“Did you really say all that?”
“Not in those exact words, but yeah. Pa don’t scare me with his hellfire.”
“Then why do you look mad?”
Jake stopped and stared at her. “You don’t know?”
“What? Did I do something wrong?”
Her chin wobbled. Such a beautiful day with the sun shining and school out. He couldn’t be breaking up with her already.
He planted a wet kiss on her cheek and took her hand. “Hey. You did nothing wrong. Whatever gave you that wild notion? Quit worrying.”
“Then what is it? Tell me.”
“It’s everything Brain was talking about. It stuck in my head all weekend. How all I’ve been doing to make things better is playing.”
“Always the monsters. I want to talk about our world for a change.”
“It’s our world I’m worried about.”
“The sheriff is a no-good bully,” Sally said.
Jake turned to study her. “You’re looking white as a ghost all day, Sal. You okay?”
“I don’t want to speak on it.”
“Did your daddy give you grief?”
“I said I don’t want to speak on it,” she grated.
“All right. Jeez. Sorry I asked.”
“Word is getting around,” Troy said. “People been giving me funny looks all day.”
“I don’t care what they look,” Jake said.
“I hear that. Just keep in mind we have to live here.”
“We’re the ones getting punished for talking to them,” Michelle said. “And all they did was tell us how no good we are.”
“Are you kidding me?” Jake said. “Think about how they get punished every damn day. Everything Brain said is true, and we all know it.”
Sally said, “It is true. Every bit of it.”
Michelle exhaled a frustrated sigh. “Oh, come now. People chase plague kids into the woods in some countries. Shoot them on sight. They live like animals. Not in America. Those kids at the Home should be grateful they get three squares and a bed. They even get proper schooling.”
Jake shook his head. “You missed my point by a mile.”
“Well, excuse me for wanting peace and quiet. I’m grounded, like, forever.”
“I think Michelle’s right about one thing,” Amy chimed in. “There’s a lot more peace and quiet without them kids around. We should let them alone.”
“You too, huh,” Jake said.
“Don’t act surprised. You already knew where I stand. I just want to live a normal life, not take on the world. Everything is the way it is for a reason, and it’s out of our control to change it.”
Amy remembered how strange the plague boys were. How impossible it was they lived in the real world. How terrifying it was when they recognized her.
Hey, cousin, the dog thing said. It had frightened her, and not just because they almost blew her secret and ruined her life. It frightened her because when the dog thing called her cousin, she wasn’t sure what she looked like at that moment. She feared her beauty had disappeared and exposed her as a hideous monstrosity, something to be pitied or hated, and she’d have to live at the Home forever.
Even more reason to keep away from them. The gorilla boy had also seen what she was but had covered for her. She figured she owed him one. Otherwise, she wanted to stay as far from those kids as she could.
A voice called out, “Hey, it’s the monster lover.”
The kids turned around. Archie Gaines walked up with Earl Kimbrel and Dan Fulcher on either side of him. He dropped his backpack on the grass.
“Lord,” Jake said. “If it ain’t bedbugs, it’s ants.”
“You had yourselves a little party with some monster kids, I hear.”
“Your daddy was there, too,” Michelle taunted him. “He works with them so much he loves them. I saw him kissing one on the lips.”
“Stay out of this. I’m talking to the monster lover here. Mister Cool. The one whose ass I’m about to kick.”
“I don’t want to fight you,” Jake said.
“You’re a coward, then. I’m gonna make sure everybody knows it. Jake Coombs is a monster lover and a coward.”
Jake’s eyes went wide and watery as the air thickened with potential violence.
Amy touched his arm. “Come on, baby. Let’s go get that Coke.”
He shrugged off her hand. “Just a minute.”
“Go get your Coke.” Archie laughed. “Faggot.”
Amy fixed her best glare on him. “You keep that up, Archie Gaines, I’m gonna tell every girl in school what you are. A no-good rotten bully no self-respecting girl would ever want to be seen with.”
“You stay out of it, too. Just because you’re pretty don’t make you queen of the girls. You ain’t no queen, hanging out with this faggot.”
Jake frowned at the ground. His mouth moved a little, like he was figuring out a math problem in his head. Then he nodded. “All right.”
“All right what?” Archie said. “That you’re a faggot?” Earl and Dan laughed. “Maybe the darkie here is your boyfriend?”
“Come on,” Troy said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“In a minute,” Jake said.
He walked up to Archie, who smiled back at him.
Jake punched him in the face.
Amy blinked, then Archie was sitting on the ground holding his nose. Everybody gasped. Nobody had seen it coming.
Archie squealed like a stuck pig. “You sucker punched me.”
Jake squared off on the other boys, who took a step back. “Hey, Earl.”
“Hey, Jake.”
“Dan.”
“Hey, what’s up.”
The boys didn’t want any of what Archie got. Jake bent down to look him in the eye while he massaged his sore knuckles.
“You want to get up, Archie, I’ll give you a free punch. Then I get to do whatever I want after that. As long as I like. Is that what you want?”
Archie glared back at him. “No, I’m done.”
“I didn’t hit you for calling me a monster lover and a faggot. I hit you for saying it like it’s a bad thing. Like you know what you’re talking about. Are we clear?”
The boy didn’t answer, his fingers bloody around his nose.
Jake’s tone changed to menace. “I asked you are we clear.”
“Yeah. Yeah, we’re clear.”
“I also hit you for talking rude to my girl and my friend. You should say you’re sorry.”
“Sorry,” Archie said.
“It’s all right,” Amy said. “Let’s have no more yelling and fighting.”
“You carry on like this again, I’ll hit you,” Jake said. “I will hit you so hard you’ll look like one of them. You’ll live in the Home with them the rest of your days.”
“I said I’m done. Now leave me the hell alone.”
“All right.”
Jake walked away with a sad look on his face like he was the one got punched. His friends fell in behind him, all of them walking a little taller now.
Amy took his hand in hers. “Are you okay?”
“So stupid,” he said. “I used to climb trees with that kid. We was like best friends the summer after third grade. We caught salamanders.”
“I can’t believe you hit him,” Troy said, bouncing on his heels. “I didn’t think you were gonna do anything. You looked real scared.”
“I was scared. Any man enjoys punching somebody is crazy.”
“He didn’t give you a choice,” Sally said.
“We always have a choice. Jesus said, Turn the other cheek.”
“Sometimes, the bad ones need their cheeks smacked, too.”
“Maybe,” Jake said, though he still looked worried he did the wrong thing.
Troy grinned. “Pow. You just went and popped him in the nose.”
“I’m done talking about it, Troy.”
“Sure, sure. But I’m buying you a Coke at the store. Any kind you want.”
/> Amy didn’t say anything. She held Jake’s sweaty hand but otherwise gave him space. She sneaked a glance at his anxious profile. His mouth kept moving a little like he was still figuring out that math problem, working it out again in his mind to make sure he’d produced the correct answer.
A truck passed with a honk. The kids waved back. Despite its mean streak, Huntsville was a friendly town. Five thousand people just trying to get by like everybody else, another ten thousand living on farms and ranches outside of town. They had built a way of life here they wanted to protect. A community of like-minded folks. Amy longed to feel a part of it. Join the flow. Live a normal life like everybody else.
Amy pictured Jake accepting her for what she was. They get married in a big church wedding, his daddy officiating, Sally the maid of honor, Troy the best man. Everybody happy and smiling. They buy a house and fix it up real nice. They can’t have kids so they adopt beautiful babies. These babies grow up healthy and safe until old enough to earn their own chance at getting the best of everything life offered. She and Jake grow old together and die happy knowing they spent lives worth living.
Sometimes, she could almost believe it.
She squeezed his hand. “I got something important I need to tell you.”
“What?”
“I love you right back, Jake Coombs.”
Twelve
The Home bustled as the plague children finished their breakfasts and tramped outside to the trucks. Dave Gaines walked among freaks ugly enough for a lifetime of nightmares, but barely noticed them. Working at the Home, he never thought he’d get used to the creepers, but there you go, you can get used to almost anything.
He moved self-consciously, aware of Principal Willard staring down at the scene from a second-floor window. Tight-lipped smile, sunken cheeks, thinning white hair combed over his balding skull. He stood rock-still like somebody perched a scarecrow up there. Only his eyes moved, seeing everything. The kids called him Big Daddy; the teachers just called him the Colonel. He commanded troops in Vietnam, gave the gooks hell in the Central Highlands in ’67.
The creepers moved slower than usual, piddling as long as they could despite the teachers shouting their throats raw. The kids were sullen and irritable this morning. Word had gotten around about Toby going to Discipline. The Colonel worked him over but good. The old coot had acquired years of practice finding out how far he could hurt somebody before he died or suffered damage of the permanent kind. He went too far Sunday, though. Toby died in the chair.
The stupid kid everybody called Sucker Punch. His face shaped like a hatchet with a little shit-eating grin and two protruding eyes rolling around in their sockets. They let him see in all directions like a species of lizard. The boys said he couldn’t ever get sucker punched with eyes like that. They put it to the test once, then at least once every few months since. All fails. That was how he got his name.
Then Sucker Punch decided to try it on them. He took to standing behind corners and decking other creepers as they walked by. Violence was against the rules, but Willard tolerated it to a certain degree. Sucker Punch couldn’t stop, though, once he got started. He had a mess of paybacks to dish out. He became a chronic offender. Chronic offenders got written up and sent to Discipline.
The weird thing was his fist was already coming around before his victim turned the corner. You were walking along and then bang, here was this fist coming at you from nowhere. He also only hit the smaller, weaker creepers. He somehow knew who to punch. When to punch. It was like he could see around the corner.
Gaines would never learn how he did it. Toby’s heart gave out in the chair.
A mess of paperwork. Maybe an investigation. Then probably a slap on the wrist unless some do-gooder at the Bureau wanted to shake things up and make a name for himself. Technically, you weren’t allowed to use force against a kid unless he was, quote, an immediate threat to life or limb, unquote.
Willard probably already wrote it up as an accident. Snapped the kid’s neck bone and said he fell down the stairs. No autopsy. The body was delivered straight to the oven at the mortuary. If the Bureau sent out a field agent, the Colonel would call Gaines and Bowie together so they could get their stories straight.
Gaines didn’t give a crap about the dumb little pecker, but he didn’t want him to die, either. Nonetheless, he would play along with the cover-up. It was that or get hung out to dry. Lose his job or worse, get framed for the murder, and spend the rest of his days locked up in the state pen down in Reidsville.
He opened his truck’s tailgate and got his cuckoos loaded up. “Get in there. Don’t rush on my account.”
He fished the keys from his jeans pocket and started the truck. He hung his hairy arm out the window as Bowie came strolling up.
“Morning, Ray.”
The man put his hands against the truck’s metal skin and leaned. “Called in sick yesterday, huh.”
“Yup,” said Gaines.
“Sick from that moonshine we put away after the creeper kicked the bucket.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Yeah, don’t do that again. I had to carry your kids all day. I got my own crew to handle. They don’t pay me double to take two crews. You owe me.”
“People get sick, Ray.”
“Maybe you’re sick of working.”
“What do you mean?” Gaines said. “Why are you saying that?”
Bowie leaned closer. “You disappear the day after one of our kids has himself an accident. Looks real bad. Makes the old man uncomfortable.”
“Did he saying anything to you?”
“Well, you know the Colonel. He don’t talk much, but you always know what’s on his mind.”
“Aw, hell,” Gaines said. “I did not think of that.”
“You were busy, maybe. Wrestling with your conscience.”
“Goddamnit. It ain’t that. It’s something else got me.”
“What is it then?” Bowie said. “Maybe I can help you out.”
“It ain’t none of your business, is what it is.”
“Just remember we’re in it together, friend.”
Gaines jerked the transmission into gear. “Aw, go fuck yourself, Ray.”
The man jumped back as the truck lurched forward. Gaines glanced up at the upstairs window. Willard stared back down at him. His bowels turned to water. He peeled out of the yard under the principal’s sentinel gaze, spraying a rooster tail of mud.
“Oh, Lord,” he groaned.
He’d screwed up by calling in sick yesterday. He should have been smart enough to put two and two together. This was how he got bopped with a board when he was a little kid and ended up with a funny eye. This was why his wife left him with Archie to raise on his own. This was how he ended up working at the Home with ex-cons and cokeheads. Not because he drank too much or gambled away his paycheck on card games, no sir. He always got the shaft because he was too slow to spot the angle and keep himself in the clear. Life did him more than he did life.
He pulled onto County Road 20 and stepped on the gas. The ancient Chevy growled in response. The truck chugged until it reached a steady speed and put a safe distance between himself and the scarecrow in the window.
Just a five-minute drive to the farm road. Another five to Albod’s.
Driving like mad out of the frying pan toward the fire.
Albod, the reason he called in sick.
After Sucker Punch’s heart gave out, Willard sent him and Bowie packing. Gaines drove home feeling out of kilter with his buzz going sour in his brain. He didn’t have to go and kill the little pecker, he raved. He didn’t have to go that far.
What a mess. Discipline was one thing, something worthwhile to keep the creepers in line. Murder, though. Gaines realized something he always knew but never before dared think out in the open. The old man enjoyed it. The only time Gaines ever saw him sweat was when he worked a kid over in the chair. Big, sour-smelling sweat stains under his armpits. The single light bulb danging from t
he ceiling. The room bare except for the chair and steel sink.
His unease had followed him all the way home, where he’d sobered up and started thinking about Sally Albod. How maybe he’d poorly read the situation. How she was likely crying her precious little heart out to her daddy right now. How his goose was cooked, only he didn’t know it yet. Gaines would show up at the farm, and there is Albod with his shotgun in easy reach, both barrels loaded with double-aught. He tries to talk his way out of it. You know how little girls are. They do like to stir up trouble. It’s the gospel truth, Reggie. Ain’t it the gospel truth? To them, everything’s a drama like on TV.
He keeps talking until his grave is good and dug because he never could read an angle and keep himself in the clear.
He’d called in sick and spent the day moping around his trailer picking at his chores. At the time, he really was sick, sick with fright, so scared he barely noticed when Archie came home with a busted nose and went straight to his room. He couldn’t call in sick again today. It was either face the music or quit his job.
By calling in sick, he’d delayed his punishment a single day while maybe making Willard suspicious. The one man you don’t want suspicious of you.
Oh, Lord, he thought. It ain’t fair, none of it.
He yanked the wheel and turned onto the farm road, raising a dust cloud. The creepers hung on to keep from spilling out. He actually envied them right now. How nice it must be to live as a creeper. All your thinking done for you. Three squares a day, a roof over your head, and no choice about anything. Not a care in the world. Just follow the rules spelled out for you, and you’d suffer no worse than the average man.
Gaines drove onto Albod’s farm and parked the Chevy in the yard.
The farmer stood on his porch smoking one of his rolled-up cigarettes.
“Fine morning,” Gaines called out with forced cheer. “Yes, sir.”
“Morning, Dave.”
“How is everything? Is everything okay?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“No reason. Just chewing the fat. You got a list for the day?”
“Just one thing on my list. A mess of cotton still needs picking. Not George, though. I need him on the livestock today. I got a heifer getting set to calve. And put Edward on the vegetable patch. He ain’t no use picking cotton.”
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