The Atrocity Artist

2.

The lake is quiet. Water laps at the stony beach but further out it's as still as a sheet of lead. The season is too early for vacationing families to have arrived. The locals are either at work or their age keeps them off the water. The late afternoon sun is warm but in the shade mosquitoes flitter and hunt.

A daddy long legs skates across a gentle wave.

As a boy, Skad would snatch them up for his fighting jar. He'd comb the yard for spiders, ants, grasshoppers, crickets, ladybugs. It didn't really matter much what he found, and there was never a shortage. Once he had a half dozen or so, he'd put them in a mason jar and watch them fight. If they weren't interested in attacking each other, he'd give it a shake to get them going.

Ed had caught him once. The little bugger must've been three or four. When he saw what Skad had going, he whined on the verge of tears. "Let 'em go. They've done nothing to you."

"Doesn't matter. It's fun."

"It's not fun. It's not. It's cruel." Then he ran off and told their mother.

Ed had been the same condescending piece-of-shit back then as he was today.

Skad searches the water's edge for a flat stone to skip. It bounces off the surface three times before sinking.

Had his own son ever had a fighting jar? He knows almost nothing about Raymond's boyhood. Marilyn had sent letters. Dear Skad, Ray is so adorable. He took his first steps since I last wrote. You should come and visit to see how big he's getting.

Perhaps the answer existed in one of the many pages filled with her tight floral handwriting. But he didn't read most of them and kept none of them, so he'll never know now.

Those damn letters had come shortly after each support check as if they were intended to give him some value for his money. At the time, they never seemed more than a quid pro quo transaction. Whatever Marilyn's true motives were, he never got the impression she sincerely wanted him in their lives.

And he'd never paid to receive those letters anyhow. He paid to stay out of court. What did he care about grades and science projects or what the hell the boy's Christmas and birthdays had been like?

Skad tosses another stone, only managing two skips.

He'd met Raymond a few times after Marilyn died. He was a grown man by then. They'd have dinner when his work brought him to Boston. He'd become an engineer. It made Skad wonder if he should have asked for a paternity test when he was born. An engineer? How the hell could that have come from his genes? But the man's severe forehead and long chin were too much like looking in a mirror.

It just went to prove nurture had the better over nature.

Marilyn ruined the boy.

A goddamn engineer.

The third stone sinks with a plop.

Raymond had never been more than an acquaintance, and not a very interesting one. In a lifetime of casual friendships, Raymond didn't even rank in the top one-hundred most memorable.

So, why had news of the boy's death been a shotgun blast to his guts? Why did his hands shake thinking about it? How did it rob the day of its warmth?

It's the surprise of it, he decides. No prolonged sickness. No warning signs. Nothing but a call early one morning from an attorney telling him his son had died of a heart attack.

"A heart attack? But he was so young."

"Fifty-six is awfully young," the voice on the other end of the phone said. "But these things happen. I'm very sorry."

It surprised him. That was all. But afterward, the city seemed too noisy, too crowded. There was no air to breathe or space to think. So, he'd come up to the old place early. It's peaceful here. Nobody bothers him.

Not now that he held the deed. Not now that most of the people he knew were filling graves with dust. First his mom, then his dad. Why couldn't that rotten son-of-a-bitch have been the first to go.

But Angeline had crossed to the other shore before any of them. No, not crossed. She hadn't even managed to get halfway across the lake before she went down into its cold depths.

Skad grabs another stone and feels eyes on him.

The yard looks empty, but over by the shrubs a cat peers out at him. It's young and black. Green eyes glow in the sun.

"Scat." He hauls his arm back as though pitching a baseball, and the cat begins to trot away. The rock leaves his grip and strikes the creature on its hindquarter. It lets out a yowl and darts into the foliage.

Skad smiles and brushes his hands on his pants to clear them of dirt.