ONE

LITTLE BILL, AS PETE LIKED TO CALL HIM, WEIGHED in at fifteen pounds newborn. Anesthetized for delivery, Estée never knew how they did it. Cranes, bulldozers, pulleys. There were yellow pustules on his scalp and a full set of teeth in his mouth, and he was strong and hungry enough at three days to eat a toenail off his own foot.

Pete Magnus began by playing the dutiful father, plying his son with gifts of athletic equipment and filling the nursery with gleaming trophies of his adolescent sports prowess. Baby-blue shelves were lined with red and purple ribbons, brass-colored figurines wielding discuses and shot puts, silver cups and mounted plastic barbells. One slow summer afternoon, when Little Bill lay spent and sleeping in his crib, numb from the fervor of hyperactivity, Pete leaned over the side of the crib and whistled the tune to “Oh, Sweet Mystery of Life at Last I’ve Found You,” and was gouged in the cheek with a diaper pin. On the subject of his son’s giant stature and rampant growth spurt, however, he waxed proud. “Boy’s gonna be a linebacker, you wait and see,” he told Estée.

An obstetrician’s lawsuit brought against them after William’s angry birth—pain, suffering, and medical costs for the functional loss of a thumb joint—constituted early warning to Estée, but Pete took the ordeal in stride. His son was a strapping lad, a powerhouse, a marvel of genetic engineering. He would build empires and feast on a breakfast of champions.

First it was flies, cockroaches, slugs, and worms. During his first month, already crawling, William ingested four wasps and part of a poison berry bush when Estée’s tired head was turned and had to have his stomach pumped. This operation turned up, along with organic mulch, a waxy fragment of milk carton, a two-inch bolt, and a sodden box of Playtex.

By the second month, like grandfather, like son, he had graduated to avifauna. When Estée took him outside to play, praying the cadaverous cast of his skin could benefit from ultraviolet exposure, extinction rates soared. Flycatchers and vireos made themselves scarce, leaving only the stubborn cowbirds to nest along the fringes of the golf course. Often Estée was forced to run interference for William with the elderly guests.

“We visited the Cistern Chapel,” said a woman who had stopped beside Estée’s lawn chair to chat about a guided tour of Rome. Estée gazed past her blue hair to the base of a tall tree, where William squatted in his pen in a bright pool of sun, his Dodgers visor glinting. A windblown feather skittered over the grass and clung to one varicose nylon. “It was pretty, but not like the Hilton. At the Hilton they gave us itty-bitty cheeses. They had the taps that go on when you stand at the sink and water fountains right beside the toilet.”

Estée walked past her to the tree. William’s chin and mouth were muddy with blood; he held a wingless sparrow in one chubby hand. Its beak opened and closed without sound. “Bad,” she told him sternly. “Dirty.” She knocked the bird out of his grasp, kicked it deftly to death, and knelt to clean his face with a Baby Wipe.

“Ooh,” said the old lady, coming up behind them. “Here’s a widdle baybee.”

William bared his teeth and spat out a feather.

“Ooh! Stinky baby!”

Pete Magnus threw a three-month birthday party for William complete with tooting paper horns, a cake in the shape of a palm tree, and pipe-cleaner monkeys for the cocktail straws. Female guests attended en masse for the sake of a few free mimosas, cooing over William’s bulk and manual dexterity while slyly pretending not to notice his ugliness. Even on good days Little Bill looked like tenderized beef and smelled like raw sewage. “Now, don’t worry dear,” remarked a melanoma-dappled Daughter of the American Revolution. “He’s just rashy. My first was homely as a child and now he’s married to Miss Teen Ohio.”

A securities trader presented Pete with a BB gun to hold in trust for Little Bill, but the birthday boy found it and fired it at a dowager’s eyeball. The missile’s trajectory met tinted plastic lenses and the woman went unharmed, but after the party Pete felt it was necessary to discipline his son. Estée was alerted by guttural choking noises from the nursery and ran in to find William seated on his progenitor’s windpipe, jamming a stubby arm down Pete’s throat up to the elbow. When Estée pulled William off, Pete was livid and gasping. “Get me to a mirror!” he said, and raced to the bathroom door to check himself out. When he returned he had regained partial composure. “That dangling thing?”

“The uvula,” said Estée. “Grape, in Latin.”

“That little shit hadda holda my uvula. Thought he was giving me a goddamn tonsilectomy.”

“Naughty William,” reproved Estée. “Daddy needs his dangling thing.”

“Take a look in my mouth Esty. Swolled up like a bladder!”

Later Pete insisted he had been faking his terror. Estée noted, however, that he avoided William for a week and was religious in his application of tan-toned cover-up to the bruises on his neck. He touched up constantly with the aid of a Q-tip and told people he had cut himself shaving. “Kid doesn’t need assertiveness training,” he joked wanly to Estée in private.

Shortly thereafter William began to crawl out of his room and make nocturnal hunting forays, leaving his bloodied kills at the foot of Pete’s bed, entrails rent asunder. They ran the gamut from mice to gulls. At first Pete was brave in the face of the evidence. “Boys will be boys,” he proclaimed staunchly the first time he awoke to find William kneeling on his chest with a rat between his teeth. “Hey Esty, did he get a rabies shot?”

But his bravado was only for show. In increments he transferred his attentions to management, ordering Armani suits cheap from Hong Kong, circulating among the guests and kitchen staff with claps to the back and jocular remarks, driving golf carts past the pool with a cheery wave to the swimmers. When he got out of bed in the morning he carefully stepped past the remains of small prey and locked himself in the bathroom to shave, leaving Estée to clean up the mess. Little Bill persisted with his offerings until he found the straw that broke the camel’s back. Pete had left his educational reading, a paperback tome entitled Money or Your Life, on the carpet beside his bed. While he slept the deep sleep of the guiltless, Little Bill laid a gift on top of it: a skunk with its scent glands split open.

“Fuck him,” said Pete, putting his foot down. “I don’t care if he’s the fruit of my loom. He’s an asshole.”

It was clear that they had a security problem. Locks and windows were no match for William, who resisted confinement. Cleaned vermin bones piled up beside his carton of toddler-size Huggies; at night he scratched holes in the wallboard, ripped the plastic covers off electrical outlets, and stuck his tongue into sockets. Estée attempted to funnel his energy into educational tasks: she bought him 3-D puzzles, xylophones, and Tonka trucks, but William swallowed the star-shaped puzzle piece, chewed on wheels, and stuck xylophone parts up a dachshund.

The nightly expeditions did not abate, so she tried locking him in at night with a bolt outside his door. This tactic met with instant failure. William refused to eat baby food, and when she force-fed him he disgorged the pabulum onto furniture and clothes. Afraid of a hunger strike, she stopped shooting the bolt. Natural selection was the name of the game and William was top of the food chain.

A decorator named Charise was invited to stay in a guest suite free of charge while she redesigned the poolroom. Her toy poodle, Lili, whom she festooned with pink ribbons, walked past William’s window at twilight. The cadences of Charise’s voice grew familiar. “Here Lili,” she sang. “Little pretty Lili, come to pretty Mommy.” Every evening William pricked up his ears at the sound and ran to his window to sit on the ledge in silent vigil. His rapt eyes followed Lili as she trotted past, though his head did not turn. When, beneath a balmy red sky on a Tuesday, Lili escaped her rhinestone-studded leash and disappeared onto the darkened expanse of the first fairway, Estée was drinking coffee in the clubhouse kitchen. The poodle search was launched without her knowledge and ended when Lili was discovered shivering on the second green, emitting a high-pitched whine, with only three legs remaining.

To placate Charise, Pete had Lili fitted out with a prosthesis and paid for canine psychotherapy. “Florida panther,” he told Charise decisively, though there were rumored to be only five left alive in the state. Estée found a pink poodle ribbon in William’s crib; she kept her mouth shut but decided to take action. She set up a twelve-foot Rent-a-Fence in a forested back lot behind the groundskeeper’s toolshed, and there, beneath a canopy of trees, sequestered herself with William.

With a small tent pitched beside his playpen, a cookstove, and a Port-a-John at her disposal, she whiled away the warm days watching while he learned to climb trees. He was happiest high in the boughs, sucking his thumb, head cocked to one side, listening. He eschewed diapers and defecated in holes in the ground; he would not be hand-fed, but grabbed his bottle from her and scampered up his favorite tree with it dangling from his mouth, rubber nipple clenched between his teeth.

At first she padlocked the fence at night, leaving William to his arboreal nest, built out of refuse and leaves, and retired to her bedroom. Soon, however, she became accustomed to her tent; she distrusted the padlock, for William was agile and canny. She began to sleep outside and entered the house only for newspapers and magazines, cassettes to play for William on her portable tape recorder, freeze-dried food, water, and changes of clothes. Pete Magnus was not pleased, since she avoided the guests and neglected her hostess duties. “Esty, what the hell are you thinkin?” he asked repeatedly. “Nature’s for hippies Esty, hippies and Indians. Let’s face it, Esty. Nature sucks.”

Her showers became less and less frequent, as did her changes of clothes. William was her sole companion and he possessed no aversion to filth. The two of them developed rituals. At the break of dawn he scavenged for rodents; she watched him eat them and carry the bones and claws to his hiding places. While she spooned up cereal, perched on a stump, William loped around the fence’s perimeter, scouting for changes in the terrain. She began to notice small processes: ants flowing in a single-file river from rock to rock, the decomposition of cicadas, the mating habits of flies, the growth of weeds, the displacement of dirt churned up by her feet. She learned to tell time by the position of the sun and to feel the onset of rain from humidity in the air. She waved to the gardeners when they passed the fence, observed the distant movements of golfers, and read to William from the newspaper. His favorite lullaby consisted of stock-market quotes. “Analog: trading volume 1142, high 36¼, low 35⅜, close 35½, down ¾. Anheuser-Busch: trading volume 7889, high 50⅜, low 50, close 50⅜, up ¼. Ann Taylor: trading volume 573, high 41⅞, low 41¼, close 41¾, no change.” At night she played him an old recording of the Agnus Dei, and he fell asleep with his thumb in his mouth, curled up in his nest in a fork in the boughs.

On a placid Saturday, after lunch, he pronounced his first words. She was unprepared. She’d just put down the National Enquirer, which she had read aloud, and was stretching out to sunbathe. William squatted in a pile of leaves, picking apart a daddy longlegs.

“First ladies,” he said, casting aside a leg. “Leading ladies. Every lady deserves a Bill Blass original.”

Stunned, she sat unmoving as he dropped the remains of the spider and rummaged for an old bird bone, which he picked up and gnawed.

“What William? What?”

“Eight ways you can make every evening a fun family night,” said Little Bill. “Ho-hum! America’s most boring hubby spends all his time hunting fire ants.”

“Say something else!” she urged. “William! It’s a miracle!”

“Dirt-poor kid from cotton farm makes millions selling mufflers,” said Little Bill casually, and stuck the bone into a nostril. “The sky’s the limit: granny graduates from college at age seventy-one. Doctor discovers proven psoriasis treatment!”

She ran into the house, where she found Pete Magnus dressing down a busboy for drinking Red Dog on the job.

“Pete,” she panted excitedly. “You have to hear it. He’s talking! He’s talking!”

Sighing, Pete Magnus followed her out to the enclosure. “That’s impossible Esty,” he complained as she unlatched the gate. “The kid’s just passing wind.”

“No, Pete,” she said. “He was talking in complete sentences! From the newspaper. He’s a genius!”

William was sitting beside a stump, twiddling a finger in his belly button.

“Uh-huh,” said Pete Magnus. “Okay. Let’s hear it.”

“Come on William. Talk!”

“Buddy,” said William. “Buddy buddy bud.”

“That’s great Esty,” said Pete Magnus, consulting his watch.

“No, he was really talking before,” she said. “William, come on. Do it again.”

William burped and cooed, wiggling his fingers.

“Look Esty, I got a meeting with the accountant,” said Pete. “Gotta go.”

William crawled to the fence to watch him leave.

“Give news anchorman the ax,” he said solemnly. “Four out of five in survey say.”

After the first outburst, his phrasemaking was sporadic. He spoke seldom, but eloquently. “Stock market rebounds,” he remarked when she dropped a soup can on her foot. “Veteran market watchers credited technical factors for much of the buying.” He placed a twig on the ground beside her while she was brushing her teeth at the garden hose and said, “Total diabetes care. At your Wal-Mart pharmacy department.” Bursting into the Port-a-John, he delivered a lengthy monologue. “Pope John Paul launches Eastern European trip. Korea’s Christians: a surging, prayerful force. As many as 500 million sperm start their arduous journey at the opening of the cervix.”

She tried to instigate conversations, but William refused to engage. He was a soliloquist. She kept track of his statements and read to him constantly to improve his vocabulary, whatever she found in the lobby. Systematic patterns emerged. When he was hungry, he said, “Introducing the Infiniti I30.” When he was very hungry he switched to, “Benson & Hedges 100’s: the lengths you go to for pleasure.” There were stock translations. “Look at this dead animal” was “Ten dollars for happy thoughts. Send your entry.” “You can’t have it, it’s mine” was “The incredible chopper, ultimate cutting machine.” He did not speak when spoken to, but he was learning fast.

Then came the ornithologists.

They were garbed in camouflage and golfing gear; they had binoculars and cameras hanging around their necks. They gathered at the fence and gawked at the foliage. Estée, with ratty hair and grimy arms, hid behind the Port-a-John and watched them. It was midafternoon. William was napping.

“It must be a campsite,” said a fat man in a tank top. “See? A little one-man tent.”

“Right here? On the grounds? I’m surprised they allow it,” offered a woman in floral shorts.

“Lookit that,” said the first one, and pointed. “See? Way on up there! Big old nest! Lonnie, look through your glasses. It could be endangered. Size of that thing!”

“Somethin in there,” said Lonnie. “Can’t tell what it is, though. Whaddaya think, Amy Lee?”

“There is something in the nest,” said Amy Lee. “It’s not moving. Maybe it’s dead.”

“Throw a rock at it. It’ll fly out.”

“Here we go, here we go,” said Lonnie.

“I don’t know if you should,” objected Amy Lee. “A rock?”

“Just a little one, Amy Lee. Barely a pebble. Ready Lon? I’ll aim the telephoto. You got good aim? On the count of three. Hold on a second.”

“Stop!” said Estée, running out into view. They turned to stare at her, but the first stone was cast. It hit the trunk beneath William’s nest; he raised himself on all fours, groggily, from sleep.

“My Jesus Lord, it’s a baby!” A shutter clicked.

“Go away,” said Estée. “Leave! Go!”

“But it’s a naked baby,” said Amy Lee.

“Lady, he must be thirty feet up! What are you, crazy? Put your kid up a tree?”

They were distracted by the sight of William crawling out onto a limb.

“He’ll fall to his death!”

“He’s not going to fall,” said Estée. “Just get out of here.”

“Jesus, Lonnie, get it on the camcorder. Tarzan boy!”

William swung down from branch to branch while the bird-watchers gaped.

“You could make a mint with that baby,” said Lonnie.

“I told you to leave!” said Estée, and ran toward them. “Get out of here! It’s private property!”

They backed off as she approached. The camcorder followed William down his tree to the ground. He loped toward the bird-watchers, giggling. At the fence he sat on the ground and gazed at them.

“I got it on tape,” said Lonnie. “I got it!”

“Aqua-Ban eliminates monthly water bloat,” announced William. “Christie Brinkley fights vicious gossip. Crooked socialite swindles her pals out of $69 million. Those divorce rumors are garbage!”

“Holy shit,” said Lonnie.

Half an hour after they left, Pete Magnus appeared at the fence in casual attire, without a tailored jacket.

“Esty,” he announced, “forget this back-to-nature shit. The guests are freaked out. I hadda tell my man Daniel to steal their lousy videotape. Little Bill is going into full-time day care. I mean it Esty. And you’re coming back to the house.”

“I am not,” said Estée. “We’re fine out here.”

“We agreed Esty. Nothing that would jeopardize our investment. You have to act like a regular mother. They’re coming to get the fence in two hours. That’s it.”

“But he has to be outside. He needs it, Pete. He doesn’t like the indoors. We shouldn’t force it on him.”

“Day care Esty. I found a place already. He can’t live like this. It just encourages him. He’s gotta learn to be like a normal kid. You know, Ninja Turtles, Barney the Dinosaur, and shit. Get ’im in front of the TV Esty, teach him what’s what.”

“He’s not a normal kid. You know that.”

“And he’ll never get normal if you let him run around with no clothes on. I don’t know how I let you do this in the first place Esty. But I can’t be everywhere at once. I got a business to run and so do you. He starts on Monday. I told ’em he was two. He’s so big they won’t know the difference. And take a shower. You gotta look good for the guests. You’re dressed like a homeless person.”

“Don’t do it,” said Estée. “Don’t make him come down from the trees.”

William crawled up and sniffed her foot and then watched closely as Pete strolled back to the putting green.

“Ritual slaying in sleepy Arkansas town,” he said softly.