Free Fiend by Harold Schechter Page B

neighborhood,Mrs. Millen allowed them to go off unaccompanied, so long as she knew exactly where they were headed and when they would be home. Before returning to her housework, she made sure to check the clock. The time was 10:20 A.M.
    *  *  *
    About fifteen minutes later, a neighbor of the Millens—a woman named Sarah Hunting—encountered little Horace near the lamppost on Dorchester Street. He was in the company of a bigger boy. Mrs. Hunting didn’t take a close look at the latter, though he struck her as “lop-shouldered.”
    When she asked Horace where he was off to, he exclaimed, “The bakery!” Holding up his right hand, he uncurled his fingers and showed her the coins he had clutched in his palm. Then Horace and the older boy headed down the street.
    *  *  *
    Mrs. Eleanor Fosdick was sitting by her bedroom window at around eleven o’clock when a slender boy, four or five years old, rounded the corner of Dorchester Street. He caught her attention because of his black-velvet, gold-braided cap. Her own five-year-old son had been hankering after just such a cap for weeks.
    All at once, Mrs. Fosdick became aware of something else: a second, older boy following the younger one around the corner.
    As the little boy in the velvet cap headed for the bakery down the block, the older boy retreated to a nearby doorway and took a quick look around him. From her vantage point across the street, Mrs. Fosdick could clearly see his expression. It struck her as so odd—so strangely excited —that she went to fetch her spectacles.
    When she returned to her window seat, she saw the little boy emerge from the bakery with a drop cake in his hand. At that moment, the older boy emerged from the doorway and—after speaking briefly to the younger one—took away the drop cake, broke it in two, gave one part back to the little boy, and devoured the rest himself.
    Then, taking the little boy by the hand, he led him away along Dorchester Street, in the direction of the bay.
    *  *  *
    About forty minutes later, a man named Elias Ashcroft spotted two boys walking along the Old Colony Railroad tracks toward McCay’s Wharf. The older of the two was leading thesmaller one by the hand. He assumed that they were brothers out for some fun.
    *  *  *
    Fifteen-year-old Robert Benson had been digging clams in the bay for several hours. He was returning home with his haul at around noon when he encountered a couple of boys, who were heading toward a strip of marshland locally known as the “cow pasture.” As the older of the two boys helped his little companion across a ditch, gunfire resounded in the distance.
    “What’re they shooting?” the older boy asked Benson.
    “Wild ducks,” he replied.
    Without another word, the older boy led the smaller one away. Benson continued in the opposite direction, wondering idly about the little boy’s outfit. The fancy clothing—knee breeches with a checkered waist, velvet-trimmed shirt, black velvet cap—seemed totally inappropriate for an outing to the marsh.
    *  *  *
    About twenty minutes later, a man named Edward Harrington, who had also spent the morning clamming, was washing his haul in a little creek when, glancing up, he spotted a teenaged boy sprinting toward the railroad tracks, away from the marsh. As he ran, the boy kept casting nervous looks over his shoulder.
    Curious, Benson paused and looked back in the direction of the marsh to see if someone was chasing the boy. But no one was there.

15

It’s like a lion at the door;
And when the door begins to crack,
It’s like a stick across your back;
And when your back begins to smart,
It’s like a penknife in your heart;
And when your heart begins to bleed,
You’re dead, and dead, and dead, indeed.
—Nursery rhyme
    B y the time they arrived at Savin Hill Beach at around 3:45 P.M. , the tide was in and the water too high for clamming, so the two Power brothers—eleven-year-old George and his older brother,