Free Vernon God Little by D. B. C. Pierre

you hear about bigger men, hardened criminals, always getting the nice boys and . . .’
    After God-knows-how-many years of life in this free country she doesn’t have the tools to just say, ‘Have you been taken up the ass yet by some lifer?’ That’s how pathetic things are. Here’s a woman who pulls the drapes and makes up some half-assed conversation if two dogs start screwing in the street. Yet, for all I know sheprobably takes a fucken fire-hydrant up the ass every night, just for kicks. Boy, I tell you.
    Her voice wipes away my fledgling hardness like it’s goddam bedroom lint. What kind of fucken life is this? Light through the window calls me, sings of melted ice-cream on the sidewalk outside, the ghost of little tears nearby. Summer dresses full of fresh air, Mexico down the way. But not for me. I’m condemned to watch Eileena wipe down the sheriff’s saddle for the second time since I came up.
    I find myself wondering if the sheriff’s saddle usually gets so much attention, and if it does, why it ain’t worn away to nothing. Then I see the room has a TV. Eileena’s eye snaps to it.
    It’s the lunchtime news. You hear the fanfare of trumpets and drums, then the face of an asshole appears in the far distance, staring through the back window of a departing Smith County Sheriff’s truck.
    â€˜Vernon, I have some bones to pick with you,’ says Mom.
    â€˜I have to go now.’
    â€˜Well Vernon . . .’
    â€˜Click.’
    My eyes latch onto the screen. A breeze rustles cellophane on the Lechugas’ teddy farm, then snags a wire of Lally’s hair and floats it off his head. The pumpjack squeaks rhythmically under his voice. ‘This proud community takes a decisive step from the shadow of Tuesday’s devastation, with the arrest of a
new player
in the deadly web of cause and effect that has brought the once-peaceful town to its knees.’
    â€˜Ain’t see me on my fuckin knees,’ says Barry, straddling a chair.
    â€˜To his neighbors, Vernon Gregory Little seemed a normal, if somewhat awkward teenager, a boy who wouldn’t attract attention walking any downtown street. That is – until today.’
    Lush pictures fill the screen, of crime-scene tape dancing under a blackened sky, body-bags punctuating drag-marks of blood, moist ladies howling pizza-cheese bungees of spit. Then a school photo of me, grinning.
    â€˜I definitely saw changes in the boy,’ says George Porkorney. You can see her cigarettes hidden behind the fruit-salad plant on the breakfast bar at home. ‘His shoes got more aggressive, he insisted on one of those skinhead haircuts . . .’
    â€˜I
know
,’ says Betty in back.
    Cut to Leona Dunt. Her handbag needs to be a yard taller for how big the word
Gucci
is written on it. ‘Wow, but he seemed like such a regular kid.’
    Black, disordered xylophone music joins the soundtrack as the camera bumps up the hallway to my room. Lally stops by my bed to face the camera. ‘Vernon Little was described to me as something of a loner; a boy with few close friends, given more to playing on his computer – and reading.’ The camera takes a vicious dive into the laundry pile by the bed. Out comes the lingerie catalog. ‘But we find no Steinbeck, no Hemingway in Vernon Little’s private library – in fact, his literary tastes run only to this . . .’ Pages flap across the screen, sassy torsos cut me that once tugged chains of shameful sap through my veins. Then we hit page 67. Flapping stops. ‘An innocent prop,’ asks Lally, ‘or a chilling link to the confused sexuality implied by Tuesday’s crimes?’ Twisted violins join the xylophone. The shot pans over my computer screen to the file marked ‘Homework’. ‘Click.’ Cue the amputee sex pictures I saved for ole Silas Benn.
    â€˜Well golly,’ says Mom. ‘I had