He banished the memory before it could continue. Although Shad couldn’t control when those images surfaced in his mind, it was his decision whether or not to linger on them. And since he didn’t like to remember those episodes, he never lingered. His full attention belonged to the present, and Shad turned away from the trash can to return to the table where Charissa sat.
She was still staring at him as Shad seated himself across the table from her.
“Did you see the tunnel?” He asked. “Or was it too dark to see anything?”
It took her a few seconds to reply. “I ... didn’t see it.” Her tone was low and soft.
Shad suspected it was distraction, not darkness, which impeded Charissa’s experience. “Well, don’t worry. We’ll go through another tunnel before we get to Jeff. In fact it should come up in just a couple of minutes. How’re your pretzels? Crunchy?”
Charissa nodded, her eyes less wide but still regarding him cautiously.
“How’s your juice? Crunchy?”
Her brow furrowed slightly but her lips twisted upward a little. “Of course not.”
“Chewy?”
“No.”
“Oh, then it must be fuzzy.”
Charissa finally cracked a small grin. “Juice isn’t fuzzy.”
“I’ve seen fuzzy juice.” Shad rested his arms on the table and leaned forward slightly. “Of course it hadn’t been in the refrigerator for a few days.”
The rest of snack time proceeded smoothly, and when they returned to their seats in the passenger car Charissa was ready to look through the items in her day pack. At first she commented on the toys and booklets to Shad, but then became more involved playing with a cloth doll and a stuffed penguin. Shad initially paid attention to the antics she acted out with her toys in case she revealed something about her family life, but when it became obvious Charissa had the doll and bird staged as friends who got along splendidly, he decided to read the newspaper he’d bought earlier that day.
Shad had purchased the paper with the intention of looking through it while he waited for Charissa to be brought to him at the park. But Shad had been too uptight to follow through with that plan, so he was glad to have the chance to look through it at all. He wasn’t particularly interested in St. Louis news, but interest had little to do with Shad’s perusal of the written word. Reading had once been a form of escape for him. And although Shad no longer needed to escape, he was still a compulsive reader.
He skimmed over the usual doom and gloom of the national and local news, and even more quickly flipped through the business section since he doubted there would be any articles of relevance there. Just as Shad started to scan as quickly through the sports section he suddenly hesitated.
His memory stirred. It beckoned him to return to the business section and take a closer look at the photographs.
Shad turned carefully through the pages in reverse order. He looked closely at each picture until one near the bottom of a middle page caused a ripple in his memory again.
There were two men in the snapshot. They were standing on either side of one of those old fashioned arcade-style video games, leaning toward each other and smiling at the camera. The man on the right was a middle-aged fellow that Shad didn’t recognize, but the man on the left....
His memory was a funny thing. Shad could recall names almost reflexively, but assigning them to faces was another matter. Whenever he initially met people Shad always had trouble remembering what they looked like, and all the mnemonic devices he tried didn’t help much. But once Shad actually got to know people, their faces were forever etched in his mind. The man on the left looked like he might be a little younger than his partner. His appearance was distinguished with blonde hair trimmed quite short and a generally athletic build except for a bit of a bulge in the belly. But his eyes, his nose, his mouth, the shape of his face....
Not even the passage of over twenty years had changed those features on this person.
A dull tingle began creeping through Shad as he turned his attention to the accompanying article. It discussed how a once local computer game business had evolved into a successful St. Louis chain of technology stores. Now the stores were going to begin popping up all over the state. One of the two original founders was the man pictured on the left, and his name was Walden Palmer.
Walden Palmer ... Walden ... Walden...
...Wally.
Complete numbness settled over Shad as he stared at the man in the photograph. It had probably been around seven years since he’d even bothered to think about Wally. Even whenever he had to consider the subject of child molestation, Shad managed to not recall those three youthful years Wally “took care” of him.
Now, over the next couple of minutes, memories flooded into and flashed through his mind like images from a very disjointed dream. Then Shad caught himself and with a little more effort than usual banished those recollections.
A sort of eerie sickness crept through him, the sensation one felt when he knew trouble was about to land on him with both feet and there was no way to escape. Shad focused all his cogitation on the present. But contemplating the present was no better than remembering the past.
The man he’d always known only as Wally was still loose in the public and still living in St. Louis and was currently a successful chain store owner. How many young boys frequented that business? How many were granted special favors around the premises in exchange for “special favors” in private with Wally?
How many boys had been subject to Wally’s attention over the past twenty years?
A wave of guilt washed through Shad. It was true that nearly ten years ago, after he turned eighteen, Shad tried to track down Wally. He had even gone so far as to make contact with that woman who gave birth to him. The only information Shad had on Wally was the mere nickname, and he'd hoped that woman would be able to provide him with more clues. But all she could – or would – tell him about Wally was about how self-centered the man was, which sounded to Shad like a serious episode of projection. After she changed the subject to monopolize the conversation about how Shad shouldn’t be wasting his money and other people’s time to go to college, he was glad to end the only meeting he’d had with that woman ever since the Delaneys brought him into their home.
With the miserable failure of that attempt, Shad had given up trying to find Wally. He counseled himself with the hope that even though Shad would be unable to turn Wally in for prosecution, perhaps somebody else would.
Except now he could make up for his earlier failure – no, wait, he couldn’t. Over a couple of months ago, when Shad turned twenty-eight, the statute of limitations ran out for him to file criminal charges against Wally. A surge of guilt pulsed through him again.
He should have kept trying to locate Wally. Over the past several years, in connection with his work and his proficiency with computers, Shad had been able to track down several people with no more than a name and a last known address. It was no excuse that he had even less information about Wally. Shad should have done ... something more.
Then again, Wally wasn’t that bad. Yes, there had been a price for his attention, but of all the boyfriends that lived with Shad and that woman, Wally was the only one who never ignored him or yelled or struck Shad in any way. Shad had been young enough when Wally was living with them he’d come to the conclusion Wally was actually his father. When Wally had been gone for a few days and some other guy moved in with them, Shad had asked that woman where his father was. Once she figured out he was talking about Wally, that woman informed Shad how stupid he was for believing such a thing. For nearly four years after that, Shad occasionally inquired about Wally whenever the boyfriend of the time became especially unbearable. And because of his situation in those days, Shad didn’t even realize that what Wally had done with him was wrong.
When, years later and under the care of Mam and Pap, Shad did learn that such actions were deviant, he didn’t tell them about Wally. He never told them about any of that woman’s boyfriends. Talking about the boyfriends would only make him think about them, and Shad was determined to ignore that part of his past as much as possible. He didn’t even tell them about Brody, the other boyfriend Shad had bothered to track down.