TEDDY WAS ASLEEP in his second-floor bedroom. It was a square, high-ceilinged room with cobalt blue walls and a bright yellow rug. The closet doors were painted red. The private bath had striped wallpaper and a ceiling fan from which hung mobiles from the Museum of Modern Art. In the shuttered window hung a mobile of small silver airplanes. A poet had given it to Teddy when he came to visit. Then the poet had gone home and killed himself. Teddy was not supposed to know about that, but of course he did. Teddy could read really well. Teddy could read like a house afire. The reason he could read so well was that when his mother had married Eric and moved to New Orleans from across the lake in Mandeville, he had been behind and had had to be tutored. He was tutored every afternoon for a whole summer, and when second grade started, he could read really well. He was still the youngest child in the second grade at Newman School, but at least he could read.
He was sleeping with four stuffed toys lined up between him and the wall and four more on the other side. They were there to keep his big brothers from beating him up. They were there to keep ghosts from getting him. They were there to keep vampires out. This night they were working. If Teddy dreamed at all that night, the dreams were like Technicolor clouds. On the floor beside the bed were Coke bottles and potato-chip containers and a half-eaten pizza from the evening before. Teddy’s mother had gone off at suppertime and not come back, so Eric had let him do anything he liked before he went to bed. He had played around in Eric’s darkroom for a while. Then he had let the springer spaniels in the house, and then he had ordered a pizza and Eric had paid for it. Eric was reading a book about a man who climbed a mountain in the snow. He couldn’t put it down. He didn’t care what Teddy did as long as he was quiet.
Eric was really nice to Teddy. Teddy was always glad when he and Eric were alone in the house. If his big brothers were gone and his mother was off with her friends, the stucco house was nice. This month was the best month of all. Both his brothers were away at Camp Carolina. They wouldn’t be back until August.
Teddy slept happily in his bed, his stuffed animals all around him, his brothers gone, his dreams as soft as dawn.
Outside his house the heat of July pressed down upon New Orleans. It pressed people’s souls together until they grated like chalk on brick. It pressed people’s brains against their skulls. Only sugar and whiskey made people feel better. Sugar and coffee and whiskey. Beignets and café au lait and taffy and Cokes and snowballs made with shaved ice and sugar and colored flavors. Gin and wine and vodka, whiskey and beer. It was too hot, too humid. The blood wouldn’t move without sugar.
Teddy had been asleep since eleven-thirty the night before. Eric came into his room just before dawn and woke him up. “I need you to help me,” he said. “We have to find your mother.” Teddy got sleepily out of bed, and Eric helped him put on his shorts and shirt and sandals. Then Eric led him down the hall and out the front door and down the concrete steps, and opened the car door and helped him into the car. “I want a Coke,” Teddy said. “I’m thirsty.”
“Okay,” Eric answered. “I’ll get you one.” Eric went back into the house and reappeared carrying a frosty bottle of Coke with the top off. The Coke was so cool it was smoking in the soft humid air.
Light was showing from the direction of the lake. In New Orleans in summer the sun rises from the lake and sets behind the river. It was rising now. Faint pink shadows were beginning to penetrate the mist.
Eric drove down Nashville Avenue to Chestnut Street and turned and went two blocks and came to a stop before a duplex shrouded by tall green shrubs. “Come on,” he said. “I think she’s here.” He led Teddy by the hand around the side of the house to a set of wooden stairs leading to an apartment. Halfway up the stairs Teddy’s mother was lying on a landing. She had on a pair of pantyhose and that was all. Over her naked body someone had thrown a seersucker jacket. It was completely still on the stairs, in the yard.
“Come on,” Eric said. “Help me wake her up. She fell down and we have to get her home. Come on, Teddy, help me as much as you can.”
“Why doesn’t she have any clothes on? What happened to her clothes?”
“I don’t know. She called and told me to come and get her. That’s all I know.” Eric was half carrying and half dragging Teddy’s mother down the stairs. Teddy watched while Eric managed to get her down the stairs and across the yard. “Open the car door,” he said. “Hold it open.”
Together they got his mother into the car. Then Teddy got in the back seat and they drove to the stucco house and got her out and dragged her around to the side door and took her into the downstairs hall and into Malcolm’s room and laid her down on Malcolm’s waterbed. “You watch her,” Eric said. “I’m going to call the doctor.”
Teddy sat down on the floor beside the waterbed and began to look at Malcolm’s books. Playing to Win, The Hobbit, The Big Green Book. Teddy took down The Big Green Book and started reading it. It was about a little boy whose parents died and he had to go and live with his aunt and uncle. They weren’t very nice to him, but he liked it there. One day he went up to the attic and found a big green book of magic spells. He learned all the spells. Then he could change himself into animals. He could make himself invisible. He could do anything he wanted to do.
Teddy leaned back against the edge of the waterbed. His mother had not moved. Her legs were lying side by side. Her mouth was open. Her breasts fell away to either side of her chest. Her pearl necklace was falling on one breast. Teddy got up and looked down at her. She isn’t dead, he decided. She’s just sick or something. I guess she fell down those stairs. She shouldn’t have been outside at night with no clothes on. She’d kill me if I did that.
He went around to the other side of the waterbed and climbed up on it. Malcolm never let him get on the waterbed. He never even let Teddy come into the room. Well, he was in here now. He opened The Big Green Book and found his place and went on reading. Outside in the hall he could hear Eric talking to people on the phone. Eric was nice. He was so good to them. He had already taken Teddy snorkeling and skiing, and next year he was going to take him to New York to see the dinosaurs in the museum. He was a swell guy. He was the best person his mother had ever married. Living with Eric was great. It was better than anyplace Teddy had ever been. Better than living with his real daddy, who wasn’t any fun, and lots better than being at his grandfather’s house. His grandfather yelled at them and made them make their beds and ride the stupid horses and hitch up the pony cart, and if they didn’t do what he said, he hit them with a belt. Teddy hated being there, even if he did have ten cousins near him in Mandeville and they came over all the time. There was a fort in the woods and secret paths for riding the ponies, and the help cooked for them morning, noon, and night.
Teddy laid The Big Green Book down on his lap and reached over and patted his mother’s shoulder. “You’ll be okay,” he said out loud. “Maybe you’re just hungover.”
Eric came in and sat beside him on the waterbed. “The doctor’s coming. He’ll see about her. You know, Doctor Paine, who comes to dinner. She’ll be all right. She just fell down.”
“Maybe she’s hungover.” Teddy leaned over his mother and touched her face. She moaned. “See, she isn’t dead.”
“Teddy, maybe you better go up to your room and play until the doctor leaves. Geneva will be here in a minute. Get her to make you some pancakes or something.”
“Then what will we do?”
“Like what?”
“I mean all day. You want to go to the lake or something?”
“I don’t know, Ted. We’ll have to wait and see.” Eric took his mother’s hand and held it. He looked so worried. He looked terrible. She was always driving him crazy, but he never got mad at her. He just thought up some more things to do.
“I’ll go see if Geneva’s here. Can I have a Coke?”
“May I have a Coke.” Eric smiled and reached over and patted his arm. “Say it.”
“May I have a Coke, please?”
“Yes, you may.” They smiled. Teddy got up and left the room.
The worst thing of all happened the next day. Eric decided to send him across the lake for a few days. To his grandmother and grandfather’s house. “They boss me around all the time,” Teddy said. “I won’t be in the way. I’ll be good. All I’m going to do is stay here and read books and work on my stamp collection.” He looked pleadingly up at his stepfather. Usually reading a book could get him anything he wanted with Eric, but today it wasn’t working.
“We have to keep your mother quiet. She’ll worry about you if you’re here. It won’t be for long. Just a day or so. Until Monday. I’ll come get you Monday afternoon.”
“How will I get over there?”
“I’ll get Big George to take you.” Big George was the gardener. He had a blue pickup truck. Teddy had ridden with him before. Getting to go with Big George was a plus, even if his grandfather might hit him with a belt if he didn’t make his bed.
“Can I see Momma now?”
“May.”
“May I see Momma now?”
“Yeah. Go on in, but she’s pretty dopey. They gave her some pills.”
His mother was in her own bed now, lying flat down without any pillows. She was barely awake. “Teddy,” she said. “Oh, baby, oh, my precious baby. Eric tried to kill me. He pushed me down the stairs.”
“No, he didn’t.” Teddy withdrew from her side. She was going to start acting crazy. He didn’t put up with that. “He didn’t do anything to you. I went with him. Why didn’t you have any clothes on?”
“Because I was asleep when he came and made me leave. He pushed me and I fell down the stairs.”
“You probably had a hangover. I’m going to Mandeville. Well, I’ll see you later.” He started backing away from the bed. Backing toward the door. He was good at backing. Sometimes he backed home from school as soon as he was out of sight of the other kids.
“Teddy, come here to me. You have to do something for me. Tell Granddaddy and Uncle Ingersol that Eric is trying to kill me. Tell them, will you, my darling? Tell them for me.” She was getting sleepy again. Her voice was sounding funny. She reached out a hand to him and he went back to the bed and held out his arm and she stroked it. “Be sure and tell them. Tell them to call the president.” She stopped touching him. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth fell open. She still looked pretty. Even when she was drunk, she looked really pretty. Now that she was asleep, he moved nearer and looked at her. She looked okay. She sure wasn’t bleeding. She had a cover on the bed that was decorated all over with little Austrian flowers. They were sewn on like little real flowers. You could hardly tell they were made of thread. He looked at one for a minute. Then he picked up her purse and took a twenty-dollar bill out of her billfold and put it in his pocket. He needed to buy some film. She didn’t care. She gave him anything he asked for.
“What are you doing?” It was Eric at the door. “You better be getting ready, Teddy. Big George will be here in a minute.”
“I got some money out of her purse. I need to get some film to take with me.”
“What camera are you going to take? I’ve got some film for the Olympus in the darkroom. You want a roll of black-and-white? Go get the camera and I’ll fill it for you.”
“She said you tried to kill her.” Teddy took Eric’s hand and they started down the hall to the darkroom. “Why does she say stuff like that, Eric? I wish she wouldn’t say stuff like that when she gets mad.”
“It’s a fantasy, Teddy. She never had anyone do anything bad to her in her life, and when she wants some excitement, she just makes it up. It’s okay. I’m sorry she fell down the stairs. I was trying to help her. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes. Listen, can I buy Big George some lunch before we cross the Causeway? I took twenty dollars. Will that be enough to get us lunch?”
“Sure. That would be great, Teddy. I bet he’d like that. He likes you so much. Everybody likes you. You’re such a swell little boy. Come on, let’s arm that camera. Where is it?”
Teddy ran back to his room and got the camera. He was a scrawny, towheaded little boy who would grow up to be a magnificent man. But for now he was seven and a half years old and liked to take photographs of people in the park and of dogs. He liked to read books and pretend he lived in Narnia. He liked to get down on his knees at the Episcopal church and ask God not to let his momma divorce Eric. If God didn’t answer, then he would pretend he was his grandfather and threaten God. Okay, you son-of-a-bitch, he would say, his little head down on his chest, kneeling like a saint at the prayer rail. If she divorces Eric, I won’t leave anyway. I’ll stay here with him and we can be bachelors. She can just go anywhere she likes. I’m not leaving. I’m going right on living here by the park in my room. I’m not going back to Mandeville and ride those damned old horses.
Big George came in the front door and stood, filling up the hall. He was six feet five inches tall and wide and strong. His family had worked for Eric’s family for fifty years. He had six sons and one daughter who was a singer. He liked Eric, and he liked the scrawny little kid that Eric’s wife had brought along with the big mean other ones. “Hey, Teddy,”Big George said, “where’s your bag?”
“You want to go to lunch?” Teddy said. “I got twenty dollars. We can stop at the Camellia Grill before we cross the bridge. You want to do that?”
“Sure thing. Twenty dollars. What you do to get twenty dollars, Teddy?”
“Nothing. I was going to buy some film, but Eric gave me some so I don’t have to. Come on, let’s go.” He hauled his small leather suitcase across the parquet floor and Big George leaned down and took it from him. Eric came into the hall and talked to Big George a minute, and they both looked real serious and Big George shook his head, and then Eric kissed Teddy on the cheek and Big George and Teddy went on out and got into the truck and drove off.
Eric stood watching them until the truck turned onto Saint Charles Avenue. Then he went back into the house and into his wife’s workroom and looked around at the half-finished watercolors, which were her latest obsession, and the mess and the clothes on the floor and the unemptied wastebaskets, and he sat down at her desk and opened the daybook she left out for him, to see if there were any new men since the last time she made a scene.
June 29, Willis will be here from Colorado. Show him the new poems. HERE IS WHAT WE MUST ADMIT. Here is what we know. What happened then is what happens now. Over and over again. How to break the pattern. Perhaps all I can do is avoid or understand the pattern. The pattern holds for all we do. I discovered in a dream that I am not in love with R. Only with what he can do for my career. How sad that is. The importance of dreams is that they may contain feelings we are not aware of. FEELINGS WE ARE NOT AWARE OF. The idea of counterphobia fascinates me. That you could climb mountains because you are afraid of heights. Seek out dangers because the danger holds such fear for you. What if I seek out men because I want to fight with them. Hate and fear them and want to have a fight. To replay my life with my brothers. Love to fight. My masculine persona.
Well, I’ll see Willis tonight and show him the watercolors too, maybe. I’ll never be a painter. Who am I fooling? All I am is a mother and a wife. That’s that. Two unruly teenagers and a little morbid kid who likes Eric better than he likes me. I think it’s stunting his growth to stay in that darkroom all the time….
Eric sighed and closed the daybook. He picked up a water-color of a spray of lilies. She was good. She was talented. He hadn’t been wrong about that. He laid it carefully down on the portfolio and went into her bedroom and watched her sleep. He could think of nothing to do. He could not be either in or out; he could not make either good or bad decisions. He was locked into this terrible marriage and into its terrible rage and fear and sadness. No one was mean to me, he decided. Why am I here? Why am I living here? For Teddy, he decided, seeing the little boy’s skinny arms splashing photographs in and out of trays, grooming the dogs, swimming in the river, paddling a canoe. I love that little boy, Eric decided. He’s just like I was at that age. I have to keep the marriage together if I can. I can’t stand for him to be taken from me.
Eric began to cry, deep within his heart at first, then right there in the sunlight, at twelve o’clock on a Saturday morning, into his own hands, his own deep, salty, endless, heartfelt tears.
Big George had stopped at the Camellia Grill, and he and Teddy were seated on stools at the counter eating sliced-turkey sandwiches and drinking chocolate freezes. “So, what’s wrong with your momma?” Big George asked.
“She fell down some stairs. We had to go and get her and bring her home. She got drunk, I guess.”
“Don’t worry about it. Grown folks do stuff like that. You got to overlook it.”
“I just don’t want to go to Mandeville. Granddaddy will make me ride the damned old horses. I hate horses.”
“Horses are nice.”
“I hate them. I have better things to do. He thinks I want to show them, but I don’t. Malcolm and Jimmy like to do it. I wish they were home from camp. Then he’d have them.”
“Don’t worry about it. Eat your sandwich.” Big George bit into his. The boy imitated him, opened his mouth as wide as Big George’s, heartily ate his food, smilingly let the world go by. It took an hour to get to Mandeville. He wasn’t there yet. He looked up above the cash register to where the Camellia Grill sweatshirts were prominently displayed—white, with a huge pink camellia in the center. He might get one for Big George for a Christmas present or he might not wait that long. He had sixty-five dollars in the bank account Eric made for him. He could take some of it out and buy the sweatshirt now. “I like that sweatshirt,” he said out loud. “I think it looks real good, don’t you?”
“Looks hot,” Big George said, “but I guess you’d like it in the winter.”
Teddy slept all the way across the Causeway, soothed by the motion of the truck and Big George beside him, driving and humming some song he was making up as he drove. Eric’s a fool for that woman, George was thinking. Well, he’s never had a woman before, just his momma and his sisters. Guess he’s got to put up with it ’cause he likes the little boy so much. He’s the sweetest little kid I ever did see. I like him too. Paying for my lunch with a twenty-dollar bill. Did anybody ever see the like? He won’t be scrawny long. Not with them big mean brothers he’s got. The daddy was a big man too, I heard them say. No, he won’t stay little. They never do, do they?
Teddy slept and snored. His allergies had started acting up, but he didn’t pay any attention to them. If he was caught blowing his nose, he’d be taken to the doctor, so he only blew it when he was in the bathroom. The rest of the time he ignored it. Now he snored away on the seat beside Big George, and the big blue truck moved along at a steady sixty miles an hour, cruising along across the lake.
At his grandparents’ house in Mandeville his grandmother and grandfather were getting ready for Teddy. His grandmother was making a caramel cake and pimento cheese and carrot sticks and Jell-O. His grandfather was in the barn dusting off the saddles and straightening the tackle. Maybe Teddy would want to ride down along the bayou with him. Maybe they’d just go fishing. Sweet little old boy. They had thought Rhoda was finished having children and then she gave them one last little boy. Well, he was a tender little chicken, but he’d toughen. He’d make a man. Couldn’t help it. Had a man for a father even if he was a chickenshit. He’d turn into a man even if he did live in New Orleans and spend his life riding on the streetcar.
Teddy’s grandfather finished up in the barn and walked back to the house to get a glass of tea and sit out on the porch and wait for the boy. “I might set him up an archery target in the pasture,” he told his wife. “Where’d you put the bows the big boys used to use?”
“They’re in the storage bin. Don’t go getting that stuff out, Dudley. He doesn’t need to be out in the pasture in this heat.”
“You feed him. I’ll find him things to do.”
“Leave him alone. You don’t have to make them learn things every minute. It’s summer. Let him be a child.”
“What’s wrong with her? Why’s she sick again?”
“She fell down. I don’t want to talk about it. Get some tea and sit down and cool off, Dudley. Don’t go getting out archery things until you ask him if he wants to. I mean that. You leave that child alone. You just plague him following him around. He doesn’t even like to come over here anymore. You drive people crazy, Dudley. You really do.” She poured tea into a glass and handed it to him. They looked each other in the eye. They had been married thirty-eight years. Everything in the world had happened to them and kept on happening. They didn’t care. They liked it that way.
Teddy’s uncle Ingersol was five years younger than Teddy’s mother. He was a lighthearted man, tall and rangy and spoiled. Teddy’s grandmother had spoiled him because he looked like her side of the family. Her daddy had died one year and Ingersol had been born the next. Reincarnation. Ingersol looked like a Texan and dressed like an English lord. He was a cross between a Texan and an English lord. His full name was Alfred Theodore Ingersol Manning. Teddy was named for him but his real father had forbidden his mother to call him Ingersol. “I want him to be a man,” his father had said, “not a bunch of spoiled-rotten socialites like your brothers.”
“My brothers are not socialites,” Teddy’s mother had answered, “just because they like to dance and have some fun occasionally, which is more than I can say for you.” Teddy always believed he had heard that conversation. He had heard his mother tell it so many times that he thought he could remember it. In this naming story he saw himself sitting on the stairs watching them as they argued over him. “He’s my son,” his mother was saying. “I’m the one who risked my life having him. I’ll call him anything I damn well please.”
Teddy’s vision of grown people was very astute. He envisioned them as large, very high-strung children who never sat still or finished what they started. Let me finish this first, they were always saying. I’ll be done in a minute. Except for Eric. Many times Eric just smiled when he came in and put down whatever he was doing and took Teddy to get a snowball or to walk the springer spaniels or just sit and play cards or Global Pursuit or talk about things. Eric was the best grown person Teddy had ever known, although he also liked his uncle Ingersol and was always glad when he showed up.
All his mother’s brothers were full of surprises when they showed up, but only Uncle Ingersol liked to go out to the amusement park and ride the Big Zephyr.
Ingersol showed up this day almost as soon as Big George and Teddy arrived in the truck. Big George was still sitting on the porch drinking iced tea and talking to Teddy’s grandfather about fishing when Ingersol came driving up in his Porsche and got out and joined them. “I heard you were coming over, namesake. How you been? What’s been going on?”
“Momma fell down some stairs and me and Eric had to bring her home.”
“Eric and I.”
“I forgot.”
“How’d she do that?”
“She said Eric tried to kill her. She always says things like that when she’s hungover. She said to tell you Eric tried to kill her.” There, he had done it. He had done what she told him to do. “If she divorces Eric, I’m going to live with him. I’m staying right there. Eric said I could.”
His grandfather pulled his lips in. It looked like his grandfather was hardly breathing. Big George looked down at the ground. Ingersol sat in his porch chair and began to rub his chin with his hand. “You better go see about her, son,” his grandfather said. “Go on over there. I’ll go with you.”
“No, I’ll go alone. Where is she now, Teddy?”
“She’s in bed. The doctor came to see her. He gave her some pills. She’s asleep.”
“Okay. Big George, you know about this?”
“Just said to bring the boy over here to his granddaddy. That’s all they told me. Eric wouldn’t hurt a flea. I’ve known him since he was born. He’ll cry if his dog dies.”
“Go on, son. Call when you get there.” His grandfather had unpursed his mouth. His uncle Ingersol bent down and patted Teddy’s head. Then he got back into his Porsche and drove away.
“I’m going to stay with Eric,” Teddy said. “I don’t care what she does. He said I could stay with him forever.”
Ingersol drove across the Causeway toward New Orleans thinking about his sister. She could mess up anything. Anytime they got her settled down, she started messing up again. Well, she was theirs and they had to take care of her. I wish he had thrown her down the stairs, Ingersol decided. It’s about time somebody did something with her.
Teddy’s mother was crying. She was lying in her bed and crying bitterly because her head hurt and her poems had not been accepted by White Buffalo and she would never be anything but a wife and a mother. And all she was mother to was three wild children who barely passed at school and weren’t motivated and didn’t even love her. She had failed on every front.
She got out of bed and went into the bathroom and looked at how horrible she looked. She combed her hair and put on makeup and changed into a different negligee and went to look for Eric. He was in the den reading a book. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I got drunk and fell asleep. I didn’t mean to. It just happened. White Buffalo turned my poems down again. The bastards. Why do I let that egomaniac judge my work? Tell me that.”
“Are you feeling better?”
“I feel fine. I think I’ll get dressed. You want to go out to dinner?”
“In a while. You ought to read this book. It’s awfully good.” He held it out. The Snow Leopard, by Peter Matthiessen.
“Has the mail come?”
“It’s on the table. There are some cards from the boys. Malcolm won a swimming match.”
“I wasn’t sleeping with him, Eric. I went over there to meet a poet from Lafayette. It got out of hand.”
Eric closed the book and laid it on the table by the chair. “I’m immobilized,” he said at last. “All this is beyond me. I took Teddy with me to bring you home. For an alibi if you said I pushed you down the stairs. I can’t think about anything else. I took that seven-year-old boy to see his mother passed out on the stairs in her pantyhose. I don’t care what you did, Rhoda. It doesn’t matter to me. All I care about is what I did. What I was driven to. I feel like I’m in quicksand. This is pulling me in. Then I sent him to Mandeville to your parents. He didn’t want to go. You don’t know how scared he is—of us, of you, of everything. I think I’ll go get him now.” Eric got up and walked out of the room. He got his car keys off the dining-room table and walked out into the lovely hot afternoon and left her there. He got into his car and drove off to get his stepson. I’ll take him somewhere, he decided. Maybe I’ll take him to Disney World.
Teddy was sitting on an unused tractor watching his grandfather cut the grass along the edge of the pond. His grandfather was astride a small red tractor pulling a bush hog back and forth across a dirt embankment on the low side. His grandfather nearly always ran the bush hog into the water. Then the men had to come haul it out and his grandfather would joke about it and be in a good mood for hours trying to make up for being stupid. Teddy put his feet up on the steering wheel and watched intently as his grandfather ran the bush hog nearer and nearer to the water’s edge. If he got it in the water, they wouldn’t have time to ride the horses before supper. That’s what Teddy was counting on. Just a little closer, just a little bit more. One time his grandfather had turned the tractor over in the water and had to swim out. It would be nice if that could happen again, but getting it stuck in the mud would do. The day was turning out all right. His uncle Ingersol had gone over to New Orleans to get drunk with his mother, and his cousins would be coming later, and maybe they wouldn’t get a divorce, and if they did, it might not be too bad. He and Eric could go to Disney World like they’d been wanting to without his mother saying it was tacky.
His grandfather took the tractor back across the dam on a seventy-degree angle. It was about to happen. At any minute the tractor would be upside down in the water and the day would be saved.
That was how things happened, Teddy decided. That was how God ran his game. He sat up there and thought of mean things to do and then changed his mind. You had to wait. You had to go on and do what they told you, and pretty soon life got better.
Teddy turned toward the road that led to the highway. The Kentucky Gate swung open, and Eric’s car came driving through. He came to get me, Teddy thought, and his heart swung open too. Swung as wide as the gate. He got down off the tractor and went running to meet the car. Eric got out of the car and walked to meet him. Crazy little boy, he was thinking. Little friend of mine.