They began at the bush hiding the hole, circling around it, Ralphusing the hoe to lift up the bush and push aside weeds, Dennis following, getting down on the ground, looking for other holes behind rocks and ferns.
“I don’t see anything,” the custodian called.
“Me either.”
Being with Ralph gave Dennis a rare feeling. It was such a rare feeling, he had to stop and puzzle through it. It was disorienting. He had never felt so free, or had so much fun.
Ralph looked at him with compassion.
They circled until they were in the shadow of the woods. The pine trees filled the air with soft green and gray light.
“Are we going to get lost?” Dennis asked worriedly. He could still see the center through the trees.
“Naw. We won’t go any farther. Can you smell that?”
“Smell what?” Dennis asked. He was studying the ground. So far, no other hole had appeared.
“The ocean. Have you ever seen it?”
“In school they showed us pictures.”
“You mean you’ve been living here two years and you’ve never seen the ocean?”
“We don’t leave here.”
“I’m sorry. I knew that.”
“Why did you ask me then, about the sea?” Dennis asked after a moment.
“It’s beautiful. But very dangerous. It reminds me of this place. Nice enough looking on the outside. But once you’re in it? Your very heart and soul are at risk.”
Dennis was beginning to wonder why the custodian never used his name. He decided to be brave and ask.
“Ralph?”
“Yes?”
“How come you don’t call me Dennis?”
The custodian turned to him. “I remember when they put me in a center. They told me it would turn me into a good boy. But if you can make cordwood even more bent, that’s what that place did to me. One week there and I was a wreck. Years later? I was hard. I was wrecked.”
Dennis waited for Ralph to answer his question.
“I didn’t want to use your name because your file said your foster parents called you different names. How am I to know which one you like?”
Ralph lifted another bush with his hoe. He stopped, and sighed.
“Maybe we missed it. What do you want me to call you?”
Dennis thought about it. His last foster mother had wanted to call him Brian. He had hazy memories of that mother, with her strawberry blond hair and large eyes, and how she’d said she wanted to adopt him and name him Brian because it was her father’s name. He had been four at that time, and he was still four when she gave him back and the agency sent him here. He was no longer part of that family. Maybe that pretend mother would want him to cut that thread. Probably by now she had a new son, or a bunch of them, better children than he was. She could have four Brians now.
But he didn’t like the name Dennis either. His birth mom had named him that. There was “boy,”but the staff said that when they were mad and about to put you in a room.
That left one choice, and he couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Think on it.”
