’m just going to help you,” she said and laid her hand upon his knotted fingers, prying gently to get him to relax his grip, but he didn’t want to, not yet, he wasn’t finished telling them about the monster, but she kept tugging at his hands and speaking slowly, words full of music, till he finally gave in to her and let go of the towel. She held his left hand in her right, rubbing his thumb with her thumb, and he was okay.
“What’s going on? What happened here?”
Nobody wanted to tell her. Each person avoided her gaze.
“Who set off Jack?”
“It was nothing,” his father said. “Just a misunderstanding about what’s appropriate in mixed company.”
“Heavens, Tim,” Mrs. Weller said. “I’ve heard ‘pecker’ plenty of times.”
“Mixed, children,” he said.
Rising for the defense, Mr. Weller tottered to the middle of the room. “Jack here was trying to tell us what he saw—or didn’t see—in regards to that creature your husband chased all the way to Canada.”
His mother took out some gauze and a bandage and went back to patch up his father. She pressed the nail marks with her fingertips. “So much blood. Do you think you might need stitches?”
He dismissed her anxiety with a wave of his hand. “I saw something out on the rocks, white as a ghost, and I chased it. I must have passed out, and when I came to, it was early dark and I was so cold. My neck was bleeding. I could feel something had been at my throat. All the way home, I kept hearing noises out in the blackness, following me, footsteps behind me, all around, that would stop when I stopped and start up again whenever I moved.”
“White as a ghost,” his mother said. Mrs. Weller kept pulling at the hem of her sleeve, and Mr. Weller was quite nearly smiling, skeptical and bemused.
“A couple times I yelled out, but whatever it was would run away—you could hear it scamper over the rocks—but then it came around again the way a dog will circle back on you. Or maybe there was more than one of them. Maybe you’re right, Fred, maybe there’s coyotes or a pack of wild dogs out there. Maybe that’s what got my throat.”
Mr. Weller’s smile broadened, and then he blushed.
“Were you just frightened to death?” Mrs. Weller asked. She had inched closer.
“Let me tell you, I was scared, and didn’t know where I was half the time. Only by keeping the sea on my left could I figure out the way home.”
He pictured his father out in the dark, using his mind to turn the landscape so that the sea would be on his left-hand side, rotating the darkened sky like tilting a picture. Maybe the monsters would just slide off the page. He wanted his father to open the doors and shake out the Wellers. Erase Nick from the page. He was tired of them. Without hesitation, he yawned wide and roared a protracted sigh.
“Seems we’ve overstayed our welcome,” Mr. Weller said, nodding to the sleepy boy. “We really ought to be getting home. Thanks for having Nick.”
Mrs. Weller stared at her husband as though he had said a bad word. “Not until Tim finishes his story.”
“Of course not, dear,” Mr. Weller said, folding his arms across his chest. “Tim, we’re pins and needles.”