Xylophone (13 page)

words that were my enemies,” Dare said. “He

made them real. So what if I became a little whore

—”

Jonah cupped his face, looked into his eyes.

“You weren’t a whore, Daren.”

“—because it was the best possible music,

that affirming language of touch and flattery.” He

was faltering again, stumbling blindly over sobs

that scraped his throat raw, stumbling through a

minefield of guilt.

Jonah held his watery gaze. “
You weren’t a

whore
.”

“But he was
paying
me, in all kinds of ways!

And I wanted what he gave me, and I kept going

back for more!”

There. It was finally out. He’d coughed up

that slimy, discolored ball of self-loathing that had

rolled around in his gut for thirteen years until it

hardened. Then, like a tumor, it had sent out

tentacles that poisoned his whole being.

He closed his eyes and raggedly sucked air.

Jonah held him again, cheek pressed to cheek.

When they drew apart, Jonah’s hands firmly

enveloped his.

“You did not want it,” he said in that

conclusive, caring way he had that allowed for no

argument. “He just took advantage of your

vulnerability and made you
think
you wanted it.

Like drugs or booze can make you think you want

and need them, even while you loathe what they’re

doing to you.”

Dare opened his eyes. He knew Jonah’s

words required his attention. They made too much

sense to ignore—especially since they came from

a recovering addict.

“You just wanted to feel good about yourself.

That’s all. That’s what you were
really
after.”

Jonah leaned forward and gently kissed Dare on

the lips. “As the Reverend Clayton C. Wallace

might’ve said, with no awareness of the irony,

‘The Devil is a cunning deceiver’.”

Dare’s mind didn’t know which to register

first: the truth in Jonah’s words, or the message in

that sweet, soft kiss.

Chapter Thirteen

“EVERY predator,” Jonah said with undisguised

bitterness, “has a xylophone.”

“And what was Wallace’s?” Dare was finally

pulling his fractured self together. He’d finally,

step by sorry step, begun to make sense of it all.

The sun slanted farther, falling below the

windows. Jonah slid toward an end table and

turned on a lamp.

Jonah

1999

IT STARTED with private Bible study. I never

questioned why the lessons were one-on-one.

Guess I was too focused on feeling special. It’s

hard for a kid not to be blinded by positive

attention, especially from an adult he idolizes. And

one who’s very charismatic, in both senses of the

word.

Clay did have a reason for this instruction. He

said I had a lot of catching up to do if I wanted to

know, really
know
the Lord. But his invitation

came with a warning: “You probably shouldn’t tell

anyone. The other children might get jealous. They

might even want to hurt you. Their parents could

start turning their backs on you. Even godly people

can lapse into pettiness.”

Those

possibilities

terrified

me—I

desperately wanted to fit in—so I kept my mouth

shut as I began a
new
routine.

On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, I’d

walk to the Church of the Living Spirit. There was

a room behind the worship area where Reverend

Clay said he had “personal communings” with God

and worked on his sermons. Nobody was allowed

to bother him on those evenings. Nobody. He even

locked the place, front and back, to make sure. He

kept the blinds closed and the curtains drawn.

I’ll never forget those ugly old curtains, how I

came to depend on them as much as despise them.

They were patterned with grinning monkeys

swinging from palm trees. Sometimes I swung with

the monkeys, carefree and mindless, just to escape.

At other times they seemed to be leering and

jeering at me. At
us
.

Clay had me sit on his lap for Bible study.

The way his arm curled around my butt and down

my thigh reminded me of the monkeys’ arms. I

wasn’t bothered at first. Barely even noticed. I’d

sat on Santa’s lap, and this didn’t seem much

different, except for the open Bible in front of me.

The Reverend was slick. He made his moves

in small, subtle stages over the course of weeks.

Then one day, when I inquired about baptism—

because he had a kind of big bathtub or water tank

in the church area—he asked if I wanted to see

what baptism was like.

He climbed in with me so I wouldn’t be

afraid.

The communing room and water-filled trough

became our playgrounds. He especially loved

getting us in the water together. The Bible lessons

were dropped. Lessons on becoming a man took

over.

Hallelujah, I was learning how to become a

man.

I still don’t know how he managed to

convince me of our godliness. We were God

damned, that’s what we were.

“
HE
WAS, Jonah. Not you.”

“I know that now. I even sensed it then. But of

all the painful things we resist talking about—we

survivors, I mean—that’s the one we resist the

most, the fact our bodies sometimes responded,

even if we felt sick to our stomachs.” He gave

Dare a pointed look. “I suppose I don’t have to tell

you
.”

He sure as hell didn’t. Dare’s eyes and gut

still ached from his own confession.

“I’ve thought about that a lot since I got

sober,” Jonah said—and it was evident he had. He

was reflective, not hysterical like Dare had been.

Battling one demon had apparently given him the

courage to face another. “How was I supposed to

know what that feeling was, the pulsing, shivering

weakness that would suddenly sweep through me?

I figured it was some sign of grace, of infusion by

the Holy Spirit. That’s what it
felt
like.”

Dare’s lips twitched, but he couldn’t muster a

smile. “For sure.” He couldn’t remember his first

orgasm—that kind of thing could happen awfully

early in a kid’s life; it was just a physiological

response to a stimulus, after all—but, hell yeah, it

had been incredible. It
had
seemed like a gift from

God. Dare remembered that much.

How savvy the monsters were, to use that as

yet another snare. Damn, they had so many.

“I’d never even heard the word for it,” Jonah

went on. “Nobody’d ever explained that sensation

to me. All I had to go on was what Reverend Clay

said, and how my own childish mind interpreted

how the Holy Spirit moved in people. I figured

everyone who crumpled to the floor during

worship was feeling the same thing. Belief was a

hands-on

experience

in

Reverend

Clayton

Wallace’s church. I’d seen that demonstrated week

after week.”

“So that was how he reeled you in, huh? With

a Bible and a bathtub.” Dare hadn’t meant to sound

flip, but those were the material emblems.

“Pretty much. Of course the real lure was

making me feel like a Chosen One.”

“And then he relied on pleasure—”

Jonah’s head jerked up. His face had

tightened. “I wouldn’t call it ‘pleasure’. I was too

confused and embarrassed to feel genuine

pleasure. And later, as I got older”—almost

imperceptibly, his chin quivered—“Clay took

things further. There was pain. But mostly… there

were feelings that were worse than physical pain.”

Dare was thunderstruck. “Oh Jesus. He raped

you?” Just voicing the word made his insides

twist. Realizing it had happened repeatedly almost

made him double over.

Pankin had never gone that far. Maybe he’d

sensed a streak of feistiness in Dare. But Jonah, it

seemed, had been more timid and naïve than he,

more compliant. He’d been a true innocent.

Without any forethought, Dare covered

Jonah’s left hand, lying motionless on his thigh,

with
his
left hand, and Jonah absently turned his

hand over. Their fingers loosely interlinked.

“Come here,” Dare whispered, dropping his

right hand to Jonah’s shoulder, sliding it behind his

back as Jonah rolled toward him.

They held each other. Dare brought up his

legs to lean in closer as Jonah nestled his head

beneath Dare’s jaw. Jonah was shaking—minute

spasms trembled through his body—but he made

no sound save for muted intakes of breath, abrupt

quiet gasps as he tried to maintain control.

“Please forgive me,” Dare said into Jonah’s

fragrant hair. He’d rested his face in it without

thinking. “I didn’t mean to imply you enjoyed it.

God, no, never.”

After a brief hesitation, Jonah nodded. “I

know that’s not what you meant.” The fingers of

his right hand curled and uncurled against Dare’s

chest until the soft friction made a patch of warmth.

“He hurt you?” Dare didn’t ask because he

doubted Jonah but because he couldn’t fathom it.

And because he cared. To the core of his soul, he

cared. He loathed the thought of physical injury

being added to the scorching of a boy’s spirit.

“Sometimes,” Jonah said, “but not badly.” He

sounded more composed. Maybe
too
composed.

Wooden. Slowly, he pulled back and sat up. “I

was older when he did it, was about to turn or had

just turned fourteen, I think. And he was…

careful.”

Dare gaped at him. “That doesn’t excuse it!”

Don’t get angry with him, you jackass. Don’t

give him even more reason to be ashamed.

Goddamn, this was a complex dance. Not

stumbling over that fine line between empathy and

outrage was the hardest part. Dare tried to distance

himself from the outrage, soften the edges of his

voice. “How often did it happen?”

“I-I’m not sure. I always tried to put myself in

a different place.”

“Of course you did,” Dare murmured. “I had

a lot of those places.” Where the sounds couldn’t

reach, or the feel of what was going on, or the

pungent, suffocating smells that seemed a

distillation of every odor contained within the junk

shop.

“I was getting ready to end it by then,” Jonah

said. “By the time…
that
began.”

“Rape,” Dare cut in coldly. “You have to see

it for what it is, call it by its name.”

With a distressed look, Jonah nodded.

Dare dropped his head against the couch

back. Oh Christ, he was making a mess of this. He

needed to control himself, be forthright but in a

gentle, compassionate way. That was how

Battaglia spoke to clients. Getting wound up would

only make it seem like he was castigating Jonah.

And he wasn’t.
He wasn’t
. Hearing this shit just

made him crazy, even though he himself was every

bit as circumspect and prone to euphemisms as

Jonah was.

How, he wondered, could he insist on brutal

honesty from others while recoiling from it

himself? Why was it so much easier to be outraged

on their behalf than on his own?

“What put you at that point?” Dare asked.

“What made you determined to stay away?”

“Maturity, I suppose. Not that I was all that

mature. But I was older. I had more awareness of

the situation, knew it wasn’t right or normal. I

mean, my peer group was pretty hip—you know?

—and by the time I was fourteen, I’d learned

plenty in health class about child stalkers and

inappropriate touching. There were certain kinds

of relationships that were defined by negative

words. Those words all fit my situation. But I was

so far into by then, and Clay was so good at

manipulating me, I
still
kept it to myself.”

“I know. You were afraid to tell anybody. By

then you felt as though you’d contributed to it.”

Almost inaudibly, “By then I wasn’t even sure

who’d started it.”

Dare knew all too well how wily pedophiles

could be, how adept at securing their victims’

silence and sliding blame their way. He’d been