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“How’d you get that bruise, son?”
Lucas had noticed it the moment Mark came in from school, a dark, angry splotch on his jaw. He’d decided not to ask, to give Mark time to bring it up himself, but it was now deep into the evening.
Mark glanced sharply up from his homework, then quickly looked away again. “Nothing,” he mumbled. “Just walked into a tree is all.”
Lucas frowned. He was at the sink scrubbing the dinner dishes, and as he worked he tried to visualize how that would even be possible.
“Turned my head at the last second,” Mark added, scribbling something in his notebook.
“A tree,” Lucas repeated, scraping at a particularly stubborn bit of grease. “How’d you manage that?”
“I don’t know, Pa, it just kind of happened,” Mark snapped. “Now I’ve really got to focus, all right?”
Lucas blinked, startled. He knew school was ever a source of stress for Mark: his kid was bright and good with his hands and picked certain things up quickly, but book-learning had never been his specialty. Sometimes it seemed he had to work twice as hard as the rest of his classmates, and Lucas knew it frustrated him to no end. Still, it wasn’t often Mark took that tone with him. Usually he was overjoyed to have a reason to be distracted from his work.
Lucas decided he would let it go, not tell the boy off for his tone. It was Monday after all and Mark had been forced to ride to school in a downpour of rain. Lucas would be grumpy too if he’d had to sit in a crowded schoolhouse all day in damp britches.
As he finished up his dishes, he crossed back to the table and spotted a tear at Mark’s elbow. “Hm,” he grunted, tapping the spot as he passed by. “Looks like you’re in need of a patch. You’ll have to get your sewing kit before you wear that to school tomorrow.”
“Sewing’s for girls,” Mark grumbled, jabbing his pencil into his notebook.
Lucas stared at him, stopped short beside the door. “Sewing is a practical skill that is fit for anyone to know,” he countered firmly. “I’m not asking you to embroider a handkerchief, Mark, just to fix your shirt.”
When Mark didn’t respond, Lucas just shook his head and headed for the stables. He wasn’t sure who’d put that nonsense in his boy’s head, but it certainly hadn’t come from him.
W / T \ Y
On Tuesday, Lucas arrived home from town to find Mark wasn’t anywhere in sight.
“Mark?” he called, jumping off his horse and jogging into the house. His stomach always twisted in fear when he couldn’t set immediately eyes on his son when he knew he should be home. Mark had been nabbed far too many times for him to handle the situation calmly. “Mark, you in here?”
The kitchen was empty, so Lucas ran into the bedroom. Mark was facedown on his bed, hands gripping his pillow.
“Mark,” Lucas breathed, running over to him. He put a hand on his neck and back, immediately feeling for fever. “What’s wrong, son? Are you sick?”
“I’m fine,” Mark mumbled, burying his face in the pillow.
“Well, what are you doing here, then?” The fear was leaving Lucas and in its place came irritation. “It’s the middle of the day; there’s chores to be done before sundown.”
“Just let me be, Pa,” Mark pleaded, turning his face away.
Lucas shook his head and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Not until you tell me what’s troubling you,” he said. “If you’re not sick, Mark, then what is it? Did something happen at school?”
Mark abruptly sat up, glaring at him. “You always say a man should fight his own battles. So that’s just what I’m doing, Pa!”
He jumped off the bed and ran out of the room, leaving Lucas startled and stung by the venom he’d put into a word that usually held such fondness.
W / T \ Y
By Thursday, Mark had grown even quieter and more sullen. The bruise on his face had mostly faded, but it seemed that his appetite and energy had gone along with it.
Lucas watched him over a dish of steak and potatoes. Mark poked at each potato with his fork, splitting it into pieces to make it look like he was eating it, a trick which Lucas knew that Mark knew wouldn’t actually fool anyone.
It was times like these that Lucas particularly missed his wife. Fatherhood came easy to him, had since that first moment that he’d arrived home and the squalling new baby had quieted instantly in his arms. Mark made it easy for him; he was a good kid with a strong sense of what was right. He was obedient and smart and good-natured and spirited and funny. He listened well and even when Lucas made mistakes, snapped at him, or was a bit too harsh, he always forgave his Pa and he always trusted him.
Until now, it seemed.
What would Margaret do if she was there? Was there something that she, in all her beautiful maternity, could say to or do for Mark that he couldn’t? Should he ask Lou for help? He hated turning to others for advice on how to raise his boy. Mark was his responsibility and his upbringing was Lucas’ decision. But perhaps that was just stubbornness. Perhaps it was to Mark’s detriment that he didn’t look for help or outside perspectives.
“Mark…” Lucas began, but stopped when Mark’s gaze flicked to him, already filled with defensiveness. He swallowed back whatever he’d been going to say and nodded at his son’s plate. “You not going to eat that?”
“I’m not hungry,” Mark mumbled, pushing his plate back. At least he had finally admitted it.
“Would you maybe be hungry for some ice cream instead?” Lucas tried. He didn’t believe in wasting food, nor did he believe in filling up on sweets instead of a good, hearty meal. That being said, Mark clearly needed some cheering and what better to cheer a boy than ice cream?
But Mark just shook his head and stood up. “No thanks, Pa,” he muttered. “May I be excused?”
Lucas nodded, unsure of what else to say, and Mark headed for the door with some excuse about bedding down the horses.
W / T \ Y
On Friday, Mark was home quite late. Lucas was almost to the point of going out and searching for him, seeing if he’d been held at school or had gone fishing with Billy, when his horse came galloping over the bridge, kicking up great clouds of dust. As he slowed to a stop, Mark tumbled from the saddle and dangled there, his foot caught in a stirrup.
“Mark!” Lucas yelled, racing towards the horse, knowing that if anything spooked him Mark could get dragged along behind and seriously injured.
Thankfully, he reached his son in time and rapidly untangled his foot. Mark lay in the settling dust, glaring up at the sky. There was a trickle of blood on his temple and Lucas quickly reached for him to check it out.
Mark turned his head and flinched away.
Lucas felt his body turn cold. “Mark,” he said quietly, as gently as he possibly could. “Who’s done this to you, son?”
Mark kept his face turned away, blinking rapidly.
“Come on,” Lucas urged, making sure his hands were within Mark’s line of sight as he helped his son up and led him over to the steps. When the two were settled side by side, he clenched his hands together in his lap. “Son, I understand if you don’t want to tell me what’s going on, and you don’t have to. But you do have to tell someone, you hear? Your teacher, Lou, Micah, Nils… someone.”
Mark stared daggers at his feet. “Carrie says that talking about things is for girls,” he mumbled.
Lucas’ eyebrows creased in confusion. Carrie Els was the oldest Els boy, known in North Fork for having a real mean streak. He was a kid who’d throw rocks at other folks’ cows and shoot birds out of the sky just to leave them in the dirt to rot. “Since when are you spending time with Carrie Els?” Lucas demanded.
And then everything clicked.
“Mark.” Lucas turned to him urgently. “Did Carrie do this to you, son?”
By the way Mark turned his face away, Lucas knew he’d hit the nail on the head.
“What’s this about, Mark? How long’s it been going on?” Lucas pressed, desperate for any sort of information. He was feeling… something. Not quite sad, not quite afraid…
Helpless. He felt helpless.
He’d always been able to take care of Mark, protect him, support him. He’d always had an ear to listen, a shoulder to lean on, arms to hug. But Mark hadn’t hugged him in at least a week, which was a rarity for the typically affectionate boy. And they certainly hadn’t had any good talks.
He’d been honest in what he said before. Mark didn’t have to speak to him if he didn’t want to, just someone who could help. But Lucas wanted his son to talk to him, to trust him. He always had before and Lucas didn’t know if he could stand it if that ever changed.
And then, with a strained noise in his throat, Mark caved.
“All week,” he spat out, digging his toe into the dirt. “All week, Pa. He’s been sayin’ that you’re raisin’ me to be the woman of the house, on account that Ma died. But Frankenstein was real sad, Pa! And I only cried a little, just at the part when the creature killed Elizabeth. But I guess only the girls were crying, none of the boys.”
Oh, Mark. His empathetic, emotional, sweet, sensitive boy who always wore his heart on his sleeve. Lucas ached to tell him how much more of a man those traits made him, how much better, but he stayed quiet and let his son speak.
“Carrie saw,” Mark continued, sniffling. “He cornered me after school and asked if I fought like a girl just as much as I cried like one, and so we tussled and he gave me that big bruise on my face. But I guess it scared him, that bruise bein’ so visible, so he didn’t hit me on my face again.”
As the tears welled up, Mark grabbed at the hem of his shirt and yanked it out of his pants, revealing a polka dot of dark bruises all over his stomach and chest. Lucas’ eyes went wide and he quickly reached out to pat down Mark’s torso, checking for obvious internal injuries or broken ribs.
“He showed me how weak I was this way instead,” Mark said with a sob, tipping his head back. “Every day, Pa. An’ I tried to fight back but Carrie’s so much bigger ’n me and he had his friends to hold me down. And Billy ’n the other boys just ran off every time!” He scrubbed at his face. “I tried to get him to stop, really I did, tried to use my words like you taught me but he just wouldn’t, Pa, he just wouldn’t.”
Mark began to sob in full and Lucas, not finding anything too medically concerning on the boy’s torso, quickly pulled him into a hug. “Why didn’t you tell me, Mark?” he asked, a choked feeling overtaking his own throat. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I was tryna be strong, Pa!” Mark cried, gripping Lucas’ shirt. “I was tryna be a real man, take care of things myself. But I guess Carrie’s right.”
“Carrie has never been more wrong in his life,” Lucas said fiercely, pulling back so he could stare Mark full in the face. “Mark, you are six, maybe ten, times the man that Carrie Els is.” Anyone in the Els family, really, he wanted to add, but he’d raised Mark not to disrespect his elders so he decided not to speak poorly of the Els patriarch, who was a drunkard and a cheat.
Mark shrugged despondently, sinking back into his arms. “Maybe,” he mumbled. “But that’s the not the way Carrie sees it so he won’t ever stop what he’s doing.”
“Carrie is a bully, Mark,” Lucas told him, rubbing his back soothingly. “So, you’re right. You could be a real man, or you could be the type of person Carrie thinks is a real man, and it wouldn’t matter. If he wants to tear you down and hurt you and break your spirit, he will, regardless of what you to do.”
This time it was Mark who pulled back, staring at his father in horror. “So there’s nothing I can do? He’s just gonna keep beatin’ me up forever?”
“Now, I didn’t say that.” Lucas dropped his arms and ruffled Mark’s hair. “We’ll think of something, don’t you worry, son.”
Mark shook his head. “This isn’t something you can fight for me, Pa,” he said despondently, staring back down at the dirt.
Lucas, as much as it pained him, knew that that was true. The last thing Mark needed was for Carrie Els to find out he’d gone running to his Pa and tattled about his playground bully. The same thing would happen if he went to the teacher: the schoolmaster would likely tell Hoover Els, who would likely beat Carrie and otherwise let the matter drop, which would only make Carrie strike out at Mark with even more of a vengeance.
This was a tricky situation, and a delicate one to boot. And, on top of that, his son’s health and safety was in the balance.
“Well, don’t fret,” Lucas said, trying to put some good bolstering energy into his words as he tousled Mark’s hair again. “We’ve got a whole weekend to try and sort out this pickle.”
Mark nodded, though the tension didn’t leave his face much. Lucas got to his feet. “Now, with that weight off your chest, you must feel hungry, huh? Don’t think I didn’t notice that you’ve barely touched your dinners this week.”
“I’ve been trying, Pa, honest,” Mark protested, clambering to his feet to follow Lucas inside. “I’ve just had such a knot in my throat all the time so’s I could hardly swallow.”
Lucas’ heart ached at those words, partially because of the torment his son had been going through that week without ever speaking about it, and partially because the same thing would happen to him when he was a boy and encountered with a problem that made him worry. His own father hadn’t been too much of a talker, but he could always tell when Lucas was anxious about something and would take him for a long ride in the country, or go swimming with him down by the creek, or they’d make bread dough with his Ma and wrap strips of it around sticks and cook it over an open campfire.
Now that he thought about it, he’d never done that with Mark before.
“I’ve got something that might get your appetite roaring,” Lucas said, leading the way inside. “Just as long as your willing to wait an hour or so. Home baked bread isn’t a thing you can rush.”
“Baking bread?” Mark asked, wrinkling his nose. “Really?”
Lucas’ lips twitched at his petulant tone. “Oh, this is a special kind. I think you’ll enjoy it.”
He pulled a large bowl from their shelves and waited for Mark to join him in the kitchen. Mark hesitated, then trotted over, and a tightness in Lucas’ chest he hadn’t realized was there slowly loosened.
They hadn’t yet fully fixed the problem, but he felt like his son had come back to him.
W / T \ Y
When Mark left the schoolhouse on Monday afternoon, he could feel beads of sweat trickling down his neck. The knot in his throat had loosened somewhat over the weekend, which he spent with his Pa: fishing, riding, looking after the ranch. Lucas had been right that homemade bread toasted over an open fire was the perfect thing to get Mark’s appetite raging again, and he and his Pa had eaten the entire batch of dough in one sitting.
On Monday, though, the worry came rushing back. He’d dallied so long in leaving home that Mr. Griswold had given him a stern speaking to for being late, but his Pa hadn’t hurried him at all, which he was grateful for. Lucas had always been understanding of him and his feelings, but the past few days, Mark was appreciating it more than he ever had before. He couldn’t even remember anymore why he’d waited so long to tell Lucas what was going on with Carrie and was just deeply relieved that he’d admitted everything in the end. It had felt so good to get it all off his chest, and besides, his Pa had helped him come up with a plan.
And today, in the next few minutes even, Mark was going to see if that plan worked.
As Mark walked onto the path to the stable, Billy fell into step beside him. “You ready?” he asked. His voice was still a little pitchy squeak even though they were fourteen, and since Mark was still sort of hurt that Billy had been just leaving him to get beat up, he had a momentary flash of bitterness that it wasn’t the other boy that Carrie was picking on. But Mark knew that Billy’s Pa wasn’t nearly as understanding and kind as his own, so Billy wouldn’t have anyone to go to if things got hard. Mark was lucky for that.
“Yeah, I’m ready,” Mark replied with more confidence than he felt. As they continued walking, he saw some of the other boys coming up behind them: Carrie and his cronies, but also a gaggle of some of the other boys from school, Mark and Billy’s neighbors. Most of them were smaller and skinnier than Carrie and his friends, but they outnumbered them almost two-to-one.
Something stung the back of his neck and Mark whirled around to see Carrie holding a handful of small pebbles and smirking. “Howdy, Marcia,” he jeered, using the girlish name he’d started calling Mark last week. “Gonna go crying to your Pa like a little girl now?”
“Oh, man up, Carrie!” Billy pipped up, crossing his arms. “Don’t be such a sissy.”
Carrie stopped, confused. “I’m not a sissy,” he spluttered. “Mark’s the sissy! He cries at books!”
Billy shrugged. “Whatever, who cares?”
Carrie stalked forward, face darkening angrily.
“Go ahead!” Mark spread his arms and widened his face into a grin. “Be a girl and hit me.”
This perplexing turn of events brought Carrie to a standstill, his fists still half-raised. “I’m not a girl!” he yelled. “I’m a man!”
“Nah!” a boy yelled from the back of the group. “We all think you’re acting like a girl for beating up Mark every day. Don’t we?”
Murmurs of ascent from the other boys, who began to swarm around Carrie and his friends and push past them as if this wasn’t interesting at all. Carrie stomped his foot, cheeks dark red. “I’m not a girl! I’m a man, I’m the biggest man of all of you!”
He ran forward and grabbed Mark by the collar, giving him a shake.
“What a girl!” the same boy from before called out. “Look at him, everyone!”
A chorus of girl, pussy, sissy rang out from the other boys. Carrie’s friends laughed a little and shoved at his shoulders as he dropped Mark and stepped back, then turned and ran in the other direction, yelling with rage.
Mark’s breath left him in a whoosh and his shoulders relaxed. He turned to the group of boys. “Thanks, everyone,” he said, smiling brightly. “I owe you one.”
“Did your Pa really say we could have ice cream if we helped you?” one of the youngest boys piped up.
Mark grinned. “Yeah, Kip, he did. Just come on by tonight and we’ll churn some up, enough for everyone.”
He began to jog down the path, calling out a last thank you over his shoulder, overwhelmed with the urge to tell his Pa the good news.
W / T \ Y
Lucas found himself distracted all day.
He left the corral gate wide open; put feed in the horses water; saddled up his mare backwards, somehow; and even managed to take the wrong turn into town on a path he’d ridden close to a thousand times. He couldn’t help it: his mind was filled with worry for Mark.
They’d thought of the plan to rope the other boys at school in and flip the switch on Billy on Sunday evening. Lucas had been wracking his brain all weekend long, but it had been a long time since he’d been in school and every idea he had would be better suited to dealing with the adult kind of bully, who usually carried a gun and usually ended up with a bullet in him. That simply wasn’t an option in the Carrie problem, because no matter how furious Lucas was with him, he wasn’t going to shoot a child.
As the shadows grew long on Sunday Lucas could feel Mark getting more and more tense and preoccupied. When he finally said something about it as they were sitting on the porch in the pleasant evening air, reading by candlelight, Mark shut his book and wrapped his arms around himself.
“I just thought we’d know what I should do by now,” he mumbled. “I don’t know if I can stand another week of this, Pa. I’m mighty sore and I don’t like the way it makes me feel on the inside, either.”
Lucas eyed him sympathetically, one part of his brain calculating the merits of taking Mark to Doc Burrage, just to double-check whether he was actually injured in any way.
“I’m sorry I haven’t had any more ideas,” Lucas sighed, shutting his own book and putting it aside. “I guess here’s what we’ve got to ask ourselves, son: what does Carrie fear?”
“Fear?” Mark wrinkled his nose. “His Pa, I guess. He’s pretty nasty.”
That was true. “Seems as though so many boys are bullies because of their Pas,” Lucas remarked. “Doesn’t get any less true when you grow up. But there’s got to be something more, Mark.”
“Well…” Mark hesitated, considering. “I guess he fears being thought of as a girl. Don'tcha think, Pa? He’d only use it to bully me because he thinks it’s something that would hurt me, because he thinks I’m afraid of it, of being known as a sissy and all that. All he wants is to be seen as a man.”
Lucas chewed on this, an idea growing in his mind. “Mark, how close are you with the other boys at school? Not Carrie and his friends, but the others?”
“Decently, I guess. We’re friendly.”
“Would they stand up for you?”
Mark hesitated again. “I dunno, Pa… Carrie’s pretty scary. I’m not sure the other boys would want to get involved in case he started hitting them, too.”
“What if you made it worth their while?” Lucas pressed. “Offered them… I don’t know… some free ice cream at our ranch, maybe?”
Mark perked up. “You’d be all right with that, Pa? There’s an awful lot of boys. That means an awful lot of cream.”
Lucas grinned. “I’m sure we can spare it,” he assured Mark. “Particularly if it means you can go to school without worrying about your pride or your body being hurt.”
They fleshed out the details of the plan together, Mark relaxing as they spoke. Lucas had noticed his fear returning that morning, but now it was Lucas who was worrying, getting that knot in his throat that Mark had spoken about. He kept his eye on the sun and his timepiece, counting the moments until Mark was set to come home. He had a feeling the plan would work, but there was no telling whether Mark had had time to rally the other boys to his aid, or if Carrie had cornered him in a private place. Or maybe they’d been wrong, Carrie didn’t care about being thought of as a “sissy,” as Mark called it, and he’d just doomed his boy to another day of getting pummeled in the ribs, which hurt like the dickens, at least from Lucas’ experience.
When the afternoon rolled around, Lucas lit a cigar and plunked down on the front porch, resigning himself to a painfully long wait staring at the horizon, waiting for Mark’s horse to crest the hill. The cigar helped take the edge of his stress, but time still dragged on interminably before the tell-tale cloud of dust that proceeded his son bloomed into the air.
Lucas got to his feet, stubbing out his cigar and stuffing his hands into his pockets. Mark was riding hard, but that could go either way: either it had gone well and he was excited to let Lucas know, or it had gone poorly and he was just hurrying to get back to the safety of his home where he could feel his feelings and vent his frustrations.
“Pa!” Mark’s voice carried over the distance. “Pa!!”
Lucas waved at him, waiting with poorly smothered impatience as Mark crossed the bridge and galloped onto their property. As soon as he was close enough, he reeled in his horse, swung out of his saddle, and sprinted towards Lucas to give him a giant hug. “It worked, Pa!” he cried, beaming from ear to ear. “All of the boys helped me out, just like you said they would. I don’t think Carrie will try coming at me again.”
Lucas’ face broke into a wide smile and he swung Mark up into his arms, hugging him tightly. “I’m mighty glad to hear it, son,” he said, and meant it.
After a moment, Mark pulled away. “Pa,” he said, face grave. “We’d better start on that ice cream, pronto.”
Lucas laughed, ruffling his hair, and led the way into the kitchen.