Little Crew of Butchers

by Francine Pascal

  “So, moron, why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  Larry opens his mouth to speak, but before he can his dad gives him a knee in his stomach that sends him reeling backward.

  “Forget it! Get upstairs and outta my sight.” He throws down the wrench he’s holding. “I can’t fuckin’ work around here!”

  John O’Neill gets in his car and drives off, leaving all the tools and parts still sitting on the ground.

  A fortyish-looking woman timidly peeks out the front door and watches the car drive off. Then she closes the door and the house is silent.

  * * *

  Larry goes to his bedroom and closes the door. He knows his mother is in the hallway, but she purposely stands on the other side of the stairs so that she can’t be seen.

  He wishes she would take him in her arms the way she used to when he was little and his father got crazy. But she doesn’t do that anymore. He thinks he’s too big and ugly and she doesn’t want to touch him, or maybe she’s just scared and doesn’t want his father to think she’s on Larry’s side. It’s just like when his father gets crazy with his mother. Larry hides.

  Sometimes he dreams of rushing in and helping her. Beating the shit out of his old man, making him run away and leave them alone. That would be good, just him and his mother.

  Larry goes to his closet. He crawls under the hanging clothes and pulls out the new Monopoly game he got as a present from the guy next door, Ryan Michaels, for his eleventh birthday. It’s still unopened. He likes the game, but you can’t play Monopoly by yourself. And if you play with someone else, you might lose.

  Under the game are some old sneakers, and under that, a wooden cigar box tied with string and rubber bands. Larry picks up the box, unties the strings, slips off the rubber bands and opens it. Inside is a small black gun. Just like the toy ones he had when he was little, only this one is real.

  He stole it from his father’s gun box almost two years ago and his dad still doesn’t seem to know it’s missing. He must have at least twenty more guns anyway. Some time later, Larry went back and took six bullets. He put them in the gun.

  Lots of times he thinks about shooting his father. But what if he missed?

  Maybe he’ll bring the gun to the rain sewer. Yeah. Make that bum think twice about calling him a fuckin’ moron. When you got a gun, nobody calls you nothin’ but yes, sir. And it doesn’t matter if you’re only twelve. With a gun, he could be as big as his father.

  Bigger.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Sixteen-year-old Ryan Michaels hears the shouting next door. As always, it makes him uncomfortable, but he’s used to John O’Neill’s temper. Ryan and his family have been listening to their neighbor’s verbal abuse of his wife and son for years. The Michaels family prefers to think O’Neill limits himself to shouting and name calling, not physical abuse. If it were physical, they would have to call the authorities, and they sure as hell don’t want to get involved with a nut like that. They’ve heard he has guns. Still, Ryan thinks he’s heard things, things that sounded like a person falling down or hitting a wall. But he knew instinctively that his parents didn’t want to hear about it, so he didn’t say anything. He might have felt differently if the kid, Larry, were somebody he liked, but Larry is fat and sloppy and sweaty looking all the time. And he hears he’s a bully, which explains why he’s always hanging out with littler kids.

  Thinking of Larry is unpleasant, so he does it as little as possible. It has to be lousy for the kid at home and not much better at school. Ryan knows the kids in Larry’s class give him a hard time. Another reason why he hangs around with younger ones. But he knows that all you have to do is let him in once and you’ll never get rid of him. Ryan is sixteen. He doesn’t need a twelve-year-old hanger-on.

  So, Ryan just closes his front door and goes up to his room. The house is empty. He’ll go online, find a good website, maybe jerk off.

  Maybe not jerk off since he has a date in about four hours with Ashley Beckmann. He’s taking her down to the beach, the part that’s closed off for the sea wall construction. Nobody will be around.

  Or maybe jerking off isn’t a bad idea—the last time he was with her, they were making out on her back porch and it was looking real good, but then he came all over his pants. He has time. His mother won’t be home until five.

  It’s a knock-out idea. Not like jerking off for no reason, which always makes him feel a little guilty. This will almost be medicinal. Beautiful, the teenager thinks, racing up to the second floor two steps at a time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Luke has slept for almost two hours. He didn’t think at his age he could cry himself to sleep, but that’s what happened.

  And now it’s late afternoon and no one has come. Not the kids, not anyone. While he slept, the day cleared. The sun’s dancing sparkles on the water has dissipated the threat of rain. Luke’s spirits are calm. He hasn’t given up on the children, but now he turns his attention to waiting for a dog walker or a beach jogger to come and save him.

  More time passes. The day begins to lose light. The evening is warm, warm enough to walk on the beach, but no one does.

  Luke’s eyes stay trained on what he can see of the bay, the waves lapping softly against the sand. He remembers a beach party back in Australia—three girls, five guys. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen and for some reason that he can’t remember, he didn’t want to go. But thank God he did—it turned out to be the most exciting night of his life.

  Not that anything really happened. But it was Luke’s first glimpse of possibilities.

  Like every young boy, he knew about sex from reading and movies and bullshitting with the guys, but here it was, the real thing, inches away. A female body in a bikini, shivering, letting him hold her close. He could see her breasts, resting high in cups of silky fabric. More of the same material, but not much more, formed a triangle over what Luke knew had to be soft, pink skin and pubic hair the golden blond of her ponytail.

  Nothing happened, but the feel of that exquisite soft body against his bare chest was enough. For a while.

  That while turned out to be blessedly short. By fall, he’d had his first real sexual experience with Marcia Ann Seligson, his overweight neighbor with straw-like reddish hair. At seventeen, she was two years older than Luke, and she’d had sex with almost every boy in her high school class. She sought him out. Luke knew she was ugly and fat and that her face was pocked with craters from exploding pimples. He knew all these things but the only thing he could see were the rosy pink lips of her beautiful open vagina as it swallowed up his penis.

  He spent the next two months shamelessly waiting on her doorstep every afternoon after school. He forsook everything—his friends, his sports, the other truly beautiful girls who came looking for him. It was only Marcia. And then an adorable cheerleader named Denise let him have sex with her. Suddenly Marcia didn’t appeal to him anymore. She was still available, but she held no attraction. In fact, he wondered how she ever had. Luke was honing his sexual tastes.

  Girls liked Luke for all the usual reasons they like good-looking boys. But there were other things. He was genuinely nice, mindful, and affectionate; he gave them all the attention that no one had ever bestowed on him. They say you play the same roles over and over again throughout your life, the ones you learned in childhood; abusive child makes an abusive parent. But sometimes there’s an exception.

  Luke liked the feel of a girl’s small soft hand in his. He liked to caress their arms, run his hands down their backs, kiss them sweetly for no reason, and brush their hair back when a strand fell in their faces. He held doors open and guided them across streets with his hand on the small of their backs, looking down at them with obvious affection.

  * * *

  The buzz of a horsefly circling his head cuts into the sweet memories, propelling Luke back to his miserable present in a crappy town
on Long Island, trapped in a rain sewer.

  Maybe this is all there is. It’s not as if he’s robbing the world of a great talent. Where was he really going, anyway?

  Like his mother always said: nowhere.

  Hours have passed and not one person has walked by. The tunnel is filled with creaking sounds as trains steam past, shaking other beams that threaten to fall from the ceiling. An occasional piece of cement does drop but always on the other side of the tunnel.

  There’s enough daylight for Luke to see a chunk of loose cement right above him jiggle each time the beam shakes. It is only a small piece, not four inches square, but it’s directly over his face. Luke tries to stop thinking about it, but it’s hard.

  The rats help.

  They come as the last light of twilight fades, in the moments before full night. First, one slips silently out of the darkness. Luke catches the movement out of the corner of his eye. There’s enough light left for him to see the furry, brownish-red creature tentatively making its way toward him. Luke shouts, and it darts away only to return seconds later followed by another, fatter one, whose belly almost touches the ground as it walks.

  Luke scoops up a handful of sand and throws it in their direction. They scatter.

  And then return, sooner than before. “Help! Help!” he screams.

  The rats stop, but don’t retreat. Two more slither out from the darkness. And then another comes from behind his head …

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  By five o’clock, Ryan Michaels has showered and swathed his armpits with enough deodorant to clog every sweat gland in his body. In case any droplet should miraculously seep through, the powerful aroma of Very Valentino would lay it low. In new Billabong jeans and a T-shirt, his hair spiked with gel, he’s ready for action.

  Action. Just what he expects. The last time he was with Ashley—five days and nearly twenty jerk offs ago—she let him put his hand inside her thong. He’d noticed that she had been finding excuses to stand close to him at the mall, brush against his arm, or accidentally touch him, all week.

  She was ready.

  Tonight it will happen.

  He’s sure.

  He and Haskins, his best friend and one of the few other nonvirgins he knows, have been talking nonstop about how to handle every possible contingency. Ryan’s nightmare is that she’ll be wearing some kind of one-piece outfit, but Haskins said she would never wear anything so unsexy. Probably she’ll have on a tight shirt that leaves her midriff exposed and a short skirt, or maybe a dress you could just slip up.

  Ryan is conflicted. Should he try to get her into the back seat or do it in the front seat? If he suggests the back seat, she’ll know what he has in mind. No, he told Haskins, the back seat is too in-your-face.

  Haskins went nuts at that expression, laughing so hard he nearly fell off the bed.

  The more they talked, the more impossible it seemed to Ryan. He decides he isn’t even going to try. Unless she starts first.

  * * *

  At five minutes to six, Ryan is out the door and into his father’s Dodge Stratus. At two minutes to six, he pulls up in front of Ashley’s house and rings the doorbell at six p.m. on the dot.

  Ashley opens it almost immediately, as if she’s been waiting on the other side. To his immense relief, she’s wearing a tight blouse that buttons down the front and shorts. She doesn’t waste any time inviting him in, just grabs her purse, shouts, “See you later!” to no one he can see, and closes the door.

  Ryan doesn’t hear anyone answer.

  It gets dark at about nine thirty. They have three hours to kill before they can park down at the beach.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The day after the beach fiasco, Daisy half expects to see Luke. More than half. Surely if he were still in town he would stop down at the store to apologize or something? He liked her, she knows that. And she feels the same. What happened wasn’t his fault. In fact, he acted heroically, throwing himself in front of her to ward off the stones. She would like to tell him that she didn’t run off because she was angry. She was just upset about the children seeing them.

  Daisy watches the front doors of Smilers all day. She has to be reprimanded twice, once to help a customer and once to pick up a comb that had slipped off her counter. When she isn’t concentrating on the doors, she’s daydreaming about her movie-star lover. It’s the same scene over and over again. He appears at the door; she sees him through the glass but pretends she doesn’t. He’s dressed in a black silk shirt with black cord pants. He looks so gorgeous that everyone turns as he makes his way directly to her counter.

  Over and over again in the daydream. He never gets there, but just seeing him move toward her makes her heart leap.

  God, Daisy thinks, am I in love? It’s not possible. I barely know him.

  With that, the old uncertainties that always seem to haunt Daisy’s decisions come flooding back. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be, she tells herself. All her life she’s always believed, like millions of other young women, that you fall in love with someone because of his qualities: his kindness, character, intelligence, understanding, honor—the important things. Only then can you allow the enormous longing and passion to overshadow everything else in your life, to do what it’s doing right now to Daisy.

  Oh God, she knows this is wrong, but she has a strong life force and she knows how to give in when something is unstoppable.

  With that understanding, she abandons all reasonable resistance and succumbs to the first real love of her life.

  * * *

  Daisy, now a woman given fully to love, waits all day, but Luke doesn’t come. Sometime late that afternoon, she decides to take a walk down to the beach. In her story, the one she’s writing in her mind, she and Luke both go down to the beach at sunset, meeting up accidentally-on-purpose at the very spot of their picnic.

  But around five, her friend, Mary Elizabeth, asks if she could stay late to do inventory. Mary Elizabeth’s littlest daughter, Annie, is running a fever and she feels uncomfortable leaving her with the babysitter. Could Daisy help?

  There’s no way Daisy can say, “No, I want to walk down on the beach to look for this guy I’m in love with as of yesterday, blah, blah, blah” … Of course, she says yes. And that’s the end of the beach; inventory goes on till eleven and there will be no romantic scene on the beach that late. Luke will be gone. Along with the possibility of Daisy ever getting out of Shorelane with him at her side.

  That was probably her last chance to see him, she thinks. This man she loves so desperately will soon be a memory.

  * * *

  To Daisy’s surprise, inventory goes flawlessly, and she finishes before nine thirty. It’s still light, barely, but say what you might about Shorelane, it’s generally a safe community. You could walk on the beach without concern even after dark.

  Daisy doesn’t bother stopping in the ladies room to fix her makeup or comb her hair. She just grabs her purse and runs out the door.

  “Hot date?” calls the manager as she speeds by. Daisy smiles but doesn’t answer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The parking lot behind the beach is deserted. With the beach closed for repairs, there are no family barbecues or late-night parties. The cul-de-sac at the end of Longston Road is the “real” lovers’ rendezvous in Shorelane, but just in case it doesn’t work out, Ryan doesn’t want to chance meeting anyone he knows. Instead, he chooses the deserted beach parking lot.

  Neither Ryan nor Ashley spoke during the five-minute drive from the mall where they’d frittered away three hours pretending they weren’t waiting for darkness. Now that it’s almost upon them, the awkwardness has grown intense. Had either one been given the choice, they would have backed out. But no one has the courage to take that step.

  Ryan surveys the parking lot and decides that parking right in the middle would put the
m farthest from the streetlights on either side. It’s a warm night but not uncomfortably hot.

  “It’s nice out. Should I turn off the AC?” Ryan asks, zapping down his window.

  “Sure, turn it off. It’s great out.” Ashley opens her window too. “I love the smell of the beach, don’t you?”

  “As long as it’s not low tide.” Ryan tries to smoothly ease his body from behind the steering wheel.

  “Right,” Ashley says, staring straight ahead as if she doesn’t notice that he moved closer to her.

  Good sign. She doesn’t move away. Ryan thinks about asking her if she ever went clamming but that would require too long an answer.

  One-word answers would allow him to make his moves without seeming impolite or like he isn’t listening to her.

  “Great moon, huh?” It isn’t easy to free his left shoulder in so small a space. He needs to face her. Maybe he should take the chance of suggesting the back seat.

  “Cool,” she agrees, still not moving.

  Ryan makes one big wrench and pulls his body around to face Ashley. Their legs are touching. If she moves away from him now, he’ll think of another plan.

  She doesn’t.

  This is it. Ryan puts his arms around Ashley and bends to kiss her. She responds the way he dreamed, even opening her mouth for his tongue. He feels his hard-on pressing against her thigh.

  Some response button somewhere is pushed and at the same moment they both accelerate into high gear, unbuttoning, unzipping, pulling off shirts, sliding down pants, and kicking off shoes. In moments, they’re both naked enough for sex.

  The faint light from the streetlamps illuminates the scrambling and bouncing action in the car, allowing anyone approaching the one car in the parking lot to know exactly what is happening.

  Anyone, like Daisy.

  She’s out of breath from rushing to beat the darkness. And as she arrives on the other side of the parking lot, her heart sinks. With what’s happening inside the car, there’s no way she can approach the beach entrance. She would have to walk right past the car. Not like it’s daytime with people around, she’s the only one. They would see her.