SIXTEEN

“All the Kiddies get my attention.”

Kathy reads the email. And then she selects a block of forty-three new messages in her inbox and deletes them. Jack is stretching the three-inch-wide ribbon of a bright orange netting across his lap. The net is a fine, supple weave, and as he cuts sections from the end he scissors slowly, careful not to bunch delicate fabric between the blades. He lifts a square and holds it in front of his face so that he can focus on Kathy through the netting.

“Rotten.”

“What?”

“You’re a rotten woman.”

“What? Shut up.”

“A rotten to the core geek woman.”

“Greek woman?”

“No, geek. Horrid. Not fit. You’re a bitch.”

“Hey! Watch it. I’m listening.”

“Yeah, sure, just checkin’.”

Jack has pulled the patch of netting tightly over his thumb and slipped a small elastic band over the knuckle.

“Kath, c’mon, leave that shit just for a second. I got a very cool plan. We’re gonna get the Whisker Wolf this morning. C’mon, sweetie.”

“Enough with the whisker shit already. I’m busy.”

“Hey, Kath, check this out. Turn around for a second, check this out.”

Jack stands up behind her. He has attached little pouches to each of his fingers with elastics and holds his hands over her shoulders like monster claws. Kath senses him behind and turns. She is startled.

“Jesus! What the hell is that?”

“I’m spawny fingers.”

“Don’t tell me your gonna catch Mr. Stubble with your bare hands?”

Jack wiggles his brightly bagged fingertips.

“Naw, I’m making roe bags, gonna fill ’em with different things. Chum bags …”

“Like what?”

“You know, see what the Whisker Wolf likes. A dead mouse, maybe. Corned beef, bugs — I don’t know. Got any ideas?”

“I think you should put your dick in one.”

“Oh my god, I gotta do that. Kath, check it out, check it out.”

Jack struggles with the buttons on his jeans, unable to open them with his sacked fingers.

“Yeah, well, you can stop now. I can assure you that the only thing less sexy than a naked man in knee high socks is a naked man with a spawn sac on his dick. So stop.”

Jack looks up and sees the incoming icon appear on Kathy’s computer screen. It says twenty-nine new messages.

“What the hell is that?”

“Fuck. Twenty-nine new messages! Stop already … Jesus, I’m gettin’ some kinda spamathon.”

“From who? From what?”

“I think it’s a response to a request I made at Misinformation. They were going to put some pressure on the town council for me.”

“Huh? But aren’t they in Texas or something?”

“Yeah, doesn’t matter. They network globally with radical groups, enviro stuff, separatists, some pretty out-there shit. So I directed a little mail for them a while back, and they’re gonna contact some underground groups in Ontario for me. But I don’t understand this, it’s weird. All these messages are about children. Some kind of children’s rights freaks, I don’t know.”

“Kiddie porn, maybe?”

“Shut up, no. I sent them some names and things.”

“You what?”

“Well, yeah sure. I sent a list of names and addresses on the town council.”

“Oh, that was smart.”

“I also asked them to contact us.”

“That’s outstanding, Kathy. Who are these people? Jesus.”

“I’m not so sure now.”

★

Ron is a garden variety pedophile. A clumsy, emotional man. He trembles at other people’s insensitivity. He believes that all people, especially children, need some kind of protection and, sometimes, especially in the case of children, a little extra. The little extra is the unconditional love that Ron sends out to people in the right circumstances — in the remote hope that it will come back to him. His favourite story is the story of Abraham and Isaac: the hand raised over the head of the innocent, in defiance of the social fabric, is a cruel, beautiful faith that flies in the face of life’s little lessons. It’s the great lesson: that God will stay the hand at the last moment. But to learn this you have to raise it first.

Like all pedophiles, the choices Ron makes are always clearly laid out. He lives across from a public school. He’s a Wolf Cub leader and goes on Christian Youth retreats. He’s always married. At times, heavily married. As he pulls his brown Toyota Tercel onto Highway 7 from Bewdley to Caesarea he is taking stock of himself: a rarely witnessed sight in the wild. Here we have a unique opportunity to study the exotic mind of a child rapist.

The first thing Ron does is set up the perfect moment. It’s something of an addiction for him, this moment; because it has to be an accident. Really, it’s a lifelong feat of engineering: a pure accident that will conjure the staying hand. First, he pictures dozens of boys in brown and grey uniforms, skidding and leaping across a gymnasium floor. Parents? Gone. Everyone gone. It is a world of their own, and they act it out, with bared teeth and swiping paws — the behaviour of wolf packs. They leap and pounce at each other, practising the kill, playing at the kill. The prey is a creature that only they know the name of: it is spoken only in these packs. It is a made-up name: an invented thing. It’s usually wandering, lost, and weaker than its brothers — separated from them. And when it stumbles down into the ravine it will never climb out of, the wolf cubs whisper its name to each other. Then they pounce, tumbling across each other over blue mats, giggling and squealing, scuffing their little knees and wheeling their small bodies up, out of the pile. This is the moment, Ron knows, that they perform for him.

Sometimes he goes even further: sometimes they perform for him sexually. They look back to him, to make sure he’s watching, then they fall in and out of explicit, adult, positions. They look wicked as they approach something like consummation, then collapse out of formation and fight, like children, for a place on the mat. This is when they have complete control — when they are merely like everyone else. When they’re devious. They know so much more than they are allowed to tell; and at this moment they’re in control, completely. Then, one of them will cry out. He’s been hurt in battle. He clutches his knee and rolls away from the other cubs. He has now relinquished control, and is desperate for the protection that Ron knows all children need. This he will provide. He collects the injured child and leads him, limping, through the swinging door of the change room. There, predictably, he removes an inappropriate amount of clothing from his little wolf. And as he hovers his hand across the golden light of the child he sees a tremendous change in the boy. No longer wicked, no longer a wolf cub, no longer adult. He’s just a little boy who has recognized, too late, so very deliciously late, that what is happening to him is wrong.

Ron feels a sickening flavour on his teeth, and he bathes his tongue in it. This flavour, metallic and electric, is, he knows, an early signal from the staying hand of God.

He pulls the car over, surprised at how frightened he feels. He slips a packet of Kool-Aid, with a trembling hand, from his suit pocket. The metal in his mouth is so strong that he sprains his tongue pushing it against the back of his teeth. He mixes the Kool-Aid in a thermos and swigs directly from its wide rim, sending wet raspberry strips down from the corners of his lips.

“I’m ronning away.”

Ron opens his mouth with a smack and laughs.

“Running. Running, I meant running. I’m not. I’m not ronning away.”

He spins the plastic lid back on the thermos.

“Maybe I am ronning away. Ha-ha, I’m a long, distance ronner. Gonna go do some ronning, today.”

Ron pulls a black leather daytimer off the dash and flips it open to where a loose page is folded in half. It reads: Kathy Barrette & Jack Brighton. Buddy Holly Park, unit 6. Mayor. Deputy Mayor. Marion …

He runs his fingers down the list. He’s not entirely sure why there are politicians on it. He certainly has no idea who these people are. But given the source of this list, and the nature of the message it came with, Ron has no doubt that someone somewhere has taken his quest for perfection to heart.