brow.
âYeah. In the wall. Bullâs-eye marks the spot.â
I was about to disregard him but somethingâ¦something pulled me in. âWhat are you talking about?â
âThere was an old woman who lived in a shoe, she had so many children, she didnât know what to do, when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall and down will come baby, cradle and all. Bulls-eye marks the spot.â
Fletcher looked at me with probing eyes. For a millisecond, he was normal. The soul inside him that hadnât been beaten to a pulp bled through his brown orbs and reached out to me in a desperate plea.
âFletcher!â a voice yelled out.
I looked up and saw the principal making a beeline toward my car. Fletcher quickly backed away from me. The principal gave the kid a tongue lashing for being off school grounds and having the nerve to talk to me. She told him to go over to the curb, sit on the bench and wait for the âspecial bus.â Then she turned to me with a roll of her eyes and told me how terribly sorry she was that I had been troubled by the kid. I asked her to tell me his story.
âHeâs a mess,â she stated, tossing her hand in the air dismissively. âHis father beat him when he was a baby and on up until he was six years old. It wasnât until his father put him in a coma that the state transferred him to foster care. Heâs bounced from one foster family to another. Heâs got special needs, since he has seizures due to the beatings. They said he suffers from something like a combination of autism and Touretteâs syndrome. Weâre just warehousing him here until they can find a more suitable school.â She leaned closer to me, talking to me as if I was her best buddy. âYou want to know his biggest problem? He makes up stories that sound quite absurd. The social worker told me to ignore the fanciful tales. Heâs most likely rehashing some trauma from his childhood.â She turned and saw Fletcher standing at the curb, staring into the sky. âSit on the bench, Fletcher!â she screamed. Turning back to me, she shook her head. âJesus Christ! Anyway, thank God heâs with a decent foster family now. The womanâs a saint . She takes in kids who have been abused and no one else wants. Thereâs a place in heaven for her! I sure as hell could never do it!â
I asked her where Fletcher lived and she told me. âThatâs on my way back to DH. I can take him home.â My first thought was that this had to be against school policy, but because I was a cop and wore a gun and ate up thirty minutes of classroom time that day, she figured I must be a safe bet. After all, donât most people believe that cops, ministers, teachers and doctors are all here to help us? If you judge a book by its cover, you sure do. She had no reservations about summoning Fletcher back over to my car and telling him to get in. Fortunately, I actually happen to be a trustworthy person.
The ride took less than ten minutes. Every time I tried to get him back on his odd tale about being âin the wallâ and his disturbing nursery rhymes that suggested severe trauma, he just stared out the window. He was much more interested in making sounds like a car gearing up and down. I gotta tell you, I was regretting my decision to play the Good Samaritan, but I couldnât shake that damned feeling in my gut.
We rolled up to his foster familyâs home. It was in an extremely nice neighborhood. The two-story white house with green trim was beautiful, with a neatly mowed lawn, swept brick pathway and manicured hedges that framed the two front windows. Fletcher looked at the house and then stared out the front window of the Mustang.
âWhat is it?â I asked him.
He looked quite pensive and said nothing for a bit. âThere was an old woman who lived in a shoeâ¦she had way too many children and she didnât know what to doâ¦â