Young Tommy Jones is building a boat on dry land. 

The closest lake is a two-hour drive on a good day, but he says he doesn’t care and that he’ll wait for the rain to fall and carry him away. When that day comes, he says his boat will grow a tadpole’s tail and swim on out of this town so he can finally stretch his legs. 

Tommy Jones has always been strange. They say he’s the son of a man with no toes who sold frozen meat on the side of the street, and that his mother had eyes rolling around her head like loose coins at the bottom of a purse. 

He was born an amorphous gray glob that spilled into a dish held up by the fingers of gloved nurses. His parents took three looks at him. One to first see their baby boy, the second to confirm their intense repulsion, and the third ordered by a doctor, who wanted them to confirm their request to give him away. 

That’s how Tommy Jones wound up in a group home, where he lived in an empty fish tank that was propped up like a crib. Where he swished and sloshed, and the social workers dripped in fresh milk that he rolled around in. 

He grew small arms and legs that looked identical, gray stubs wiggling out and grasping at the edges of the glass until he finally had the strength to pull himself out. The other kids pushed him around in a stroller meant for toy dolls. By this time, his eyes had opened and the social workers gasped because they were the eyes of a grown adult. Bright and analytic. Eyes meant to lead a business meeting where dollars were candy to be gobbled up.  

Mr. and Mrs. Jones adopted Tommy when he was eight years old. That’s when he became Young Tommy Jones, and he was starting to look more like a boy who could walk on two legs. His eyes were just as bright, but he kept them behind a thick pair of sunglasses because the sun felt like a rash from the inside. Mr. and Mrs. Jones said they were called on by the Good Lord to give a life to this unfortunate soul who had been cast aside. 

In his first week, Young Tommy Jones climbed up onto the roof of his new house, and the neighbors watched with some concern as he swam along the tiles. He slept out there until the firefighters came, his body slipping through their hands, and he climbed right back up the next night. 

His parents chased him around the garden with a broom and scrubbed his skin clean with bright blue dish soap. They kept a bucket by their side to scoop him up and sit him still at the dinner table, where they ate mashed potatoes, well-done steak, and played the local news behind them.  

Young Tommy Jones, they swore, would grow to be a man whose skin was firm and peachy-keen. 

In school, he had no trouble making friends, but his parents forbade him from joining the swim team. He joined track and his body flopped loose above the waist every time he crossed the finish line.

His skin became less slick, his arms more outstretched, and his feet fit inside every shoe he was ever given. When the other kids squinted, he looked just like the rest of the Jones’ dressed in fresh ironed shirts. 

But Young Tommy Jones found ways. In class, he licked his own skin to add back moisture. He rolled around in the fields and dripped down into the dirt to mingle with the slugs. He pushed and pulled at his pores until they filled with algae that splattered onto the wooden desks that made the room smell like moss. 

Now Young Tommy Jones is a man with a solid build, but he says he wants to find out what he’s actually supposed to be. Every day he scours the streets for scrap metal and wood. People have started leaving out trinkets for him to use; parts of an old shed and outgrown beds. He carries them all on his back and builds his boat. 

No one knows where Young Tommy Jones is going to go. 

His house is empty. Mr. and Mrs. Jones have moved to the assisted living home across town, where there’s no sidewalk and the asphalt on the streets smells like cooked tar. He visits them once a week with a tie and a smile that never utters a word about the boat. 

Young Tommy Jones doesn’t wear sunglasses anymore, but he says the sun still makes his eyes sting. They swirl around his forehead with a keen stare that’s always fixed somewhere in the distance, just past where everyone else can see.

He sleeps outside next to his boat. His skin dewy and damp with a soft scent of cut grass. He holds every snail he finds like a long lost friend and asks them questions no one else can hear. 

When it rains, which isn’t much, we sit out on our porches or stand with our just-bought umbrellas. The rain never feels cold, and the sky always has a purple hue. We wait, hoping to catch sight of Young Tommy Jones sailing away.