Chapter Text
Wayne Munson was fourteen years old the first time he met Richard Harrington.
It was the summer before he started high school. Wayne had developed a fondness for spending Saturday afternoons alone in the movie theater, sneaking into second showings and surviving for hours on a single bag of popcorn he stretched to make last.
Despite his wiles and thrift, it was a somewhat expensive hobby. His family wasn’t the poorest in town, but they didn’t have money for him to be spending seeing movies he’d already seen, especially not on a weekly basis. So, after a brief and frustrating search for gainful employment, he’d found a butcher shop in town that needed the help badly enough to overlook his age.
Joe, the butcher, was a portly and kind-faced man in his mid-fifties. He’d greet Wayne with a smile on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, tossing an apron and hat his way as he walked through the door. Wayne would sweep and mop the narrow linoleum floor of the shop, haul sacks of trash from the workroom to the dumpster out back, and, once a week, he’d wash the gleaming front windows. This last task was his favorite – something about the combination of fresh air and a job he could see he’d done well. So he would stretch it out for nearly an hour, though it could’ve easily been done in half as much time.
It was on one such afternoon that he first encountered Harrington. He had just finished the top panel of the glass door, using the soft cloth from his apron pocket to polish away the remaining bit of lint. He’d taken a step back to admire his work, like always, and collided with something solid.
“Sorry, mister,” he’d already started to say, wheeling around to face whoever he’d just run into. The face that met him was twisted into a frown – no, that wasn’t right – a sneer . The boy was at least two heads taller than Wayne, dressed impeccably in a crisp white button-down and a pair of cleanly-pressed slacks.
“Watch where you’re going,” the larger boy hissed, reaching past Wayne to haul the door open. Before Wayne could form a response, or even another apology, he was through the door…leaving a broad, deliberate handprint in the middle of the glass as he went.
Wayne had stared at the mark for a moment. There had been no reason to make it. The door’s metal handle was more than adequate for holding it open as one passed through. It took several long, blank seconds for him to come to the conclusion that the kid had seen what he’d been doing and decided to ruin his work on purpose .
It was, all things considered, a very unfavorable first meeting. From then on, Wayne kept a closer eye on the sidewalk around him whenever he had cause to be working out front of the shop. He definitely did not want a repeat performance.
Wayne would learn at the start of the school year that the boy was named Richard Harrington. He was not technically new in town, but had attended primary school at a private academy a few hours’ drive north, just outside of Chicago. His family had decided to transfer him into public school for the remainder of his education, and so Wayne saw him often thereafter: in class, strutting the halls in a varsity sweater, or helping pretty girls out of his father’s white Cadillac in front of the movie theater.
And Wayne did mean girls , plural. He’d often swing by to look at the marquee on Friday nights, gearing up to decide what to see the following day. More often than not, this stroll would coincide with Harrington’s arrival for date night. He’d be with pretty cheerleader Shelly Holloway one week, and peppy, bespectacled Elizabeth Holland the next. Many of the girls were classmates, but some Wayne didn’t recognize. He once went seven consecutive weeks without seeing the same girl twice.
It continued that way for the entirety of their mutual (and thankfully short) time at Hawkins Junior/Senior High School. They overlapped only during Wayne’s freshman and sophomore years, during which Wayne made a sincere effort to avoid running into him, both literally and figuratively. He wasn’t scared of bullies, or getting into fights; but he knew that you always got in more trouble for scrapping when the other guy had rich parents. His goal was to stay off the administration’s radar, and so he made himself scarce when necessary. Eventually the elder boy was off to college, and Wayne spent the rest of his high school career (and a few years thereafter) content to never think of him again.
Then, suddenly, the nation was at war. Wayne’s mother and his baby sister ( “I’m fifteen, Wayne!” ), Amelia, had cried and cried when his draft letter arrived in their dented white mailbox. His father was gone by then, had drifted out of their lives when Amelia was too small to remember. So he’d gathered his girls close on the couch, pressing his face into Amelia’s dark curls, and whispered a promise he already knew he couldn’t keep.
“I’m coming home, do you hear me? I’m coming home, and I’m gonna take care of us all.”
It would be years before he had a chance to make good on that promise.
Wayne arrived home from Vietnam on a Tuesday afternoon. His baby sister Amelia made the trek to pick him up in the family’s shitty Ford, the pockmarked chrome bumper just as cockeyed as he remembered. But it ran well enough, and it got them back to Hawkins in the usual two and a half hours, give or take. She filled the ride with fast-paced chatter, catching him up on several years of breaking news and idle gossip. Most of all they reminisced about their mother, who had passed shortly after Wayne’s conscription.
Eventually they’d arrived at Amelia’s new place. The family home had been sold during his absence, and all of his things either taken to Amelia’s or put into storage to wait for his return. Amelia herself was a married woman now, and had recently given birth to a healthy baby boy.
“Edward,” she’d told Wayne on the drive home. “After Mom’s brother.”
Uncle Eddie had been a good man. He’d helped out around the house when they were kids, until he got too sick to do much anymore. He’d been the one to teach Wayne to fish and to defend himself in a fight. If you had to be named after someone, Wayne supposed Uncle Eddie wasn’t a bad choice.
The boy in question was crawling happily on a blanket on the floor when they entered Amelia’s home. To Wayne’s tired eyes, he looked like something out of a painting in a book. A fat, tiny cherub, his head adorned with a crown of soft, dark curls. He’d looked up at Wayne with absolutely no fear, which felt somehow shocking considering where he’d been not twelve hours before. Where Wayne had come from, fear and rage and a hurt so deep you’d never reach the bottom of it lined the corners of every man’s eyes. But now this wide, chocolate-brown gaze was fixed upon him with a wary sort of curiosity. It looked so like the boy’s mother’s, and so like Wayne’s own mother’s, that he felt strangely close to tears.
He dropped down onto the floor with little Eddie, and spent the next several hours in a sort of delighted daze while his sister continued to chatter happily to him. She puttered around in the kitchen, fixing dinner, while he marveled at the strength of his nephew’s grip around his calloused finger. It was almost like whiplash, seeing his sister and his hometown so unchanged, so happy after everything he’d seen.
Of course, he only managed to hold onto the illusion until her husband came home.
Frank Milton was not the good, kind man his sister had described to him in years of letters. He was, in point of fact, a mean drunk and a piss-poor husband. Over the next few years, as his true nature was revealed, Wayne would try several times to convince Amelia to leave him.
“Come on, Millie. Look at you,” he lamented, brushing gentle fingers over the bruise under her left eye. “He can’t be worth it.”
“He doesn’t mean it, Wayne. He just had too much to drink is all.”
“I’ve never had so much to drink that I’d put my hands on a woman. That man is trouble, Amelia. Come stay with me. There’s enough room in the apartment for you and Eddie. Or, I don’t know…I’ll get a bigger place. I’m due for a raise at work, I can figure it out.”
But she wouldn’t come. Not that time, and not the next, and not any of the dozen-odd other times he asked. Nothing scared her more than the prospect of being divorced. That, she said, was a stain that never washed out.
Eventually, after one-too-many retaliatory strikes from Wayne, Frank moved them two counties over. It was just far enough that the trip there and back wasn’t easy, and would eat up most of a day. Just far enough that she stopped going to Wayne for help.
He would wonder often, in the years after her death, whether he should have followed them. Whether he could have prevented her suffering, and Eddie’s, if he hadn’t been so reluctant to uproot the life he’d just started building for himself in Hawkins. The image of little Eddie, dark hair shorn close and face downturned at his mother’s graveside, haunted Wayne’s nights for months afterwards.
He’d been so small in his hand-me-down suit, no doubt provided by one of Amelia’s friends from church. The faded black wool sleeves had covered his hands to the knuckle, and Wayne had watched him clench and unclench his fist while the pastor spoke about ashes and dust. The gesture had struck Wayne as intentional, rather than mindless; like it was something the boy was doing to release energy, or maybe to keep himself from crying.
And then Wayne got a job driving truck, and the years started flowing away like water.
Wayne knew something was wrong before he even finished parking his beat-up Ford F-100 in the gravel out front of the trailer. The living room light was on, a warm yellow glow emanating from the squat window. He knew this was wrong, because he was returning from a three-day run to Oklahoma City by way of Wichita. He would never have left the lights on before leaving on a trip - the electric company just about robbed him blind for the little he used on his brief stints at home as it was.
He took his time fitting the key into the door and turning the lock, the hunting rifle he kept under the truck seats braced carefully under one arm. Entering slowly, he scanned the kitchen and hallway for threats. Instincts he hadn’t called upon in years, a vigilance he’d learned across an ocean, guided his eyes towards the spots that would provide best cover for a potential attacker.
But Wayne didn’t find any attackers.
What he found was his nephew. Eddie seemed to be composed entirely of knees and elbows, folded as small as he could make himself in the farthest corner of the front room. His arms were wrapped around his shins, shoulders hunched up up to his ears, but what struck Wayne the most was his eyes. Not just the purpling swell of a day-old bruise that cast a shadow over one in the dim, yellow light. No, it was the deep, primal fear in Eddie’s expression that gave him pause. The boy was looking at him like he carried an executioner’s blade.
Slowly, telegraphing his movements so as not to spook him further, Wayne turned and set the gun muzzle-down against the front door.
“Eddie?” he offered in as soft a voice as he could manage. It came out rough anyway, his voice gravelly after days of silent driving. “That you, kid?”
He watched as the trembling pile in the corner momentarily tensed, then gave a short nod. Wayne wanted to ask him what in the hell he was doing there, and how he’d gotten into the trailer, but he sensed that those questions had long, complex answers that Eddie wouldn’t be eager to part with. So instead, he relaxed his own shoulders and let his face fall into the familiar smile he reserved for family.
“Well, hell, then. Whatcha doing down there? Come on over here and let me have a look at you.”
Eddie unfolded slowly, lifting himself from his fetal crouch. The motion was stilted in a way that smacked of joints stiff from being held too long in one position. He shuffled across the floor towards Wayne, timid as a fawn and projecting his anxiety loud enough that they could probably hear it in Loch Nora. One fist snarled in the fabric of his worn t-shirt, clenching and unclenching in slow turns, but he did as his uncle asked, moving further into the warm light of the room.
Wayne could see now that it was more than just the black eye. Eddie’s lower lip was split in two places, swollen and scabbed over from where he’d clearly been fussing at it. The injured eye also touted a narrow gash across the brow, as if the person who’d hit him had been wearing a ring, or as if it hadn’t been a fist they’d hit him with at all. Last, and most concerning, was his left arm. He held the wrist close to his body, almost cradling it against himself. Like it hurt. Wayne was willing to bet it did.
Loath to make too much of a fuss and scare the kid, he merely gave a low whistle. “Looks like you’ve had a rough one, huh?”
Eddie only continued to stare at him in silence for a moment. Then, seeming to remember himself, he gave another jerky nod. “Yes, sir.”
Wayne huffed a soft laugh. “None of that, now, boy. I’m your uncle, not your Sargeant. Just Wayne is fine.”
His expression thawing minutely, Eddie nodded. “Sorry, sir. Um, I mean. Sorry, Wayne.”
That felt like progress. Wayne ventured a step further. “You hungry? I’ve been on the road for sixteen hours, I think I could eat a whole hog. Wanna come have a seat, and I’ll scrounge us something up?”
After a final tense moment, Eddie agreed. They moved as one into the kitchen, and Wayne tossed his overnight bag under the table to be dealt with later. His first priority, right then, was getting his nephew’s injuries seen to.
Over the next several hours, a shared pot of canned chicken soup, and a long stretch at the hospital the following day, Wayne learned the story of how Eddie came to be a stowaway in his trailer. It was an ugly tale, and a confirmation of Wayne’s worst fears about the boy’s father.
Frank was, of course, the source of Eddie’s injuries. He’d lashed out after an argument Eddie was hesitant to say too much about, and twisted the boy’s arm behind him til he’d heard something snap. The hospital had wanted to call his father, Eddie being a minor, but the kid had collapsed into near-hysterics at the suggestion. It was the first panic attack Wayne had ever seen his nephew have, but it wouldn’t be the last.
“I’ll take him home,” Wayne had assured the attending doctor. “He just needs a day or two to cool off, and so does his old man.”
Satisfied that their civic duty with regard to family reunification was complete, the staff had discharged Eddie and his immobilized wrist into Wayne’s custody. The two of them had barely shut the doors of Wayne’s rusting blue pickup before Eddie’s panicked babbling began anew.
“Wayne,” he hissed. “You can’t take me back there. I can’t go back with him; I’d rather die.”
Wayne heaved a sigh, reaching out to wrap a warm, calloused hand around the back of the boy’s neck.
“I know that, son. I had to tell them that to keep them from calling your daddy. The longer it takes him to figure out where you are, the better off we are.”
Eddie’s head snapped around to face him. “You think he’ll find me here?”
“Well, you don’t have much family. I suspect he’ll come sniffing around my place eventually.” Eddie looked forlorn, turning his eyes back down to the footwell and chewing nervously at a fingernail.
“He’ll kill me,” he breathed softly. “He said he would, and I believe him.”
Wayne’s chest felt tight, guilt and shame washing over him for what he’d abandoned his sister’s child to for all these years. But he steeled himself; this wasn’t about him.
“I won’t let that happen, Eddie. He’s not gonna touch you again.”
“He will. If he finds me, if you let him take me back–”
Wayne reached over and squeezed the back of his neck softly, reassuringly.
“That’s not gonna happen. I promise you, kid. You’re safe with me.”
“But if he finds me–”
“If he finds you, I will handle it. If he sends the cops looking for you, I will handle it. But Eddie,” his voice turned sad, reluctant. “I need you to tell me everything that happened. I need to be able to tell the police something if they do come looking.”
And so, slowly, over the drive back to his trailer, Eddie told his uncle what was left of the story. He told him about his father’s drinking, and the fights his parents had in the years before his mother’s death; about Frank’s shady business dealings, and the number of times they’d had to flee in the night from someone or other he owed money; about all the nights Eddie had spent taking care of himself over the years while his father slept off another bender in the local precinct’s drunk tank.
Finally, he told Wayne about how his father had come home early from his most recent “job” three days ago and caught Eddie kissing Jacob Whitlow on his back porch.
His first kiss.
The scale of Eddie’s fear suddenly made sense to Wayne. Frank Milton was a scab and a louse for a million reasons, but above all else, he was a bigot. Wayne could only imagine the size of his rage, could feel his heart breaking at the thought of little Eddie alone out in front of it. Hell, he was just a kid; twelve years old, and forced to defend himself against the wrath of a man three times his size. A man who was supposed to love him, to protect him from the hatred and the evil in the world.
Wayne felt his stomach sour. He slid his arm all the way around Eddie’s shoulders, squeezing him tightly as they pulled into the trailer park. They idled outside the trailer for a few minutes, both staring straight ahead and balancing the weight of Eddie’s revelations between them.
Finally, Wayne spoke.
“Thank you for telling me, Ed.” His voice was gruff, but the words were soft. Eddie shifted to look up into his uncle’s face, gauging the meaning of his words.
“So…I can stay, then?”
Wayne’s brow furrowed, and he met Eddie’s worried gaze.“‘Course you can stay. You were always gonna stay.”
Eddie’s eyes widened slightly.“Even though I’m…” He seemed to struggle to find words. “...like this?”
For a brief moment, Wayne felt the loss of his sister deeper than he had in years. His grief was always present, but the sudden sharp pain of it nearly made him gasp. What would she say now, if she could see the fear in her son’s eyes? What would she think of her brother for not protecting him better?
Gathering himself for Eddie’s sake, Wayne took a deep, steadying breath. He tightened the arm around the boy’s shoulders, tucking him closer against his own side.
“Son, I want you to listen to me. You are not ‘like’ anything. There isn’t a damn thing in the world wrong with you. Not one damn thing. You’re, you are–” He had a sudden flash of memory, something his mother had said to him when he wasn’t much older than Eddie was now. “You are as God made you, do you understand me?”
“I don’t think God has much time for people like me,” Eddie replied after a long moment of silence. His voice was muffled against the flannel of Wayne’s shirt, and he seemed to struggle with where to put his broken arm, finally settling on resting it awkwardly across Wayne’s lap. “I don’t think God likes me much at all.”
Wayne had never been particularly religious, but his mother and sister had been regular churchgoers. On warm summer nights, he sometimes imagined he could still hear Mama in the kitchen, humming along to hymns from the crackling radio in the front hall. She read him bible verses as a child, and said grace every night before dinner. But those weren’t the parts of her faith that Wayne remembered, that he called to mind whenever he heard the lilting strains of Amazing Grace wafting from a truck stop diner jukebox. And those weren’t the parts that Eddie needed now.
“God makes everyone exactly how He means to. Even me, and even you. He made you just the way you’re supposed to be. And nothing you could ever do, and…” He hesitated for a moment, wary of overstepping, but pushed on, “...and no one you could ever kiss would change that. Okay?”
He waited a moment, the air in the truck thick and heavy.
“Okay, Eddie?”
Instead of answering, Eddie merely nodded, the fuzz of his close-cropped hair brushing Wayne’s chin with the motion. Then, without further preamble, he started to softly cry.
They stayed in the truck til nightfall, til Eddie had cried himself out and finally succumbed to sleep. Wayne carried his limp form into the trailer, called his boss, and quit his job with the trucking company. He appreciated everything they’d done for him, but he couldn’t do the job anymore, he explained.
He had a kid at home, now. And he needed to be there for him.
Art by @hellfiredemon
Their first days together were less than smooth. Despite Wayne’s easy acceptance, Eddie was cagey and standoffish more often than not. Wayne supposed it made sense: they hadn’t seen much of one another in recent years. Eddie had come to him because he was his only other living family, but there’s a big difference between a plan to escape danger in an immediate sense and a plan to live with someone you don’t really know.
So, Wayne moved out of the trailer’s single bedroom first and foremost. Eddie was quiet, embarrassed at the fuss being made on his behalf. He kept telling Wayne the couch was fine, he didn’t need a bed, he was smaller anyway. But Wayne was insistent. The last thing he wanted was Eddie getting the idea that this arrangement was temporary, or that he was a time-limited guest in Wayne’s home. In no time at all, he even managed to source a reasonably comfortable folding bed for himself in the living room.
The second thing he did was take the kid shopping.
Eddie had left home with the clothes on his back and a backpack of his most prized possessions. It wasn’t much: a sad stuffed rabbit that had seen better days, a couple of paperbacks worn soft and yellow with age, and a framed picture of Amelia with a network of spiderweb cracks over the glass. He also had a switchblade and two unopened cans of Coors; those, however, he surrendered to Wayne immediately. (“I wasn’t trying to be smart,I just— I knew it was gonna be a long bus ride, and that was all we had in the fridge.”)
Wayne took him down to the local thrift store and let him pick out some clothes. Three pairs of jeans he’d likely grow out of by the end of the summer; a handful of soft (if somewhat threadbare) t-shirts and flannel overshirts, and a worn leather jacket that dwarfed him but was lined with butter-soft shearling and held a slightly spiced scent from years in a cedar chest. The last one was Eddie’s favorite, even if he wouldn’t be able to wear it for months. It had been marked down due to the season, so Wayne couldn’t see the harm in letting him have it now.
He was quickly learning that there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do to chase away that hangdog look that so often graced his nephew’s face.
It had taken a couple of weeks for them to adjust to one another. Eddie seemed to be always coiled with tension, like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Understandable, coming as he had from living in fear of his father’s displeasure and disgruntlement. He wasn’t quite scared , just…careful. Intentional about the steps he took, both literal and metaphorical.
They’d been settling into something like a routine. Wayne spent his days at his new job down at the plant, but was always home in time to cook dinner and have them both relaxing on the couch by seven. Eddie would often have a book with him: one of the soft, worn paperbacks he brought with him, or sometimes a plastic-wrapped hardcover from the library.
He’d asked Wayne where the library was only a couple of days into his time there; had said he was bored sitting around all day and needed something new to read. Wayne had offered to take him, of course, but Eddie had waved him off and insisted that it was fine, that the walk would give him something to do. And, lo and behold, the next day Wayne had come home to find him sprawled on the couch with a new book, a stack of five more balanced precariously on the overturned dynamite crate that served as their end table. He’d finished those by the weekend, and returned with six more.
If it hadn’t been required reading in school, there wasn’t much chance you’d convince Wayne to read it. But Eddie practically devoured books, could start one at the breakfast table and be nearly done by the time Wayne shuffled home from work. And he read books by authors that Wayne had never even heard of: Butler, Tolkien, Donaldson, LeGuin. Their covers often featured fantastical settings, barren deserts with turreted castles on the horizons or strangely spindly cities silhouetted against foreign moons. Nothing familiar; nothing that seemed like it could happen in a backwater suburb in Indiana.
And so their evenings went: quiet, but comfortable. Companionable, even. Wayne might not have been much of a reader himself, but he was grateful for the books, for something for Eddie to do to feel normal. Hell, some afternoons, he even seemed happy.
Wayne wanted rather badly for the kid to be happy.
It was Jeopardy! , of all things, that finally helped them open up a bit.
They’d been sharing their usual quiet post-dinner existence, the TV turned low to accommodate the fact that Eddie was 200 pages into something called The Twin Towers . Wayne was only half watching, nearly dozing himself where he was propped against the arm of the couch. Art Fleming asked the contestant to choose the next clue, dutifully repeated their category, and read out the answer:
“This was the given nickname of the Porsche 550 Spyder that celebrated actor James Dean was driving when he was involved in a fatal crash on May 30, 1955.”
Wayne muttered the answer aloud at the same time that Eddie scoffed it.
“Little Bastard.”
Both their heads snapped up, eyes turned toward one another. After a minute, Eddie’s expression had cracked into a wry smile.
“You like cars, Uncle Wayne?”
“I suppose so, yeah.”
Eddie had watched him for another minute, careful as always, before flicking his eyes back down to his book, but Wayne had felt so close to something there. An opportunity to connect.
He said the next thing before he could think better of it.“Like James Dean, too. You ever seen East of Eden ?”
Eddie nodded, eyes a little wide. “Used to play on TV sometimes. Mom always liked it.”
He flinched even as he said it, eyes darting away from Wayne again. They were both quiet for a moment, Mom echoing between them in the still air.
Wayne abruptly realized that he’d never had this; never had anyone to share in the grief of his sister’s death with him. There’d never been anyone else around to miss her. He cleared his throat, not sure what he was going to say, but knowing he had to say something. But of course, Eddie beat him to it.
“I always liked Rebel Without a Cause better.” It pierced through the tension, releasing the pressure Wayne had felt building behind his eyes and under his sternum.
“Yeah, I guess you would,” he finally snorted, earning a rare look of surprise from Eddie.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, arms folded over his chest in what Wayne hoped was exaggerated offense.
“Well, y’know. That whole tough guy thing Dean does in that one. It’s very…” He wracked his brain for a word that would convey his meaning without feeling like a taunt. “...comely.”
Eddie’s eyes got somehow even wider. He sputtered indignantly. “Excuse me, comely ? Who even says things like that?” But he was smiling, pale cheeks reddened.
Wayne couldn’t help a chuckle escaping him.
“Your mom did. She was…hell, I don’t know, maybe your age when she first saw James Dean, and she was just–” He slapped a dramatic hand over his heart, playing it up for Eddie’s sake. “–just in love with that hair and that jacket and those jeans –”
Eddie cut him off with a pained groan, his own hands coming up to cover his ears. “Ew, Wayne. I don’t wanna hear about my mom having the hots for some dude .”
Wayne tried to suppress his chuckles… but not very hard. “Why not? It means you’ve got good taste, right? Runs in the family and all that.”
He was just teasing him now, seeing if he could dig a few last grumbling laughs out of the joke before it died. When he was satisfied that he’d needled his nephew enough, he clapped a friendly hand to his shoulder and stood from the couch.
“Welp, dishes to do.”
He’d barely been at the sink five minutes when Eddie sort of wandered into the kitchen behind him. He managed to make it look accidental, like he’d just found himself in there, like there was anywhere in the meager square footage they shared that he wasn’t intimately familiar with the steps required to reach.
Eddie hadn’t said anything, just settled himself at the small breakfast table, ostensibly going back to reading his book. But Wayne could feel his nephew’s eyes burning holes in him every time he turned his back.
“If you’re gonna be in here…” He tossed Eddie a clean towel from the cabinet over the sink, nodding to the pile of rinsed pots and plates. “...might as well help me dry.”
The kid looked startled for a moment, but recovered easily enough. He padded over to the square of counter where Wayne had been placing the clean dishes, picking up a chipped blue plate and buffing it gently with the towel. Wayne waited until he’d done two more before he spoke.
“You can talk about her, you know.” He extended the olive branch softly, his voice quiet. “Your mama.”
Eddie didn’t look up from the Hawkins Fire Department mug he was dutifully drying. Wayne waited for him to finish with it, set it aside, and move on to a slotted spoon.
“My dad didn’t like to talk about her.” He still wasn’t looking at Wayne, but his voice was steady. “Got out of the habit, I guess.”
Wayne considers this; considers how possessive Frank had been of Amelia, how determined to take her away from the only family she’d had left. He supposed it made sense that that selfishness would have to find new ways to manifest once she was gone, withholding even her memory from the other people that loved her; from the son he no doubt saw as a burden she’d left him.
God, some men really were just born rotten.
Turning from the sink, Wayne fixed Eddie with as much of his direct attention as he figured he’d tolerate. “People handle death all different types of ways. Some people like to bury it deep, shove the hurt down to a place where they can’t feel it. Some people can’t talk about anything else, will just go on and on all day about missin’ whoever they lost. None of it’s really right or wrong, it’s just…people, I guess.” When Eddie didn’t look up from the last butter knife he’d been drying for two full minutes now, Wayne continued.
“What I’m trying to say is, it’s okay. To wanna talk about her.”
They shared a long beat of silence.
“It doesn’t…make you sad?” Eddie finally placed the knife in the drawer, setting the towel aside. “To be reminded of her?”
Wayne shrugged. “Sure it does. She was my baby sister, I damn sure wasn’t supposed to outlive her. But…” He trailed off, scratching at his beard while he searched for the right words. “It makes me happy, too. To remember her. And most times, the good of it outweighs the bad.”
Eddie seemed to take this in, rocking himself on his heels for a moment before plopping back down into the kitchen chair he’d originally occupied. He seemed to be thinking pretty hard about something, brow furrowed in a way that usually meant he was reaching the height of the action in one of his books. Finally he gave the chipped formica a few quick raps with his knuckles, seeming to come to a decision.
“I’d like to.” His voice was soft, but not unsure. “Talk about her.”
Wayne settled into the opposite chair, their knees bumping in the narrow space under the table.
“Alright, then. Let’s talk.”
As the summer wore on, Wayne learned a lot about his nephew. In fact, he learned a lot about a lot of things. Because, as it turned out, his mother was not the only topic about which Eddie liked to talk .
It started with that conversation around the kitchen table. Wayne had worried, later that night, that he might never get his nephew to open up like that again. It had been an emotionally taxing conversation, after all. Maybe the kid would have worn himself out.
But his worrying was for naught. The floodgates were open now, and Eddie had a seemingly bottomless supply of thoughts and questions and stories . God, the stories! Everything from benign anecdotes about the few friends he’d had back home to dramatic retellings of the stories he read from all those books. Wayne would come home from work to find the boy practically vibrating with excited energy, desperate for someone to talk to about whatever literary adventure he’d been on that day.
Wayne couldn’t say he retained it all, but he was more than happy to listen. He’d cook dinner while Eddie regaled him with stories about hobbits and elves, aliens and wizards and something called Fae? (That had been a weird one, but it reminded him of his grandmother’s fantastical stories from the wild and beautiful country where she’d grown up). Eddie’s voice became the soundtrack of trips to the grocery store, endless loads of laundry at the tiny laundromat a few blocks away, and hours that Wayne spent up to his elbows in the old Ford’s engine.
Actually, Eddie was surprisingly helpful with that. It turned out that his father had taught him some things; namely, how to get a car that wasn’t running to start running again, toot sweet. His suggestions weren’t always sustainable – no amount of duct tape was ever an acceptable solution, in Wayne’s book – but he knew enough to make himself useful.
It was on one such afternoon that Eddie finally asked Wayne for something. Wayne was under the truck, whispering curses at the oil pan like he did just about every time he was under it. Eddie was curled up into a corner of the ratty couch that sat on the trailer’s porch, occasionally offering humorous commentary on the book he was reading. ( Oceanworld , Wayne thought he’d called it.) There had been a few minutes of quiet, wherein Wayne finally managed to get the damn rusted bolt unstuck, before Eddie’s tentative voice reached him under the vehicle.
“Hey, Uncle Wayne?”
Wayne grunted, mouth busy holding a half-inch wrench so he could use both hands to pull off the corroded bolt. Eddie, used to Wayne’s not-quite-verbal communications by now, took it as the acknowledgement it was and continued.
“Do you have a tape player?”
Wayne yanked the bolt free, dropping it onto the grass by his hip. “Nah, just the radio.”
Eddie was quiet, and Wayne paused to consider why he’d ask.
“Why, you got cassettes?”
“No, but they have them at the library. Books on tape, and some music, too. So I figured I’d ask.”
“Huh. And here I thought it was just books.”
“No, they have all kinds of stuff! Books and movies and records–” And Eddie was off, extolling the many virtues of the public library system. Wayne tucked the knowledge away for future consideration, refocusing on the task at hand.
The following day, he stopped at Melvald’s on the way home from the plant. The selection was meager, but they had what he needed. He dropped the little combination tape player and AM/FM radio into Eddie’s lap on the couch when he got home. The boy blinked down at it for a moment, then turned wide eyes up at Wayne.
“You bought me a tape player?” Eddie breathed the question with the awe of a penitent receiving absolution. Wayne felt something shift behind his ribs, rearranging itself to accommodate the look of hope on the kid’s face.
“Sure. Can’t have you missin’ out on any of the benefits of the Hawkins Public Library, now can we?”
Hope bloomed into disbelief, which melted into pure shock. You would think he’d handed the kid a crate of gold bars, the way he was absolutely glowing up at him.
“That’s– I’m–” Eddie seemed almost lost for words, breaths coming fast and shallow. “You didn’t have to! I didn’t mean to make you spend money–”
Wayne waved him off. “You didn’t make me do anything. I wanted to. And it was on sale, only twenty bucks.”
Eddie’s eyes were wide on him again. “ Twenty? Wayne, that’s too much money to spend on me. I’ll never be able to pay you back.”
Wayne’s brow furrowed, and he considered his nephew for a moment. “It’s not a loan, Eddie. It’s a present. For both of us, actually.” He gripped Eddie’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have one around. I just hadn’t ever thought to pick one up, because I don’t have any tapes. Oh, speaking of…”
He reached into the pocket of his shirt and fished out a shiny, plastic-wrapped rectangle. “Here’s one to start your collection. Lady at the store said they’re selling out of ‘em left and right, so. Figure they must be good.”
Eddie accepted the tape from Wayne, turning it over to read the cover. It showed a man and woman doing – something, dancing maybe? – photographed in black and white. In large, stylized text above them were the words FLEETWOOD MAC . Then, slightly smaller under that: RUMORS . He read through the song titles, giddy and overwhelmed.
“I’ve heard of them, yeah. They’re on the radio a lot.” When he looked back up from the tape, he had managed to pull himself together a bit. “Thank you, Uncle Wayne. This is… This is so cool of you.”
Wayne gave Eddie’s shoulder one last squeeze then released him with a pat.
“Don’t mention it, kid. Glad I could help.”
That night, Eddie plugged the tape player into the outlet in his bedroom and played RUMORS no fewer than eight times back to back. Wayne didn’t even ask him to turn it down.