Free The Lesser Blessed by Richard van Camp

a mountain rolling down into the forest. She was chewing gum: Bubblicious. I could smell that it was strawberry flavour. I wanted that gum so bad. I saw the glint of her teeth and I wanted her. Big time.
    “Gimme gum,” I said, and she gave it to me. She stuck it in my mouth and I bit soft. Johnny took her other hand and led her away. I watched them as they went around the corner. I heard a door close. The music had changed. This time it was Power Station: “Get it on! Bang a gong!”
    I got up and sat at the kitchen table. I was looking at my swollen knuckles. The blood from Jazz’s nose had caked on them and turned chocolate brown. There was blood on my white socks. I could see cigarette butts in an ashtray, one with Juliet’s lipstick on it. I picked it up. It was a small butt and I lit it. I placed my lips where she had placed hers. I puckered and swallowed deep. I burned my thumb and lip; I coughed and hacked. The music had ended, so I put Van Halen back on. I turned it low and sat down. I looked out the window and tried pretty hard not to look at my reflection. When I heard the bed bang chang against the wall, I turned up the system as loud as it would go.
    I had it bad for Juliet. I wanted her for my secret, my prayer. I wanted her as my sweet violence of seeds and metal. I wanted to spill candles with her, to hold hands and walk around in gumboots with her. I wanted to do anything and everything with her. I mean, if she were in a coma, I’d make sure the nurses played her favourite music over and over so she’d come back to life and thank me.
    I was looking at the floor, past my bloody socks, and I saw those burns in the linoleum floor, the ones that looked like scorched blurred eyes. Except this time it wasn’t the ceiling they were staring at; it was me. They were studying me and I wondered what they were seeing, what they were thinking.
    I sat back on the couch, and all I could do was think of when I wasyounger. I looked around the living room. There was a couch like this one in the old house, but ours was green. The music was blasting then, too. My dad stood over my mom. He had called me out of my room. He was holding the yellow broom. He was speaking French. He had learned it in the residential schools. He never talked about what had happened there, but he always talked French when he drank.
    My mom was passed out on the couch. A couch like this one. This was back when she used to drink. She had gone to residential schools, too. She was passed out, in her bathrobe. My father took the broomstick and started laughing. He spread her legs and with the yellow broomstick—
    I shot awake.
    “Fuck fuck fuck,” I said. “No!”
    I purposely made myself remember the lake in Rae. One time before the accident, I was hanging out with my cousins there. We used to play in the sand way down the beach. We’d take some toys down and build houses. We’d also sniff gas. I wasn’t too crazy about it at first, but after seeing my dad do the bad thing to my aunt, it took the shakes away. I could feel the heat on my back from the sun. Every now and then we’d stop to eat or take a leak. Me and my cousin Franky were good pals, even though he was demented. He was the guy who told me that if you touch gasoline to a cat’s asshole, the cat’d jump ten feet into the air. He was the guy who taught me about bennies.
    He’d say, “Close your eyes, Larry. Close them tight. Now face the sun, that’s right. Face it and feel the bennies bouncing off you.”
    I’d close my eyes so tight my forehead would stretch, and after a while I’d relax and, sure enough, I could feel bennies bouncing off me. They’d hit one area and the warmth would spread. It was glorious. I began to shout, “Hey! Hey Franky! I feel them! I feel them!”
    One time we were taking leaks and facing the sun. We could feel the bennies bouncing off us and we were yelling, “Bennies! Bennies!Bennies!” but soon I was the only one who was yelling, and when I