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"No, I'm not going away. Not while you need me."

"But I thought . . . "

"Shhh," I said, hugging her. "How could I leave someone as pretty and sweet as you?"

And even as I said it, I knew I was lying.

How could I promise to stay with this child when I hadn't kept every other promise I'd ever made?

I was a deserter from the army. I'd betrayed Jason and his Tribe: Not a good track record. I would probably betray these people too, before I was through. And I'd have a good reason for it too.

Holly rested her head against my chest then and held one of my hands in both of hers. She believed in me. The poor dumb kid, she believed in me more than I believed in my own self.

Oh, hell.

I stroked her hair and remembered how much we'd loved the children in Jason's Tribe. Or had we really? Hadn't we just used them as little slaves? We'd had them serve the meals and clear the tables and wash the dishes and do the laundry and sweep the floors; and we'd justified it all by calling it "teaching them responsibility."

I couldn't deny that they were happy children. They laughed and sang and played so joyously, it almost made me forget that humanity was an endangered species.

There was no doubt that those children were loved, but-

-that was the problem.

Some of the ways they were loved.

I guess I was guilty of that too.

I hadn't wanted to, I really hadn't, not at first, but they were so insistent, all of them, even the children said they liked it, there wasn't any shame in it, you had to let go of stupid things like shame before you could play together in bed, and after a while, it just became the easy thing to do, to be one of the Tribe.

And after a while, it didn't feel wrong at all.

But what if they were wrong? And if they were, what did that make me'? A deserter. A renegade. And a child molester.

It made me uncomfortable to sit and hold Holly so close. I wanted to hug her because children need hugging; but I was afraid to hug her because . . .

. . . because Jason and his Tribe believed that it was all right for children and teenagers to have sex with each other and with adults if they wanted, and I was afraid that I might forget where I was and who I was with. I was afraid that I would hurt one of these children, and they'd already all been hurt enough.

It was this simple. I was the wrong person to be entrusted with the care of these children, no matter how much I loved them. And I couldn't tell Betty-John, because they needed me here more than they needed to know the terrible truth about me.

Neither Holly nor I had said anything for a long time. I had just sat there, thinking and stroking her hair and making cooing noises and occasionally kissing the top of her head.

I guess I knew it already. I was going to have to leave here. It would be best for everybody.

"Jim?"

"Yeah, Punkin'?"

"I love you."

"I love you too."

"I'm sorry about the . . . the tool shed. I got scared."

"That's all right, honey. I get scared too sometimes. There're some pretty ugly tools in that shed."

"Uh-uh." She didn't amplify what she meant.

For some reason, I thought of Dr. Davidson and his calm, patient voice. He could ask you anything and you wouldn't be afraid to answer him. You wanted him to know everything. You wanted him to understand.

I wished I could talk to him again.

I wished Holly could talk to him. Hell, I wished Holly could talk to me. I put on my best Dr. Davidson voice.

"Who hit you?" I said.

"Mommy did," she whispered quietly.

"Mommy hit you?" I sounded surprised. "Why did Mommy hit you?"

"Because I wouldn't stay in the closet. Mommy told me to hide in the closet and be real quiet and I did-for a little while; but then I got all scared and . . . " She stopped to wipe her nose on my shirt again. She sniffled hard, and for a moment I thought she was going to start crying again, but she didn't. She blurted quickly, "I opened the door and started to ask Mommy if it was all right to come out, if the game was over yet, and she slapped me hard and pushed me back into the closet as hard as she could and told me to shut up and then she slammed the door and locked it or pushed something in front of the door, because I couldn't open it to get out, and I tried, real hard, I screamed loud as I could too, but nobody heard me or came-and then . . . ," Holly gulped, hard, ". . . and then I heard Mommy screaming. Real bad, mister. Mommy was screaming like she was being hurt real bad. And it went on for a long time. And the other thing was screaming too, the big red thing-and I pounded on the doors and hollered to let me out so I could help my mommy, but nobody did. And I couldn't get out of the closet. It was all broken anyway. I was in the closet for so long-I think two or three months, I don't know for sure. It was so dark in there, mister. Please, is my mommy all right? Can I see her now?"

"Shh, sweetheart. Shh." I held her and stroked her hair and rocked her in my lap and said, "Shh, Jim is here now. Jim is here."

So that explained Holly and why she was afraid of the tool shed, and the closets in the house, and all of the other dark enclosed places in the world.

Abruptly, she looked up at me. "You're not going away?"

"I love you, sweetheart." And it was true. I did.

And even if I didn't, how could I leave her now?

Chuck is weird, let the whole world know it.
He brought in his bucket to show it.
We all had a fit
when we saw it was shit.
We didn't know he was planning to throw it.

34

Bait

"A friend is someone who likes you in spite of yourself."

-SOLOMON SHORT

Forty-three days later (it would have been sooner, but Betty-John had to be sure), I was a father. It was one of the fastest gestations in recorded history, and one of the most fruitful: Tommy, Holly, Alec and Bear. That's what the papers said; three children, one stuffed animal.

Birdie administered the oath while B-Jay glowed proudly. The kids, scrubbed and shiny, stood solemnly by my side in new shirts and shorts (B-Jay had splurged for this occasion), not quite understanding what was going on, simply that it was important.

I had explained it to them very carefully. What it meant was that they were going to be living with me permanently now, and that I was going to be their Daddy and take care of them. Tommy nodded gravely at this, he accepted it without comment. Holly asked if that meant she was going to be the Mommy. I asked her if she wouldn't like to be the little girl instead, but she said no, she wanted to be the Mommy. I sidestepped that for a while. Alec, who didn't say anything at first, finally managed to gulp, "Bear too?"

"Of course, Bear too." And that was how Bear got adopted. Getting the papers approved hadn't been hard. Betty-John had begun preparing them after the third week, and Birdie had already, very surreptitiously, completed her interviews (and I thought she'd been honestly curious about the kids). The only one that caught me by surprise was the anti-dowry release; even though Congress had already approved the Inheritance Act, the rest of the bureaucracy hadn't yet caught up. I still had to swear that I wasn't marrying the kids for their money; even if they didn't have any now, they might inherit some later. Etc., etc.

I was already familiar with the adoption oath, but looked it over again for loopholes, zingers, hooks, and bear traps. Didn't find any and took it proudly. My "I do," was one of the gladdest things I have ever done in my life.