It is his uncles, his father, his grandfather who belong on such a list. I am not putting him on the Most Hideous Men of My Life List - whether he belongs there is for him to decide. James and I played so many ferocious games while camping that summer: hooking each other with fishhooks, holding each other underwater, tying each other up, shooting each other with cap guns, chasing each other with garter snakes, dumping hot embers on each other’s heads. And there it still was, the wadded-up thing. Late at night, when the guests had gone home, I took off my dress, pulled down my pants. He pulled up my dress and crammed the balled-up material down my pants. He wadded up a piece of fabric - it was a light blue-violet shade and looked fluffy, like a bunched-up hairnet. James looked at me with his feral gray eyes. I don’t remember now what it was, probably a stick, or maybe a rock. Our families had gone on a camping trip to Pokagon State Park, and I learned that an object could be shoved up the place where I tinkled.
To me he said, “I’m going to shove this up you again.” He ordered everyone around, even the older kids. James was 7 and a half or 8, a bloodthirsty, beautiful, relentless boy.
As the parents drank cocktails in our big yard with the scent of the blooming wads of cash infusing every inch of Indiana just after WWII, the kids played up on the hill beside the schoolhouse. Arthur and Evelyn drove up from Indianapolis with James to the redbrick schoolhouse where we lived, deep in the hills north of Fort Wayne. Arthur and Evelyn were best friends with my parents, Tom and Betty. When James was 6, he was taken away from his father and given to a rich couple, Arthur and Evelyn. My mother told me the stories much later. He grew up to be the president of the United States. My first rich boy - I had fixed my eyes on his face long enough to know - was beautiful, with dark gray eyes and long golden-brown hair across his forehead. My first rich boy pulled down my underpants.
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