PATERSON, AGAIN

He returned home. He lay in bed, he healed. His mother so infuriated she wouldn’t look at him.

He was a complete and utter wreck. Knew he loved her like he’d never loved anyone. Knew what he should be doing making like a Lola and flying back. Fuck the capitán. Fuck Grundy and Grod. Fuck everybody. Easy to say in the rational day but at night his balls turned to ice water and ran down his fucking legs like piss. Dreamed again and again of the cane, the terrible cane, except now it wasn’t him at the receiving end of the beating, but his sister, his mother, heard them shrieking, begging for them to stop, please God stop, but instead of racing toward the voices, he ran away! Woke up screaming. Not me. Not me.

He watched Virus for the thousandth time and for the thousandth time teared up when the Japanese scientist finally reached Tierra del Fuego and the love of his life. He read The Lord of the Rings for what I’m estimating the millionth time, one of his greatest loves and greatest comforts since he’d first discovered it, back when he was nine and lost and lonely and his favorite librarian had said, Here, try this, and with one suggestion changed his life. Got through almost the whole trilogy, but then the line ‘and out of Far Harad black men like half-trolls’ and he had to stop, his head and heart hurting too much.

Six weeks after the Colossal Beat down he dreamed about the cane again. But instead of bolting when the cries began, when the bones started breaking, he summoned all the courage he ever had, would ever have, and forced himself to do the one thing he did not want to do, that he could not bear to do.

He listened.