13 1/2

“Do I need to slap you, sugar?” Polly asked solicitously.

“No,” he said as the tears morphed back into laughter at the touch of her voice on his mind. “I’m not hysterical. At least not too hysterical. Drummond was where I grew up, a juvenile detention center in Mi

“It’s a long, long story,” Marshall said, suddenly weary of his past.

“I have read Coriolanus seven times and Bleak House twice.”

God, but he loved her.

“When I was eleven my family was killed: Mom, Dad, Lena -my baby sister-even the cat. They didn’t die in a car accident. They were murdered. I was convicted of killing them.”

“You were a little boy!” Polly exclaimed in disbelief.

“Yes. The papers dubbed me “Butcher Boy.” I was the youngest person ever convicted of murder in Mi

“I love you,” he said.

“I know, sugar.”

“The tattoo, thirteen and a half, that you’ve asked about? I got it in Drummond. I was there for seven years. The staff psychiatrist, a bastard named Kowalski, set me to writing ‘homework assignments.’ He’d bring me the newspaper clipping of some horrific murder and insist I put myself in the killer’s head, think their thoughts, feel their disease on my brain, then tell him the reason I would have done killings like that. I guess he thought if he got me to go down that path enough times I’d remember killing my family. Maybe he only wanted me to say I did. The guy wanted to wring a best seller out of me one way or another.”

“Now there was a Butcher Boy all grown up,” Polly said with disgust. “Why did he have to torture a little boy to get his book?”

“Because I didn’t remember doing it; I didn’t remember killing my family. I’d had a cold, and Mom gave me medicine, and I slept like the dead. God,” he said as the word echoed in his brain.

“It’s okay, baby.” Polly touched his cheek and the pain of memory lessened.

“The bastard wanted to be the one who made me remember-or made me admit I remembered. So, the homework. By the time he’d gotten on this kick, I’d been in Drummond just long enough to get punky. Most of the stuff I wrote was just in-your-face rebellion. Since they’d dubbed me Butcher Boy, I’d be Butcher Boy. But those clippings were vicious, brutal things.”

“I know. I read them.”

Before Marshall recovered from that, Polly said, “I, too, have a long, long story, and I suspect Brother Da

Marshall nodded. He knew he should ask for her story, should listen to her. Polly had been hurt so badly by his past. The need to tell overcame the need to listen, and he went on: “The more I read those damn things-those lists of people butchering people-and tried to get into the skins of the killers, the sicker I felt. I knew I’d done it. Enough people tell a kid he did a thing, and he believes he did it. The shrinks came up with half a dozen reasons I didn’t remember, and I believed them. Why wouldn’t I? I’m eleven, and they’re the authorities as far as I knew.

“So I knew I’d killed my mom, my dad, Lena -knew it but I never felt it. Do you know what I mean? I never felt like a killer, like some psycho. I still felt kind of like the kid who played ice hockey, the boy with the fishing pole. God, it was strange. I didn’t know it was strange then. It was like air and stone walls, just there. Most of my life I’ve walked around thinking I was a time bomb that was going to explode and kill everyone around me.

“Tippity-the dog I told you about-she didn’t jump in the freezer. She was taped up and thrown in. I figured I’d done it. The night was a blank, just like when I was a kid. I figured getting close to Elaine triggered it somehow.” Saying the words aloud, Marshall realized he’d not “figured” that. Da

“He was doing it,” he rasped, his throat dry. “Da

Polly’s cool fingers and murmured endearments brought him back to himself.

“Just like he did it before?”

“Yes.” Marshall stared at the shadows he and Polly cast on the white wall of the hospital room. He was seeing two boys, Dylan and Richard. “He must have been born with something broken inside of him. It’s no easier for me to see him doing it than it was to see myself doing it.

“He was going to do it again. To you and the girls.” The cold in his soul was deep. “I don’t want to hate him,” he said quietly.

For a while, they sat without speaking. Marshall ’s breathing evened out. His thoughts slid from frantic to torpid. Polly held his hand.

“You asked if I believed you,” Polly said.

Marshall grew very still. He wanted, needed her to believe in him-to believe in him when he was unbelievable.

“It was not merely the lipstick on your brother’s shirt-though that had a comforting concreteness about it. It was partly that I did not believe Da

“A part of me believed that I was not fooled in you. Part of me knows anyone can be fooled.” She ran her fingertips down his cheek. His sadness trailed after her touch. “I am sorry, my darling. I ca

Marshall let that soak in. The knowledge that she had entertained the thought he was a beast and a killer did not hurt him as much as he’d thought it would. He had not believed in himself. He’d believed in Da

“That’s best,” he said finally. “Civilized behavior is built on conditions. I love both your conditions.”

“They don’t seem to be too traumatized,” Polly said. “I hope to keep it that way.”

“There will be newspaper articles about this, about the old murders, about who I am, and what Richard did, and what Da

“Surely the rebuilding of New Orleans is sufficiently ubiquitous in the press that they will not have space for an old story,” Polly said with a smile. “We can hope most of our neighbors will be too occupied with their own dramas to read them.”

“I’ll read them,” Marshall said. “I’ll read them and try to figure out why, what makes a killer desire the kill, what made my brother take my family’s lives and, then, in every way he could, take mine. Homework. I’ve done it for so long, trying to find myself.”

“Well, my darling, you can quit looking. Gracie and Emma and I have found you.”