by Craig Taylor

The Beast is already sitting in the car when I come out of the coaches meeting. He's strumming his badminton racket like it's a guitar. He's singing along with the radio. His blonde head is bobbing up and down. I told him, twice even, that if he took the key to listen to the radio then he had to turn it to the left — all the way so as not to start the car and waste gas. But when I open the door of the rec centre the headlights are on and the engine's running. There's exhaust coming out of the tailpipe because the air is shimmering like it does when it's hot. It's late summer.

He's kind of a retard, seriously. I don't think anyone on my Dad's side thought they had it in them to produce that kind of person, but Aunt Sheila did, and there he was, since 1987, always with his mouth open in photos, always asking for unrealistic stuff at Christmas, carrying around a badminton racket even before he started playing the sport and strumming it like it was a guitar. Probably one kid in a hundred thousand turns out like he did, but my Dad told me from the moment he came out everybody knew. On the first day of badminton camp I explained to the campers in each section a little bit about him and told them to be patient. On the second day he suddenly stood up in the middle of a lesson, wiggling his hand against his leg, and said to the class that he wanted his tournament name to be The Beast. He just declared it. Two of the campers who had heard my talk the day before nodded and started whispering to each other. No one else asked for a tournament name. In the history of the camp no one had wanted a name as far as the rest of the coaches remembered. But I did him a favour and wrote it on the chart and Jesse, who announces the matches, did him a favour and said 'Court One: Kevin Joseph, Bantam, versus The Beast, Bantam.'

Later on that day, when we were driving back to Aunt Sheila's cottage, I told him that it was a bad idea. He was quiet. I turned off the radio and said that he should chill out.

"Maybe you're the one who should chill out, not me."

"Oh, nice one."

"Oh, nice one," he said.

I waited a couple seconds until the Copying Game was done, drove over the hill near the golf course, then told him that being fascinated with the changes was one thing, but there was no point in advertising it was happening.

"This has nothing to do with advertising," he said.

"Telling people all about it is advertising."

I told him he didn't need to call himself The Beast. It was what happened to every single thirteen year old in the history of the world, and that he was no different; that he wasn't turning into some kind of monster, and that it would just come to an end when it needed to come to an end. I showed him my own legs, which were a bad example because he was already hairier than me. I told him that they don't keep growing forever. He watched the concession roads roll by for a moment and then announced that if the hairs didn't stop by September he would check himself into a different school.

"You already go to a different school."

"I mean an alone school."

"What, just you and nobody else?"

"Only teachers who have the same problem."

"It’s not a problem you get, it’s something that people go through. It’s no different from the hair on his head." He turned away and didn't say anything until we got back to the cottage. I twisted the dial back on and sang along with the AM radio when we turned on to the dirt road.

"So where would you find a solitary school? You going to do that by yourself or are you going to get Aunt Sheila to do it for you?" I asked him one morning when we were down at the lake for his swim. He ignored me. I supervised his swim, if you could call it that. He would put on his bathing suit, have to go to the bathroom, put it on again. Then we'd flip flop down to the beach and he would look at the lake, skip some rocks, then lie on his towel and spend the rest of the time inching up his bathing suit to stare at his thighs. He'd show me the new ones and then try to pluck them.

"They only come back darker."

"How can they get any darker?" he asked, squinting against the sun.

"They come back stronger and then each time you do it, it'll be harder to pull them out until one day they just won't come out, and if you make them come out, you'll pull a big piece of your leg out with it."

He looked at me, looked back down at the hair he was pinching between his two fingers, squinted back at me. Then pulled it.

I shrugged my shoulders. "Your funeral."

The badminton school refused to take him at first because he was out of the age group. But when I explained he was the way he was, and when my aunt made that phone call and started crying, they let him into the Bantams. My seniority helped. "The alone school will be in another country," he told me a little later, while he brushed the loose hair off his thighs. "Or it will be done through the mail."

"Correspondence," I told him.

"Corr-es-pond-ence," he replied.

"Why don't you go in the water? You're dressed for the water."

He decided to stare down into his shorts and not answer me.

"Besides it happens when you sleep."

He looked up at me again, using his hand as a sunscreen. "Then I won't sleep."

"Just try that."

But he did. He lay on the foldout bed next to the woodstove pretending to read Reader's Digest condensed novels, staying awake as hard as a person could. One of Aunt Sheila's rules while the two of us lived at the cottage was that I had to make sure I went to bed only after he was asleep, so I sat on the rocking chair, hoping his eyes would slip shut, watching his mouth hang while he concentrated. "It's working," he would say at around three o'clock and then he’d pick up the book from off the bed and prop it back up in a way that let him see his chest and his stomach and the book at the same time. He read slowly, turning a page every twenty minutes or so. Then he would put the book down to check up on himself. The darkness outside at the cottage at that time of night is complete, and it's cold. I would let the fire go until four and then tell him that that was it. If he didn't go to sleep he’d have to use blankets. So he piled the comforter and arranged it so his patches of hairless skin were the only things showing.

One morning the raft next door came loose from its moorings. Mrs. Binns, who had bought the waterfront property with insurance money, came around to all the cottages in the vicinity to ask for men to come help pull her raft back before it drifted into the neighbour's expensive red speedboat. She had heard that Mrs. Olson's special son and her nephew were living at the cottage for the summer, so she came down the driveway in her long t-shirt and tights around six o'clock in the morning, just as we were giving in to sleep. "Because if the wind gets ahold of it," Mrs. Binns said, "the raft'll be in the middle of the lake in an hour." He nodded with wide eyes, completely awake. He stayed excited until Mrs. Binns mentioned there would be a whole group of people down there "because that was the great thing about a camp: When something like this happens, everyone pitched in."

When I came back from the outhouse, he was there sitting at the table with his towel around his neck and his corduroy church pants on.

"I can swim in my pants."

"You don't need to swim in your pants."

"They shouldn't have to see me."

"They don't care." I said to him, louder than usual, and then tossed his shorts at him, then a clothespeg.

He looked at me in that way retarded people look where they don't see anything even when they're looking straight at it. I told Mrs. Binns that I would come by myself. From the road I could see him still sitting at the table with his pants on and a towel. We saved the raft, but he was still there in the same position when I came back. I took the towel from around his neck and hung it back up on the clothesline.

Back in the car in the parking lot, I turn down the music. He finishes playing guitar on his badminton racket with a little flourish of the hands. I cut the engine.

"Was the engine on?" he asks, as if he hadn’t heard it start.

There are a couple cars in the parking lot still, and the sunlight bounces off their windshields. The cornfield beyond is looking saggy and sort of a mess, like they all do at the end of summer.

"So what happened in your meeting?" he says.

"Where do you want to eat tonight?" I reply. We can make bologna sandwiches at the cottage but that's about it.

"No," he flicks his hands at me a couple times. "What did the coaches say?"

"Well." I clear my throat. "They decided that they'd rather you just went by Geoffrey."

"How do they know that name?"

"Because it's on the registration forms, Geoffrey."

"Oh."

"And because I'm your cousin."

"I was just kidding."

"You weren't kidding."

"You weren't kidding," he says.

I wait a second to make sure he's done. Finally I tell him "They'd rather you just went with your real name for the tournament because that's when the parents show up and if they call out a match and someone says that their kid is playing The Beast then they might wonder what kind of operation we're running here."

He taps his racket on the foam dashboard a couple times.

"Did you tell them what's happening?"

"No."

He looks over at me with a wrinkled forehead. "Come on." The pouches under his eyes are about as dark as charcoal.

"What am I supposed to say?"

"You're supposed to tell them."

"They wouldn't care. They're coaches. They're not your mother."

"But I asked you especially if you would tell them. And I wrote down something for you to say, as an explanation."

"I'm not going to read them what you wrote. I don't want to sound..." I stop again. Conversations with him only go in fits and starts. A coach drives by in his 4x4 and waves.

"I want you to go tell them now."

"Tell them what?"

"That I can't be Geoffrey."

"And why is that?"

"Because you know why. Because I'm not Geoffrey."

I want to smack my hands against the wheel and call him a retard; call him what he is. Tell him he’s not some sort of strange and wonderful case that’s going to turn into a bear. That it's just pubes.

"No," I say, finally in that tone I learned a couple days after they dropped Geoffrey off. "I'm not going to tell them that. You know what they think? They just think it's a stupid name. They think that you're just playing around and being intimidating."

"And being what?"

"In-tim-i-dating."

"Oh."

We sit there for a second and then he takes off his shirt. I don't look because I know it’s a retard stunt. The last coach is shutting down the rec centre in front of us, one light at a time, and I keep quiet until he comes out the front door, waves, and heads off towards his car at the other end of the lot.

"Will you take off your shirt too?" Geoffrey asks.

"Why?" I don't look at him, I look down at the badminton racket that’s now lying on the floor mat.

"I have a hair coming out of my tit."

The coach is pulling flyers from off his windshield. I want Aunt Sheila to be here. I want someone to be here who has training.

"That doesn't mean you're a beast," I say without turning my head.

"I didn't stay up late enough."

"That's got nothing to do with it."

"You said that's when it happens."

"I don't know." I try again with a little less force. "I don't know if that's for sure the truth Geoffrey. OK? I just heard that that's how it happens."

"When did it happen to you?"

"It just happens."

"Did you pluck them and then they came back stronger?"

"I don't know. Seriously. I don't know."

"I didn't stay up late enough," he says quietly.

I finally look over at him. He has a retard's bone structure — a big breastbone that pokes in a point. There's a hair coming from one of his tits and a couple around his neck he probably hasn't seen yet.

"It's right there," he says.

"I see it."

It looks like a limp piece of thread.

"Maybe just for this tournament you can be Geoffrey, but you can be The Beast in your head."

He folds his hands in his lap and looks out his window.

"Geoffrey wouldn’t have a hair on his tit."

On the way home I buy Neopolitan from Davidson's store and sugar cones from the gas station. He wraps the ice cream up in his t-shirt, holds it on his lap, and goes the rest of the ride bare-chested. It was technically still summer, so I don't tell him to stick his shirt back on. When I open the lock on the screen door of the cottage, he pulls on the woodpecker knocker a few times and its woody noise echoes around. This is our ritual. I don't mention that he should put on his shirt when we sit at the table with our cones. He seems to be OK just sitting there. After a while the willow shadow starts stretching across the table. A car goes by on its way to the public access part of the beach.

He falls asleep with the last part of the cone still grasped in his hand. I shake him a few times, then prod him with his racket, but he's gone. I lift with all the pressure on my knees and somehow pick him up, his big head rolling around from side to side, little caked pieces of strawberry ice cream under his lip. With my foot I push a couple of the condensed books off onto the floor and then set him down on the bed. His hand is bent into a little claw. His nose is rubbing against the pillow. I roll the tit hair around in my fingers a few times — it seriously is just like a little string. He moves his lips. And then I pull.

Craig Taylor is a writer in London. He is a former editor at Saturday Night magazine and Open Letters (openletters.net), and is currently the editor of Anonymous Juice magazine (anonymousjuice.com).