3

 

        Puck Fetterland was one of those kids who just couldn’t keep out of trouble.

        If the cops got a call from the Lakeview section of the city, they immediately assumed Puck had something to do with it.

        He was the unnatural byproduct of a gay man’s marriage to a local prostitute, neither of whom wanted much to do with him after he was born – although when all was said and done, the father struggled to raise him until Puck got too wild to control, at which point, Puck went out into the world to fend for himself.

        Although I had seen Puck’s blonde head streaking through the streets of my neighborhood for some time, I hadn’t actually talked to him until he stopped me near the coffee shop. I was on an errand for my uncle.

        I found him leaning against the store window staring at me when I came out.

        “What are you staring at?” I asked.

        “You,” he said, making it sound like he mocked me.

        “Why?
        “I was wondering what you stole from the store.”

        “I didn’t steal anything,” I said.

        “Then why did you go in if all you came out with was a cup of coffee?”

        “Because my uncle sent me.”

        “You’re uncle? You live around here?”

        I pointed up the hell at the cream-colored Victorian house my family owned.

        “You live there?” he said in disbelief.

        “I said I did, didn’t I?”

        “Then you must be rich,” he said, straightening up so that he no longer leaned against the glass. “Maybe I ought to beat you up and take your money.”

        I laughed and his forehead crinkled, giving him an annoyed, yet puzzled look.

        “What the fuck are you laughing at?” he asked.

        “You.”

        “Why?”

        “Because you’re so silly.”

        “You’re starting to piss me off.”

        “And you stink. Don’t you ever take a bath?”

        “Now you have pissed me off.”

        “Why don’t you come to my house? I’m sure my uncles will let you wash.”

        “Get the fuck away from me!” he said, turning to leave, but stopping abruptly to turn and look at me again. “Sure, you’re rich. Maybe you can go get me some money?”

        “I don’t have any money.”

        “You’re full of shit, you living in a mansion like that.”

        “No, we’re really not rich.”

        “Maybe I’ll come over one night and take a look for myself.”

        “And wash up?”

        “Fuck off!”

        Then I asked him how he got so dirty. Didn’t his mother make him take a bath?

        “My mother don’t care what I do as long as I don’t do it near her,” he said. “Mostly she makes me sleep outside when she has her men friends over.”

        “Outside? What does your father say about that?”

        “That faggot? He wants even less to do with me unless it’s to fuck me up the ass. That’s why I go over to my mother’s place when I can, or sleep on the street.”

        “Where does your mother live?” I asked.

        “Over there,” he said, pointing diagonally across the street.

        “In the bar?”

        “No, in the apartment above it,” Puck said. “She gets a lot of business from downstairs.”

        “And your father? Where does he live?”

        “Downtown.”

        “Where?”

        “You ask too many questions. Don’t you have to go home or something?”

        “Oh, God, yes,” I said. “My uncle hates his coffee cold.”