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“Get out here! Bring a gun!”
“Daddy, wait, you don’t understand,” Li
But he was too busy trying to clamp his hands around Junior’s throat. Junior thought he should be given a moment to get his overalls back on; it put him at a disadvantage. He pried Mr. Inman’s fingers loose without much difficulty, but when he spun toward where his clothes lay the man grabbed hold of him again. Then, “Freeze!” somebody shouted, and he turned his head to find two boys standing in the doorway training Winchesters on him.
He froze.
“Hand me that,” Mr. Inman ordered, and the younger boy stepped forward and passed him his rifle.
Mr. Inman backed up just far enough to put the length of the rifle between himself and Junior, and then he cocked the lever and told Junior, “Turn around.”
Junior turned so he was facing the two boys, who seemed more interested than angry. They had their eyes fixed on his crotch. Junior felt the cold, perfect circle of the rifle muzzle in the dead center of the back of his neck. It prodded him. “Forward,” Mr. Inman said.
“Well, if I could just—”
“Forward!”
“Sir, could I just get my clothes?”
“No, you ca
“But, Daddy, he’s half nekkid,” Li
“You shut up,” Mr. Inman told her.
He jabbed the rifle harder into the back of Junior’s neck and Junior lurched forward, sending a last desperate glance toward the crumple of his clothes in the hay. The toe of one boot was poking out from underneath them.
It was dark in the yard, but the bulb above the back door of the house lit him clearly, he could tell, because the people crowding out on the stoop all gasped and murmured — women and a couple of men and a whole bunch of children, all ages, their eyes as round as moons, the little boys nudging one another.
It was a blessing to leave the circle of light and step into the deep, velvety blackness just beyond. With one last jab of the rifle muzzle, Mr. Inman came to a halt and let Junior stumble on by himself.
He hadn’t walked barefoot since he was in grade school. Every stob and pebble made him wince.
Next to the Inmans’ yard it was woods, the scrubby kind thick with briers to snatch at his bare skin, but that was better than the open road, where headlights could pick him out at any moment. He found himself a middling-size tree that he could stand behind, close enough that he could still see pieces of the Inmans’ lighted windows through the undergrowth. He was hoping for Li
Gnats whined in his ears and tree frogs piped. He shifted from foot to foot and swatted away something feathery, a moth. His heartbeat got back to normal.
Li
After some time he took his shirt off and tied the sleeves around his waist with the body of the shirt hanging down in front like an apron. Then he stepped out from behind the tree and made his way to the road. The ground alongside it was stony, so he walked on the asphalt, which was smooth and still faintly warm from a day’s worth of sun. With every step, he listened for the sound of a car. If it was the Moffats’ car, he would need to flag it down. He could already picture how the twins would snicker at the sight of him.
One time he heard a faint hum up ahead and he saw a kind of radiance on the horizon. He ducked back into the bushes just in case and kept a watch, but the road stayed empty and the radiance faded. Whoever it was must have cut off someplace. He returned to the pavement.
If the Moffats did come, would he recognize their car in time? Would he mistake another car for theirs and get caught by strangers without his pants on?
This was the kind of fix that the men he worked with told jokes about, but when he tried to imagine talking about it ever, to anybody, he couldn’t. To begin with, the girl was thirteen. Right there that put a different light on things.
Sawyer Road took so long to show up, he started worrying he had passed it. He could have sworn it was closer. He crossed to the other side of the pavement so he’d be sure not to miss it, although the other side was low-growth fields and he would be easier to spot there. He heard a fluttering overhead and then the hoot of an owl, which for some reason struck him as comforting.
Much, much later than he had expected, he came across the narrow pale band of Sawyer Road and he turned onto it. The gravel was vicious, but he had stopped bothering to mince as he walked. He trudged heavily, obstinately, taking a peculiar pleasure in the thought that the soles of his feet must be cut to ribbons.
He hoped Li
He didn’t know what time it was when he finally hit Seven Mile Road. He walked in the very center, where the asphalt was smoothest, but his feet were so shredded by then that even that was torture.
When he reached home the sky was lightening, or maybe he’d just turned into some kind of night-visioned animal. He nudged a sleeping dog aside with his foot, opened the screen door and stepped into the close, musty dark and the sound of snoring. In the bedroom, he shucked off the shirt tied around his waist and felt his way to the chifforobe and dug out a pair of BVDs. Stepping into them was the sweetest feeling in the world. He sank onto the rumpled sheets next to Jimmy and closed his eyes.
But not to sleep. Oh, no. His whole walk home he had been longing for sleep, but now he was thoroughly, electrically awake, watching vivid pictures flash past. The party guests gawking on the stoop. His ski
He’s half nekkid!
He hated her.
During his first months in Baltimore, those pictures could make him wince and snap his head violently to one side, trying to shake them out of his brain. Gradually, though, they grew fainter. He had other things to think about. Just making his way in the world, for instance. Figuring out how it all worked. Adjusting to the unsettling look of the horizon in these parts — the jumble of low, close buildings wherever he turned, the lack of those broad-shouldered purple mountains rising in the distance to give him a sense of protection.
At some point, it occurred to him that it was highly unlikely Mr. Inman would have set the law on him. As the man had said himself, he didn’t want to shame his family. All Junior would have needed to do was keep out of the way for a while, and maybe partake in a fistfight or two if he chanced to be in the wrong place. But this realization did not cause him to pack up and go home. For one thing, he found it surprisingly easy to put his family behind him. His mother was the one he had cared about, and she had died when he was twelve. His father had turned mean after that, and Junior had never been close to his brothers or his sister, who were all considerably older. (Had he, in fact, just been looking for any excuse to get away from them all?) But what was even more important: by then he had discovered work. Prideful work, the kind that makes you eager to get out of bed every morning.