Matt Bell - Scrapper

A spray-painted sign over a burnt storefront: pet store any varmit you want free.

Now the house of the boy’s family, as old as the other houses on the block, built of the same architecture but otherwise seemingly from another era. The brick powerwashed and graffiti-free, the porch a new bit of construction and nicely stained, the siding painted a cheerful green. Last week’s snow covered the earth but Kelly could see flowerbeds in front of the house and trellises built along the sides, ornamentation readied for spring growth, summer bloom, the future.

This was the kind of home he desired, maybe the kind of life.

The boy’s father answered the door, shook their hands, invited them in. Kelly hadn’t thought to guess the boy was adopted until he saw the father, the bearded man around the same height as Kelly but heavier, dressed in dark jeans and a short-sleeved checked dress shirt. In the boy’s house Kelly found himself more aware of his movements, knew he was being watched by the father, the cameraman, the blonde reporter. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve, tried to smile. The walls were decorated with pictures of the boy, all the official documents of a child, starting when the boy was a toddler and ending at whatever age he was now, ten or eleven or twelve. In the photos from later years another boy appeared in the pictures, after which Kelly assumed the children had taken on new titles: the boy, the brother, the boy’s brother.

The mother came out of the kitchen to meet him, her long dark hair restrained in a single braid, faded freckles on her face and arms and hands, everywhere else pale skin escaped the bright fabric of her dress.

Thank you for bringing Daniel back, she said. Thank you for finding him for us.

As if Kelly had done something purposeful, something tried. She called the boy’s name up the stairs and the boy appeared, dressed in his own gray suit. Kelly knew the boy’s name but there were so many Daniels in the world, so many Dans and Dannys. The boy? There had been a boy before. There was this boy now. It was only generic in the mouths of others.

The father talked to the blonde reporter, explaining their move back to the city, the price they’d paid for the house, the sorry shape it’d been in. Kelly flushed when the father spoke of the house being ransacked, how the hardwood floors and the winding staircase and the brick walls had held but how scrappers had come in and taken the wiring, the plumbing.

They did us a favor, the father said. We would have had to tear it all out to put in a modern system. Now the house has grounded plugs, new pipes, central air.

All new appliances, as of last winter, the mother said, joining in. The walls were already gutted so we took down the plaster to put in drywall, painted the rooms brighter colors.

In the summer we mow the neighbors’ lawns, the father said. To keep up appearances. To make it easier to hope other people might move here too.

The mother and the father : their titles made them sound older than they were but they were the same age as Kelly or else younger. The father was a veteran, had come home from overseas to study, work, start a family. His grandparents helped with the down payment on the house and with adoption costs and they were the ones who had paid the reward.

We don’t have much, the father said. We have to be willing to take help wherever we can find it.

They didn’t have much but they had a family. Kelly sat down on a creaky wooden chair, focused on not putting his head in his hands. Before the small talk was exhausted Kelly stood and again began inspecting the family photos on the walls, tried to imagine the life they suggested. The mother saw him looking, came to stand beside him, touched his arm. He looked at where she had touched him, followed her hand as it left his skin to gesture through the photographs, indicating various ages, after-school activities, the brother playing basketball for the school team, the boy sitting at a piano dressed in the same gray suit.

The mother asked, Do you have kids?

No, Kelly said. No kids.

She said, We wanted kids of our own. And when he couldn’t have them, then we wanted to love a child no one had wanted. We wanted there to be less suffering because of our love.

Her earnestness embarrassed him. He turned and looked for the boy, wondered what the boy had heard. The blonde reporter asked where the brother was and the father and mother looked at each other before answering.

He’s out, the father said.

We didn’t know you would want him here, the mother said.

The blonde reporter needed a family reunited but it didn’t matter to her who the family contained. The cameraman shot video of the father and the mother, of the family together, and then the boy by himself. The father put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and the boy flinched. On the news the reporter had said basically nothing had happened to the boy. But it wasn’t nothing, couldn’t have been nothing. Even if he was unhurt now, he had not been unhurt in the basement. He had been watched and Kelly knew watching could be its own kind of injury.

The boy had been left too, and hadn’t he screamed in the dark?

The boy was looking at Kelly and Kelly tried not to stare back. The cameraman maneuvered closer, asked Kelly to sit beside the boy. They were supposed to talk but about what? Kelly had good teeth too but never showed them in pictures because before they’d been bad. He had to keep blinking to keep his eyes from watering. He never paid much attention to his face but the camera made him aware how it was moving wrong.

Kelly wanted to say something to the boy but not in front of these hovering people, not with their hands touching the boy, his head, his hair, his hands. He saw the way the boy suffered under their touch but he didn’t know if this was new. After the photographs were finished the father pumped Kelly’s hand and thanked him, handed him a check. The worth of a boy, paid for again. Who was the real criminal, the one who took the boy or the one who took the ransom? They treated him like a hero but he’d been acting like a thief and yet here was the payment for the best thing he’d ever found, in any abandoned house.

Kelly could smell the suit he was wearing, his sweat tanging through the harshness of the cheap chemicals used to wash away whoever had worn it last. He kneeled down in front of the boy, touched the boy’s skinny arm.

Daniel, he said. I want to see you again.

He hadn’t meant to say it so loud but there it was. Conversation stopped and he knew he’d made a mistake. The father bristled and the mother put her hand on the boy’s head, pulled the boy away before Kelly could see his reaction.

The parents had been friendly with him but now he saw their truer feelings cloud their faces, suspicion shifting toward accusation. They were happy for their boy’s return, had paid the reward, but honestly what was he doing in that house.

The boy was too old for the gesture but now he hid his face in the mother’s side, tucked away an expression Kelly couldn’t track. Then the boy nodded, his face moving against the fabric of the mother’s dress.

If it’s okay with you, Kelly said — speaking to the boy’s parents, being careful not to address the boy again — I’ll leave my phone number, in case you need me.

Need you for what, the father said, but the mother brought Kelly a pen and a pad of paper. An instinctual courtesy.

The father said, I don’t think this is a good idea. We want this to be over. I’m sure you understand.

The boy stayed where he was and shuffled his feet, scuffed his dress shoes against the linoleum. An odd smile crossed the father’s face and Kelly knew he would be polite enough to wait until Kelly left the house to throw the number away. The cameraman shot more footage but Kelly knew it wasn’t the story they’d come to tell and afterward Kelly cried out in the reporter’s car, a tremor in his hands and his voice not making the words he wanted to say, not any apologetic noise. The blonde reporter touched him on the shoulder but her touch wasn’t what made him stop. He was almost done when she took her hand away, checked her watch, put the car into drive.