Theo Read Online Free

him, make faces at him like they think he needs cheering up. Sometimes he finds someone looking at him oddly, their eyes half-closed, focusing, like they are thinking hard, seeing something else. Then they smile at him and act normal again.
    The man in the gazebo opens his eyes, sees Theo and grins. He has glasses. Theo stares.
    Come here.
    Theo is unsure about whether to do it. The sun in his face makes him squint. Motion catches his eye – the heron flapping over its nest, in the big tree like a dead hand reaching out of the ground, gray-brown and smooth like driftwood near the dunes. Theo knows things about birds and thinks this one is lost – herons are freshwater birds that live on lakes. He hopes it’s finding what it needs. Maybe it’s not a heron.
    It’s okay.
    Theo notices the man again, and slowly walks at him. It seems to Theo the bird would want a little more privacy for a nest, like a tree with leaves to hide the babies. But apparently the big ones like that build in the open so they can see. One parent’s always there, for protection. Theo thinks about his parents, and then about teachers. Theo stops.
    Why are you not wearing any clothes.
    It feels better, man. Do you live here.
    Yes.
    Are you Frieda’s kid.
    Yes. This is my house.
    Listen to the birds.
    Are you high.
    The man laughs, and then he frowns and stands. Theo steps back. He’s seen this before and is glad there is plenty of room to run. He hears something: Alex and Paz and Baron sit behind him now, panting, looking at him, their dog eyebrows raised. He had forgotten about them and now feels better.
    Standing, the man looks short, his penis like the nest with a dark purple baby bird Theo had found on the ground under one of the gnarled beach trees. His own penis is pale and wormy. What happens, Theo wonders, between now and then.
    My mom asked if you could put some clothes on.
    The man stares up and out and around. And down at Theo. Then he moves fast, his hair blowing, across the gazebo floor to the steps and jumps, landing and collapsing, then scrabbling up, grass sticking to him, and runs at Theo, his arms like flippers spinning at the air. Theo screams.
    The dogs hop and jump, barking, Paz stumbling, Theo scooting sideways as the man gets closer, faster, saying something but Theo can’t figure it out. Theo runs withoutthinking, the dogs frantic and the man suddenly there and grabbing and the dogs barking and the man laughing.
    Theo away, watching, now the dogs calming, licking, the man on his knees, sticking his face against theirs, his arms like penguin wings rubbing the dogs.
    Theo isn’t sure what to do, so he looks at the brown ground, the grass like dirty hair, and then up toward a long-needled pine waving and shaking at him. There is a lot of wind early, making ocean noises. Theo feels himself moved a little by it as he decides to scuffle his way toward the cracked terrace that runs the width of the big house’s back side, facing the trees in front of the dunes, the naked man now squatting on his haunches and the dogs trotting after Theo.
     
    ‘Mansion.’ Theo had found the word in the big dictionary with the tissue pages smelling like an old coat. 1. A large stately house. 2. A manor house. 3.
Archaic
a. A dwelling; an abode. b. A separate dwelling in a large house or structure. 4.a. See house. b. Any one of the twenty-eight divisions of the moon’s monthly path. Middle English, a dwelling, from Old French, from Latin mansio, from mansus, past participle of manere, ‘to dwell, remain’; see men- in Indo-European roots.
    It is a big house. He isn’t sure about stately, marked by lofty or imposing dignity. On the same page was
Their swords are ruste, their bodys duste, Their souls are with the Saints, we truste
, about something else. He passes the sundial at the side of the house.
    Come, light! visit me!
    I count time; dost thou?
    Theo whispers the words to himself, walking.
    Weeds poke up through the squares of the terrace,