Page 208 of The Wild Charge

“Yes. Fine.” He resettled. “It’s not like they say, ‘Would you please,’ you know.”

“I know.”

“They don’t ask your opinion on any of it. It’s ‘do this, or we’ll start taking toes.’”

“I know,” Fox repeated, with more difficulty.

“And the thing is, you don’t really even fight it, because that’s all you know. You don’t sit around thinkingI want to go smoke with the lads; I want to go to the pub; I want to catch the Ramones live in concert. Your life is those rooms. Those four walls, and the men they send in for you to beat the living shit out of. And always some bloke watching in a booth somewhere going ‘again. Do it again.’ And so you do.” He made a gesture with his free hand.Of course, it said.What else could you do?“It’s not til much, much later that you start to realize how wrong it all is. Was. And then you’re out, and you’re your own man, yeah? But you’ve got these children, and you have to decide: do I make it harder on them? Or on me?

“I’d come by, now and then. Sneak looks. Bring you prezzies. I didn’t want any of you to think you were bastards.”

“Wearebastards.”

“Well, none of you are Greens, if that’s what you mean,” he shot back, a little heated.

“Cass is.”

“I’mnot even a Green. Not really. I didn’t put a ring on any of your mothers. But youknewyou had a dad. I wasn’t some ghost. I picked a name, at least, so you could curse me properly.”

Fox tried to lever a bit of fight into his voice, but he felt oddly floaty, a combination of post-death high and something new; something that felt dangerously like understanding. “Is this your roundabout way of saying it was hard onyou?”

“Itwashard on me, whether or not you choose to believe that. But, no. I’m saying that, given how much you all hate me, I thought it best to stay away.”

Fox snorted. “You’re an idiot.”

“Obviously.”

On screen, a woman in impossible spandex was choking a man with her thighs, and Fox half-expected Devin to glance that way – but he didn’t. He gazed steadily at Fox, and it felt as if things were coming to some sort of head.

“In any event,” Devin said, finally, “it hasn’t worked: the staying away. So I’ve been wondering, in my invalid state. What if, this time, I stuck around?”

“What if you actually meant that?”

“I do. I’m asking: can I stay?”

He was five again. Five, and gripping the tail of a flannel shirt, and sayingplease stay, Daddy! Just a little longer!

He would never,evermake his own child say that.

He turned his head away. Through the gap in the window curtains, a flurry of pale moths fluttered beneath the porch light out front. His voice came out rough. “It’s not my decision to make alone. I’ll have to ask everyone else. Ask if they’re willing to have you around.”

“That’s only fair,” Devin said, nodding in his periphery. He resituated himself so he faced the TV again. “What do you think they make those costumes out of?” he asked.

Fox bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing, and subtly scrubbed his eyes on the shoulder of his shirt.

~*~

Pleasantly spent, Tenny reached to tap ash off his cigarette into the tray on the nightstand, and raked the fingers of his other hand through Reese’s hair. Reese lay half on top of him, face warm and sweat-damp against his throat, fingers tracing aimless patterns across his chest.

“We don’t have any tattoos,” he observed, as if it were a revelation.

“No,” Tenny agreed. “I couldn’t have any ‘distinguishing marks’ when I was working.”

“Same.” Reese’s body was heavy against his own with the best kind of exhaustion, but his voice sounded alert; sounded like he had something on his mind. “We could get some, I guess.”

“I guess,” Tenny echoed. “Anything in particular?”

“No. Maybe. I dunno.”

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