Relentless

sir,” and he says, “So you’re alone here,” and I say, “Yes, sir,” and he asks who all the vehicles belong to, and I say, “To my aunts and uncles and cousins. That one there is my dad’s.” He looks at all the house’s lighted windows and asks where my folks are, and I say, “They’re gone, sir,” and he asks if I know where they’ve gone, and I say, “No, sir.”
    He follows me to the open front door, where he rings the bell, and when no one answers, he calls, “Anybody home?”
    I figure policemen have to do things their way, by the rules, so I do not remind him that I am alone.
    He asks me to show him the way, and I lead him through the open door with the clouds and the moon.
    Just across the threshold, in the front hall, the deputy says, “Son? Cubby? Wait a minute.”
    I turn to look up at him. His face has changed, and not just because the light is brighter here.
    “What’s wrong?” I ask.
    “Your shoes.”
    My sneakers are more red than white, and dark, and wet with blood. On the wood floor around me are bloody footprints.
    With his right hand, the deputy draws his revolver, and with his left, he pulls me to his side and half behind him.
    In three steps, he reaches the archway between the hall and the living room, and he says, “Oh, my God.”
    Looking past him, I see everyone dead, and now I remember what happened before I went to sleep in Colleen’s room.
    Soon many deputies and the sheriff himself are at the house, plus other people not in uniform, who seem as busy as the police.
    The sheriff is a nice man, tall and older and with a belly, but he does not listen well.
    I tell him that because I was not afraid, Tray and his friends could not see me. The sheriff says I must have found a hiding place.
    I tell him that after I woke up in Colleen’s room, I forgot what happened for a while. But because I was not afraid and because the dead people did not want to frighten me, I could not see them, just like Tray could not see me.
    The authorities conclude I combed my mother’s hair and restored the dignity of other victims
after
Tray and his buddies left.
    But I know the truth. Most memories from early childhood fade or vanish altogether, but my memories of that night are as clear as if the event were only a week in the past.
    I know how I survived. I do not know why.
    That night and the next day, I do not cry. They say I am brave, but I am not. I am instead the recipient of a great mercy, because upon me was conferred a power of endurance, emotional and mental, that is far beyond my six years. It will remain with me until my name is changed, and will for the rest of my life seem unearned.
    Months later, a court rules behind closed doors, and thereafter I am Cubby Greenwich, living with Aunt Edith in a new city.
    That evening, at long last, the grief comes and the tears. The murderers are in their cells, the murdered in their graves. Tears can wash away all that has obstructed hope, and grief that does not break us will only make us stronger.
    What psychological problems I experience for a couple of years are all related to these facts: I am the one who heard Tray knock; I am the first to see him on the front porch; I am the one at whom he winked through the clear moon, as if we were conspirators; I am the one who opened the door to him; I am the sole survivor.
    I feel to a degree responsible and believe illogically that no one else would have opened the door to Tray.
    Furthermore, for a long time I will not answer a door because of the irrational fear that others like Tray and his two friends will be drawn to me because they know I will always grant them entrance.
    Sessions with a psychologist are unproductive.
    Although she has little experience of children, my aunt Edith possesses the wisdom and patience to show me that guilt requires fault and that fault requires intention. She works, as well, on my irrational fear and convinces me in time that I have no reason to be afraid of a knock or a doorbell:
I am not a magnet for monsters
.
    Like her sister, my mother, Edith loves to laugh, and from her I learn that laughter is our armor and our sword.
    Years later, when I am twenty and Edith is on her deathbed, I tell her that I believe I was spared that night in September for a reason, for something of importance that I will one day be called upon to do. And Providence put me in her care because she was kind and wise enough to heal me and therefore prepare me for whatever task will be