Free Ask the Dark by Henry Turner Page A

no jungle gyms, neither, or kiddie pools, nothing to play on, just grass and flowers and ivy and trees everywhere thick as you please.
    We got stopped three times. First by people in their yards who came over and talked about Jimmy Brest and the last time they seen him and where. Word was generally that he must still be around, that even if he was captured and kidnapped by this killer he had to still be in the neighborhood or in town at least, because here’s where Tommy Evans was found. So even though there was this sense of him being already dead, there was the idea that maybe he’d be found, or the man who took him would. Day was sunny and I remember ’specially how when we talked the people was always in the sun, holding hands up to cover their eyes but it weren’t any good, and they were squinting like they hurt, their eyes, I mean, and the streets and houses all seemed empty in rows behind’m.
    Third time we was stopped it was a cop. He asked Marvin what he was doing with me, and we both told’m no Marvin ain’t doing nothing wrong and we knowed each other real good and was even the ones hanging the flyers for Jimmy Brest and showed’m a bunch of’m. But this cop was young and dumb and new and looking for something to do, so he radioed in and wouldn’t let us go until another cop showed up, officer named Dryker, big old cop with white hair, who knowed both Marvin and me, Marvin from just around and me from when he caught me once taking eggs off porches.
    We talked and he asked us both if we knowed Brest and when we last seen him. I told him I did know him but hadn’t seen him awhile, and Marvin said pretty much the same. Then looking at me, Dryker said what a wiseass I thought I was but that this man out there was killing boys and for me to mind the curfew, which was now an hour earlier, five o’clock. I said, Yessir, I will, sir, or something like that, and he went off.
     
    Day after that was when they found Tuckie Brenner in Florida.
    Florida.
    So he ain’t around here, that Jimmy Brest, Marvin said. He was driving, looking on at the street. I was looking at the foam piece.
    Yeah, I said.
    Could be here. Could be in Florida. Could be anywhere.
    Yeah, I said.
    They hadn’t found all Tuckie Brenner, just a piece of’m, and that was three weeks back from when we was driving around now. Took’m three weeks, Florida cops, I mean, to identify out who it was.
    We didn’t talk about that, though. Just drove. I weren’t feeling at all good. I mean I felt real bad, but couldn’t say why, and I couldn’t talk much, or even look at anybody. And I guess Marvin, he noticed, ’cause after a bit he pulls the van to the side of the street and he stops and looks at me.
    Billy?
    Yar? I said.
    You didn’t get along with this Brest boy, did you?
    No, I said.
    He watched me a minute, Marvin, me just sitting there sort’f blank-faced and staring at the foam piece, and then he talked, low and smooth, almost a whisper to his voice.
    Billy, one thing you gotta know is, what you do or say, it don’t mean shit ’bout what’s real. You understand that?
    I didn’t say anything and he said, Fact is, you can even kill a man and it ain’t real. I mean it ain’t nothing you wanted to do, ain’t nothing you meant to do, but just something you had to do, ’cause that’s the way things were. War taught me that. Life—it all fucked up. Once you know that, things go easier. You can get complicated all you want but that ain’t gonna help. You just gotta know it. ’Cause what I’m saying is, what you said or done or what he said or done, that don’t mean shit now. What you been ain’t what you are. Understand? Most men take their whole life to learn that. But you gotta learn it right now. You hear what I’m saying?
    I hear, I said.
    So it don’t matter what you ever thought about him. You didn’t do this, Billy, even if you wished it. You understand?
    I sat still a minute then, just looking at him, and he never took