I Looked For You, I Called Your Name

His parents placed him on a Greyhound with twenty dollars, a plastic bag full of asparagus from the small garden out back, a satchel containing his meager summer clothes, and a letter. The asparagus he tossed in a trashcan when the bus made its first stop in Pennsylvania. The letter he opened before they’d even left the station, and in Ohio he paid the driver five dollars to write a new one. The note he presented to his grandparents when they picked him up from the bus station in central Oklahoma read, “Clay’s a good boy, but we just don’t have room for him. Please show him a good time,” in the bus driver’s closest approximation of Clay’s mother’s handwriting. His grandparents looked at one another, then smiled at Clay. But as they drove to their house, their smiles became nervous, tight.

Clay had never met them before; he’d only seen old photos. He remembered one in particular, in which his father, just a little boy then, and his grandfather stood in the doorway of a white building—a church, Clay thought—wearing matching suits, squinting their eyes against the sun, his grandfather’s hand so massive as it draped across his son’s shoulder that it looked like he could have tossed the child like a football. Now, though, as his grandfather got out of the car and appraised him with eyes magnified by thick glasses, he looked to Clay like something left out in the sun too long: a dried-out husk.

They gave him his own bedroom for the first time—he’d always had to share with his sister, Maysie—and the clothes that hadn’t even filled the satchel now formed small piles in each of the four drawers of the dresser. It was in one of these drawers, under his two white T-shirts, that he placed the original letter.“Clay’s been stealing,” it said, “breaking into people’s houses, and sneaking out. His sister’s enough of a handful. We’re hoping you can straighten him out over the summer. If you can’t handle him, either, send him someplace else. We’re finished.”

He shut the door to read it because his grandparents’ home contained so much noise—radios, televisions, fans, chiming clocks, all at top volume—he couldn’t concentrate enough to memorize the words. He was staring at the letter when a voice surprised him. “There are no secrets in this house,” his grandfather said, and propped the door open. Clay hid the letter between the T-shirts and spent the rest of the day exploring the woods behind the house.

The second day, he walked to the next town—about three miles— and stole a red bike from a house that looked like its owners could afford another. At home, his friends stole things all the time, Cokes, bikes, beers. Once, he’d even ridden around in a car that his friend Mike had taken from the grocery store. Since the keys were in the ignition, Mike had told them, it didn’t count as stealing. Clay had sat in the back seat, feeling that was not as bad; he’d felt along for the ride. The bike was the first thing he’d ever stolen himself, and the ease with which he did it surprised him. He scraped the decals off with the blade from his grandfather’s razor. He tore the padding from the frame and threw it into the woods. Then, with some of his remaining fifteen dollars, he bought two cans of spray paint—one black, one silver—and gave the bike a new paint job.

His grandfather asked where he’d gotten the bike. “Some guy gave me a couple bucks to mow his lawn,” Clay responded. His grandfather said Clay could mow their lawn; his back couldn’t take it any longer, and Clay traced his eyes along the curve in the old man’s spine. He got halfway done with the lawn and took a break that never ended.

His grandparents spoke to him slowly, as if they were frightened of him, or thought he was an idiot. “Would you like some green beans for dinner?” his grandmother would ask in the morning and he would shrug his shoulders. “Is it a nice night out?” his grandfather would say, sitting next to Clay on the porch, in a way that insinuated they didn’t live in the same world, like they were talking long-distance on the telephone.

The neighborhood didn’t have many children. It was a sad, compact block, where the houses looked right into one another’s windows and the crabgrass dotted the dirt in the front yards. No one went outside. Nothing much happened. Every day, Clay rode the black-and-silver bike farther and farther in search of something else moving. But what came to interest him most was only two doors down.

The Boxtells lived in a clapboard shack decorated with flakes of paint, on the corner of Oak and Vincent. Riding past, standing on the pedals, Clay often found Mr. and Mrs. Boxtell sitting on their front steps after work, seeming to rise out of the long grass that grew wild in their yard. Their son Griff would lie down on a glider that had broken loose from its rusted chains and sat on the uneven boards of the porch, blowing smoke at the ceiling.

Clay’s grandparents told him not to loiter outside the Boxtell house. They said the Boxtells would sooner take his head off with a shotgun than say hello, but he’d pretend there was something wrong with his bike chain and pause by their mailbox. If the sun had dipped low, all Clay would be able to see was the glowing blossom of Griff ’s cigarette every time he took a drag. He wanted Griff to know he wasn’t afraid of him, even though his grandparents claimed Griff had spent three years in prison. Sometimes Griff ’s low voice would emanate from that darkness. He’d say, “Picture’d last longer, faggot.”

Clay couldn’t pretend any longer then, and his fear pedaled him back to the blaring noise of his grandparents’ house. While they were watching the evening news, he’d sneak out into the garden in back and sit down by the cucumbers. He’d dig his toes into the soft earth. The sound of the corn stalks rattling and brushing against one another comforted him, and in that quiet, he missed his family—his parents’ stern silence. Their apartment back in Massachusetts was so noiseless—though the ticking of the clock in the living room could always be heard—that he could always find quiet enough to think. From the kitchen, he could hear his sister in his parents’ bedroom, pretending their mother’s hairbrushes were horses, whispering for them to go faster. At his grandparents’ house, everything was blaring. The two of them yelled to each other, whether they were two feet or two rooms away. His mother and father had never yelled at him, but it was hard for him not to think that they’d given him away, like an old piece of furniture left by the side of the road.

One day, Clay found Griff lying on the broken sidewalk in front of the Boxtell house, working on a motorcycle. A rusted toolbox sat beside him in the dirt. His sandy hair had been cut recently—clean white skin shone around the borders of his uneven hairline. He wore a pair of camouflage cargo shorts that had been duct taped in places, and a sleeveless t-shirt that said “America” in starry letters. His feet were bare.

As Clay stood next to his bike and watched, Griff unscrewed a nut, slipped the bolt out, inspected it for a second, blew into its center, held it up to his eye, then put it right back in the same place. He repeated this process. All the while he made thoughtful noises. Clay became aware that Griff knew he was there, but he hadn’t yet threatened him or called him a retard. He guessed that Griff owned that motorcycle about as much as he owned his bike.

“You know anything about hogs?” Griff said, standing and brushing the dust from his pants. He said the word “hogs” with care. Clay shook his head no. “That’s some paint job,” Griff said, nodding at the bike. Clay looked down and his work looked suddenly drippy and amateurish. “You need a beer?”

“Sure,” Clay said, wondering what kind of man offered a fourteenyear-old a beer.

Griff stomped onto the porch and reached into a Styrofoam cooler. His hand emerged empty and red. He shook off the water. “You don’t have a couple of bucks, do you?”

Clay’s hand went to his pocket, where he knew he had close to ten dollars left. “A couple, yeah.”

Then they were walking down Vincent Street. Griff talked fast, pointing out who lived in each of the houses, his descriptions peppered with expletives and statements like, “They found me in their shed after I beat Gary Danielson in a whiskey drinking contest one night.” The names—different in each story—came with no context, no explanation.

Clay couldn’t believe his good fortune. He wanted to ask a million questions—Where did he find the friends in his wonderful stories? Where did he get his tattoos? How much beer did he drink in an afternoon? Most of all, he wanted to ask why he’d been sent to prison, but he thought it was rude, like asking an old lady how old she is. He kept quiet.

They walked to Miller’s, the town’s small grocery. It looked like a stubby barn, red with white trim on the posts and the doors and windows. The front porch was laden with silver-haired people, slowed even more by the heat, checkerboards untouched on the wicker tables between them. Inside, the store smelled of fresh cold cuts and brewing coffee and was about the size of a living room. The shelves stood shoulder-high, arranged in no particular order, soup with cake mix, cookies with canned beans. The cooler sighed as Griff grabbed a sixpack. He put it on his shoulder and carried it to the front of the store. Clay followed dutifully.

Griff stared at the fishing poles behind the counter. “I had a knife like that once,” he said, and hitched a thumb at the glass case full of knives.

“Which?”

Griff waved his hand at the display.“That one.” He held out his hand for money. Clay handed him the five, and Griff raised his eyebrows appreciatively before grabbing two bags of beef jerky from the counter.

“Griff,” Mr. Miller said in greeting. Mr. Miller was an odd-looking man, with a bulbous nose that had been broken two too many times, and hair that—though full—seemed too small for his head. “Who’s your friend?”

“Cousin,” Griff replied, and Clay felt sudden warmth at being connected—even in a lie—with the Boxtell family. Mr. Miller eyed Clay with suspicion, and Clay tried to meet his gaze. Griff stuffed the change in his pocket, threw the six-pack back over his shoulder, and headed out the door, leaving Clay in Mr. Miller’s wary shadow.

“I guess we’ll be going,” Clay said.

“Your cousin,” Mr. Miller said, “is trouble in the end, boy.”

Clay grabbed the beef jerky from the counter and raced out the screen door. Up ahead, Griff disappeared into the forest. He led the way down an almost indiscernible path worn in the side of the ravine. As soon as he heard the first rocks give way under Clay’s feet, Griff began his steady stream of chatter again, this time discussing Mr. Miller’s obvious sexual shortcomings, and his children, who were apparently all fat, stupid, and spoiled Eagle Scouts. At the bottom of the hill, a well-worn line of dirt and dead grass led them through a stand of trees and out into the brutal sunlight beside a muddy, churning stream.

Griff let out a satisfied sigh and peeled off his shirt. He popped the top on a beer and drank for what seemed to Clay an awfully long time, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down with each gulp. As he drank, Griff extended his hand, the six-pack hooked on one finger, and Clay tore a beer from its plastic ring and opened it. His father would sometimes give him a sip of his drink after work, but Clay had started leaving the room once his father sat down, so he wouldn’t offer and Clay wouldn’t feel compelled to accept. Now he took a small sip and let the cold liquid wash down his throat.

“You a noodler?” Griff asked and crushed his empty can. Clay waited for an explanation, figured none was forthcoming, and shrugged. Griff unbuttoned his shorts and let them fall to his ankles. He wore a small pair of black underwear. His legs were pale at the tops, like the skin at the edge of his hairline. He stepped into the water. “You ever been noodling?”

“What’s noodling?” Clay said, and took another sip of his beer.

“Real fishing,” Griff said. “Man’s fishing.” He moved deeper into the stream, dipped his arm into the water, and began to feel along the bottom. Noodling, he explained, was fishing for catfish by hand. Find a hole beneath a rock or sometimes an old barrel, and jam your hand in there. The catfish will think you’re there to get at its eggs, and it’ll bite down on your arm, which is when you haul it to the surface. “Pretty simple.”

“Does it hurt?” Clay asked.

“Of course it fucking hurts.” Griff paused in his searching, the muddy water swirling in eddies around his still body. “What would be the point otherwise?”

Admonished, Clay took one last sip of the beer, set it down, pulled off his shirt, shoes, and socks, and stepped into the water.

“Those shorts’ll drag you down,” Griff said. He inched closer to Clay. Clay thought for a moment that Griff was going to pull them off, could smell the beer on his breath, coming out from his cracked lips, but then he leaned down and dipped his arm deep into the water. “Here’s a nice hollow, see? I found a lot of big fish in this one.”

Clay leaned down. He couldn’t reach the bottom. In a second he felt Griff ’s hand on his head and then the muddy water rushed in around him. His desperate eyes opened but could see nothing in the murk. He fought, but Griff was strong. His lungs crackled and caught fire. Griff let go and Clay burst out of the water.

“Don’t do that,” Clay said, forgetting for a moment the cool composure he’d tried to keep around his new friend. He coughed and spit up some water. “What’s wrong with you?”

Griff held his hands in the air as if Clay had a gun and laughed. “OK, cowboy, damn.” Griff disappeared under the water, and surfaced a moment later. “Nothing.”

They spent a good part of the afternoon wandering the stream, Clay staying out of the middle where it got too deep, looking for possible catfish holes. Griff walked with purpose—he knew the stream by heart. The holes could be anything, root systems, old trees, even an old car, and Griff warned him they could contain anything too: snapping turtles, beavers, cottonmouths.

Sometime during the afternoon, the sun beating down on them, the constant fighting against the stream wearing on their muscles, Griff called Clay over. The water was deep enough that Clay had to leave his feet and tread water. He remembered swimming at the YMCA with his sister, Maysie. While he padded heavily, Maysie darted in circles around him, talking as if they were standing on their front stoop. Clay tried to not breathe so loud, to not let on to Griff how difficult he found the water.

They were in a dark part of the stream. Shadows came from the cedar elms and cucumber trees that hung over the water. The hole, Griff explained, was below a barn door that someone had dumped in there long ago, maybe before his parents had fallen into bed together. In late August and early September, he said, when this bend in the stream began to dry up, one end of the door was visible in the shallower water. “One of the best spots I know,” he said. “See what’s under there.”

Clay dunked his head and kicked his feet to keep from being carried downstream. He moved his arms around, knowing full well Griff couldn’t see through the brown water, but wanting to make a show of it. His hand never even grazed the wood.

When he came back up, he was face to face with Griff.“Nothing,” he said, blinking the water from his eyes. “There’s nothing there.”

*

In the late afternoon, with Clay taking a break on the shore, letting his shorts dry out, Griff gave a stifled cry. His nose barely cleared the churning surface. “Didn’t bring any string, did you?” he asked.

Clay wanted to ask what for, but one look at Griff ’s neck, straining from the weight, and he knew he had a fish. “Hang on,” Clay said.

“The fuck you think I’m going to do?” Griff said.

Clay slid a lace from his shoes and splashed into the water.

“I got the damn thing, but you got to string that through his lip so he can’t run,” Griff said. Clay reached down. “Christ, kid, don’t just stick your hand in any old place, they got barbs that’ll take your skin right off.”

Griff took the string with his free hand. He made a mysterious movement accompanied by a great deal of thrashing, then handed the line back to Clay. The catfish made another frantic attempt at freedom and the line jerked in Clay’s grasp. His palms turned raw. Griff groaned and heaved and walked backwards, into shallower water.

The fish emerged slowly with each step, Griff ’s hand completely engulfed by the creature’s huge mouth. Drops of blood slid down Griff ’s tattooed skin and onto the swirling colors of the catfish— browns and greens and blacks. The fish was enormous, as big as a dog. Griff told him it probably weighed thirty-five, forty pounds. Its gills flared angrily. As Griff got closer to the shore, Clay took some of the fish’s massive weight in his arms. It writhed under his grip, not as slimy as he would have expected, but firmer, stronger.

When they got it onto dry land, Griff kneeled on it, found a large stone in the shallows and dashed its head. The first swing seemed to have done the job, but Griff hit the fish again and again, until the skull split clean open. Clay fought the urge to gag. Griff stood up, breathing heavily, sweating, water mixing with the blood that streamed down his arm from the fish’s bite. He dropped the stained rock. His eyes crinkled at the edges, and Clay knew he was hiding his pain when he gripped his wrist with his other hand.“That’s fishing,” Griff said. He opened a beer. “Last one’s for the fisherman.” He pulled a rusty pocketknife from his back jeans pocket and sliced the fish from its tail to its belly. He drew a finger through the cut and yanked out the entrails. “I been to jail, once. I expect your grandparents told you that.”

“I paid my bus driver five dollars on the way out here to write another note from my parents,” Clay said, and took another bitter swallow of beer; he’d been dumping it into the water every chance he got.

“Why in the hell did you throw that money away for?”

“They know my handwriting. I’ve been writing them thank you notes for my birthday and Christmas my whole life.”

“Thank you notes?” Griff asked, sitting down on a rock. He snorted and tossed his empty beer can into the water. They watched it bob along the surface, the swift current taking it around the next bend in no time at all. Then he leaned back on the rock and placed his hands under his head.

“Why didn’t you write with your wrong hand?” Griff said after some time.

Clay hadn’t thought of that. He went quiet, and Griff seemed content to lie on the rock in his underwear and let the day cool down. He itched at his crotch.

After they made their way back up the side of the ravine, Griff, shirt draped over one shoulder and carrying the two catfish filets, said, “Come on by tomorrow, and we’ll do it again.” Before he walked off, he slapped half of the fish into Clay’s hand.“This time, you bring the beer.”

*

Clay presented the filet to his grandmother, who was snapping the ends from green beans. When she asked where he’d gotten it, he told her he’d been fishing in the stream. She picked the fish up between her index finger and thumb, stepped on the pedal to the trash can, and dropped it in. The lid dropped back down with a resounding, hollow clank.

At dinner, with the six o’clock news forcing everyone to speak up, his grandparents looked at him with even more suspicion than usual.

“Where’d you get that sunburn?” his grandfather asked.

“He spent the day fishing in the stream down in the ravine,” his grandmother said.

“That water’s dirtier than a highway restroom,” his grandfather said. “If he has time to go fishing, he should have plenty of time to do some weeding tomorrow.”

The way they talked around him enabled Clay to ignore them. His thoughts returned again and again to the bloody rock, and the fish’s skull, split and pulverized. He served himself some more beans and when he finished, he helped his grandmother with the dishes.

*
 

The next afternoon, Clay brought the beer to Miller’s counter with what he thought was an aged confidence.

“You twenty-one?” Mr. Miller asked, not even bothering to lean back from where his elbows rested on the counter.

“It’s for my cousin,” Clay said.

“What’d I tell you? Now he’s got you—what, fourteen, fifteen years old?—in here buying beer for him,” Mr. Miller said. “Wait till his folks hear. The last thing they need.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Clay said.

“We can see if the police think it’s a big deal.” Mr. Miller sniffed, his bulbous nose twitching from side to side.

“Fine,” Clay said, thinking of sending his only friend back to prison.

“That boy is trouble,” Miller said as Clay slammed the cans into the cooler.

“You mentioned that,” he said, walking out the door. “I’m not even his goddamn cousin.”

Behind him, he heard Mr. Miller say they hadn’t been fooling anybody. Without any beer, Clay didn’t think he could face Griff. He’d been given one thing to do, and he hadn’t done it. So he rode back to his grandparents’ house, where even the garden couldn’t calm him, and the radio blared out the windows, those tinny horns and big bands stirring him up even more. He kept seeing Mr. Miller’s face, the look when he approached the counter, the look that told him he shouldn’t even bother.

He took off on his bike again, hoping to find something else to do. All he saw were people coming home from work and sitting on their porches, reading the paper or heads back, eyes closed. He smelled fresh-cut grass and the smoke from barbecues.

When he returned to his grandparents’ house, he jumped off his bike and sent it crashing into the bushes. Sweat dripped from his forehead. He stood on the porch. Someone on the radio yelled about Jesus and he didn’t know if it was an improvement. The mailbox held a letter from Maysie addressed to him. He crumpled the letter and threw it into the dirt beneath the steps. She was the one they’d kept. He breathed hard through his nose. If he were at home—his real home—they would be sitting, the two of them, brother and sister, in front of the empty refrigerator, with the door open, trying to keep cool. Some days they would sneak into the movies, Clay mustering tears to explain to the usher that he’d left his jacket inside the theater and that his mother would just kill him. Then they’d curl up into the velvet-covered chairs and sit through Westerns and romances in glorious air conditioning. Clay would pretend to hate the kissing and the quick embraces; Maysie watched the gunfights through her fingers, ready to cover her eyes at the first drop of blood. His parents had picked her, but it wasn’t his fault.

He stooped to brush the dust from the envelope. She asked how he liked Oklahoma. She said their parents told her that Oklahoma was hot, hotter than Massachusetts. “Why’d you leave?” she asked. Clay folded the letter and placed it in his back pocket.

*

At midnight, the clock in the hallway clanged its noisy hour and Clay made his way downstairs. Even though waking his grandparents didn’t seem likely, he walked in his stockinged feet, his shoes dangling from his fingers.

The humidity of the day hadn’t dissipated with the arrival of night, and Clay found himself sweating before he’d even fetched the bike from the bushes and started pedaling. Locusts buzzed. The town flew past, almost entirely dark. He rode in the middle of the street, swaying from lane to lane, enjoying the freedom of being the only person awake.

At Miller’s, he tried the front door to no avail. The back door—the floor there slick from the deliveries of meat and fish and produce—had been locked as well. A side window had not. Clay found an empty crate and used it to boost himself up onto the windowsill.

His friend Victor had broken into some apartments on Clay’s block, using the fire escapes and open windows to steal whatever he could stuff into his pockets. Victor had whispered down to him from a wrought-iron ladder one afternoon, his voice harsh in the alley, and Clay had joined him on the fire escape. But once Victor explained what he was doing, pulling a gold necklace halfway out of his pocket—the shining material set against a ragged band-aid on his thumb—Clay went home, grabbed Maysie, and together they sneaked into the movies. When they returned, Clay’s parents asked where he’d been. He looked to Maysie and lied, saying they’d gone to the park to watch the old people feed the pigeons. His parents retreated, frowning, and an hour later a police officer showed up. Clay spent the night in a small holding cell, alone and hungry. Near as he could figure out, Victor had been caught because someone had spotted the two of them on the fire escape, and Victor’s parents had called Clay’s. Maysie had tried to defend him, but too late; they thought he’d coached her. His things had been ransacked, and even after he put everything back, it still felt off, wrong somehow.

He fell into the store between a barrel full of smoked meats and a Ritz cracker display. His breathing seemed heavier when he tried to stifle it. The room was silent, except for the humming of the refrigerators, from which Clay removed two six-packs. Another two reoccupied the empty space, sliding into place from the darkness.

The glass case was not only unlocked but slightly ajar. Clay removed a knife that he hoped Griff would like. The steel was lighter in his hand than he’d expected. But there was no way to rearrange three knives to make them look like four. Underneath the counter, stacks and stacks of cardboard boxes were labeled with writing too small to read in the dim light coming from the street. So Clay began opening long, skinny boxes. After five minutes, his heart no longer beating fast, he found the same knife, and placed it in the display case.

He was about to leave when he saw the fishing tackle. Even in the weak light it all sparkled. Underneath their display racks was a low cabinet, and inside Clay found a rod and reel disassembled into glorious pieces, and this he also tucked under his arm. Loose coffee beans crunched under his feet as he made his way back to the open window.

*

First thing the next morning, he wound his way down the ravine with the bundle in his arms; he’d wrapped the merchandise in a pillowcase taken from his grandparents’ linen closet. Griff was sleeping by the side of the stream in the sun, his mouth hanging open, wearing nothing but underwear. Clay wasn’t sure he’d left the water’s edge since the last time he’d seen him a day and a half ago. Three empty cough medicine bottles leaked their last remaining neon colors onto the rocks next to Griff ’s dirty fingers. Clay thought of opening one of the beers to wake him, like a cat hearing a can opener. Instead, he laid the rod and reel on the soft moss that lined the bank, stuck the knife into a rotted log, and tied the beer to a tree and dropped it into the rushing water. The twine pulled tight, but held. Griff didn’t stir.

Clay removed his shirt. He rolled his socks and stuffed them into his shoes. Then, after another check on Griff, he removed his shorts. The elastic of his underwear rolled and buckled, nearly worn out. He stepped into the water, which tried to lift him from his feet. He waded out until the churning waves almost touched his nose.

He found hole after hole empty. Griff didn’t move, but occasionally let out a small snort. He wandered up and down the stream. He came to the dark spot where the cucumber trees and cedar elms knitted their branches over the rushing water. Beneath his bare feet he felt the old wooden door, smooth and soft, worn by the current. He stood still and tried to slow his breathing down. Then, taking three huge puffs of air, he went under.

He could see nothing but murk. Even his arm he could only make out to the elbow. The underside of the wood was slimy, covered in algae. He shook his fingers. The wave came first. It must have been a flick of the great fish’s tail, but Clay felt it as sure as a punch. The mouth closed around his right hand. He gasped. It felt as though his wrist would snap clean off. The fish thrashed and Clay moved with it like a ragdoll. He fought to get his feet under him, plant them in the silt. They sunk until they hit rock. His head was underwater by nearly two feet. The fish would not let go. The pressure on his hand made him feel like he was being sucked through a straw. He didn’t want the fish. He didn’t care about impressing Griff. All he wanted was air, daylight.

He pulled on one hand with the other, but the fish only came closer, close enough for Clay to see its broad nose and whiskers. As they eyed each other, Clay thought he would die, drowned in a muddy stream in backwoods Oklahoma with his hand stuck in a fish’s mouth. He wondered if the fish would spit him out once he went still, or if they would both be killed by this embrace and be found pale and bloated bobbing on the side of the stream.

Then a strong set of arms grabbed his waist, and he felt the weight of the fish lessen. Griff, he thought, with a rush of relief. Hands pulled at him. The fish hung on, but the pressure had lessened. His head broke the surface and he leaned back and let his mouth and nose breathe in the hot, stagnant air. He was pulled, and he moved always backwards, backwards. The three of them collapsed, the catfish—as big as Maysie— landing in Clay’s lap, its great gills flapping, its eyes calm.

“Jesus, boy,” a voice, not Griff’s, said. Clay tilted his head back. It was Mr. Miller. He still held Clay to his chest. Clay could feel Mr. Miller’s heartbeat through his thin cotton shirt and the fish’s mouth on his wrist. Clay retched, some of the stream pouring from his mouth and nose.

“You OK?” Mr. Miller got to his feet, but Clay’s legs wouldn’t oblige.

“Yeah,” Clay said, his voice hoarse. It had been Mr. Miller who had pulled him to safety, Mr. Miller who had found him in that murky, brown water. He helped pry the fish’s jaws loose. Freed, the fish writhed on dry land, its mighty tail sending a small spray of water onto the rocks. The sun soaked it up as soon as it fell. Dirt stuck to its shining skin and began to dull it. Clay’s hand was—much to his surprise— much the same as he’d last seen it. His wrist, however, was raw, the flesh rubbed away in places. Blood pooled under papery layers of skin.

Griff sat on the rotted log, arms bent behind him. A police officer— sweat stains drawing large dark circles on his brown uniform—twirled the stolen knife idly between his fingers. Griff stood, and the officer held out a hand to hold him back, then withdrew it. Griff wasn’t wet. He hadn’t so much as waded in after Clay. As Griff neared, Clay found himself at eye level with his calf, which carried a tattoo that said, “Nobody Live Forever.” The misspelling made it seem like an order.

“That’s got to be a fifty-pound fish,” Griff said, handcuffs rattling on his wrists. He danced a little jig. Mr. Miller helped Clay to his feet. Clay’s legs quaked from the exertion. He waited for a question, an apology, as Griff stared in awe at the fish. A cloud moved in front of the sun, and Griff looked up at the sky, as if it had ruined the moment.

Clay grabbed the huge fish by its bottom lip and dragged it from the rock and into the mud, toward the stream.

“What are you doing?” Griff asked.

Clay took two more steps into the water and the fish waited, dazed for a moment, as the current flowed through its gills, reinvigorating it—Clay could feel the strength grow—then it flashed between his feet and was gone. He looked back at Griff, who turned his eyes to Mr. Miller, to Clay, to the officer. All as if he’d never seen them before.

Griff whispered an expletive under his breath, then said, “Here we go,” sprinted into the water, dove deep, arms still behind his back, and came up halfway down stream. He swam with choppy, violent kicks, neck straining to keep his head above water.

The officer’s belt jangled as he ran to the edge of the bank.

“Don’t bother,” Mr. Miller said. They all watched as Griff scrambled out of the water on the opposite bank, fifty yards downstream, and went crashing into the forest.

“This belong to you?” the officer asked Clay, still holding the knife in his hand.

“No,” Clay said. Maybe it was the memory of Griff turning a catfish’s head to mush, or maybe it was the thought of him standing on the bank, staring at the spot where Clay fought for his life, before Mr. Miller shoved past him and splashed into the seething, brown water, but Clay didn’t care anymore.

“Maybe you better go get him, Ed,” Mr. Miller said to the officer, and nodded his head in the direction of Griff ’s flight.

The officer looked at Clay, one hand resting on his empty handcuff wallet, the other holding the knife. “Sure thing, Terry.” And he walked off the way they’d come, pausing to place the knife on the rotted log and wipe his brow with his forearm.

Mr. Miller stood up from the rock where he’d been catching his breath. He passed close to Clay, and Clay thought Mr. Miller might leave him there as well. Instead, he reeled the beer in by pulling the twine hand over hand. He popped one of them open and took a long drink. From his shirt pocket he produced a soggy envelope, and Clay instinctively patted his back pocket. Maysie’s letter had fallen out when he’d landed on the floor of the shop.

“Make this the worst thing you ever do, kid,” Mr. Miller said, and threw the envelope into the water. He told Clay that Griff Boxtell was trouble: too much trouble for the town, too much trouble for his parents, too much trouble for his own good. Clay, however, still had a chance, and he should use it to go home to his grandparents and be a good boy.

“How did you know who I was?” Clay asked.

“It’s a small town,” Mr. Miller replied. “Besides, you’re the spitting image of your grandfather.”

They walked up the hill together, Mr. Miller carrying his merchandise: the beers, the knife, the rod. Clay knew he shouldn’t offer to help ease his burden.

As they reached the road, and Mr. Miller turned left and Clay turned right, Clay asked in a small voice, “What’d he do, anyway?” Mr. Miller looked at him quizzically, and Clay asked the question again, expecting a long list of breaking and entering, auto theft, maybe even murder.

“He took checks. Out of people’s mailboxes,” Mr. Miller said, and brushed a horsefly from his crooked nose. “Mail fraud, they call it.”

He left Clay standing there, his stolen bike lying in the bushes next to him.

*

That night, Clay expected to see a police car pull up the driveway at any moment. After another cacophonous dinner, Clay’s grandfather wiped his mouth with his napkin and shoved his chair back. “Let’s talk on the porch,” he said. Clay looked to his grandmother, who either pretended not to have heard or truly hadn’t, and rose with a handful of dishes.

On the porch, the radio and the clatter of dishes and the rhythmic chirping of grasshoppers accompanied them. Clay’s grandfather sat in his rocking chair and Clay leaned against the porch support. “OK,” Clay’s grandfather said and slid his belt from his trousers. With each loop it passed through, the belt made a small ticking sound.

“You know what you got coming?” his grandfather said.

Clay nodded.

With a surprisingly sturdy hand, he turned Clay’s back to the rocking chair. “Pull down your shorts,” his grandfather said, so low it was difficult to hear over the sudden roar of the disposal in the kitchen. The belt whistled on the air and stung through Clay’s underwear. The runners on the rocking chair thrummed against the floor as his grandfather put more and more behind each blow. Watching their shadows, Clay thought he could see his grandfather fill out and rise up, reinflate back into the giant man in the black-and-white photos. Eventually, Clay went numb.

When his grandfather finished, he leaned his forehead against the small of Clay’s back. His breath rattled in his chest and whistled between his teeth. “Your mother says she didn’t send you off with the note we got,” his grandfather said. Clay said he knew. “She told us what she wanted the letter to say. You read the other then?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Not a good thing for a boy to hear, I imagine.” His grandfather lifted his head and turned Clay around. “You didn’t shed a tear.”

Clay shook his head no. He felt a trickle of blood slide down the back of his thigh. The slight breeze on the open cuts stung. He pulled his shorts up with one hand and tried not to wince. “I guess I figured I deserved it,” Clay said.

His grandfather clutched Clay’s shirt on either side to hoist himself to his feet. They stood almost eye-to-eye, the elder man only an inch taller with the curve his spine had resigned itself to. “I told your folks that you’d have a place here,” his grandfather said. “So long as you do better, staying out of trouble.”

Clay didn’t argue.

His grandfather held on until Clay relaxed a little, let his head dip ever so slightly toward his grandfather’s shoulder. He smelled of tobacco and sweat, laundry detergent and talc. “Tomorrow you help your grandmother out in the garden,” his grandfather said, and retreated back into the house.

Clay stayed there, in all of the noise, and all of the sweltering heat, and watched two small children across the street licking the churn from an ice cream maker. Their father opened the screen door after a few minutes and their heads turned to reply. The children tussled for a minute, then scrabbled up the steps and back into their house.

*

Clay didn’t think much about Griff, especially after he heard that Mr. Miller had pressed charges—the letter and Clay apparently slipping his mind—and that Griff had resisted arrest and ended up in prison. Clay stopped his bike rides, at first because he couldn’t sit on the seat from the whipping, then because he was too busy, either working in the garden or at his grandfather’s tool bench, where he tried to whittle a catfish. It ended up looking like a teardrop.

He was going to pick his way down the path and watch the brown stream slide by, knowing that fifty-pound catfish waited with mouths agape, but he mowed the lawn and yanked weeds instead. He was going to Miller’s to buy something, just to prove to Mr. Miller that he could pay for it, but he kept his last three dollars for a milk shake and a hamburger. He was going to drop a letter that proclaimed Griff ’s innocence in the Boxtells’ mailbox, but he tore the letter into pieces and dumped it in a trash can near the church. That didn’t end up being the worst thing he ever did, either.