WEBVTT

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This next one is a
little like that.

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It's called Bleeder.

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A bleeder's a hemophiliac.

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It's sort of about--

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Well I was once a counselor
for a couple of years

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at a crippled children's
camp in Pennsylvania.

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I was about 15.

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The camp was I worked about 15.

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And there was a kid
there with hemophilia.

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And this sort of distorts that.

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Bleeder.

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By now I bet he's dead
which suits me fine.

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But 25 years ago
when we were both 15

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and he was camper
and I counselor

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in a straightlaced
Pennsylvania summer

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camp for crippled
and retarded kids,

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I'd watch him sit all
day by himself on a hill.

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No trees or sharp stones,
he wasn't safe to be around.

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The slightest bruise and all his
blood would simply drain away.

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It drove us crazy,
first, to protect him,

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then to see it happen.

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I would hang around
him, picturing a knife

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or pointed stick wondering how
small a cut you'd have to make,

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then see the expectant face
of another boy watching me.

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And we each knew
how much the other

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would like to see him bleed.

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He made us want to hurt him so
much we hurt ourselves instead,

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sliced fingers in craft class,
busted noses in baseball,

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then joined at last
into mass wrestling

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matches beneath his hill, a
tangle of crutches and braces,

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hammering at each other
to keep from harming him.

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I'd look up from
slamming a kid in the gut

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and see him watching with the
empty blue eyes of children

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in sentimental paintings, and
hope to see him frown or grin,

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but there was nothing, as
if he had already died.

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Then, after a week,
they sent him home.

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Too much responsibility,
the director said.

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Hell, I bet the kid
had skin like leather.

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Even so, I'd lie in
bed at night and think

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of busting into his
room with a sharp stick,

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lash and break the space
around his rose-petal flesh,

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while campers in
bunks around me tossed

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and dreamt of poking
and bashing the bleeder

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until he was left as flat as a
punctured water balloon, which

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is why the director
sent him home.

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For what is virtue but the
lack of strong temptation.

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Better to leave us with
our lie of being good.

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Did he know this?

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Sitting on his private hill,
watching us smash each other

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with crutches and canes.

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Was this his pleasure, to make
us cringe beneath our wish

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to do him damage?

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But then who cared?

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We were the living
children he the ghost

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and what he gave us was a
sense of being bad together.

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He took us from
our private spite

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and offered our
bullying a common cause,

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which is why we missed him,
even though we wished him harm.

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When he left, we lost our
shared meanness and each of us

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was left to snarl his way
into a separate future,

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eager to discover some new loser
to link us and frailty again.

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