Little Maynard was the firstborn of twice-wed Maynard II and Veronica, proudly named Maynard III, proudly but thoughtlessly, for it is a bad enough thing to be called the Nerd, much worse to be Nerd the Turd. It had started already in the second grade. Little, as his folks called him, didn’t even get the joke at first, and he certainly couldn’t figure out where it all came from, it being the sort of thing his dad never wanted to talk about, blowing his stack whenever he was asked, even swatting Little once across the back of the head. Hard. Finally it was his mom who let it all out one day when she was fed up with his dad, one of the many days, she was fed up with him most of the time, and she always let the whole world know about it. So, that was when he found out that back when his own mom and dad were still in junior high, and Grandpa Maynard had just got elected mayor of the town, everyone at school had started calling his dad Mayor Nerd. Okay, ha ha, very funny, but come on, that was centuries ago, how did the guys in his class know that? Little figured it must have something to do with Clarissa and Mikey, who were Uncle John’s kids, Uncle John being one of his dad’s worst enemies and so probably the person who had started it all in the first place. Clarissa was mean and sneaky enough to do something like that to Little, she was always bullying him, he hated her and had often found himself wishing that Jesus or somebody would order him to take her pants down and spank the daylights out of her, and although Mikey was a spooky little twit who kept to himself pretty much and hardly ever said anything at all, Little didn’t trust him. He didn’t trust much of anybody actually, it was more like a general principle, something his dad had taught him early on, about the only exception being his friend Fish, one of the preacher’s kids, Zoe’s and Jennifer’s big brother. Fish was older than he was, already in high school, and knew just about everything, at least the things Little wanted to know. The first thing he taught him was his weekly paper route when Little took it over, but even that first day they soon got to talking about lots of other things, starting with baseball and God, but pretty soon moving on to more interesting stuff. Things that happened on the paper route, for example. Fish was a good explainer. Then one day Fish heard one of the other kids calling him Turd while they were playing video games out at the mall (“Quit hogging the fricking machine, Turd!” is what the dumb jerk said), and Fish just grabbed him by the back of the neck and said: “What did I hear you say? I think I heard you say, ah, ‘Turtle,’ is that right?” “Yeah, yeah! Ow! Turtle!” the kid squeaked and they all laughed nervously, and after that they mostly called him Turtle, though some of them still said it with a d. It was like some kind of joke they were all in on, but that was okay, he was in on it, too. So everything was cool. It was Fish and Turtle from then on. And it was Fish who told him about collecting for the Crier at the big house of Turtle’s Uncle John one Saturday morning and finding his aunt there all alone. Just out of the bath. Fish said. Naked. Stark naked. You should have seen.
Naked flesh: ever a sight to see, with all its glowing surfaces, its creases and dimples and hairy bits, and especially when generally withheld from view. As was the case with most in town past the crawling age, at least in public between the sexes, John’s wife no exception. Many had imagined her au naturel, as Ellsworth, showing off, once put it in The Town Crier when describing the orthodontist’s scandalous daughter at a famous Pioneers Day parade (“how natural,” is how most folks thought that naughty phrase got spoken, the naughty girl herself long gone from here), but though few would miss the chance, few had actually seen John’s wife starkly so. Young Fish’s brag, if overheard, would have aroused doubt in most, envy in many, rage in a few perhaps and/or anxiety or mad desire, but certainly in all quarters a great curiosity. For Gordon, who longed to photograph John’s wife exhaustively, it would have added another shot for his projected study: “John’s Wife (Wet) Draped in Falling Towel.” He had not thought of this one, not yet, though he had envisioned her, before his lens, on a barren hilltop, dressed in a gauzy stuff like mist, gently pivoting on one foot, glancing around, her hair caught by a breeze, her far hip lifting slightly, her trailing hand waist-high, a mysterious shadow between her thighs: “John’s Wife Turning Through Diaphanous Wisps.” And also, more akin to the paperboy’s uncorroborated report, standing naked (“John’s Wife …”) in the rain, face uplifted, arms outstretched, feet together, her body streaming and glistening in the downpour, diamonds of light in her pubic hair. This one he had practiced with his wife Pauline, and the results, free as he was to play with angles, lenses, filters, and exposures, were professional enough, quite admirable in some respects, but there was no magic in them. No radiance. Not even in his blowups of the diamonds of light.
“Radiance” was a word often used when speaking of John’s wife, though what was meant by it, few could say. “Radiant” was how her parents Barnaby and Audrey described her as a baby when astark, delighting in the little creature, excessively so perhaps, she being the only one they ever had, though others, too, privileged back then to behold her entire, John’s folks Mitch and Opal among them, often remarked that the precious child truly “glowed with health.” She was still “dazzling” (see the testimonials in her high school yearbooks) as she blossomed into the well-dressed woman whom John undressed, starkly, to his great delight, but whom others glimpsed in similar state along the way, or thought they did, Gordon’s friend Ellsworth, for example, who babysat her and dressed her up (and down) for the make-believe games they played. “Babes in the Woods.” “Sleeping Beauty.” “Narcissus and Echo.” “Alice Through the Looking-Glass.” And games that Ellsworth made up from scratch, like “Dreaming Awake” and “The Artist and His Model.” “Narcissus and Echo” was a particular favorite of both of them, copycat play that was lots of fun, followed by a kind of hide-and-seek. Ellsworth would hunch over his own reflection — in a rain puddle, a paddling pool, a hubcap, kettle bottom, or snow shovel, most often just a handmirror at his feet — while she “vanished,” leaving her clothes behind, the playacting ones she wore on top. While she was looking for a hiding place, Ellsworth, his gaze fixed upon the pale acne’d image of himself (sometimes, cheating, he’d tip the mirror to see, between his legs, the dress-up clothes come off), would call out to her in phrases stolen from Ancient Mythologies and she would shout back at him the last words that he said—“Won’t anyone come play with me?” “Play with me!” “Why can’t I see you?” “See you!” “Don’t be such a nincompoop!” “Poop!” “Where have you gone?” “Gone!”—until she had finally hidden, and then she would be silent and he would go looking for her, tickling her when he found her. But not too hard. Just a little. The tickling was not her favorite part. Nor, though he liked it, his. After that, they’d get dressed up and do it again, though sometimes, just to be fair, he’d be Echo. Of course, this was a long time ago, when Ellsworth was even younger than Fish was now.