Cockeyed

To Hood, I said, “The church did shut down the compensation machinery at some point. Didn’t your friends urge you to file a claim before it was too late? Did Hu

“I didn’t tell anybody back then. In fact, I kind of forgot about it. A guy I was involved with for a while kept asking me why I didn’t like to get fucked, and then I remembered.”

“And that’s when you wrote to the pope?”

“Another guy I used to date who had a computer helped me send an e-mail to the Vatican. Maybe the pope only speaks Italian, but there must be other dudes who work in his office who speak English. I think the guy is just a geek, that’s all.”

“You said you’ve had counseling. When was that?”

“At the farm the judge sent me to. I was thirteen years of age.

Anyway, that wasn’t about sex, it was about fires.”

“Have you had any problems with the law since then? Hu

their cars, and it is very frightening to people.”

“That’s just the Bud Lite talking,” Hood said. “I would never do it. Hu

“Hu

“Hu

“It’s why even though he is fond of you, he is somewhat afraid of you.”

“Yeah, well. Mom and Pop never replaced the battery in their smoke alarm. Does he know that part of it? Let that be a lesson to Hu

“Stu, what you are saying to me isn’t all that reassuring.”

“What I’m saying to you, Strachey, is that I don’t set fires anymore. I’m all talk. Talk and beer, beer and talk. And if it’s reassurance you want on a Saturday afternoon, this homo bar is not the place to find it.”

ChAPteR fouR

Hu

DeCarlo, who was interviewed first, along with his attorney, Thurmont Fewster, said it was the deep pain of being betrayed by a man he had always thought of as a friend that was hurting him most of all. His lawyer focused on what he referred to as a

“broken oral contract.”

When it was Hu

Timmy and I were watching the news in our bedroom at our house on Crow Street before heading out for a Saturday night Thai di

Timmy said, “Hu

“DeCarlo does appear to be an unscrupulous fellow. Most of the other skeletons tumbling out of Hu

bit unhinged and maybe even dangerous. I saw one of them this afternoon at the Watering Hole. He’s a hustler named Stu Hood who has a history of arson.”

“Oh no.”

“He has only one conviction, as a juvenile, but Hu

“Why, Donald, it’s our story.”

“Exactly. I was a confused youth, and when you fondled me behind that bush, I thought, oh, wow, I could get used to this.”

“You were the mixed-up youth? I’m reasonably certain it was the other way around.”

“Then how come you were carrying that towel thing around with you at eleven o’clock at night? You even told me at the time that it was so you wouldn’t get moss on your knees.”

“I seem to have repressed any memory of that.”

“Anyway, Hood’s story is as ugly as it gets. He told me that he was repeatedly raped by a priest when he was eleven years old but that he didn’t recall these incidents until it was too late for any legal recourse.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I’m not sure. But it was two years later that he started setting fires. Or two years that anybody knows of.”

“Were there any church fires around that time?”

CoCkeyed 25

“Good question. But my role here is not to prosecute or to clear Stu Hood for any crimes he may have committed in years gone by. My job is to get him off Hu

Timmy zapped off the TV — no more Hu

“I find him interesting and sometimes even entertaining,” I said. “Hu

“Vanishing species, I don’t think so. God, if only.”

“Hu

“What Hu

Timmy had at least a partial point. Maybe looking after Hu

§ § § § §

The first thing Mason Doebler said to me was, “I’m not taking any shit from Hu