Black Fridays by Michael Sears

hands pinned over his ears, eyes squinted shut, and emitted a hideous, high-pitched shriek. I tried rubbing his back to soothe him, but my touch sent him instantly into an even bigger fit.
    “I want you to know, sir, that I have reported you to airport security. I have been watching. The way you treat that boy is shameful.” A heavyset, older woman in a floral-patterned summer dress was standing over me. Her fists were clenched. She looked like Barbara Bush, only meaner. An embarrassed-looking twenty-something man in a seersucker suit and white buck shoes was pulling ineffectually on her arm.
    “Come on, Grandma. You’ve done your good turn. Let the police deal with this.”
    “I’m going to pray for that boy,” she hissed at me. It was a threat.
    The garbled announcements came to an abrupt end. The Kid stopped screaming and sat up.
    “Looks like it’s working,” I said.
    “Jesus is watching you.”
    I let her have the last word.
    The gate attendants called our flight and we queued up with the other families traveling with children. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two uniforms approaching the gate—security. They didn’t look like they were interested in long explanations.
    “Excuse me, sir. Is that your child?”
    We were steps away from boarding.
    “Would you step out of line, please?”
    The Kid shuffled along at my side, head down, shoulders slumped, looking just like what I imagined a battered child would look like.
    “What’s the problem?” I tried to give them a pleasant smile. It is not what I do best.
    “We had a report of a child being physically abused.”
    “My son is fine. Take a look.” I silently cursed all meddling grandmothers.
    The cop got down on his haunches and inspected him. The Kid scowled back at him.
    “Tell me, boy, are you all right? Has anyone been hurting you? We’re here to help.”
    The Kid’s eyes rolled up toward the ceiling and he moaned with the force of a ghoul in an Irish fairy tale, “’Nilla! ’Nilla!” Then he gave a sigh of immense heartbreak. It was a Tony-winning performance.
    The cop looked up at me.
    “Ice cream,” I said. “He wants ice cream.”
    “Oh.” He stood up. “Sorry.” His partner was trying not to smile.
    “Can we go now?” I said.
    They waved me through.
    I thought I was in the clear. I was proud of us. We had weathered our first storm together. The Kid and I were struggling, but we were making it work. No problem.
    That sense of well-being lasted all the way through the boarding bridge. The step from there to the plane itself involved crossing a half-inch gap. The Kid began shrieking.
    In the few seconds it took me to identify the Kid’s problem, he managed to terrify all of the other children who were in line with us. He also wet himself, soaking not just his pants and underpants, but his sock and one shoe as well. And he broke out into a slimy sweat all over, so that when I grabbed him and propelled him over the crack and into the plane, it was like wrestling a greased piglet.
    I don’t think pigs bite as readily as he did, though. He didn’t bite the flight attendant who reached forward to help me, which would probably have had us ejected on the spot, if not arrested. He bit me—hard enough to put two holes in my Ralph Lauren blazer. He also bit himself, but that was later.
    He fought me as I changed him, pulling clothes out of his carry-on while annoyed passengers pushed by us. At first, he refused to wear the seat belt, but once it was locked in, he kept pulling it tighter until I became afraid he was going to cut himself in two. I was ready for an in-flight vodka on the rocks and we were still at the gate.
    The shrieking didn’t start up again until we were in the air and the pilot came over the overhead talking about what time we should expect to land and what the weather was going to be like. The Kid looked around wildly for the source of the annoying hum that accompanied the pilot’s voice, and then, without