About a Boy

Ron Mattocks recounts how he came to see the better side of the troublemaking kid at the bus stop.

There’s a boy at the bus stop. Cute kid, deep dark eyes, bright charismatic grin—probably in first grade. He’s also a holy terror. He rips things out of other kids’ hands. He tears around the entry drive, darting in front of moving cars without regard.

When the drivers blow their horns, all the adults waiting with their children turn and look at him, wondering where his parents are. Usually, he’s the last one on the bus because he has to figure out where he left his backpack. You can see the annoyance on the bus driver’s face as she holds the door over, waiting for him to locate it. My stepdaughters say he’s even more of a pill once he gets on the bus, because the driver yells at him at least three or four times during the ride to school.

One afternoon, I noticed that one of my stepdaughter’s eyes were red from crying. When I asked her what had happened, she told me she got in trouble on the bus for taking a sharp pencil and poking holes in the green upholstered seats. Then she pointed at the boy. “He told me to do it. He was doing it too, but then he told the driver it was just me.”

I grounded her—the lesson being not to listen when other kids tell her to do stuff stupid stuff—but really I was peeved at that boy. The next morning I intended on asking the bus driver to move my stepdaughter to another seat, but I held off after the boy walked up to my stepdaughter and handed her a stack of Pokémon cards that he told her to keep.

She smiled, and the two talked about their favorite characters until the bus arrived. Maybe he felt guilty, or maybe he was truly sorry, but regardless of his motivations, in that moment I saw a sweetness in him that negated the outward hellion I watched morning after morning.

♦♦♦

Sometime after Christmas, he showed up at the bus stop with a toy that he would toss into the air and then try to catch. Sometimes he missed and the plastic would clatter against the concrete. After being dropped three or four times, the toy could take no more, and it exploded into several pieces. The boy looked down at scattered parts, surprised at the possibility that this could even happen.

My stepdaughters told him that maybe I could fix it, and they brought him over to me. I’m always fixing the girls’ stuff; so to them, I’m some sort of miracle worker. Fortunately, I was able to maintain this reputation, snapping the toy pieces back into place, good as new. When I handed it back to him, he never said thank you, yet I didn’t mind because his eyes reflected something better than gratitude. There was a genuine wonderment in them, as if he had just witnessed Jesus healing a blind man. Then he ran off and resumed his solitary game of catch.

A few weeks later, the girls and I were walking home from the bus stop. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the boy running. The fifth-graders were racing each other, and he wanted to show that he could keep up. About the time he hit full stride, one of the older kids—the largest of the bunch—swung his leg to the side, intentionally tripping the boy, which launched him into the sidewalk. The violence would’ve earned the guilty party an automatic red card in a soccer game, but there were no referees around to blow the whistle, and the older kid took off as if nothing happened.

The boy, however, was still on the ground, holding his leg. Through heavy sobs, he kept repeating, “He kicked me. He kicked me.” His words were not an accusation; they were a plea—a plea for someone to comfort him, to make the pain go away, to be there for him. The sight of him, crying and alone, evoked a feeling that surpassed pity, and his tears washed away all of his previous misbehavior.

I bent down and checked out his shin. There would be a nasty scratch, but otherwise, he would be fine. His crying tapered off, and I helped him to his feet while cracking a few jokes. He didn’t laugh, though; nor did he respond to my stepdaughter’s attempts to console him with reassuring voices that he would be okay. I’m not even sure he was listening to any of us. He just limped along beside us without saying a word.

When we had to head in separate directions, I stood and watched for a few minutes as he hobbled away, his cadence occasionally interrupted by the deep sniffles that linger after crying uncontrollably. It was a sad vision of utter loneliness.

Even though it was unfair of me to do so, I couldn’t help but wonder about his life at home. Maybe his circumstances were just tough, I thought. Maybe he has a single mother who loves him all she can, but has to work a job that dictates she leave early and stay late in order to make ends meet.

Or maybe it wasn’t that way at all; maybe it was better. Maybe it was worse. When he was gone, I turned in the other direction and wondered where he would go.