"What the hell is this?" Tony asked himself after he opened the shoebox under the bed.

His father asked the same question, just about a hundred times a day, whenever something didn't look, act, taste, speak, think or feel just the way he thought it should. "What the hell is this?" when he kicked Tony's old, broken toys, the only kind he had, out of his way. "What the hell is this?" when the results of one of Mommy's rare cooking experiences wasn't exactly what he wanted at that moment in time, even if he had just asked for it a few minutes ago. So it should be no surprise that this oft-heard phrase was the first thing that popped into Tony's six-and-a-half-year-old head when he found the .38.

He had been playing "baseball" by bouncing his dirty blue rubber ball against the short, end-of-the-hallway wall between his room and his parents' and catching the ball as it came back; if he missed, it was a hit. He felt he was ready to play regular ball, but Mommy said he wasn't old enough yet. He was wearing his navy Tigers hat, the one with the white, felt 'T' coming unglued, a remnant from last summer's T-ball league. His red t-shirt was a holdover from two summers ago, faded and holey from hundreds of washes. His blue jeans were a gift from Mommy's church. Back then the knees weren't torn out. His tube socks were too long, their whiteness aged to grey. The elastic in them had long since been stretched into regular thread, allowing the socks to sag around his ankles immediately after he pulled them up. Three or four inches of sock flopped in front of and around his toes. On his latest play, he tried to step forward with his right foot, but his left foot was standing on that extra four inches of toe room. He lost his balance and fell to the floor. He managed to throw the ball, but the ball hit his bedroom doorframe and careened back into his parents' room.

"Not in there, not in there, not in there," he breathed over and over, quicker and quicker, hope escaping with each word. He watched with dread as the ball sailed through the air toward the gaping doorway. He imagined it as a giant bear, huge white fangs dripping with spit, ready to clamp down on his baseball game and the last vestiges of his hope.

Little Tony felt like he was in a slow motion replay; he tried to regain his feet to reach the ball before it crossed into the wastelands. His slick, sock covered feet slipped and slipped. The ball seemed to float, but the closer he came to gaining his balance, the further away the ball sailed. Then it was gone. Really it was over in a second or two, but to Tony it seemed as long as a TV commercial during Power Rangers.

He lay resignedly on his stomach on the cool, dirty, yellowed tile, his head toward the short wall, his face toward his own bedroom, and his arms by his sides. Dust bunnies danced in the wind created by his fall. He did not cry. After several long seconds of contemplation, he slowly lifted his head and turned it at his parents' bedroom. He knew he wasn't allowed in there, but how else would he get his ball back? He pushed himself up and swung his legs around to sit facing The Room. He sat Indian-style with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. He debated his options. He knew well the repercussions of disobeying the house rules.

And besides that, The Room just wasn't a nice place to be. His father smoked all the time in there, he knew, and the sheets hanging in the window couldn't keep all the mid-morning light from bleeding into the room. The filtered light combined with the stifling, stagnant smoke-air and another thousand dust bunnies to give the room a creepy, haunted feeling that made Tony uncomfortable. Just looking at the darkened doorway, he was reminded of the awful noises his mommy made and how he cringed in his own stained and thread-bare bed linen when the sobs and yelps echoed through the house at night. Almost every night he relived his father's drunken howlings and the all-too-often beatings he received in The Room. They didn't have to make a rule to keep him out, but no rule was going to keep him off the playing field. He didn't really have anything else to do but play ball.

He stretched his tiny, floppy-socked foot across the threshold to The Room and slowly entered the shadowy, hazy otherworld. He felt like he was walking into a dungeon and expected a dragon to breathe fire on him. On the rare occasion in the past when he had to go into his parents' room, he looked behind the door and the far side of the dresser for lurking things or, even worse yet, the Wild Things. He couldn't help but think about one of his favorite books. 'This is where they are,'� he whispered to himself. The strange odor of The Room made his belly feel pukey.

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