Penance

—an excerpt—

We all knew he was harmless, some could even say kind, in a subtle, to himself way. He hardly ever spoke and always moved out of the way to let you walk past him. We all grew up in the same little town, spending our young summers jumping from sandbox to sandbox and eventually, pool to pool. As we got older, I would see him walking with his mother to watch as the fishermen, my father and I among them, came in with the morning's catch and filleted them there on the wharf.

I remember the time I slipped in the playground mud as the class ran in at the end of recess, we weren’t very old then. We were both at the end of the line and amidst the bell chiming and all the kids swarming to not be late for class, he was the only one who heard my quiet yelp as I went down in a slick patch of just-rained-on clay. I looked up, my hands stinging and raw from fresh scratches under a layer of mud and even worse, my ego bruised at the thought of everyone watching me fall. But he stood there, just waiting for me. It seemed as if he was caught in between this world and one of his own, between waiting for me and joining the class. We never said anything to each other, he just trotted alongside me as I sulked back towards the building.