Dummy
A short cautionary tale
Amos fought the urge to look up as he passed under the branches of the suicide tree.
He’d never liked walking under that tree, not for as long as he could remember. And now the kid would be up there, like every afternoon this week, nestling in the twisting branches as if that were the safest place in the world.
Amos wasn’t sure if the kid couldn’t speak, or if he wouldn’t, or if he was just too stupid to have anything to say. He lived on the same block as Amos, in the run-down house on the corner, the one the kid and his thin, unsmiling father had moved to the previous summer.
There were rumors about what had happened to the kid’s mother: one of the girls at school had heard she was in the nuthouse; Amos’ friend Stitch theorized that she was being kept prisoner up in the attic and that’s why the kid wouldn’t talk. The kid’s dad, Mr. Tadeo, discouraged overtures from the neighbors with a flinty stare and spoke no more than was necessary. The kid didn’t say anything at all.
Amos ignored him all summer. But now that school had started, the kid was in three of Amos’ classes. Because the kid’s first name was Matt, Stitch and Jake and CJ gave Amos crap about being stuck in classes with “Mute Tardo”, although they mostly called the kid Dummy. Worse, the kid…
