“I could stay, if it’s okay with my mother.” Nick stole a glance at Jack Peter, but he showed no reaction. A flush rose on his face, and he tightened his grip around the plastic men.
“You boys will have to clean up now, and, Jack, you never made your bed today.” Mrs. Keenan took one step into the room, and her mere presence seemed to break the spell around her son. His rapid panting slowed into a gentle rhythm. He put down his toys and bowed his head like a penitent. Making parentheses of his arms, Nick scooped the soldiers and warriors to the middle of the mattress.
“Jack, Jackie.” His mother snapped her fingers, trying to get his attention. “Isn’t it nice Nicholas can stay for supper? But, Jack, you have to help clean up this mess. And make your bed, okay? I don’t want to have to tell you again. C’mon, my boy.”
In slow motion, he picked up the ponies that had fallen to the floor and added them to the pile. Mrs. Keenan turned and left the room, and in her absence, he began to move more quickly. With Nick’s help, they put the plastic soldiers in a pretzel tin on top of the toy box, and then they straightened the sheets and pulled smooth the quilt. The boys went about their work quietly, as Nick knew better than to distract his friend. He was always unsteady when transitioning, and it was best to be silent and let Jack Peter find his own way. When the room was tidy and everything in order, Nick pretended to clap dust from his palms. “Finished?”
On cue, his friend became a ten-year-old boy again. “Yes!” he shouted, and they raced each other downstairs. The wind rattled the panes of the picture windows on the lower floor and flung sand against the siding. Just beyond, whitecaps frosted the Atlantic, and the surf pulsed like a heartbeat. Cold and damp pushed against the old saltbox house, the joists creaking in the wind, and the furnace pushed back with an exhalation of heat. It was good to be inside on such a night.
The living room was dark except for the glow of the tiny colored lights on the Christmas tree, and the boys nearly bounced right past Mr. Keenan, nestled in his easy chair. “What ho, lads? Mr. Nick, I see, has joined us. And what have you fine fellows been up to all afternoon?”
“War,” said Jack Peter. “With the army men.”
“War? Mayhem and murder, J.P.? So soon to Christmas, do you think that’s wise?”
Jack Peter hovered beside his father’s chair, a step away from contact. “Pretend war. Just pretend. It isn’t real.”
“All in the imagination, eh, Jip?”
“Up here.” He tapped his skull with one finger.
“How about you, Mr. Weller? Which side were you on?”
The question embarrassed Nick, for he felt, in part, too old to be playing with toy soldiers. He had agreed at Jack Peter’s insistence, just as he nearly always had. “There were no sides. They were all mixed up, the Germans and the Americans and the Indians.”
“A healthy disregard for history,” Mr. Keenan said. “Good for you. There are many things more important than history. Imagination, for one. And dinner, for two. Are you boys washed up and ready for some grub? Let’s turn on some lights on the way. No need to be living in a graveyard.”
A fish stew bubbled on the stove top. Nick watched as Mrs. Keenan sliced a loaf of bread on a wooden board. As she concentrated on her task, a bruise on her cheek deepened to purple. They sat in their usual places, the grown-ups at the ends, Jack Peter and Nick facing each other. From the saying of the blessing, Nick began to sense the difference in the atmosphere, as though something or someone was watching them eat. None of the others seemed to take heed of the situation. Mr. and Mrs. Keenan chatted idly about the weather and the food, savoring a morsel of whitefish, a hunk of bread, a sip of wine, and Jack Peter, as usual, zoned in upon his task, chewing mechanically every bite. But Nick could not shake the feeling that they were not alone.
“You boys will never guess what I found today,” Mr. Keenan said. “I was up at the Rothmans’ place making sure it was shipshape for the winter, and I thought I heard the wind come in, so I go checking all the windows. In one of the rooms there’s a real peculiar smell. A stink, really—”
With his glass at his mouth, Jack Peter snorted into his milk.
“So I look under the bed, and what do you know, the kid had left a wet bathing suit under the bed. Been sitting since the end of summer, but that’s not all. Inside the pockets, what do you think? Hermit crabs. Four of them crammed in there. But here’s the weird part. I’m getting ready to leave and I hear this scribble-scrabble sound coming from where I laid them out upon the desk, and you guessed it. Those crabs come back from the dead, trying to escape the house and walk back to the ocean.”
“Ghost crabs,” Jack Peter said.