Deerhead Mansion

Old man Hinkley liked his boys young… but probably not in the way you're thinking.

What I mean is I never once saw Hinkley take off his three-piece suit. As far as I know, the man was born wearing one. And he hardly ever raised a hand to us because he didn't have to. His stare burned holes through us while his voice steered us toward Armageddon, all before his toothless smile brought us back from the brink.

I was 6 years old when I first met him, this stick-thin man with slicked back hair who swaggered toward the pair of housing officers who were escorting me to the relocation docks. He just stood there, hands in pockets, blocking our path.

"Hey, where you taking my grandson? His mother's going to be worried sick."

In that instant, I wasn't thinking about how the Blue Banana Uprising had taken my mom, my folks, everyone who mattered. I was thinking about how I'd just discovered a new species of human, one whose frost blue eyes were much too big for his face.

"Goddamn, you sure got a lot of grandkids," one of the housing officers said. I can't remember what else they said, only that there was a lot of smiling and joking.

I never did end up getting on one of those airboats to some sanctuary city. Hinkley must've paid the housing officers their usual C-note fee to misplace me.

And from that moment on, I belonged to Hinkley. Hell, he practically raised me.

One poorly aimed shot and 22 years later, Hinkley's still in my head.

The man knew how to break down a boy's mind and remake it in his own image. And he knew I had it in me to do the same.

That must be why I'm doing it to Arnold now.

Lately, I've taken to waiting around corners so as to ambush my son.

I can hear the frenetic voices emanating from his VR glasses now. He's way too into anime, that kind where the most socially awkward guy imaginable somehow finds himself surrounded by a harem of supernatural babes. Sometimes the women have furred ears, horns, or both, but the basic premise never changes. I know because I've tried to watch a few episodes with him.

As Arnold rounds the corner from the kitchen, I throw a few playful jabs his way.

Eyes glued to his VR glasses, to some silly show being beamed across his retinas, my son doesn't even do me the courtesy of flinching.

"Hey, hands up."

He gives me a sheepish smile coupled with an exaggerated shrug, probably copying some mannerism that's sure to attract furry women from the spirit realm.

"Arnold..."

"I told you, call me Aru-noru."

I snatch the VR glasses off Arnold's face. When he tries to grab them back, I grin and dangle the VR glasses just out of reach.

Arnold shouts something in Japanese that I guess is meant to unnerve me, then he tucks his head and starts flailing his arms. Believe or not, this is an improvement.

When I turn up the heat with my jabs, Arnold tries this crazy side-to-side dodge.

His timing is just awful.

What I'm saying is he basically puts himself on a collision course with my left hand before I can pull the punch.

My son clutches his head then stares at me. I hold the VR glasses out to him by way of silent apology, and he doesn't take them.

Fourteen years old, and he runs with his arms flung backward like some cartoon samurai. He runs crying to his mom.

Silence ensues.

"You hit our son," Mel, my wife, says to me when it's late and we're sitting in bed.

"I'm only trying to…" I trail off, waiting for her to fill in the blanks. But Mel simply stares. She's making me do what I hate. She's making me do all the talking.

I take a deep breath, but I can't let it out.

"And another thing. Don't let him call himself those stupid fucking made-up cartoon names. You're going to turn him in to a…"

"A what?" Mel finally asks.

"An upstairs boy."

"What the hell is that?"

"The kind of kid who always gets his ass kicked at school, so maybe we're already too late."

"We talked to the parents. They're getting involved."

"You think that's how it works? I'm teaching him to fight because those animals only understand one thing."

Mel slaps me across the face. "Is that what you understand?"

I see the next one coming but somehow don't have the will to move away.

"You don't hit my son."

I can't meet her eyes. She raises her hand, as if to smack me again, then turns off her bedside lamp instead.

I sit there, shaking in the dark.

Hinkley managed his army of boys with an iron fist swathed in silk, and here I am, struggling to stay on top of a household of three.

And the old man's still watching me, whispering advice.

I know what Hinkley would do, so I leave instead.

I leave the house and wander through ReBern, our metropolitan oasis modeled after Bern, Switzerland.

In the Swiss Bern, there's supposed to be this gentle river that flows through town, so ReBern, Florida has the same. On warm summer days, people drop what they're doing to float their way across town. They jump from picturesque stone bridges then pull themselves up onto grassy shores to do it all over again.

How we scrimped and saved to get a place in ReBern. Drifting away feels like a sin, but I jump in the water all the same. The water feels icy tonight and, beneath the overcast moon, it looks like it could be one of those rivers in the Greek underworld, a river that's supposed to wash away your memories, a river whose name I forget.

I forget that there's no mud, no mangroves lining the shore, no logs that looks like alligators or alligators that look like logs.

I forget until I'm 14 again, back in Deerhead mansion on the edge of the swampland. In front of the house, there's an ancient tree, long-dead but too stubborn to fall. Its barren branches look like antlers and part of the trunk is warped by what must've once been a huge termite nest; it bulges out so that the top half of the tree looks like a—well, you get the picture.

Many of the boys came to Deerhead mansion via the docks like I did. The rest found their way to Hinkley's doorstep one way or another. I remember the old man walking me to the house for the first time. A group of older boys was waiting inside. Hinkley called them off after I tried to return a few swings.

The boys who didn't fight back were sent upstairs to Sister Fran. You didn't want to be an upstairs boy.

But it wasn't too bad being one of Hinkley's boys. Men like Hinkley who made a living off children weren't uncommon in that part of Florida. Blame it on the Great Disconnection. Blame it on the Blue Banana Uprising. Hell, while you're at it, blame it on Ancient Greece and the rise of city states after Florida and the rest of the country fell apart, but men like Hinkley kept the economy moving. We stole from the poor and gave to the rich, so the local authorities, if you could call them that, left us alone.

Hinkley had us work in teams of three, sometimes against each other. He taught us how to play cards, roll dice, and read each other's tells. And once we were 16, he kicked us out of the house.

"Young bucks have no place in Deerhead," he'd say.

Almost every boy listened. They'd strike out on their own to start their own small operation, and any who stayed within county lines made sure to pay tribute to their swampland king.

But there was this one boy, Derrick, who refused to leave when his time came. So, Hinkley grabbed his shotgun and made Derrick go stand in front of the tree that gave the house its name. We all went outside to watch, even Sister Fran and her upstairs boys.

Hinkley kept the barrel of his shotgun pointed down at a 45 degree angle while Sister Fran walked over to Derrick and handed him something. She stepped away, and I saw the old pistol hanging like a bar of iron from Derrick's hand.

"Now, that there is a Colt," Hinkley shouted to make himself heard over the house's old generator. "And one of us is going to leave Deerhead today."

The old man raised his shotgun before Derrick could even get his finger on the trigger. The pistol, still pointed down, trembled as Hinkley walked toward the tree.

When the old man was only a few feet away, Derrick wet himself and dropped the Colt. We chased him through the mud, then ran him down into the water, then watched him paddle away like the dog that he was. That boy paddled away until he was a distant memory.

And maybe I'm doing the same now in ReBern's river. Maybe I've been fooling myself all these years that I could be a good husband and father. Maybe it was all an act.

"A good actor makes you believe, but a great actor makes you forget there's such a thing as belief." Hinkley always said that as if he had once been a great actor.

And Hinkley loved his movies. Deerhead had this small theater with a single cathode TV. Only three boys were allowed in at a time as a reward for a job well done. Hinkley would sit with us and watch whatever movie we choose. One wall of the theater was lined with shelves filled with relics of a bygone era, what he called DVDs. Only the top row of DVDs was off limits.

As I grew older and earned the right to watch more movies, I learned two things:

1) Hinkley's style of speaking and his manner of moving were almost entirely borrowed from some actor from well before the mid-century, called Christopher Walking or something.

2) Every time Hinkley said his little line about good acting vs. great acting, his eyes were drawn to a red DVD case in the forbidden top row.

When I was 14, my team and I managed to snatch some boys and their belongings off an airboat instead of scouting the docks for them. I saved Hinkley from having to pay the housing officers $100 a head, so I knew he was going to have us in the theater as a reward.

Anyway, I was feeling bold and wanted to play a trick. I slipped in to the theater before the others and switched out that DVD in the red case with another in the middle row. The airboat raid had been my idea, so I was the one who got to choose our feature presentation.

I watched Hinkley out of the corner of my eye after the movie got started. He clenched his jaw but said nothing. The movie was about some Scottish uprising, back when men wore kilts instead of pants and carried swords instead of guns.

All in all, it was a forgettable film except for one moment, the moment when the camera zoomed in on this young warrior who seemed like he was about to say something inspiring right before a battle. But instead, he opened and closed his mouth again and again like a fish out of water.

We recognized the actor immediately as a much younger version of old man Hinkley.

While the young Hinkley struggled to speak, someone from off-camera said, "You forgot your line, you bloody mook."

I have no idea why they left it in the movie. Maybe it was filmed right before the Great Disconnection, and no one could be bothered to remove it. And so we had this treasure, this blooper from old man Hinkley when he was young and dumb like the rest of us.

The first time it played, I looked at Hinkley, and he gave me his toothless smile. So, I hit rewind. We must've watched it five times while he sat on in silence. He was shaking, so I thought he was trying not to burst out laughing.

When the credits were rolling, I turned to him and said, "Hey Hinkley, did you know a good actor makes you believe, but a great actor makes you forget… uh, uh, uhhh, you forgot your line, you bloody mook."

Hinkley slammed me into the wall of DVDs as the other two boys fled the theater.

"Sister Fran… Sister Fran! Get down here. Bring the shotgun and the Colt."

It all happened so fast. I can't remember walking out to the Deerhead tree, or Sister Fran handing me the Colt. I only remember staring at Hinkley's shotgun and thinking I saw the twin barrels coming up.

Instead of wait like Derrick did, I raised the Colt, squeezed my eyes shut and pulled the trigger. After the first shot I just wanted the gun's roar to stop, so I pulled the trigger again and again until there was nothing but dry clicks.

When I opened my eyes, Hinkley was patting the front of this three-piece suit.

"Now that's just bad luck," he said after finding no holes. "Tell you what, you got off six shots, so I'll give you a six-minute head start."

Hinkley had to fire his shotgun in the air for his words to make sense.

I bolted across the dirt yard then into the trees beyond Deerhead Mansion. I could hear him holding the other boys at bay, but that wouldn't last forever.

Somewhere in the swampland, a treacherous mangrove root reached out and tripped me. When I tried to put weight on my ankle, I had to bite my lip to keep from screaming.

There was nothing to do but cover myself in mud, hide in the mangrove roots, and pray no one found me.

But prayers held no power over Hinkley. I heard his slow, measured stride. When he stopped right beside my mangrove tree, I closed my eyes to hide their whites.

I heard him sigh and risked a peek. His frost blue eyes were trained on my face, and all I could do was shiver under his silent stare.

"I'm sorry I shot at you," I finally said.

Hinkley chewed on that for a bit as he shifted his shotgun to his other arm.

"Don't be sorry," he finally said. "Blanks in the Colt, kid. Remember, everything's an act."

"Hey, I've got this part covered. Go check down yonder," he said as two boys burst into view.

After they'd run off in the other direction, Hinkley told me what I had to do.

I crawled to the water's edge, and Hinkley didn't shout until I was well downstream. I heard his shotgun blast then a splash of water well behind me.

Before I made my way into the water, there was one last thing that Hinkley said to me. It stuck with me after I pulled myself onto dry land and began my new life far away from the swampland.

It's still with me now as I pull myself out of ReBern's artificial waterway and head back home to Mel and Arnold, or Aru-noru. I'll call him Aru-noru or whatever he wants to be called. He can call me whatever he likes, too, as long as he's talking to me. If it's all an act, then I'll be the world's best actor.

Because right before he let me go, Hinkley said, "You'll do fine."

And what else can I do but believe him?