The Boy in the Park: A gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist. A Grayson J
of those once-surprises that’s become a predictable repetition of the good and welcome sort. I like that I see him every day, visiting this place just like me. I like his kiddish overalls. The white shirt that’s become a dusty brown is on display again, the armpits stained. His hair is dirtier than before. The stick again is in his hand, the tip piercing the water.
He seems to gaze vacantly out over the tiny expanse of our miniature sea. He doesn’t notice the ducks.
He never notices the ducks.
I squint my eyes. It looks like there’s a spot of blood on his arm, poor thing. Happens to kids.
It glistens in the midday light. Blood on the arm of the little boy. And like the ducks, like the wind, he doesn’t seem to notice.
The evening is coming,
The morning is gone;
Little boy with his playful heart
And castle and crozier and soldier.
Leaps, not knowing
where they shall land –
How little boys do play until
The day of youth is done.
I’ve gone back to the shop and taken up my dutiful post. A steady stream of customers, none of them terribly interesting. None of them offensive. I ate a sprout and beancurd wrap for a bite, taken from our refrigerator in the back. Why pack a lunch when you work at a health food shop? I wouldn’t take the tablets if they were free (and Lord knows they aren’t), but the food’s a nice perk; at least, once you convince yourself that terms like ‘curdled’ and ‘fermented’ are actually positives and not the repellent horrors the words more obviously suggest.
I’ve developed the habit of eating when I return to work, after my outings, in the last five minutes of my lunch break (though my boss, Michael, doesn’t really mind if I nibble at the counter once my shift resumes). Eating at the pond always seems a touch vulgar. A cup of coffee, that’s different. Sip and watch and enjoy. But gnawing into a sandwich or wrap, face smothered in the cellophane wrapping with bits of lettuce and mayonnaise clinging to your chin … it seems like the trees, if they had voices, would snicker down and say, ‘All well and good that you visit like this, but honestly, couldn’t you do that sort of thing at home?’
So it’s here in the store that I’m chewing on my sprouts and former beans, and here that I’m pondering what came before. I am, I realize, a touch confused by what I saw in the park. It didn’t hit me then, but it’s stuck with me since. This boy and I have been sharing the pond for a year and a half, and I’ve never seen him injured before today. Not a bump, never even an obvious scratch. Then today, that bloodied arm … it’s troubled me more than it really should.
I think I’m most disturbed that he didn’t notice it. Or at least, he gave no visible signs of having noticed. There was blood that descended from a patch of raw skin above his left elbow, emerging just beneath the tattered hem of a short sleeve, which isn’t something a person simply stands oblivious too. Especially a child. I’m left wondering what caused it. A bad scrape from a fall? Rough play? In any case, what I’d seen was too much blood for a little child – the amount of blood you expect to draw tears. But there were no tears.
There was no expression on his shadow-hidden face. None that I could make out. The blood dripped a little, but his attention remained at the tip of his stick, tracing figure eights in the algae at the surface of the water. He appeared unfazed and unemotional.
I’m plucked back into the present by a woman who wants to know about dietary supplements. ‘The kind for losing weight.’ I walk her over to a whole shelf we have cunningly dedicated to this particular myth. HEALTHY RAPID WEIGHT LOSS is the sign we’ve affixed to the top of the section: words so oxymoronic that I’m surprised we’ve never been sued for deception.
The woman gasps, mystified at the array of bottles. It’s the gasp that comes with a look of excited enthusiasm I’ve seen many times before.
‘Which would you recommend?’ she asks. There are so many! Clearly, these are going to change my life!
She’s in her mid thirties, pudgy but not fat. Not as fat as the men who usually come to browse this section, who absolutely never want to talk to anybody about their options (if caught gazing at the weight-loss shelf, they usually swerve just to the right, where we’ve cleverly placed the Protein Muscle Bulk powders so as to save them the embarrassment of admitting what they were really looking for). The whipped cream of the woman’s mocha Frappuccino is piled high beneath a domed plastic lid, a crowning chocolate-covered coffee bean beginning to sink into its sugary pillow. She seems entirely oblivious to the irony.
‘A lot of people are going for the cinnamon extract,’ I say non-judgementally, pointing to a green bottle. ‘But others swear by the basic fibre capsules. They fill up the stomach with harmless bulk.’ A brown bottle. ‘Keeps you from wanting so much when you eat. So the theory goes.’
And they’ll each do you about as much good as closing your eyes, clicking your heels three times and hoping the fat will make a pilgrimage to Oz.
I artfully keep that last bit to myself. My job is to get her to pick a bottle, any bottle, and politely charge her the 450 per cent mark-up we make on what is mostly encapsulated sawdust with a token sprinkling of your favourite herb. I smile warmly, something I’ve practised. She goes for the brown bottle and I nod in knowing approval. A wise choice, ma’am. That’s the one I would have suggested all along. A few minutes later I have gratefully relieved her of $39.50. If she loses a pound from a fistful of fibre capsules three times a day, I’ll personally double back her money. But at least she won’t be suffering from irregularity.
My mind is back in the park. He remained a few minutes, there, the boy. Standing motionless on the far side of the pond like he always did, though not for quite as long, I think, as usual. When I saw his wound I felt the urge to say something. Are you all right? Did you fall? Do you need that looking at? But I sat quietly, instead, and I wished I’d had a coffee. Maybe that was selfish. I’m not used to looking after other people’s children. And after all, it’s just a scrape.
A few moments later, the boy plucked up his stick, turned and walked back into the greenery, into the depth of the park.
Tough breaks, kid. Everybody falls. Given the calmness of his demeanour, it was a lesson he seemed to have learned with grace and dignity.
Once he’d gone I closed my notebook. The muses had still not come and there was no more time to wait for them. My two lines remained an unaccompanied duo. I rose from my bench, said farewell to Margaret’s ghost, and walked away.
That was hours ago. I must really be bored to have spent the afternoon dwelling on it as I have. The clock on the wall says 5.49 p.m. and I can’t imagine anyone is coming supplement shopping between now and six, so I flip the sign to ‘Closed’ and lock up. It’s enough for today. There’s a bus ride ahead. Home, and diamonds, and memories.