Clare

RAY TOLD ME later. It was after the sun had gone down, and we’d come in from outside. He was at the kitchen sink washing his hands, and to this day, whenever I smell that soap—that Lava soap, strong and clean—I think of that night and the way he told the story so la-di-da as if it was nothing at all, just a little piece of chitchat he’d carried home in his pocket.

“He’s one of them,” he said. “That Henry Dees. He’s a kid fruit. He’s got short eyes.”

I didn’t know what he meant. I was at the counter dumping the Kentucky Wonders into a drainer so I could rinse them, and I said, “Short eyes? Sounds serious. I thought he just needed his glasses straightened up.”

Ray turned off the tap and shook water from his hands. “He’s a puppy lover, Clare. An uncle. A chicken hawk. Do I have to say it plain?” He dried his hands on the dish towel. “He gets his jollies from being with those kids. He’s a pervert.”

“Henry Dees? I can’t believe that.”

“It’s hard to know someone,” Ray said. Then he said the rest of it, told me that Henry Dees snuck around in the dark and kept his eyes on those kids, one in particular, a little girl who lived in the Heights, a little girl named Katie Mackey. One night, he took a snatch of hair from her brush.

“Ray, did he go into that girl’s house?”

“I believe he’s capable of doing that, Clare. I really do.”

“He told you all this?”

“Darlin’, do you think I’d make it up?”

I didn’t even wonder then how Ray knew all those names for what he claimed Henry Dees was, and when I finally got around to asking, he said, Well, you know, it’s just things you hear. It’s just talk.