And, alas, I am also, alas, the tortured ex-Marine cop, forty pounds over his Parris Island weight, a major smoker, rifle collector, registered Republican, with fifteen long years till retirement, a disappointed man who—having built rabbit-catching boxes as a boy—finds entrapment lots more fun than giving speeding tickets. He is also a guy whose own sexual fantasies let him display his son (nearly as pretty as he once was). He does it in order to catch the vermin he sees swarming everywhere, the shameless weirdos who’ll be the death of this Great Land, the queers that he knows want, most obsessively of all, him.

Sure, he might have drinking probs and the so-so marriage and no further prospect of promotion anywhere near even assistant chief, but at least he’s not that far gone. He is the detective about to detect. Sick behavior like …

Mine. Like Dan’s. And I keep silent, in a stall already unlatched for kicking open at lethal speed. I unpocket the necessary flashbulb I’m about to insert into its reflector socket. I hear whispering. Good boy, my son is waving the perpetrator closer. I prepare the flashbulb. The glass sphere’s metal tip I dampen with my tongue. I am ready, now, I breathe, I kick toward desire illegal. The blast in a tile space this small sounds like a cannon going off. I holler “FRee-eeze!” at heat. As I capture, for eternity, the Older Me just as I touch the healthy prong of Me Young. And, armed with pictures of me molesting myself, I am going to have to turn me in. Otherwise, admit it—I’d be less than a whole man.

Hey, Dan? Missed you.

Find me, sir.

SAINT
MONSTER

In Loving Memory—
Mac Dancy (1888?–1979)
and
Ardelia Smith (1930–1966)

1. OLD TESTAMENT
Expulsion

I. Genesis
“The Expulsion to the Garden”

And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy Voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked….

Genesis 3:9–10

Dad screams I mustn’t see them at it but I race across our backyard toward the darkened house. Under me, short legs are stunted flippers spinning. My old tricycle on its side, I hop. Lagging, Daddy bellows, “Come back, son. Leave them be. Don’t go in and look. Let sleeping dogs. She loves us anyways….”

Three lawns behind, he waves the white sling of his newly broken arm. He’s a smoker and is stumbling and keeps hacking, the old sweetie. Daddy begs me not to catch the two of them at it, at some deed. But I clamp palms over my ears, I must not obey Dad, I am only doing this for him.

Our rear screen door is latched. I make such a fist. Knuckles break through rusted wire, a fry of brown powder. I jump then chin myself on the door’s crossbar. Reaching in, I unhook everything.