Free Ask the Dark by Henry Turner Page B

his eyes off me.
    He was right. I had wished it.
    I fuckin’ hated Jimmy Brest.
    And he hated me.
    Since I was five years old he’d called me the worst names I knew or could remember, for no reason I could ever understand, saying things about my sister and Daddy and even my mother after she died that I could never forget. He hit me and beat on me more times than I could count. But the last thing I wanted, no matter how many times I’d cussed him and said I hated him and wished he was dead, was for him to get anything like what got Tommy Evans. I get mad but I ain’t never that mad. So yeah, I was feeling bad ’bout stuff I’d said and thought, and felt guilty for all that.
    But maybe those thoughts just hurt too bad, I don’t know, ’cause right then they kind’f faded away, and I was thinkin’ more about the day before yesterday, before he was took, my mind goin’ over all that I’d seen. Last thing I knew he’d done was chase me down that alley into that garage, where I went up the rafters and sat waiting to chuck paint on his fuckin’ head should he find me. And there was something else, too, something—
    Billy? You all right? Marvin asked me.
    I didn’t say nothing. He must’f thought I was nuts. But I was staring at that foam piece, thinking, trying to think, to remember about something he had with’m in his hands, that bag of chips he was eating when he chased me, that he never threw down as he ran.
    Billy? Marvin’s eyes was buggin’ now.
    Night before last, looking in that car, didn’t I see that chip bag? Lying there? Next to Skugger’s goofball hat?
    Didn’t I?
    I knew then I had to see that car again, see if it was still there.
    Marvin, now he shoves my shoulder. You okay, Billy?
    I’m fine, Marvin, I say.
    Damn, boy, he says. You was in a trance or something!
    I guess I sort’f grinned at’m. Then I said, Marvin?
    Yeah?
    I wanna find’m.
    Marvin nods his head and from off the dashboard he takes one of them cigarettes he smokes ’bout once every two weeks when he’s thinking hard. Real slow he lights it, and then he looks at me and says, That would mean a lot to you, that right, Billy?
    To me? How you mean?
    His face sort’f pinches. He says, People might think a lot different ’bout you if you done a thing like that. Might forgive you a lot. Ain’t that what you was thinking about just now?
    Yeah, Marvin, I say. Sure. That’s just it.
    And it was, a little. But even more I was thinking about that chip bag, wonderin’ if I could get hold of it.
    He smiles, sad smile sort’f. Puffs out some smoke and says, That’ll be hard, Billy. Findin’ him. That gonna take double luck. And that shit just don’t happen.
    Why so? I said.
    ’Cause the money, he said.
    ’Cause I ain’t told you. At the bottom of that flyer, under Jimmy Brest’s face and the day he was took and what he was wearing and how old he was, there was wrote something else.
    ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD .
    Findin’ him, findin’ him alive, Marvin said, that’s luck. But gettin’ the money, too, that’s double luck. That’s like a lotto ticket that wins twice, and that shit don’t happen. Fact is, they shouldn’t’ve put up the money, ’cause ain’t nobody gonna ever get it, he said.
    Yeah, you prob’ly right, I said.
    ’Cept maybe the grave digger, he said, and we went driving on.

Part Two

Chapter Fourteen
    Here’s how I had it.
    Maybe the chip bag was in that car. Say it was.
    And maybe it was the same I’d seen Brest had when he chased me.
    So what?
    Could’f come from anywheres. ’Cause it just a chip bag, don’t mean nothing.
    ’Cept to me it did, and here’s what. Meant maybe that I saw Skugger in that car, and he was high, smoking dope all day with the man driving. And he tells about Brest wanting to find me and then flips me the bird, Skugger does. I cuss him good for that, so he calls Brest on his cell phone maybe, and Brest finds me quick and chases my ass. And he got them chips