Trent
“As far back as I can remember, there was music and there were numbers. They are always dancing and singing. They’re here now, too.”
Nearby something growled and scurried away, Trent gathered his arms closer around himself, trying to tug his worn, green jacket closer to himself and ward off the chill he could feel soaking through him from every direction.
“Don’t worry ‘bout that, kid,” the man sitting next to Trent said, “Probably just another raccoon. There are lots of them in this damn city.” Trent looked around suspiciously. It took a couple minutes to say words again.
“Sometimes my teeth chatter and these are numbers, too. Counting them makes things better. It’s easier to think about how many times my teeth him than to think about – what time is it?”
“Quarter after eleven, kid.”
“Easier to think about it than about three days, two hours and seven minutes ago exactly. That’s when the music stopped.”
“Does it do that a lot?”
“In school I try to make it stop, but usually it was always there – everywhere I go. There are threes that follow sevens, and if the melody is just right, they become fives and twelves and other more beautiful numbers. “
“Beautiful numbers? What do you mean?” the man asked. Trent closed his eyes and tried to hear them, but he couldn’t. All he could hear was the chattering that came back.
“Tests were the worst,” Trent said. If he didn’t answer the question, the man probably wouldn’t care. He hadn’t cared about others too much. “During tests, I hear the music , but without singing it, it gets confused. I lose track of it. The numbers come too fast. When I start humming, the teachers send me to the office.”
“’What’s wrong with you?’ Jenny would say anytime she came. She’s my Father’s wife. She’s not my Mother. Father doesn’t talk about Mother at all. He says she would be ashamed, anyway. I don’t really understand what he means. I don’t really understand him.”
“What about councilors? What about other classes besides math?”
“Councilors give me lots of paper. I can read it, but it usually doesn’t make much sense until I sing it. Then it doesn’t make sense to them, because I write numbers. They want words. That’s what English teachers want, too.”
“I try,” Trent said, scratching his black, wavy hair with his hand, “but the teachers don’t like what I give them either. I memorized a lot of songs that make sense. Most of them don’t have lyrics, but the ones that do, I try to memorize. When I write those down for my English teachers, they get angry. They don’t tell me I’m stupid like Father does, but I think they think so. I think everyone thinks so. I don’t understand what they want.”
“Is there anything you like to do in school?” The man smiled and put a hand on Trent’s knee. The corners of his eyes crinkled a little when he did that.
“ I like math, but the math teachers don’t like me. They think I’m stupid because I have to sing songs. They don’t understand when I tell them there are numbers in it. Some of them think I’m making fun of them. On the homework, they say I cheat because I get it right and I can’t do the same thing on tests. But that’s because they don’t let me write the music!”
Three gaudy women walked by and looked down at Trent, then laughed when he looked away quickly.
“Forget those bitches,” the man said, momentarily squeezing Trent’s knee, “Why don’t you do music?”
“I tried. My Father said it was ‘sissy stuff.’ He said I should play football like on his TV.”
“So you did that instead?”
“I tried. Last year was my first year in high school. I tried doing football like Father wanted. I thought maybe I could understand him then, but I couldn’t stay on the team.”
“Why, you didn’t like it? Were you not good at it?” The man’s expression was completely unreadable to Trent, who scooted further against the wall, to be on the safe side. Usually when Trent couldn’t figure out what someone was thinking, it meant they were about to dislike him.
“I liked it ok, I guess. But nobody on the team liked me.”
“Why not?”
Trent looked again at the man. There was a different set of crinkles around his eyes now. He wasn’t sure what they meant, so he scooted back some more. Now he was out of reach. Out of harm. Nobody could get him.
“Don’t worry, you can tell me,” the man said. The streetlight caught his eye and for a moment Trent could see them sparkle blue. He didn’t come any closer and Trent didn’t say a word.
Their eyes burned themselves into his memory. Those guys who looked at him with venom. Sometimes they’d spit at him. Sometimes they would throw stuff. He could hear everything they said, even when they thought he couldn’t or thought he was too stupid to understand. There was no music in anything they said.
Trent’s body started shaking again, against his will, and not because of the cold.
“Father was right,” Trent sobbed and buried his face in his green sleeve, trying to wipe the tears away. He didn’t want to count these.
“C’mon kid, don’t worry,” the man said. Trent couldn’t see him but soon there was an arm around him. That only made the tears come harder.
“What time is it?” Trent asked when his sobs started letting up.
“Quarter ‘till midnight, kid,” the man said and chuckled. “Why?”
“I wanted to know how long, that’s all.” He looked up at the man who smiled at him. In the dark, his eyes still sparkled, though it was harder to tell they were blue.
“They hated me for the same reason Father hates me,” Trent said. Being next to this man was warm. Not just because the other person had body-heat or that he blocked some of the wind that powered through the alley, but there was another kind of warm. The kind that made Trent want to cry again.
“Where do you live? Maybe I can talk to your Father and—“
“Councilors talked to him a lot. He doesn’t like talking. He thinks it’s for sissies. He told me I don’t talk much for a sissy.” Trent felt a tear slide down his cheek and before he could do anything about it, it fell from his chin on the stranger’s arm. It looked like a raindrop. Trying to count those was fun. They would make a song that never ended, there were that many.
“So you spent three nights out here?”
“What time is it?”
“Five ‘till.”
“Two nights, eleven hours and fifty-five minutes.”
“Don’t you want to go back home?” the man asked.
“Go back where?” Trent asked.
“Back home?”
“Why?”
“Do you have any other family?”
“I think so. I don’t know them. Father doesn’t talk about them much. I’ve seen some of them but I don’t know their names. I only know how old they are.” The man chuckled. It was a warm sound and there was melody in it.
“That’s a seven point six,” Trent told him.
“What, I’m getting rated on my laughing, now?” the man said. There was still a seven point six in his voice when he said that.
“That’s the number in your music,” Trent said. The man leaned back a little and looked at Trent again. His face was so confusing. Trent would have wanted to scoot back but there was nowhere to go. The man had his arms around him and it didn’t feel like he wanted to push him away.
“You’re completely different,” the man said. There was a hush in his voice that Trent didn’t understand that was only made more confusing by his wide eyes and the smallest suggestions of a smile at the corners of his mouth. Trent thought it would be impolite to count his teeth.
“Are you hungry, kid?”
“Very.”
“Does your stomach have a number?”
“Sometimes.”
The man smiled at this answer and stood up, then extended his hand to Trent. Sometimes Trent had seen other people do it for each other, but nobody had ever done that for him. It was scary, giving his hand to this guy, but he did.
It was hard to get up. He legs were really weak and everything started spinning. The next moment, the man was holding Trent by his shoulders. Another strange look was on his face. It was the look that the nurse had when he’d come into her office with a broken arm from football when his teammates had pushed to into the goal-post.
“Man, you’re in bad shape. I don’t think they’d let you into any of the bars I was going to, but maybe we can find a place to eat that’s not closed yet.”
“But I don’t have any money—“
“I have enough.”
The streets were very dark and walking by bars, Trent could see lots of numbers. Numbers of people coming in and out – numbers they gave each other. Numbers floating in the dark air he wanted to write and the number: two, that he and this man made walking in the night.
