When he was eleven years old, Roy began waking up between four and four-thirty in the morning, four hours before he had to leave for school. His mother, her husband and Roy’s sister were asleep and so long as he kept to the back of the house he did not disturb them. No matter what the weather was, even if it was freezing or raining, Roy liked to go out onto the back porch to feel the fresh air and watch the sky. He could imagine that he lived alone, or at the least that this third stepfather did not exist. Roy had come to understand that his mother gave very little thought to how her bringing these men into his life might affect him. He knew now that it was up to him to control his own existence, to no longer be subject to her poor judgment and desperation.
It was on a morning in mid-December when Roy was standing on the porch wearing a parka over his pajamas looking up at a crescent moon with snow beginning to flurry that he heard a scream. It came from the alley behind his house. Roy could not identify the sound as having come from a woman or a man. He waited on the porch for a second cry but none came. Roy went inside to his room and exchanged his slippers for shoes and went back out. He pulled the hood of his parka over his head and walked carefully down the porch steps, not wanting to slip on the new snow, and continued through the yard along the passageway that led to the alley. Flakes were falling faster, translucent parachutists infiltrating the darkness.
Roy looked both ways in the alley but did not see a person. He stood there waiting to hear or see someone or something move. He was about to go back to the house when he saw a shadow creep across the garage door directly opposite his own. Instinctively, he retreated a few steps toward the passageway. The shadow was low and long, as if cast by a four-footed animal, a large dog or a wolf, although he knew there were no wolves in Chicago. What if one, or even a panther, had escaped from a zoo? But could an animal have emitted such a human-like scream? Roy knew that he should go back inside the house but his curiosity outweighed his fear, so he waited, ready to run should a dangerous creature, man or beast, reveal itself.
A car appeared at the entrance to the alley, its headlights burning into the swirling snow. Roy watched the car advance slowly, listening to its tires crunch over the quickly thickening ground cover. As the vehicle came closer, he stepped back further into the passageway, wanting not to be seen by the driver. The car crept past his hiding place and slid to a stop twenty feet away. Roy could not see the car clearly enough to identify the make. Nobody got out. The car sat idling, its windshield wipers whining and thunking.
Roy imagined the driver or perhaps a passenger was looking for the person or animal responsible for the scream. If so, why didn’t someone get out of the car and call out or look around? What if the object of their search were injured or frightened, unable to make its distress and location known? After a full minute, the car moved forward, heading toward the far end of the alley. When Roy could no longer see its tail lights, he walked back through the passageway to his house.
His mother’s husband was standing on the porch holding a flashlight.
“The back door was open,” he said. “What are you doing out there?”
Roy remained at the foot of the porch steps, looking at this man he never wanted to see again. He could feel the snow leaking around the edges of his parka hood, water dripping onto his neck.
“I heard a scream,” Roy said.
“You probably had a nightmare. Lock the door after you come in.”
The flashlight clicked off and Roy’s mother’s husband went inside. The snow let up a little but there still was no light in the sky. Roy sat down on the bottom step. It was almost Christmas and he knew that what he wanted was what he didn’t want.