The boy looked at him. There was no pity in his face, thought the giant. There was only curiosity. But if there was not pity, then neither was there understanding. The boy was just too young to understand, and that was why the giant loved him.
“Why?” said the boy. “Why can’t I touch it?”
“Because it is in pain, and you will only increase that pain by touching it.”
The boy considered this.
“Can you make the pain go away?”
“Yes,” said the giant.
“Then do it.”
The giant reached down with both hands, placing his left hand like a shell above the body of the gull, and the thumb and forefinger of his right hand at either side of its neck.
“I think maybe you should look away,” he told the boy.
The boy shook his head. Instead, his eyes were focused on the giant’s hands and the soft, warm body of the bird enclosed within their ambit.
“I have to do this,” said the giant. His thumb and forefinger moved in unison, gripping the bird’s neck and simultaneously pulling and twisting. The gull’s head was wrenched one hundred and eighty degrees, and its pain was brought to an end.
Instantly, the boy began to cry.
“What did you do?” he wailed. “What did you do?”
The giant rose and made as if to grip the boy’s shoulder, but the boy backed away from him, fearful now of the power in those great hands.
“I put it out of its misery,” said the giant. He was already realizing his mistake in euthanizing the bird while the boy was watching, but he had no experience in dealing with one so young. “It was the only thing that I could do.”
“No, you killed it. You killed it!”
The giant’s hand retreated.
“Yes,” he said. “I did. It was in pain and it could not be saved. Sometimes, all that you can do is take away the pain.”
But the boy was already running back to the house, back to his mother, and the wind carried his cries to the giant as he stood on their neatly trimmed lawn. Gently, he cupped the dead gull in his right hand and carried it away to the treeline, where he dug a small hole with the edge of a stone and covered the little thing in earth and leaves, placing the stone at last upon the mound. When he rose again, the boy’s mother was walking toward him across the lawn, the boy clinging to her, shielded by her body.
“I didn’t know you were out here,” she said. She was trying to smile, both embarrassed and alarmed by her son’s distress.
“I was passing,” said the giant. “I thought I’d drop in, see how you were. Then I saw Danny crouching on the grass, and went over to see what was the matter. There was a gull, a dying gull. I-”
The boy interrupted.
“What did you do with it?”
His cheeks were streaked with the marks of his tears and his grubby-fingered efforts to wipe them away.
The giant looked down upon him. “I buried it,” he said. “Over there. I marked the place with a stone.”
The boy released his hold upon his mother and walked toward the trees, his eyes grave with suspicion, as if he were convinced that the giant had somehow spirited the bird away for his own dark ends. When his eyes found the stone he stood before the gull’s resting place, his hands hanging loosely by his sides. With the tip of his right foot he tested the earth, half hoping to reveal a small swath of feathers, darkened with dirt now like a discarded wedding gown, but the giant had buried the bird deep and no trace of it was made visible to him.
“It couldn’t be saved?” asked his mother.
“No,” said the giant. “Its neck was broken.”
She spotted the boy and saw what he was doing. “Danny, come away from there.”
He walked back to her, still refusing to look the giant in the eye, until he was once again by his mother’s side. Her arm gripped the shoulder of the boy, and she pulled him closer to her.
“There was nothing anybody could do, Danny. The bird was sick. Joe did the right thing.”
Then, in a whisper to the giant, she added: “I wish he hadn’t seen you kill it. You maybe should have waited until he was gone.”
The giant reddened at the chastisement. “I’m sorry,” he said.
The woman smiled to herself as she tried to comfort both boy and man simultaneously. He is so big, so strong, she thought, and yet he is made awkward and small by the sorrow of a little boy and his feelings for the boy’s mother. This is a strange position in which to find myself, circling this huge man as he circles me, almost-but not quite-touching. It took him so long, so long…
“He’s still young,” she said reassuringly. “He’ll learn, in time.”
“Yes,” said the giant. “I guess he will.”
He grinned ruefully, briefly exposing the gaps between his teeth. Then, suddenly conscious that he was revealing them, he allowed the smile to die. He squatted down so that his face was level with that of the boy.
“Good-bye, Danny,” he said.
The boy was still looking toward the grave of the gull and did not respond.
The giant turned to the woman. “Good-bye, Marianne. Are we still okay for dinner?”
“Sure,” she said. “Bonnie’s going to look after Danny for the evening.”
He almost smiled again.
“Say good-bye to Officer Dupree, Danny,” said the woman as the giant prepared to leave. “Say good-bye to Joe.”
But the boy only turned his face away, burying himself in the folds of her skirt.
“I don’t want you to go with him,” he said. “And I don’t want to stay with Bonnie.”
“Hush,” was all his mother could say.
And the giant named Joe Dupree strode toward his Explorer, dirt beneath his nails and the warmth of the bird still palpable on the palm of his hand. Had there been any strangers around to see his face, the sadness upon it would have given them pause. But to the natives on the island, the look upon the huge policeman’s face would have seemed as familiar as the sound of breaking waves or the sight of dead fish upon the shore.
After all, he was not called Melancholy Joe for nothing.
He was born huge. His mother would often joke that, had Joe Dupree been a girl, he could almost have given birth to her. They had been forced to cut him out of her, and, well, that was that as far as Eloise Dupree having more children was concerned. She was almost forty by the time her son was born, and both she and her husband were content to remain a one-child family.
The boy grew and grew. For a time, they feared that he was suffering from acromegaly, the ailment of giants, and that their beloved son would be taken from them at an early age, his life span halved or even quartered by the disease. Old Doc Bruder, who was then not so old, sent them to a specialist, who conducted tests before reassuring them that their boy was not acromegalous. True, there were risks associated with his size later in life: cardiovascular disease, arthritis, respiratory problems. Some form of chemical intervention could be considered at a later stage, but he advised them to wait and see.
Joe Dupree continued to grow. He towered over his classmates in elementary school and in high school. Desks were too small, chairs too uncomfortable. He stood out from his peers like the seed of a great tree dropped in the wrong part of the forest, forced to survive amid alder and holly, its strangeness apparent to even the most casual of glances. Older boys baited him, treating him like a handicapped oddity. When he tried to strike back at them, they overwhelmed him with numbers and guile. Even the sporting arena offered him no comfort. He had bulk to go with his size, but it was without grace or skill. His was not an immensity and strength that could be put to use in any competition. He lacked the instincts necessary as much as the abilities. His great body was a burden on the football field and a liability in the wrestling circle. He seemed destined to spend his life either falling over or getting up again.
By the time he was eighteen, Joe Dupree had topped out at over seven feet, two inches and weighed over 360 pounds. His mass was a millstone in every way. He was intelligent, yet it was assumed by his peers that he was stupid because of how he looked. Instead of proving them wrong, he became what they perceived. He was the freak, the freak from the island (for it was his upbringing on the island that doomed him, as much as anything else; already he was an outsider to the kids from Portland, who thought little of the islanders to begin with, even those of normal size). He retreated into himself, and after high school took a job on the island driving for Covey Jaffe. It was only when the time of his father’s retirement drew near that Dupree joined the Portland PD, his size almost an impediment to his acceptance until his family’s history in the department was taken into account. When his father at last retired, it seemed natural that Joe Dupree should take over his role as the island’s resident policeman, assisted by the existing roster of cops from the mainland.