Lying with the Dead by Michael Mewshaw

asked me.
    “I’m only eleven.”
    He laughed. “That’s old enough.”
    “Not to drink.”
    “Good. That means more for me.” He popped a can of Gunther with a church key from his knapsack.
    Every bit of his equipment excited and unsettled me in equal measure. I longed to handle the weapons. The man had to have sensed that. “Like to see my rifle?” he asked. “Don’t be afraid. It’s not loaded.”
    He handed over the .22 and sidled around behind me. “Press it against your shoulder and pull the trigger.” Encircling me in a loose embrace, he inserted my finger into the trigger housing. The click of the firing pin was no louder than a snapped twig. Although discomfited by his closeness, his laying on of hands, his breath on my neck, I still didn’t run.
    “Wanna see my knife?” He yanked it from the scabbard and flipped it at my feet. The blade sank in soft leaf mulch between my tennis shoes. “Go ahead. Pick it up.”
    I hefted the knife by its carved bone handle. Nothing had ever seemed more seductive and beautiful to me.
    “Do me a favor and you’re free to keep it,” he said.
    “My mother won’t let me.”
    “Let you what?”
    “Have a knife.”
    “Hide it from her. Don’t you have secrets?”
    I told him that I didn’t.
    “I don’t believe that,” he said. “Me, I got plenty. Even where I am and where I go’s a secret. I’m traveling around the country meeting young fellas like you and looking to get laid. Can you help me?”
    “I’m only eleven,” I said again. “I don’t know any girls your age.”
    He laughed soundlessly. “Me neither. But we have each other. If you wanna be friends and have some fun, you’re welcome to the knife.”
    “I gotta go home. My mother’s waiting dinner for me.”
    “Hold on a sec.” He grabbed the waistband of my blue jeans and shoved a hand down into my underpants, all the way to the sack of my balls. “I won’t hurt you.”
    I thrashed to get away, but he tightened his grip. His whiskery chin scraped my face. I screamed, and while it wasn’t the kind of bloodcurdler Mom recommended, he let go.
    “Hey, I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “Go ahead and keep the knife. And keep your trap shut. Nothing happened.”
    I told Dr. Rokoko that I grabbed the knife and raced home. I didn’t mention that Mom wasn’t there yet, allowing me time to think things through. I went up to my room and lay in bed with the knife on the covers beside me. The blade had a dull sheen and was cold to the touch. The bone handle was smooth and warm.
    The man, I decided, had been right about one thing. Nothing had happened. Or not much. But if I confessed to Mom that I stayed in the woods with a stranger when I should have run, she’d beat me black and blue. Then she’d call the cops and I’d have to own up to them that the guy stuck his hand down my pants. They’d ask where he touched me and why didn’t I fight back? Why didn’t I use the knife? Did I want to do what he said? And what exactly was that? I had a hard time imagining sex with a girl. I couldn’t picture what the man was suggesting.
    After the cops caught him, there’d be a trial and I’d have to repeat the story in front of a flock of people. Then the guy would go to prison. All because I didn’t do what Mom told me to. All because, as she frequently complained, “You’re never happy unless you’re making other people miserable.” All because I had been spellbound by the knife, and because the man had sex on his brain, something I had more and more on mine. He wasn’t to blame. I was.
    So I never told her about him, just as I didn’t admit to Dr. Rokoko that I hadn’t emerged from the incident unscathed. But the scar wasn’t emotional. When Mom found the knife hidden in my closet, and I refused to say where I got it, she whipped my bare ass with a wire coat hanger. She whipped me so hard I bled. “Don’t you understand what knives have done to this family?” she screamed.