the gutters and the final peace was made as the world lay down in winter.
Kevin and I kept at our work. Somewhere along the line, thirty minutes just wasn’t enough, and I extended my time with him to an hour. I couldn’t easily afford it with the other kids at the clinic, and it meant I had to work into the evening because I was still coming to see him every day. Kevin continued to talk to me and to no one else, although we had laid that problem to rest for the time being. All in all, it was a quiet period, spent sharing little moments.
We were coloring. Kevin had a thing about coloring, and I didn’t mind it because it was relaxing and it was the mindless sort of activity I found best for allowing us to talk without its being apparent that was what we were doing.
I had brought us one of those huge posters from the discount store which one colors in with felt-tipped markers. This poster depicted a spaceship out among the stars.
Kevin was coloring the crew at the window of the rocket and I was doing the sky because it was large and boring to color, so Kevin didn’t like it. I was not especially enamored of it myself.
‘You know,’ I said after what seemed like an interminable amount of coloring, ‘I’m not so keen on doing this either. I wish I had a broad-tipped marker instead of this one.’
‘Well,’ replied Kevin matter-of-factly, ‘you have to do it.’
‘We could split it,’ I suggested, looking at all that was left.
There was a long, long silence as Kevin stared at the poster. I saw his knuckles go white as he gripped the pen harder. His breathing tightened. They were the same old signs, and I glanced around the room quickly to see what could possibly be frightening him.
‘No, you have to do it,’ Kevin said. His voice was low. The muscles along his jaw tensed.
I stared at him because I could see his fear coming up on him but I didn’t know what was causing it. Then I looked back at the poster, thinking perhaps I could distract him from the fear.
‘Why don’t we just leave it blank? There’s too much coloring. I could do the stars instead and outline them in black. Then they’d stand out good.’
‘No,’ he said very quietly.
I looked at him. He looked squarely back at me. Fear had dilated his pupils but there was an intensity behind them that I did not recognize.
‘What’s going on, Kevin? What’s wrong?’
‘You have to do it. You have to color that sky.’
‘Why?’
He began to tremble. His whole body arched away from me slightly. ‘You have to do it.’
I watched him.
His voice was only a whisper. ‘You have to. Because I’ve told you to, do you hear?’
I shifted positions. I’d been sitting on my feet and the circulation was going, so I moved them.
‘Awk!’ Kevin screamed when I did. His marker flew out of his hand. Abruptly, he dived for the safety of the table.
‘Kev?’
‘I didn’t mean it!’ he shrieked and covered his head, as he rolled into a ball. ‘I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it. You don’t have to!’
Stunned, I only gaped at him.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it!’ He was in tears already, rocking and sobbing. ‘Please, please, please, I didn’t mean it. Honest I didn’t. Please. I’m sorry.’
‘Kevin, I don’t mind. It’s not that big a deal. Don’t be frightened. I’m not angry You want me to do the sky? I don’t mind. I’ll do the sky. Okay?’
‘Please, please, please, please, please,’ he begged. ‘Oh please don’t think I meant it. I didn’t. Please, I’m sorry.’
‘Kevin?’
He was beside himself, rocking and weeping, crying for me to forget and absolve him. I was too astonished at having caused such a furor to really think about what was going on. On my hands and knees I crawled across the carpet to try and talk him down from his hysteria.
WHAM!
Leaping to his feet when I approached, he threw the table off over his back. ‘Get away from me!’ he shouted. His face grew red, terror glazed his eyes. ‘Get away! Get away!’
Before I could gather my senses, he had picked up one of the chairs. He hurled it at me with keen precision and it didn’t really miss. Painfully, I staggered to my feet.
The room was too small for Kevin to be able to elude me to his satisfaction, and clearly it was I who terrified him. He reacted to me as if I were the Devil Incarnate.
Because the room was so small and he could not get away from me, Kevin felt obliged to keep me at bay by throwing things at me. He needn’t have. I was quite sufficiently panic-stricken myself and was perfectly willing to stay out of his way. This frightened, I knew he was dangerous. And looming up to his nearly six-foot height, he made an awesome sight when he held a chair aloft.
There wasn’t much for me to do. I ducked. A lot. Kevin threw anything and everything he could get his hands on. Chairs, pens, the poster, my box, its contents, even the table. His terror gave him improbable strength. And I, like a circus performer, jumped and ducked and dodged. The most painful things turned out to be the numerous small wooden blocks I had had in my box. They were two-inch square colored counting cubes with surprisingly sharp edges, and Kevin fired them like missiles.
Frantically I looked around for a call button or some other method of summoning help. There was none. I did have a key to the door, which the stupid aide persisted in locking. Still, with Kevin in this state, I did not want to chance turning my back on him for long, especially in front of an exit. But what else to do? Through my mind whirred all the alternatives I could think of. Would I be able to talk him down from this? Would he wear himself out before he splattered me? Should I just keep dodging and hope my strength held out longer than his? I don’t think he was dead serious on really hurting me. All he wanted was to keep me away from him. But that made him plenty dangerous. Every move I made was interpreted as an attack and provoked another frenzy of panic and missiles. But it was a vicious cycle. When I moved, he threw things. When he threw things, I had to move again to avoid being hit.
Around and around and around we went. He was screaming now, ripping at his clothes and throwing himself against the walls in an attempt to escape me. When he came to the door, he jerked at it violently, but of course it was locked.
In the end, I confined myself to the two bare walls and stayed away from the windows and the door so that he would not think I was blocking any exits from him. I held a wooden chair in one hand and fended off what he threw the best I could. He began to scream when I kept the chair in hand because I think he thought I was planning to attack him with it. He screamed and screamed and screamed.
That did the trick. They heard us. Within moments a crowd of faces pressed against the small door window, frightening Kevin even further. Next came the frantic rattling of a key in the lock. Kevin tried to run from the door and
