Chapter Text
Oh. This isn’t home.
Nubbins emerges from the tree line, to the sight of a fence, lined with all kinds of flowers. Roses, magnolias, daisies. The real pretty kind, not the harsh and mean looking sunflowers he has in his yard, always staring like mama’s mean brown eyes, just framed by yellow eyelashes instead. They scare him.
But pink roses don’t. Til he touches one.
Blood drips from the tip of his finger. The roses painted on his Sissy’s dresser drawers don’t bite, but these ones do. He shakes his hand and bounces a little with the movement, trying to make the pain travel up his arm and disappear, like the tingly feelings he gets in his body when his feelings get too big and he gots to shake them out.
It don’t work, so he pops his finger and the little bead of blood into his mouth. Sure, it don’t taste good, but sometimes it helps.
Now he can explore.
Nubbins travels along the whole fence, until he finally gets to the back gate. But shoot it’s got a padlock. He rattles it, but it doesn't budge. It shakes the whole section of chain link, and makes a clacky-swishy sound Nubbins likes. So he keeps on doing it.
Shakin’ and gigglin’ and shakin’ a little harder.
“Who’s there??” A meek voice calls out.
Ooh. Company.
“I-It’s me!” Nubbins announces.
Confusion is the response, “Who?”
That frustrates Nubbins. His voice is higher than Bobby’s, and his stutter is thick. Who else would it be?
“Nubbins. Fr-From the-the Sawyer hou-house.”
A moment of quiet, before the voice says, “I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.”
“I-I’m not strange. Jus-just a little d-diff’rent. My s-sissy says that.” Nubbins argues, a little defensive.
He’s been taught now that it ain’t wrong to be himself. After Bubba was born different too, their big brother gave up on trying to “fix” them. Mama left, grandpa was dead, so why bother? And anyhow, Sissy says they ain’t all the bad words people call them.
Diseased. Crazy. Disturbed. Defective. Feeble.
They’re creative, and silly, and curious, and special instead.
And Nubbins always listens to what his big Sissy says. She’s the one who says he’s allowed to have candy after dinner, and that he can use her pretty nail polish to paint on his fingers, and teached him how to play all the best games.
The boy on the other side of the fence lights up, for just a moment, “Hey I have a sister too! She’s too little to play with me, that’s what mama says anyhow, cause she’s only eight. I guess she’s havin’ a faze, and she don’t really like me right now..”
Nubbins gets so happy he just has to bounce back onto the balls of his feet and rock forward again, a few times. He’s got so much in common with this boy, he knows now it was destiny he’d walk out here and find him.
“M-My Bubba is eight too, b-b-but he’s diff-er-ent like us a-an’ so he rreally a-acts more like a little..little kid.”
“Shoot, how many siblings you got?”
“W-Well there-there’s me, and B-Bobby, a-and Bubba, and Sissy, and Dray-Drayton!”
The boy shrugs, like he doesn’t know what to say at first. “Your mama must work real hard to take care of y’all.”
That was the wrong thing to say.
Nubbins has to break the news, and tell his friend that he’s nothin’ but a lonely, bitter, problem child.
“I don’t got a-any mama. She-She left.”
Real quick, Nubbins squeezes his brown eyes shut, hoping his friend couldn’t see him anymore and he’d turn invisible. The only thing in life he doesn’t enjoy talking about is being abandoned and abused, all them years ago.
Thankfully, the boy in the wheelchair changes the subject by asking him, “Oh. Um. Do you got any friends?”
Nubbins happily starts his list over again, “Sure! Th-There’s Bobby, ‘n S-Sissy, and-“
But the boy interrupts him, “No I mean any friends . Not your family. Anyone you know from school, you know.”
“I-I don’t goes to school.” Nubbins answers simply.
“Me neither! Mama says I c’ain’t, cause the other kids would bully me, but I really wants to go, I want to so bad, ‘cause it’s just me and Sally here and she never wants to talk to me cause she just wants to play dolls and I can’t get down on the floor to play with her, so’s I got nobody! And I’m all alone!” The boy in the wheelchair has such shiny blue eyes, he’s so excited to have so much in common with Nubbins, and Nubbins is excited too. He smiles as big as his marked up face can stretch.
But the boy hunches down all of a sudden, shoulders curling forward like a flower withering away in real time, beat down by his own brain. “Sorry, I shouldn’t talk so much.”
That’s confusing. Nubbins tilts his head way to the side, workin’ real hard on making sense of all the mysterious things he’s learning, “Why?”
“It’s rude.”
“I-I don’t th-think it is.”
“So.. Do you wanna be my friend then?” The boy don’t look at him when he asks that. He stares straight down at the dry grass.
Nubbins gets real close to the fence, ‘cause he wants to see that boy's shiny eyes again, as he answers, “Yeh!”
So they’re friends now!
The boy doesn’t stand up from his chair, he puts his arms over the sides and spins its wheels round, pushing himself forward towards the gate. Nubbins’ face is pressed against the warm metal of the chain-link, watching everything with as much precision as possible.
It takes one turn of a key he had in a little bag attached to his wheely chair to unlock the padlock so Nubbins squeeze in. The first thing he does is hug his new friend. His siblings are his friends and they like hugs.. mostly. So this friend should like them too!
They only do it briefly, but it’s enough to feel the staticky, warm feeling in his arms from wrapping them around the boy. Some kind of bond, a spark, a magic connection maybe. Nubbins squeaks out a small laugh he can’t keep to himself.
The boy wheels a little ways away in his fancy chair, over near a tree, where there’s a tire on a rope for Nubbins to sit on. He can spin back and forth, so he sits right on it and does. So fast he can pretty much hear Draytons voice crowing in his ear to slow it down.
“What do friends do?” The boy muses out of nowhere, but Nubbins, busy twirling around, just shrugs. Cause he doesn’t know. The boy turns pink, “Right. Sorry. I forgot you don’t have any friends neither.”
Oh well. He’s happy now. Nubbins reaches over and pokes his friend in the arm to get his attention, “What d-do you like-like to do?”
Now he shrugs, pickin at the edges of his nails and making his hands look all sore. He must be nervous.
“Prob’ly jus’ sit here and watch the clouds go by til the sun gets too hot.”
Ooh Nubbins doesn’t like the hot, hot sun neither. He gets a real good idea, “You a-and me could-could play tag i-in the wwoods! Sh-Shade makes it real c-cool!”
“I c’ain’t.” The boy answers simply, with a little motion towards the special chair he sits in.
Nubbins doesn’t get it. “Why don’t you jus’ get up?”
“I’m paralyzed, silly. Means I can’t walk. You really don’ see me different?” A smile plays on the boy's face. Nubbins finds he really likes that smile.
This is easy for him. He shakes his head, and assures his friend, “I just l-like havin’ a fr-friend for the f-first time is-s all.”
“Yeah. Me too, I guess.”
Even though they just met, they run out of things to say fast. Nubbins doesn’t want to tell his friend about his family, he doesn’t want to think about them right now. It might make him miss them and then he’d want to leave.
But Nubbins never ever wants to leave.
He reaches, and holds his friend's hand. Just because it seems like the right thing to do. The kind of quiet connection he’s learned to have with somebody from having a little brother that can’t talk.
To have that with somebody new, and somebody special, and somebody with such pretty eyes, makes Nubbins giddy. His free hand raises up and he shakes it all over, his wrist limp and snapping back every time he flaps. His tire swing seat rotates a little from all the moving, but he won’t never let go of the boy's hand.
Not even when he asks, after watching for a little bit, “What’s that you’re doin’?”
“I-I dunno. I jus’ do it.” Nubbins says, and it’s the God honest truth. He always done it. It’s just the way he is, like how his friend just has to sit in his wheelychair.
“Looks like it hurts.”
“Nuh-uh. S-Sissy says my feelin’s get too bi-big fer m-my body. So’s I-I-I sh-shake ‘em all out!”
It makes Nubbins want to move around even more. He makes a little humming noise, and lets the shaky-flappy-ness invade his other limbs, wiggling his bottom in the seat and flying his arms around.
The boy watches, and watches, and after a minute decides to join in too. He does it slower than Nubbins, lifting up his hands and sort of just tilting them side to side in a swivelly pattern. His friend smiles, and starts to sort of copy the sound Nubbins is making, interlaced with pleased laughter.
Once he gets confident, he does it more and more, so Nubbins does it more, til he can’t take it and he’s hopping up on his feet, to spin and hop in circles. He’s never had this much happy energy before!
Eventually it starts to burn off, so he sits back down, and holds the boy's hand again.
It prompts his friend to turn and look at him, and say, “I wish I was more like you, Nubbins.”
Instant disappointment strikes into his heart. His poor friend doesn’t know how he really is.
“But I-I’m no.. no good.”
“Sure you are. Who says you ain’t?” Oh he sounds so genuine, Nubbins gets mad.
At himself. For being dumb enough to forget he’s good for nothing, long enough to trap somebody in. Like mama, the way she trapped their daddy in. That’s what he used to say.
“Me.” He grumbles, pounding the back of his knuckles against his head. Stupid, stupid Nubbins.
His friend squeezes his hand gently, “Hey. We was havin’ fun. Why you so bummed out now?”
“See? I-I ruins everythin’. E-Ever’body hates me, a-and I scared m-my daddy away, ‘cause I’m jus’ a g-good fer no-nothin’ retard.” Nubbins laments.
He’d grown up hearing it, and knowing people thought it about him, even when they didn’t say it. Their stares are enough. When he’s playing with Bubba and Bobby at the gas station, and they look real hard and furrow their brows and scoff. Cover their mouths and whisper about him. The big dumb baby who’s too stupid to work for real like his big brother and sister does.
His friend don’t think that though. He uses his wheelchair to get closer, and hugs Nubbins again. This time, he don’t let go. “Whoever said that ‘bout you’s just plain old mean. Forget ‘em!”
A match of rebellion is lit. All it takes is one little flicker from that special spark to light the burning fire in his chest.
“Yeh! Yeh! I-I’ll forget ‘im! I’ll p-put ‘im out with the-the garbage! A-An’ grind ‘im into.. into meat! A-An’ piss o-on his grave!! F-F-Fuck you, grandpa!!”
Every exclamation is punctuated by his hand pounding into the tree his tire seat is tied to. It hurts his knuckles but it makes him feel good on the inside, to burn those feelings off. It’s been eight years since grandpa died, but the hurt doesn’t never go away. They’re not really allowed to talk about it all. He done tried, lots of times, but Drayton always gets this deathly pale look on his face, and Sissy ushers him away to go play instead.
His friend doesn’t mind it. Honest, he looks impressed. Nubbins likes feeling like he’s brave and cool and strong in the eyes of somebody else. His posture straightens out, and he sits a little taller, as him and the boy in the wheelchair exchange smiles.
For hours and hours they talked. Only one time they was interrupted, when they got visited by the boy's little sister. Her big greenish-blue eyes locked onto Nubbins and got big with some look of disbelief. Maybe she thought his long hair was scary and his birthmark looked gross, or maybe it surprise her that her brother had a friend. Whatever the mean thoughts, they didn’t actually bother Nubbins this time.
Nothing could, now that he has his best friend by his side.
He hadn’t bothered keeping track of how long he’d spent in that backyard, all he knew was the katydids had started up their singing and the sun was pretty much all the way gone now, the sky a purpley dark color like a bruise might look on his skin. There might be one forming now from punching the tree.
Nubbins had moved to sitting on the arm of his friend's fancy chair, perched up like a kitty cat. They were talking in whispers ‘cause he said his daddy would be trying to sleep for his job the next day, and they was saying about something silly like the stuff they listen to on the radio, when the back door flew open.
It was Sissy. Her blonde hair was a mess and her cheeks flushed as deep as the roses on the bush just to her left.
“Oh my gawd, there you are!” His sister come down the single step and come over to hold her arms out for a big hug, “C’mere, sweet thing.”
Nubbins hops to his feet and hugs her, but he doesn’t get it. For one thing, he doesn’t know how she found him out here. For another- “W-What’s wrong?”
She holds his face in her cold, sweaty hands, gently but firm, “Honey, you went missin’. Didn’t tell a soul where you was goin’ off to. Done disappeared on Bobby and worried his little self right into a tizzy.”
Nubbins knows what that means. When his twin gets upset, he gets these fits. Something with the condition in his brain that makes him get all fainty and sick. Tensing up and twitchin’ and stuff. He didn’t know that would happen. It’s not like he remembered.
“Oh.” Nubbins doesn’t want to cry. Todays been long, and he’s tired, and all his happy seemed to drain out by now. One little tear drops off the end of his nose.
His friend notices and gives him the sleeve of the big flannel work shirt he wearing, probly belongin’ to his daddy, to wipe it up with. Nubbins dries his tears and gives the arm attached to the sleeve a little tiny kiss on the wrist. A thank you without words.
Sissy sounds even gentler now, “Badger, it ain’t your fault. I was jus’ upset. But it’s okay, now. I promise it.”
All he can do is nod. Right now, his heart is torn in two. He loves Sunshine and wants to go with her, and he wants to go check on Bobby cause he loves him too. But.. he kinda loves his new best friend. It wasn’t silly to love that much, not when Sissy said he always had a big heart. It’s big enough for everyone.
‘Too big for his own damn good.’ Drayton would crow.
Now he’s just froze here. Overloaded. It’s gettin darker and he can’t do nothin’ but stare.
Sissy takes the hand that was meant to be held by his friend, and makes the decision all for Nubbins. She doesn’t even mind when he taps his fingers and digs his nails in a bit, while the big emotions try to make their way out of his body.
He wishes she could pick him up and carry him, like she used to, but he’s taller than her nowadays, and on his way to being even taller than that, one he gets big like Bobby. He can’t wait. Maybe then they’ll let him decide stuff on his own!
Speaking of, Nubbins turns around, not forgetting to say bye to his best friend. He just waves, and gives the super biggest smile he can make with his face. The kind that closes his eyes for him. His friend does the same back, except he doesn’t smile as big ‘cause he’s a lil shyer.
Nubbins won’t use his words, cause it ain’t for his Sissy to hear, so he just makes a little stick figure guy formed by his middle and pointer fingers walk through the air. At first, the boy in the wheelchair doesn’t get it. He scrunches up his face and tilts his head.
It’s when Nubbins changes his symbol to also point to the woods and himself, that the boy gets it. And nods. And smiles again.
He’ll be comin’ back. Really, really soon if he can help it.
Sissy tugs carefully on Nubbins’ hand to get him to come with her. They go back through the front of the house since that’s where Sissy come from, “Who was your little friend anyhow?”
Oh. It’s only then that Nubbins realize, “I dunno. I-I didn’t aask his n-n-name.”
“Silly goose.” She teases him, as they walk hand in hand back home, which from this side of the house is just a little ways down the road.
Nubbins thinks it would be funny to make noises like a goose, since she called him one. In his head he knows he’s s’posed to be quiet at these hours, but the bigger part of him wants to have fun. He makes shrill and screechy noises like an annoying goose would, earning a somewhat similar sound out of Sissy when she laughs.
Things feel okay.
Even as he’s marched straight to bed, and told to hush up and go to sleep after he changes into his pjs, he feels okay, ‘cause then he can dream about his nameless best friend.
Or at least stare at the ceiling and think about him, and about all the things he’ll say to him the next time he visits. Sleep doesn’t come easy for Nubbins. All that energy in his body stays put even when he’a tired, and he’ll just kick his legs and bounce around all night.
Drayton calls him nocturnal, whatever that means, and blames it on sugar. But Nubbins hasn’t had any of that since this afternoon; he’s high on the feelings of longing he has in his heart.
In the middle of the night, between little bursts of rest, he sneaks into his closet. It’s not got much in it except a breaker switch and a mouse hole, but he’s made it his little nook, for all his secrets. On the wall, there’s a map of the town, zoomed in real close. He’s taken a liking to adding things to it that he can make an adventure out of!
A little broken piece of charcoal forms an X over the general area of the exit he used in the woods. ‘Boy in wheelchair.’ Seems like a good enough reminder of his very special person.
Nubbins remembers Bobby asking him if he had any crushes one day when they were alone and popping dandelions heads off in the front yard. He’d said no, he didn’t even know what it meant, and his answer was still no once his brother explained it, and where he learned it from.
Love and fluffy stuff wasn’t what Sawyer men were supposed to be worried about, even at his age. Especially at his age maybe, cause Nubbins doesn’t really know anybody to like. Even the friends he met through the gas station usually don’t come back. That part of his thinkin, the part that crushes, just wasn’t ever around.
Until the boy in the wheelchair. He was special. He lights up all the little twinkley stars in Nubbins’ bone galaxy. Or whatever Bobby tried to describe a crush like. Skeletons and burning heavenly bodies sounded scary. This isn’t.
Maybe it isn’t a crush. Maybe it’s already love. His soulmate who’s name, whatever it is, is written in the book of life right next to his. Damn these adults and their confusing metaphors.
All Nubbins knows, is he’s real excited to go back, and just as much so to tell his brothers about his new friend at breakfast the next morning.
“A-At the edge of the w-woods, there’s a.. a boy, who-who’s got tires on the bottom. L-Like a c-car!” Nubbins will do a bad job explaining.
Bobby’s blue eyes, hazy and cloudy as they are, will light up with interest, “Does he make race car sounds?”
His twin could mimic the sounds he’s talking about, screeching like angry tires and makin boosted engine noises.
It will definitely makes Nubbins giggle, but it’s not really right. It might be hard to explain, so he’ll repeat what had been said to him, when he was confused, “Nuh-uh. He-He just uses it for his l-legs. ‘Cause.. ‘cause he c’ain’t w-walk.”
“It’s called a wheelchair, honey.” Sissy will interject over her glass of orangey juice, pressed just that morning from the oranges she traded away some of their apples for.
Always out of the loop, and always grumpy about it, Drayton will ask them, “What y’all talkin’ about?”
“Nothin’ Dray. Don’t worry about it.” Sissy might assure, sweet but far from innocent.
A big brother rant is bound to happen that way.
“You know damn well that’s all I do. Gotta work to support the kids, can’t catch a damn break just working and working my young years away while y’all just grow up right in front of my eyes an-“
Sissy will interrupt and explain what happened, their secret not kept for very long, “I took an extra shift at the salon. I let the boys play outside while I was gone.”
That will make Drayton extra angry, even for him. “You’re telling me he wandered his skinny ass over to the Enright property?”
“No, I-I found a fr-friend!” Nubbins will insist like a hero. A defender of the bestest friend ever in the whole wide world, cause he knows the boy in the wheelchair would do the same thing.
In no universe would that be good enough.
“On the neighboring land, boy. Shoulda never left the damn house..” Drayton’ll grumble, and maybe grab the edge of the table extra hard to not lash out, as he could suggest, “Just eat your damn food and quit filling your brothers heads with fairy tales.”
A quiet moment will pass while nobody eats their eggs but Bubba.
Drayton will speak up again, “And Sunshine?”
“Yessuh?” Sissy will make big innocent eyes, and smile her soft gappy smile.
“Promise me that boy won’t go over there no more.”
“You have my word.”
Lies. But it’s okay. ‘Cause they’re gonna be white lies, not the kind that get people hurt. And Nubbins’ big Sissy is gonna do everything to make sure he doesn’t lose his friend. He knows she will, ‘cause she saw the way he and his friend were. He felt all the sparks, so she had to have seen them.
“And you, boy. Don’t go snoopin’, don’t go trespassin’, jus’ mind your own damn business. Got enough toys and shit round here to fill up a whole barn..” Drayton will warn.
And Nubbins will act like he’s upset, “F-Fine.. I wo-won’t..”
Maybe he could sniffle and pretend to cry a little too. Just to make his mean old big brother feel bad. ‘Cause in the end, his fingers will be crossed under the table. Nothing can keep him away from the boy in the wheelchair. Not ever. Not in any future Nubbins could dream up from his mattress here on the floor.
Nubbins Sawyer is determined to get what he wants, and what he wants is simply that boy.