Free Mason by Thomas Pendleton Page B

between his thumb and index finger. He scrubbed the place with his fingers.
    â€œYeah? What problem?”
    â€œYou know Rene Denton? Lives out on Hyacinth?”
    â€œYeah. Total bitch. I’m slammin’ her best friend.” Hunter Wallace laughed.
    â€œInteresting.”
    â€œWhat’s the problem?”
    â€œShe’s seen something that I’d like for her not to have seen.”
    â€œYou want me to put a scare into her?”
    â€œI’m thinking of something a little more definitive.”
    â€œWhat the hell does that mean?”
    â€œThis isn’t a vocabulary lesson. Just take care of it.”
    â€œCool.”
    â€œIndeed. Cool.”
    â€œYou figure out what to do about Dusty yet?” Hunter asked.
    â€œI have some ideas,” Gene replied, rubbing at the tender skin on his hand.

10
Iconography
    The carnival carried on in Riverfront Park through that warm autumn afternoon. Farmers and ranchers and families from the city descended on the town and mingled with the residents. As night fell, the noise and excitement of the midway grew.
    The body of Dusty Smith still lay on the rumpled bloody sheets in a house at the center of the Ditch. His phone rang every hour or so—customers looking for a bit of the drug he used to provide them.
    Only three blocks away in his bedroom, Mason Avrett looked at a series of pictures he’d drawn over the last two weeks—since the last time Gene visited his room and forced him to step up and take responsibility. In those days, his hand had scribbled one nightmare after another on the clean sketch-pad sheets.
    A dog shrunken and disfigured in death, with dirty mattedfur and one eye dangling from a socket …
    A flock of gruesome birds with tattered black wings and chipped beaks…
    A monster that looked like his brother Gene, only with long, apelike arms ending in knobby, blunt clubs …
    Other terrible things appeared on those pages, but these were the repeating images.
    Now, with his aunt’s fried chicken warming his tummy, he couldn’t understand why he’d drawn them or what they meant. Mason thought the pictures were ugly. They weren’t nice. So he stacked up the pages and put them in a drawer under a pile of shirts. When he returned to his bed, he thought about his fun afternoon with Rene. The ice cream was really good, and what Rene said had made him feel better, just like when his mama used to hold him and give him a cookie when Gene did mean things.
    Maybe Gene wasn’t trying to help him. Even though they were family, and family was all you got, maybe Gene was just hateful and bad.
    And Rene Denton sat in a movie theater with Cassie Ferguson, who was telling her all about Eric Crawford, who’d actually asked for her digits last night when they ran into each other at the carnival. Cassie played it cool and said she might go out with him if he called, but Rene knew she would. There was no question.
    Then you’ll be busy all the time and I’ll have to make newfriends , Rene thought. Or be alone .
    And beneath the arching arms of a willow tree near the river, away from the carnival that roared only a few dozen yards away, Lara stood in the shadows with Hunter Wallace, Ricky Langham, Lump Hawthorne, and his girlfriend, Tara Mae. Lara did a bump of crystal off the back of Hunter’s hand, snorting the drug deep into her sinuses. She flipped her hair back and wiped at her nose, enjoying the burning sensation against the delicate membranes in her head.
    Hunter smiled and nodded, handing a flask to her.
    â€œAwesome,” Lara said, upending the metal container and washing the back of her throat with a shot of Wild Turkey.
    The three other kids looked at them. Ricky wore his earpiece and had a blank, robotic look on his face as he always did, but Lump looked nervous. Tara Mae, who kept rubbing her rounded belly absently, just looked drunk.
    This blows , Lara thought. She wanted to laugh