Protector of Children - 21. Chapter 21: Lucas and Mark--Part V

Lucas

“Daddy?” Mark’s voice was soft, but I could hear a quiver in it—and I felt his fear. “There’s something else. It’s about when I went looking for Eddie.”

Eddie had stopped singing the Popeye song, but we could still hear his splashes. He’d be in the tub for a while, and Mark and I would have some privacy. I realized that bath time was not going to provide sufficient opportunity for private talks—especially if the boys insisted on bathing together—and that I’d have to come up with something else, soon. And, I still had to deal with Mark’s mother’s concerns about three in a bed.

“What happened?” I asked. I tightened my hug just a little.

“You know that I heard Eddie, and felt him, and wished I was there to help him, and I was. On the roof. And I know it happened in just a second. But it also took a long time. I know that sounds stupid . . . .”

Mark was waiting for me to say something. “Not stupid, Mark. All this is new, and even though Dike and Apollo and Captain Marlberg—Aiden, too—have done a lot to help us, they haven’t told us everything we need to know. Maybe they can’t,” I said.

“Aiden told us that the words of the gods could create reality. Maybe they’re afraid to tell us too much. But you can tell me what happened.”

I remembered how upset—and perhaps nervous—Zeus had been when I summoned him by using words that might have created a reality. Why was he so concerned? I wondered. Other than sometimes feeling what Mark and Eddie are feeling, and seeing—that one time—what Eddie had seen; maybe pushing people in the hospital to do what I told them to do; and various predictions made by various gods, I wasn’t Prometheus and it didn’t look like I was getting any so-called powers.

These thoughts passed in an instant. I smiled, but Mark didn’t see it. “And if you and I create a reality, we’ll make darn sure it’s a good one, okay?”

“That’s okay,” Mark said. I felt the smile in his voice. And then, I felt it go away. “It was like a dream I sometimes have.”

That surprised me. Mark often had nightmares. Sometimes, his screams from next door would wake me. When he slept with me, I’d hear him whimpering. I’d wake him—usually before he started screaming—and cuddle him until he went back to sleep. He never spoke of the dreams, and in the mornings, denied remembering them.

“I didn’t remember the dream until then. In the dream,” he said, “I’m flying through a tunnel. It’s mostly dark, but I have a light, or one that goes along with me. I can see around me. I can see the walls. They’re stone like an old castle or something. The first time I had the dream, I thought it was one of the subway tunnels, but there aren’t any tracks or stations.”

Mark’s voice, which had grown stronger, softened. The quiver was back. “And there’s always something chasing me.”

I waited, briefly, before asking, “What is chasing you?”

“I don’t know. I never see it. I always wake up before it catches me.”

Mark shuddered and then whispered. “I think if it ever catches me, I’ll die.

I didn’t want to interrupt, so I simply hugged him a little more tightly.

“When I went to Eddie,” Mark said, “the dream was different. There was something new. The tunnel opened into a huge cave. It was too big for the light, but I heard things. Bad things, like snakes hissing, dogs barking, wolves howling, other things. The sounds echoed—that’s how I knew it was a huge place. Then, there were blackbirds that flew around me and tried to bite me. I was scared. I tried to go faster. And then I was on the roof with Eddie and about to fall ’cause I didn’t have my canes or walker. You came and I knew everything was going to be okay.”

Mark had buried himself into my side. At least he was no longer crying. I remembered something I’d studied for one of my blog posts. I don’t think there would be any harm in asking and it may help.

“Mark, Jungian psychologists ask their patients to do something called dreaming the dream on. How would you like the tunnel dream to end? If you could make up an ending, what would it be?”

Mark was silent for a long time. Eddie’s splashes had stopped, and I knew Mark and I had only a few minutes before Eddie came into the room.

“Mark?”

“I think I know how it’s going to end. The thing that’s chasing me is going to catch me, but before it can hurt me, you’re going to be there. You’re wearing the tunic you had on when you came back from visiting the Moirai, but you have on armor, too. A breastplate, and things on your arms and legs. And, you’re holding a sword and you kill the thing before it can hurt me.”

“Mark-o-mine,” I whispered. “Thank you. I want always to be your hero, and I’m happy that you want it, too.” I hoped this was a phase, and knew I’d have to help him grow out of it and stand on his own, but at twelve, if he needed a Greek warrior to protect him in his dreams, I’d accept that role.

Mark kissed me on the cheek. I saw that his eyes were bright and that his smile was wide. We’d cross one hurdle. I knew, however, that it was a low hurdle, and that there would be others. Before I could say anything, Eddie came in, jumped onto the couch and hugged Mark, and it was time for Mark’s bath, and then supper.

§ § § §§ 

I needed to know more about what powers Mark had or would have, and a whole lot more about this translocation thing. Dike frightened me, a little. She was nice enough, but I remember when I’d challenged her about the problems and danger she said Mark would face. Something had happened, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to trigger it, again. So, I sent the boys to brush their teeth, and called Ben Marlberg.

I agreed to meet Ben for coffee the next morning at six. Alice would be home by then, and the boys could sleep in. I posted my blog by 5:00 AM, and was already at the coffee shop when Ben arrived. He was dressed as I’d seen him before except that he had on a leather bomber jacket. When he unzipped the jacket, his badge was not visible. I stood and shook his offered hand. He gestured to the barista, who poured a cup of coffee and brought it to the table.

“Thank you for coming, Ben,” I said.

“You said you had a problem,” he said.

I thought he was being brusque until he added, “Helping with problems are what friends are for. Perhaps we haven’t known one another long enough or well enough to become friends, but I’d like to keep that possibility open.”

Wow, I thought. He’s not brusque, but he sure is up-front.

“Ben, I’ve never before heard anyone say something like that. I have few . . . no, truthfully, I have no friends. I have acquaintances. I have a short list of people I communicate with on the internet. My landlord is a nice guy, but we’re not friends. Mark’s mother might have been a friend, but I’m afraid I’ve pushed her too hard, recently. So, I’d like to keep open the possibility of our becoming friends, as well.”

“Good. Now, what’s the problem?”

I told him what Mark had said about the dream when he transported himself to the roof. “He seemed to mix up what he saw then with a recurring nightmare in which he’s moving through a tunnel with something unknown, but frightening, chasing him. We did a Jungian thing. I asked Mark to complete the dream the way he would want it to end.” I described Mark’s imagining a Greek warrior protecting him, saving him.

Ben pointed to my empty cup and raised one eyebrow. I nodded, and he waved to the barista, who brought refills. I don’t get that kind of service, I thought. And I’m here nearly every day—and tip pretty generously. The barista must know who Ben is.

“Lucas? I have to tell you something. When you think hard about something, I can hear it. I’m not pulling your thoughts, you’re projecting them. The barista doesn’t know who I am. I sent him the impression that we want refills and that he would receive a generous tip—which I will leave. It’s simpler and easier—”

“You’re manipulating him?” I said. I tried to keep my voice neutral, but know that some disapproval probably came through.

“Not really, I don’t think. I offered a fair exchange of his service for my money. I just did it a little more quietly than if I had yelled across the room.”

I thought about that, and then nodded. “You’re right, of course. Your message to him contained no coercion? It’s not like what you suggested I do in the hospital, when I found out that people would do what I told them?”

Ben shook his head. “No, I didn’t coerce. Neither did you.”

“Huh?”

“At least, if you did, you didn’t use any powers. I would have known, because I was—well, keeping an eye on you isn’t quite right—but I was tuned to you and Mark and Eddie, and if any of you had used any powers, I would have known it. No, whatever you did at the hospital was done by force of personality as well as the probability that you had the moral high ground.”

Ben quizzed me about Mark’s dream and the boy’s experience when he translocated to find Eddie. I understood why Ben was a captain of police: he was good. I could only imagine how a criminal would feel under such a pointed interrogation, and glad I didn’t have a guilty conscience. It was, however, of no avail. Ben was not able to shed any light on what Mark had seen. As far as he knew, when the gods translocated, the experience was instantaneous. I thanked him, and resolved to warn Mark not to do it again until we found out more. A lot more.

It was far easier to deal with our mundane problem—a long-term solution to our sleeping arrangements. The answer wasn’t simple, but Mr. Simmons said it would be okay. Captain Marlberg’s question about my apartment had suggested the solution. I remembered from when I was a kid that Mark’s bedroom shared a wall with my living room. A handful of cash brought in a crew of workmen who tore out a section of wall and added a door between my apartment and Mark’s room. A couple of phone calls and a credit card number ensured delivery of a second twin bed and desk, and two computers.

Alice and I had several talks while this was happening. She seemed to understand and accept that the boys would often “sleep-over” with me. We also talked about agape love, and she seemed to accept, as well, how important was our physical, non-sexual bonding.

Mark

Eddie and I had pushed our beds together. Mama knew, and so did Lucas, but neither of them said anything. We whispered a lot before we went to sleep. At first, it was from the edges of our own bed. Then we started getting into one bed and cuddling while we whispered. We usually got stiffies when we cuddled, and we talked about that, too. We talked about sex, and a couple of times jacked off after these talks. I’d learned my lesson, and made sure that we had handkerchiefs that could be rinsed out in the sink the next morning.

After a few weeks of this, I dreamed that Eddie was performing fellatio on me. I knew what it was because I’d watched stuff on the internet. In my dream, I lay on my back while me took me into his mouth, and deep into his throat. It didn’t take long for him to bring me to orgasm. When he did, I woke up not to a wet dream, like I thought I might, but to find that my penis was really in Eddie’s mouth and was filling it with my cum. By this time, even my awake self had lost control. I could not stop him even if I wanted to.

Even if I wanted to. These words haunted me while I gasped with release. I felt Eddie suck out the last of my cum while I quivered with good feelings. Eddie raised his head and then lay beside me, his body pressed tightly to mine and his arm draped over my chest.

“Eddie?” I whispered. I felt him shiver, so I put my arm around him and pulled him close. “Eddie, I know what you did. I thought it was a dream, until I woke up and it was real. In my dream, I didn’t want to stop you. When it was real, I couldn’t stop you. But I should have! This isn’t right!”

“It has to be right!” Eddie said. He was crying, now. I felt his body shaking with sobs; I heard his voice become throaty as his nose filled with tears. “It has to be right because I love you!”

“Oh, Eddie, I love you, too, but I love Lucas!”

Eddie’s tears stopped and his body stiffened. “I know!” he said. “I know and that doesn’t have anything to do with it. You can love Lucas and me both. It’s different. We’re different!”

All I could do was hold him until we fell asleep. The next morning, we were both in our own beds, my pajamas weren’t down around my ankles, and Eddie said nothing. I realized that the whole thing had been a dream. I’ve got to talk to Lucas!

Lucas

That winter gave way to spring more slowly than in living memory. Some people blamed La Niña, which had begun to dominate weather patterns in the Americas the previous fall. Others blamed the scientists who had warned of global climate change, although the illogic of this escaped them. Eco-terrorists from the fringes of the environmental movement began to attack the electric grid, destroying power lines. The electric company had to institute brownouts and rolling blackouts. A UPS kept my computer and modem operating, but I missed several deadlines when my ISP’s servers went down. The Army managed to beat out the TSA for the mission of protecting the power lines. (The TSA’s arguments that the lines were “transporting” electricity and that the electricity was used in transportation terminals was laughed out of contention, frustrating those in the administration who were determined to use every crisis to increase and consolidate their power.) After several would-be saboteurs were shot “while resisting arrest,” the attacks stopped, and things went back to normal.

Well, not quite normal. Not in our household. In early April, Mark came to me with the first crisis.

“Lucas? I don’t know what to do!” We were sitting side-by-side on the couch. When he said those words, he dug himself into my side and wrapped his arms around me. I felt him shaking.

I put my arms around him.

“Mark-o-mine, what’s wrong?” I used his pet name. I used it so seldom that it got his attention. He stopped crying and squeezed me even harder.

“I love you!” He started crying again.

“I love you,” I said. “Love is a good thing, so that’s not the problem.”

“I love Eddie, too! And I promised Aiden . . . .”

I waited for a few moments, but Mark said nothing else. So, I asked, “Why is it a problem that you love Eddie, Aiden, and me?”

“ ’Cause I want to do sex with Eddie, and so does he. And I think, I hope, that when we get to when Aiden is he wants to do sex stuff, and I want to do sex stuff with you and you won’t!”

I thought I had the answer. “Mark, we talked about this. Love isn’t just about sex—”

“No, but that’s part of it! And if I do sex stuff with Eddie I can’t do it with Aiden, and if I do sex with Eddie or Aiden then I can’t do it with you when I’m eighteen.”

He hesitated. “You will do sex with me when I’m eighteen, won’t you, if I wait, I mean?”

My answer came quickly. I’d thought about it for a long time. “Yes, Mark. When you’re eighteen, if you still want, we can do sex.

“But that has nothing to do with having sex with Eddie or Aiden. Do you remember I said that you can love more than one person, and that it’s okay to do that?”

I felt Mark’s head, buried under my left arm, nod.

“It’s okay to have sex with more than one person, too, as long as it’s someone I know and approve of, and that you avoid lustful acts.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Mark whispered into my chest.

“Mark, having sex just to get the good physical feelings that come with it, is lustful. Having sex that hurts someone else is lustful. If you have sex with someone you love, if you both get good feelings, if you, oh, I don’t know, if you try to make the other person happy and feel good, if you cuddle afterwards, if you cuddle first and don’t just jump in and get off, it’s not lustful. If you can do all that, you can have sex with more than one person you love.”

“Lucas, I had a dream last night,” Mark said. He told me the dream, and then pulled away enough that he could look up at me. “It’s okay for me and Eddie to have sex?”

“Eddie and me,” I corrected.

“Eddie and you! What—”

I laughed, then realized that Mark looked not just puzzled, but hurt.

“I was correcting your grammar, silly goose! I meant Eddie and you!”

I thought I had successfully solved this until Mark said. “Actually, I was hoping you would show us what to do.”

“Mark? You’ve seen stuff on the internet, haven’t you?” I’d not filtered the computers in the boys’ bedroom, and knew Mark had watched stuff on my computer.

“Yeah, but that’s all lustful acts, I think. I mean, will you show us the love part of it?”

Oh, I thought. And the safe parts of it. And the what-might-hurt-so-don’t-do-it parts. And the dangerous parts. And the wait-until-you’re-older parts. Well, Lucas, you wanted to be a daddy; it’s time you started earning your keep.

Mark

Lucas had told me never to translocate until we could learn more about it, so I wasn’t surprised when he announced that Ben would be visiting to work with me. We talked a lot about what he did, and how he did it. He talked about the power that the gods seemed to get, and said that he saw that I had a lot of it.

“There’s a kind of glow, that only other gods and spirits can see,” he said. He showed me in my head how to look for the glow.

“I can see it!” I said, and turned to Lucas. “I can see—” I stopped talking, and stared.

“What’s up, Mark?” Lucas asked. “You can see Ben’s glow, right?”

“I can see Ben’s, and I can see yours, too. Ben’s is golden. Yours is silver, but it’s the same thing, I think.”

“Ben?” Lucas asked.

“He’s right,” Ben said. “I saw it at the coffee shop, but was afraid to say anything.”

“Why?” Lucas asked.

“Yeah, why?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

Ben seemed embarrassed. At least, he blushed a little, and looked at his feet. “I’ve never seen a silver glow, before. All the gods and spirits are gold. But you’re supposed to be Prometheus, the Bringer of Light. Dike said she didn’t know what your powers would be, and I didn’t want to influence reality by saying something. I still don’t. Please?”

Lucas nodded. “You’re right, of course. What’s next for Mark?”

“I’m going to translocate Mark and me somewhere and, after a few minutes, back here. We’ll find out what Mark sees. If that’s okay?”

Lucas agreed, and Ben moved to the middle of the room and gestured for me. I slid my canes onto my arms and stood beside him.

Lucas

Eddie giggled when Mark and Ben disappeared, but it was a nervous giggle. I heard his relief five minutes later when they reappeared. Mark handed Eddie an orange. “California,” he said. “Ben made me pay for the orange.”

“Any tunnels?” I asked.

Mark shook his head. “No tunnels, and it happened really quickly.”

“I did the translocating,” Ben said. “Now, it’s Mark’s turn.”

He turned to Mark. “Do you remember the orange grove? Show me.” He seemed to study Mark.

“Okay, you have a good picture of it. Take us there.” Again, they vanished.

Five minutes later, they reappeared. No oranges this time, but Mark’s face was white.

“Tunnels.” I said.

Mark nodded and stumbled toward the couch. I jumped up, grabbed him, and set him on the couch. Eddie had seen Mark’s face, too, and joined us. We sandwiched Mark between us.

“It was chasing us!” Mark said. “It was chasing us and I tried to go faster but I couldn’t. I tried to tell Ben, but I couldn’t. He was beside me, but he didn’t see me!”

After Mark had calmed down a bit, Ben told us what he’d seen. “It was as instantaneous as normal. Whatever is happening, is happening only to Mark. When we got to the orange grove, I saw that he was afraid, and I did the translocating back here.”

Ben shook his head. “I’m sorry Mark, Lucas, but this is beyond me. I think you need to ask someone a great deal older and smarter.”

I knew two I could ask: Dike and Zeus. I agreed. “Thank you, Ben, I’ll contact Dike or Zeus. In the meanwhile, however, these two boys haven’t eaten since lunchtime. Would you join us for pizza? It’s within walking distance.”

We had a good time at the pizza place. Mark and Eddie no longer engaged in their gross, competitive behavior, but still managed to devour more pizza than I can remember having consumed at their age. Ben and I split a pitcher of beer, and I made a joke about “translocating while impaired.” I was careful that Mark didn’t hear it, and Ben thought it was funny, at first, and then started talking about the critical control necessary to translocate. I realized that the alcohol hadn’t affected him, at all.

Dike seemed pleasant when she accepted my phone call. I explained the situation, and described Ben’s work with Mark. She said she had no idea what was happening, but that she’d ask others. It was a few days later that she called to report that no one else had experienced anything like it.

“What if I were to ask Zeus?” I said.

“I’ve already done that,” she said.

“What should we do?”

“Don’t let him translocate,” she said. The phone went dead.

Part of me was a bit relieved. These gods were powerful, but they weren’t omniscient. I kind of liked that. On the other hand, I was afraid for Mark.

By late spring, Mark could walk and run a short distance without help or support. He wasn’t ready to play tag with Eddie or to join the track and field team at the gym where we all worked out, and when we went out, he usually wore braces and used canes. Still, for someone who’d never walked before, he was doing very well.

Not, apparently, well enough—at least, in his eyes. The next crisis came in June after Eddie and I had joined a pick-up game of volleyball at the gym. Mark had sat on the bleachers and watched. I had seen but hadn’t paid much attention to the boy his age who sat beside him for a while.

When we got home, and while Eddie was taking his bath, Mark pulled me to the couch and curled into my left side. “Lucas, do you like Eddie more than me ’cause he can play volleyball and stuff?”

“Mark, I told you that you were and always will be my first son. I love you. And I love Eddie. And, unless I miss my guess, so do you.”

Mark nodded, and pulled a pamphlet from his pocket. “Some kid at the gym gave me this. He said I was too young and too cute to be sitting by myself. I read it. And it scared me!”

I looked at the pamphlet—tract, rather. The front bore the logo of an infamous, self-proclaimed Christian family organization and the headline: “Will Sex be Your Road to Hell?”

I nearly threw it directly in the trashcan, but Mark said he had read it. So I read it, too. It was what I expected: any form of sex outside heterosexual marriage was a mortal sin. Any sex among married couples other than normal intercourse for procreation was a mortal sin. They didn’t describe normal, but I bet it didn’t include reverse cowgirl.

Contraception, according to them, was a sin. Abortion was a sin. Premature withdrawal and the rhythm method to prevent pregnancy were sins. Pictures of people screaming amid flames as stereotypical devils leered and poked them with pitchforks adorned that page of the tract.

Sacred marriage blessed with children—along with an appropriate contribution to this particular ministry—would bring eternal reward. That page held a picture of happy couples, men and women holding hands, wearing white robes adorned with the logo of the ministry (!) approaching the gates of heaven. Didn’t this guy ever hear of that part of Matthew where Jesus said that in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage? Of course, whoever wrote the Gospel of Matthew got it wrong. None of the other gospel writers seemed to think this was important enough to include.

Before I could say anything, Mark pointed to the pictures and said, “So there is a heaven and a hell, and Eddie and I are going to hell, and if you and me have sex we’re going to hell because it’s a sin?”

I was too stunned to correct his grammar—stunned at both the thought and the anger with which Mark expressed it.

“No, Mark! Please don’t think that! In the first place, if we had sex now or later it would be a sin only in the context of some limited interpretations of the Judeo-Christian religion. In fact some people who have studied the earliest versions of Matthew . . . let me think . . . Chapter 8, verse 5 and on . . . believe that the beloved–child-servant whom Jesus healed was the centurion’s catamite. It was very common for a soldier of his rank to have a catamite—a boy who was loved and with whom the man had sex. The words used in the earliest versions of the gospel to describe the child-servant were commonly used elsewhere to describe exactly that kind of relationship. Whoever wrote the gospel—and we know that wasn’t Matthew—would have known that. Yet he said Jesus didn’t hesitate to heal the boy and praised the centurion for his faith.

“It was Jesus, too, who instructed his followers to love one another. It’s pretty clear he meant agape love, but agape love doesn’t include, and specifically excludes the hatred that many Christians feel and show toward homosexuals. Those who have that hatred are violating the most important commandment they were given.

“Some Christians disguise their hatred with the expression, love the sinner, hate the sin; however even there they’re being judgmental—which they were also told in no uncertain terms not to do. That’s another violation of their own rules.

“And, Christianity is only one of several major belief systems. The Buddha didn’t consider homosexuality a sin, although he warned against empty lust of the flesh. He taught that any sex, gay or straight, might slow one’s progress toward ultimate fulfillment, but not that any kind of sex inherently sinful. Islam warns against homosexuality, but always in the context of lustful relationships, not the acts, themselves. And Hinduism does not view homosexuality as a religious sin—and actually, a religious sin is the only kind of sin that can exist.”

Mark’s eyes hadn’t quite glazed, but they were moving back and forth. I knew that meant he was thinking.

“So, it’s okay for you and me to have sex?” he said.

“No, Mark. It’s not. In the first place, even though you and Eddie are having sex, I don’t think you’re ready to make the decision to have sex with an older person, yet. There are dynamics that are different from those of people the same age.”

“What’s dynamics? And what makes them different?”

“It’s things like who is in control. It’s about an imbalance of power. It’s whether the relationship is balanced. It’s—”

“It’s a lot of bullshit,” Mark said. “At least that’s what it sounds like. If you don’t know the answer, don’t make something up. You’ve never lied to be before!”

“I’m not lying,” I protested. “It’s just that there are things you don’t know about and which I’m having a hard time describing. And don’t say bullshit!”

“Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit! You can’t tell me what to do! You’re not my daddy! If you won’t have sex with me, I’ll find somebody who will!”

Mark disappeared. Oh, shit. That was my first thought. My second was, he’s separated from Eddie.