Fearsome Jones collected discarded love like some folks collected aluminum cans. He gathered its remnants to himself, finding it sometimes in the strangest places. A crumpled dinner receipt from the Rainbow Lounge on the steps of a posh apartment building. A wilted bouquet, it’s “I’m sorry – Please let’s try again” placard stained with rainwater or tears. A wedding band tossed from the window of a funeral bound hearse.

So when he saw the young coffee cart girl from the corner of First and Lenora leave the AlCom Building crying and clutching a bloody bundle of restroom paper towels, he followed.

The evening traffic had stilled, slipping into the routine of patrol cars and cabs, the pedestrians owning Seattle’s night. Slinging his backpack of papers, he put her twenty yards ahead and kept her there.

“Gotta smoke, Fears?” Skinny smiled up at him from the hotel stoop.

“Later,” he said, moving past.

“Hey – need some smoke, man?” Skinny sold him his weed each week.

“Later, Skinny. I’m onto something.”

Skinny laughed behind him. Fearsome, eyes locked on the slouched shoulders, pressed forward.

She paused at the foot of a hill, looked around furtively, and started up. The park. He just knew it.

As she crossed the sidewalk and cut into the lawn, Fearsome dodged into the Seven-Eleven to watch through the window. She’d slowed now, her head moving side to side, studying benches and bushes. A few small children played at the swingset while a mother stood protectively by. Fearsome saw the girl’s fist move to her mouth as she watched. He couldn’t see her eyes from this distance, but knew what was in them. Then, she turned away quickly, lifted the lid of the trash-can, and gently set the bundle down. After a moment, she left and Fearsome saw her eyes as she passed the store. Shame and despair, lines of tears, lips pulled tight with resolution.

As soon as she vanished around the corner he broke cover and made for the park. The bundle mewled pitifully as he lifted the lid and Fearsome scooped it up.

“Well, what have we here?” A bit of discarded love, a bit of someone else’s life. Someone else’s secret shame. Come to think of it, she had been wearing baggier clothes, moving a bit slower, smiling a bit sadder as she’d served him his one cup of free coffee each morning for the past few months.

He dug through the blood-matted paper towels, finding a foot and then a hand...both cold. “What has old Fearsome found?” He pulled away the paper like an excited Christmas morning child and gasped at the face it revealed.

“Goddamn,” he said, his voice a whisper. “You are one ugly motherfucker, ain’t you?”

The baby stared up at him, its face contorted and purple. Three eyes – black as a Republican’s heart – blinked into the fading light and the misshapen mouth twisted and sucked at air. Fearsome realized he’d held his breath and let it out with a slow whistle. “Jeezuz Christ.”

He covered the face back up, and clenching his latest bit of discarded love, he turned back down the hill to the Hotel he’d called home the past six years.

Fearsome poured himself a glass of bourbon, took a swig from the bottle, and fumbled the cap back on, his eyes never leaving the baby on the bed.

He’d cleaned it up and wrapped it in an extra pillow-case. The umbilical cord, he’d thought, would be a problem. But it had simply fallen off, leaving a small rosebud nub slightly higher than it should have been on the baby’s belly. It was hung like a brother, but he couldn’t quite see it as a he just yet. As he’d scrubbed it down, ugly had become weird and weird had become different. Other than. The ears lacked definition, the nostrils were too “flappish” and the eyes, boring into him with sapient expectation, ran ghost fingers down his back.

He drained the glass in one calculated gulp and set it down. Moving to the bedside, he shifted the pillowcase as a small stream of urine arched onto his large black hands.

“Shit. You already done pissed on me.” He went to the window, groaned it open, and looked down. “Skinny,” he yelled.

The young man stood and turned. “Whassup Fears?”

Fearsome dug the pack of Newports from his shirt pocket and dropped it down. “Wanna make a fast twenty?”

The street kid nodded.

“Good...come on up. Quietly.”

He grabbed the baby and a pillow, setting it up in the scum-coated tub. He pulled the bathroom door shut as Skinny rapped softly.

“What you got in here?” he asked as Fearsome opened the door a crack, leaving the chain in place.

“Never you mind. And you keep quiet about this.” He shoved a fifty into a scabby hand.

“I saw you come in in a hurry, man.”

“Yeah. Got the shits eatin’ your Mamma. Now get on up to the Rite Aid and get me some diapers.”

Skinny laughed. “They don’t make ‘em in your size, Fears.”

“Not for me, fuck-stick. Small diapers.” He paused, hearing the strangeness of it all in his voice. “Baby-diapers.”

“What?”

“Just get them.”

“Why?”

He spun his lie fast as ever. Lies had saved his life as far back as he could remember. “My...uh...my grandson’s gonna be staying with me awhile. Only we gotta keep it quiet. Ballsy’d have a fit he knew I had a kid here.”

“Grandson? I didn’t know you had a grandson.”

Neither did Fearsome. At least not for sure – but he might. Standley’d be what? Twenty-one now? He shook off the math of too many years. “Just get the diapers for me, Skinny.”

Fearsome shut the door and turned to the bathroom. Halfway back to the baby a word fell into his mind with the splash of a well-aimed stone.

Hunger.

“What the hell?” He looked around the room, sure of the tiny voice.

Hunger. Now.

“Holy shit on a poop-sicle stick.” He yanked open the bathroom door, knees weak. Three eyes blinked up at him like midnight flashers. He jumped to the open window, hollering. “Skinny!”

The kid stopped, midway across the street. Fearsome ripped out another fifty from his wad, crumpled it into a tight ball of green, and pitched it to waiting hands. “Get food, too. And...a bottle.”

“Food? What kinda food?”

“Jesus, Skinny, I don’t know. Ask someone for God’s sake.”

Skinny shook his head and moved off.

As he shut the window, a yowling racket filled his head, punctuated again and again. Hunger. Now. Hunger. Now. Hunger. Now.

“God-Damn-Almighty-Fucking-Christ.” Fearsome clawed at his temples and staggered to the bathroom. “I got it. I got it. Hunger. Now.” The jackhammering subsided and the little mouth puckered into a grin.

Thirty minutes slipped by and Skinny returned, his arms full of Rite Aid bags. Fearsome had to open the door to get everything in. As he took the plastic sacks, Skinny pushed by before he could stop him.

“Grandson, eh? Fearsome, you old dog. Let’s see the little tyke.” Skinny looked around the room. “Had me a baby nephew once.”

Fearsome intersected him at the bathroom door, torn between rooting through the bags and ousting his unwelcome guest.

“Yeah. That’s nice, Skinny. Got my change?”

“Sure. But I wanna see the baby.”

No believe me you don’t, he thought. “Not such a good idea.” He needed another lie fast. “He’s...he’s got birth defects.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. Genetics and all.”

“Fuck you, Skinny.”

Skinny handed over a mess of bills and loose change. “Already kept mine,” he said.

“Good deal.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“I wanna see the baby.” His voice had that whiny tone to it.

Another voice dropped into his head: Hunger. Now.

Skinny’s face nearly slid to the floor. “What was that?”

“I said: He’s hungry now. Maybe tomorrow. And I’ll maybe have another twenty for you, too. Lord knows what else I might need.”

“I’ve fed babies before – “

Fearsome grabbed Skinny’s arm as gently as he could and escorted him to the door. “Tomorrow. Maybe.”

Skinny’s eyes lit up. “Promise?”

“Yeah, yeah. Now let me feed this kid, okay?”

He pushed Skinny through the door and shut it, working the chain. Then as the clamor started up again behind his eyes, he rummaged through Pampers and Gerber jars until he found the bottles and formula. He dumped a can in to the tin coffeepot on his hot plate and waited, memory rushing in like a belated tide.

He’d met Marsha the week after he got out of the Pen. She’d been dancing her way through college at a strip-joint in Chicago’s steamier downtown. She was a young, scrawny white kid and his two degrees and life of crime had mesmerized her.

They’d shacked up for just a few months when she announced the coming baby.

At first, he’d panicked, tried to talk her into an abortion, but as her belly swelled he’d settled in easy as sin. Held her as she cried after telling her folks he was black. Took a second job so she could quit dancing. Even gave up weed and booze, though he’d missed them fiercely during his twenty year “vacation.”

He measured her labor by the three packs he’d smoked outside the hospital, and raced in stinking like Newports and two days of sweat to hold his infant son.

They named him Standley – the name that had been intended for him – and they settled into their one bedroom apartment in the Projects.

The itch came on him again, there, as the bills piled up. He started lifting cars again for easy money and when Terrence Champion went down, the bastard squealed and nearly took the rest of them with him. Fearsome lit out for New York in the dead of night, kissing his girl and baby goodnight and goodbye as they slept.

He never went back to Chicago again, but he called sometimes when he was too drunk or too high to stop himself. When he had cash, he sent it, and Marsha’s Christmas cards followed him slowly around the country for twenty years, sometimes catching up to surprise him.

These days, from her last cards, she worked at some firm in Chicago. Marsha Jones, Attorney at Law. Never married, but she’d taken and then kept his name nonetheless.

Her cards had stopped mentioning Little Stan a long time ago.

Fearsome tested the formula on his wrist and winced. “Shit. Hot, hot, hot.”

He ran the bottle under cold water and picked up the baby. Its eyes locked on his and it opened its mouth expectantly. It looked savagely triumphant. “Hold your horses, little man. Don’t wanna burn yourself.”

He picked his way across the room to a ratty recliner crowded in the corner. Cradling the baby, he put the nipple to its mouth.

After a few tentative sucks, the baby spit it out, its face caving in as it purpled a deeper shade. Salt.

Fearsome shook his head. “What?”

Salt. He remembered the chemistry courses he’d taken in prison on the path to his first degree. He saw the images forming in his mind: NaCl, like a movie from school.

“Salt?”

Salt.

Putting the baby in the crook of his arm he climbed to his feet and went to the dresser. He found three packets of McDonald’s salt and tore them open, dumping them into the bottle and shaking it up.

Seated again, the baby drained the bottle and burped loudly as Fearsome patted its back.

“Good one.”

Then, he taped on a diaper and tucked the baby into his bed. “You gotta have a name, baby. So what you like?” Two of the baby’s eyes closed, the third blinked rapidly, struggling to stay open.

Fearsome ran his hand over the baby’s scaly, bare scalp, rubbing it lightly. “How about Standley?” He smiled. “My little man Stan.”

Curling up beside the newest piece in his collection, Fearsome fell lightly into sleep as the Seattle skies leaked rain onto the street outside his window.

His own mother had named him Standley before she died, but his grandmother had intercepted the doctors before they could complete the birth certificate. When they’d questioned her, she’d told him later, she’d put on her best “pissed off black woman” look, put her hands on her hips and told them: “The Good Lord done see fit to take my one baby and give me another. If’n I’m gonna raise ‘im, then by the Lord’s Mercy, I’m gonna name ‘im, too.” And so they scratched out Standley and wrote in Fearsome under her approving eye.

When he was six, she told him that story. Afterwards, she told him what his name meant.

“Fearsome,” she said, “A name is a powerful good or a powerful harm. The Good Book says a good name is more precious than ointment. And the Book is filled with meaningful names.”

They sat on the porch in her swing, rocking to the sounds of the “only white boy as could ever sing” Elvis Presley. She was ancient to him, larger than life.

“In life, boy, you gotta know when to be fierce and when to fear. That’s what your name is. Don’t forget it.”

But by thirteen, he feared nothing. He started with cars, then petty B&E. The gig at the First National, at sixteen, was supposed to be easy. But it had all gone wrong and when the man at the door grabbed the barrel of the shotgun, Fearsome squeezed the trigger and skirted a death penalty by claiming tearfully that it had gone off accidentally and pleading the ignorance of his misguided youth. One of his many life-saving lies. His grandmother’s heart attack in the courtroom hadn’t hurt and he’d been given life.

Caged, he became fiercer but learned to dodge the Queens and the Klan. Got his degrees, put on a good show for The Man, and got out at twenty years, thirty-six and alone in the world.

Three times the voice blasted his head and three times he stirred awake and fed his baby. When he heard the pounding rain at six, he re-counted his cash and decided to skip the morning ferry terminals.

Real Change newspaper – produced and distributed by Seattle’s homeless – had given him his break from crime. He made enough to stay in clothes, groceries, weed and booze. The hotel was almost as expensive as an apartment, but close to the swarming suits and skirts that provided his livelihood.

With Christmas nearing, he could miss a beat. People would give him twenties and watches at Christmas, a small price to pay for their white, middle class privilege.

He waited until nine, checked the sleeping baby and slipped down to the sloop. Skinny waited, his cup half full of coins. The coffee girl wasn’t at her cart. No free coffee today.

“Hey Skinny.”

Skinny grinned, his teeth yellow. “Hey gramps.

“Wanna make another twenty?”

“Diapers and formula?”

“Formula, toys and...salt. A big thing of it.”

“Salt?”

“Don’t ask.” He shoved some bills into Skinny’s cup.

“What about a binky? Babies love binkys.”

“What the fuck’s a binky?”

“You know...something to stick in their mouths to suck on. When they’re crying and shit.”

“Just take your faggoty ass up to Rite Aid before I put my size eleven in your mouth to suck on.”

Skinny laughed. “Okay, okay.”

As he walked away, a thought struck Fearsome. “Skinny?”

“Yeah?”

“Get the kid a pacifier, too.”

Skinny crossed the street shaking his head and mumbling as he went.

When Skinny knocked an hour later Fearsome didn’t have the heart to wake up little Standley. He cracked the door.

Skinny pushed the sack through, then the change. He looked nervous. “Some suits around the park,” he said. “Lookin’ for a baby.”

This was one of those times to be afraid. Kidnapping was a felony charge and no one would see it any other way. “Suits?”

Skinny nodded.

“Cops?”

“I don’t think so. They don’t walk like cops.”

Fearsome peeled off another twenty and pushed it through. “Just keep quiet about this, okay? It’s my grandson...visiting up from Tacoma. Got it?”

Skinny hesitated. “I don’t want your money. I’ll keep quiet. Only....”

“What?”

“Can’t I just see him?” Fearsome was a sucker for pathetic faces, and Skinny worked him over like a prison yard brawler.

“I don’t think that’d be such a good idea.”

“Ah...come on, you old fart. I oughta at least know who I’m covering for....”

“And you can keep your yap shut?” He was suddenly thinking of Champion all those years ago.

Skinny held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor, dude. Swear to God.”

Fearsome scowled, paused, then unchained the door. “Five minutes. And not a word, Skinny, or I swear to God I’ll open you up in your sleep like a Santa Claus present.”

Skinny’s face beamed as he fell through the doorway. Fearsome stepped aside and pointed to the bundle on the bed.

“Oh what a cute...Holy-fuck-me-Jesus!” Skinny stepped back, and said it again, this time in a quiet voice. “Holy-fuck-me-Jesus.”

“I know...he’s no looker, that’s for damn sure.”

Skinny stared, mouth working for words.

“But he...well, he sorta grows on you. Isn’t that right, my little man Stan?”

Three black dots flashed open on the baby’s face.

“He’s got three eyes.”

“Yeah,” Fearsome said. “The better to see you with.” He laughed at his own joke.

“Genetics,” Skinny said. “Figures an ugly fuck like you would have fucked up grandkids.”

“Welcome’s worn, Skinny. I’ll need you tomorrow.”

After Skinny left quickly, Fearsome lifted the baby and danced him around the room. He paused at their reflection in the bathroom mirror and he held the baby up so its grayish face partially eclipsed his own dark face. The scars, the broken nose from twenty years of prison life, juxtaposed against the baby’s innocent, misshapen, three-eyed head.

“You’re not so bad, my little man Stan. Not so bad at all.”

The next day brought more cold December rain and Fearsome sent Skinny off for baby clothes at Nordstrom’s. He’d already gone through his pocket wad and dipped into his rainy day wad, a rubber banded bundle of bills between his mattress and his box spring.

“Make sure you get him a stocking cap,” he’d told Skinny.

By afternoon, little Standley was ready to roll. The stocking cap nicely covered the third eye and strange ears. The nose could hide behind the pacifier but could also be explained easier than the rest.

With the baby in his arms, the cash rolled in. Half the people didn’t even bother with taking the papers, which kept him happy -- he paid a quarter for each and every extra was one more he could sell.

He made rent in two hours. Groceries in three. Booze and weed money.... He looked at the baby as they walked home, the sky clearing finally.

“Goddamn,” he told the wriggling, hungry bundle. “No more weed or booze.”

Midway to the hotel, the voice grabbed him again. He found himself getting used to it.

Feeer. Zum. Hunger. Now.

Pride flooded him. “Did you just say my name?”

The baby blinked up and him and mewled.

Feer-zum. Fear.

“Yeah, that’s right little man. Sometimes you gotta be fierce. And sometimes you gotta fear.” He chuckled and the yowling started, louder than ever, dull butter knives grinding into his brain.

Behind the pain, he saw a black car, shrouded.

He looked up in time to see two dark suits hustling Skinny into an even darker sedan.

“Fear,” he whispered, and dodged into the shadows, his brain furiously spinning lies and escape routes.

Back in the hotel room, he dragged his military surplus duffle from the closet. “I’m not giving you up, my little man Stan.” He caught himself realizing how close he’d come to saying again.

Again. He remember the way his son had smelled the night he left Chicago but he could never remember what he looked like.

He dug the Glad Bag from beneath the bed. It was nearly full, his collection of discarded love. He knew he should clean it out, even leave it all behind. The baby was enough to take. But he couldn’t and he opened the bag.

Propping Stan the Man up against his folded knees, Fearsome pulled each piece from the bag, the flowers, the ring the cards, the poems scribbled on napkins, and passed them before the baby’s three eyes for approval. He talked slowly in a low voice, explaining the meaning behind each bit from his collection.

The last piece he pulled out was a tattered picture. He held the photo in his hands like a wounded butterfly, then held it in front of the baby.

“My boy. My...other...boy.”

The baby gurgled and cooed. Feerzum. Good.

Fearsome smiled. “Not so good, little man.” He tickled the baby’s chin. “Maybe finding you was the greatest good I ever done. Or the greatest good ever done me. I don’t rightly know.”

Ten minutes later, he headed down the stairs as quickly as an old man with an armful could move. Ballsy waited at the counter.

“You got rent for me, Jones?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He shifted the open duffle bag so the baby, lying on top of his clothes, couldn’t be seen. Now you be quiet little man.

Quiet, the baby answered.

“What was that?” Ballsy asked.

“Nothing dude.” He peeled off two hundred dollars from his newly replenished pocket wad. “This should square us up.”

“You moving out?”

“Yeah. Time to move on. Sister’s in New York...think I’ll head there. Haven’t ridden a train in years.” The lies rolled easily off his tongue.

“Well, best of luck to you.”

“Thanks.” He moved towards the door and opened it.

“Hey Jones,” Ballsy called out. “Hold up a second. Got something here for you.” Ballsy came out from behind the counter, a bright red envelope in his hand. “This came for you yesterday.”

Seeing his hands were full, Ballsy tucked it into his coat pocket.

“Thanks, man.”

“No problem. You take it easy.”

“You too.”

He moved through the door and into the night. The temperature had dropped but Seattle winters had always been mild. Christmas lights sparkled and shoppers moved towards crosswalks even in this part of town. Fearsome would miss it.

As he lost himself in the crowd he saw a squad car and a black sedan slip past silently. He looked over his shoulder and watched them slide to the curb in front of the hotel. “Sorry Skinny,” he said. “I knew you’d talk.”

Talk.

He lowered the duffle bag enough that he could peek in on the baby. “You and me, we’ll be just fine.”

Jerry had been the best when it came to new identities. Fearsome had used him twice before age and honesty had brought him back to his real name. He’d retired to some small town outside of Medford but he was still connected.

Fearsome hitched his way to Portland in the night and fell into an Econolodge bed after feeding Standley.

A knock at the door awakened him.

Covering the baby, he went to the door. “Who’s there?”

No answer. Then, the knock came again.

“Look, Goddamn it, I’m not opening the door until....”

But suddenly he was opening the door and stepping back as a man stepped through.

He could have been a movies star. Perfect hair, perfect teeth, piercing blue eyes, a deep tan and athletic build. He wore khaki slacks and a yellow shirt -- summer clothing.

“Hello Mr. Jones,” Mr. California Sun Tan smiled and extended his hand. Fearsome tried to ignore it but found himself shaking it. Again to choose: Fear or fierce...which response? He felt both.

“Who the fuck are you and what do you want?” Only, he knew what the man wanted and Fearsome was already wondering if he could take this guy or not. He had youth but Fearsome had meanness.

“You have something of mine.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” He stayed between the man and the bed where little Standley slept.

The man’s face suddenly turned inside out and went gray. Flappish nostrils flared and a third eye, black as spilled ink, unstuck its lid from the yellow ooze that coated it.

Fearsome felt a warm rush of thought streak through his brain towards the bed behind him. He heard a pleasant cooing and another stream of warmth, this one tenuous and less focused, returned.

“He is the savior of our race and the bridge between our worlds.”

“Well if he’s so damn important why’d she dump him in the trash?”

Mr. California Sun Tan’s face fell back together with a white toothy smile. “She had no idea what he meant. We had hoped to intercept her but were...delayed.”

“So now you’re just gonna take him away?”

The man nodded slowly.

“I won’t let you.” He raised his fists. “I won’t Goddamn let you.”

The man blinked and Fearsome sat down heavily on the floor, suddenly out of breath. “Forgive my use of force, Mr. Jones.”

The man stepped past him, gathered up the baby and headed for the door.

Feerzum. Good.

After they left, twenty years of tears broke through his head and he sobbed himself to sleep on the floor. He awoke in the early afternoon, stiff and sore.

He went to the bed and stared down at the empty pillowcase. “Left his pacifier,” he muttered, picking it up. He took it to the Glad bag and tucked it inside carefully. Then, he dug through his collection, poking each bit with his finger until he found his son’s picture.

Digging Marsha’s card from his pocket, he ripped it open. Sure enough another business card, another hastily scribbled “Call sometime -- let me know you’re alive.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, picked up the phone, and started pressing buttons. The tears started again but he grabbed hold of them fiercely and held them at bay.

Her secretary put him through without asking who it was. Maybe she knew or maybe it was the Friday before Christmas and anyone who called was somebody important just now. He coughed a little and sniffed when he heard Marsha’s voice fill up the phone.

“Hey baby,” Fearsome Jones said. “How you been?”

The line crackled in the midst of her hesitation. “Fears? Oh my God. Is that you? Where are you?”

“Portland.”

“I haven’t heard from you in....”

“Too long,” he said, finishing her dangling sentence. “I know. And I’m sorry.” He waited, letting the words soak in. He waited, hoping she would say something. She didn’t. “Anyway, what with it being Christmas and all I was kind hopin’ you could put me in touch with Stan.”

“I would if I could, Fears. He’s gone. I have no idea where. Last I heard, he was in Atlanta.” Her words tumbled out fast. “Fell in with a bad crowd and lit out one night. Sound familiar?”

Fearsome felt a second wave of loss roll over him. “Atlanta?”

“That was two years ago. He could be anywhere.”

Anywhere. “Well, thanks babe.”

“Fears, I – “ Her voice had that tone in it that said she wanted to talk more, but he cut her off in a quiet voice.

“Merry Christmas, Marsha.” He set the phone down. Another batch of tears pried at his eyes, nose and throat. He coughed them back, running a hand over his face. Time to be fierce.

“Atlanta,” Fearsome said to the empty room. Then, gathering up his things, he let himself out into the night in search of a train station.

The End