Free B009XDDVN8 EBOK by William Lashner Page B

was inside and Ben and Augie played lookouts on either end of street, I emptied the bag smack on the Grubbins lawn.
    Holy Peter, it was perfect. It looked like a brontosaurus had made its way onto Henrietta Road.
    “They say one guy who overheard something the Devil Rams didn’t want him to overhear,” said Ben on my steps, “they c-cut off his ears and sewed them onto his ass.”
    “Whenever he sits down,” said Augie, “he goes deaf.”
    “What’s that you say?” said Ben in his famous old-man’s voice. “What? What?”
    “Stop it,” I said as the other two giggled. I tossed a baseball card onto the step to start a new pile. “Let’s play.”
    “You’ll be sorry,” said Ben. “Yes you will.”
    And I didn’t doubt it. But the son of a bitch had thrown a football at my face. I wasn’t going to sit back and take it. I was still at that age where consequences more serious than a schoolyardtussle were not within my consciousness. I figured maybe I’d end up with a bloody lip, a swollen ear, maybe I’d lose a baby tooth a few months early. I never thought the whole thing could spiral so far out of my control it would endanger everything I ever loved. Though, to be perfectly honest, I was the kind of kid that would have done it anyway.
    “Here he comes,” said Augie.
    I cocked my head and heard nothing, nothing, until the clamor of a motorcycle engine in the distance squeezed at my bowels. “Maybe we should go inside and look out the window,” I said.
    “Maybe we should all j-just go home,” said Ben.
    “Maybe you girls should change your diapers,” said Augie. He tossed a card on top of mine. “He won’t even notice us.”
    The sound of the engine grew louder, the individual piston-churning explosions came closer. Until he appeared, at the very end of the street: Derek Grubbins, helmetless on his Harley. Broad shoulders, brown beard, biceps bulging from his T-shirt, tattoos shining as he roared down Henrietta Road.
    He cruised toward his lawn and then right past the pile as if it didn’t exist. He pulled into the drive, killed the engine, yanked the bike back on its stand, stomped up the steps to the front of his house, banged the front door open before disappearing inside.
    “Nothing,” said Augie. “A bit fat nothing.”
    I was simultaneously relieved and disappointed. It was as if a roller coaster I had been dreading closed before I could hop on. “I can’t believe he missed it,” I said.
    “His eyes must be failing,” said Augie, “considering that the pile is as big as his head.”
    “And it l-looks like him, too,” said Ben.
    “Now what?”
    “Now we go home,” said Ben.
    “What about finishing our flip?” said Augie, gesturing to the baseball cards between us.
    “Okay,” said Ben, settling down to finish flipping when—
    Bam.
    The front door of the Grubbins house blew open and Tony Grubbins flew out headfirst, landing splayed on the lawn. Derek Grubbins strode out after his brother. When Tony tried to scramble to his feet, Derek cuffed Tony hard enough to knock him to the ground again.
    “Pick it up now,” said Derek.
    “I don’t have a bag,” said Tony.
    “I don’t give a fuck,” said Derek. “I told you to keep the damn lawn clean.”
    “It’s not my—”
    Before Tony could finish, Derek kicked Tony in the ribs, hard enough to send his brother spinning, and then stormed back into the house, slamming the door behind him, leaving Tony Grubbins on the grass, clutching at his side as if shards of bone were poking through the flesh.
    The beating was quick enough that we might have missed it if we weren’t sitting on my steps, waiting just for it. But we didn’t miss it, we caught it in all its ugliness, the flash of violence and submission, a glimpse into the dark heart beating inside that house.
    What do you feel then, when you realize you’ve stumbled carelessly into something dreadful and made it worse? You feel shame, and remorse, and pity, of course you