Old Wounds by Vicki Lane Page A

brief question, but began to assemble the ingredients for an impromptu meal.
    The two dogs bounded into the kitchen, jostling each other in their eagerness to investigate. “No! Down!” Elizabeth scolded, envisaging a disastrous confrontation as the faithful dogs, bent on protecting her, attacked the intruder. She grabbed their collars and hauled them away from the boy. To her surprise, he leaned out and began to pat Ursa’s broad back. The big dog’s plumy tail was waving happily as, Elizabeth realized, was Molly’s.
    Feeling vaguely ridiculous, she released the dogs. They instantly crowded up to Calven, obviously recognizing an old friend.
    “Hey there, ol’ Molly; hey there, Yoursa.” He looked up at Elizabeth. “I know them two, seen ’em in the woods back of this. Read their names offen their collars. They’re right friendly, ain’t they? I wisht I could have me a dog but—”
    He broke off as Rosemary set a glass of milk and a plate with a thick ham and cheese sandwich on the little table under the window. His eyes widened at the sight and he darted forward.
    Again Elizabeth interposed. “Maybe it would be a good idea for you to wash your hands first, Calven.” She spoke gently but firmly. “There’s a bar of soap over there at the sink.”
    The child frowned but mutely complied, leaving dirty smears on the dishtowel Rosemary gave him to dry his hands. Then he slid onto the bench, hunched over his plate, and began to devour the sandwich.
Wolf his sandwich,
thought Elizabeth, watching him snap off huge bites and swallow them, virtually unchewed, helping them down with noisy gulps of milk. Rosemary refilled his glass two times before the plate was empty. Then she gave him a bowl of the leftover apple crisp, topped with a scoop of ice cream.
    Calven’s spoon chased the last crumb of the dessert around the bowl, scraping furiously. Reluctantly he abandoned the implement and picked the bowl up to lick off the remaining film of ice cream. “Son, I tell you that’s good stuff. I kin
hide
me some ice cream.” He looked hopefully toward the container Rosemary was returning to the freezer.
    “Calven, I don’t think you better eat any more right now. Let that settle a while. I don’t want you to get sick.” Elizabeth looked at the thin dirty child, wondering what had brought him to her kitchen in the middle of the night.
He said he ran off from Bib—who or what is Bib?…Is this some neighbor’s child? Barefoot, for god’s sake, and it’s chilly out there. And filthy…he can’t have bathed in weeks. How old is he? Ten? Eleven? Maybe not that old; he’s not very big.
    The boy was singularly unattractive: scrawny and pallid beneath the dirt. He wore a too large pair of camouflage pants, belted around his bony hips with a green bungee cord. A rip high on the side revealed no underwear, only pale, dirty flesh. The worn, faded T-shirt beneath the camouflage jacket—again, several sizes too large—advertised a waterslide in Gatlinburg in colors that had once been lurid but were now overlain with embedded grime. His hair, dark with grease and dirt, hung in limp hanks to his shoulders. And he stunk.
    Elizabeth’s nose wrinkled but then as she watched, she saw that Calven had saved back two bits of crust and was offering them to the attendant Ursa and Molly.
    She smiled. “They like you, Calven.”
    He looked at her with an answering grin and his gray-green eyes suddenly came alive. “I like them too. They’s my friends.”
    With a wrench, Elizabeth forced herself to the job at hand. “Okay, Calven, I need for you to tell me who your folks are. They’re probably worried sick about you and—”
    “Huuh!” It was a derisive snort. “Ain’t no one worried about me but Bib. And I already told you—I done run off from Bib.”
    “Is Bib your father?” Rosemary stacked the dishes in the sink and came to sit beside Elizabeth.
    “Him? Naw! He’s just my mama’s boyfriend. Mama, she’s in the