The boy finally opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Only black. Black saliva poured from his lips and a cough sent a black cloud into the air, close enough for Tony to smell it.
It smelled of gunpowder. Enough gunpowder to fill five hundred fireworks. More than that. Enough to blow him and everyone within fifty yards to oblivion. All poured down Gary’s throat, forced into every orifice, bursting out of his bulging stomach.
That was when Tony looked down and saw the kid’s pants looped around his ankles. He saw the trail of blood droplets on the ground. He smelled the burning. He heard the crackle of the fuse.
And in his head, the voices of that expectant crowd echoed again: Tres, dos, uno…
REMEMBER WHAT I SAID ABOUT LIVING OUT IN THE COUNTRY?
by A. J. Brown
I never wanted no kids. I don’t like ‘em, didn’t like ‘em when I was one. Sure as hell ain’t interested in raisin’ any of my own. Why put myself through that hell for the rest of my life? I even killed one of them fuckers when I was sixteen. He was a snot-nosed brat, around the age of eight or nine, annoyin’ as hell.
I had been fishin’ out at Mr. Lehman’s pond not too far from Ma and Pa’s house, maybe a mile or so up the road. The boy—I think his name was Wade—come up out of the bramble makin’ an ungodly noise, all twigs a snappin’ and leaves a rustlin’.
“Howdy, Mister,” he said in this curious I-want-to-be-friends tone. I tried ignorin’ him, turnin’ my back and watchin’ my cane pole for any hits. He rounded me, stuck his dirty face in mine, “Wha’cha doin’?”
“Fishin’,” I said.
“Wha’cha fishin’ for?”
“Bream.”
“Wha’s bream?”
“A fish.”
I stood from the stump I had been sittin’ on, stretched my back and took a few steps toward the water. Loose moss covered the embankment, makin’ it slicker than owl snot on a wet roof.
“You catch anything yet?” Wade asked.
“Nope. Too much noise. Them fish don’t like noise.”
He looked around, then back at me. “I don’t hear nothin’.”
“I hear you,” I said and squatted to pick up my pole. There wouldn’t be any fish bitin’ with that motor mouth yappin’ away.
The kid got right up next to me and when I stood, I stepped on his foot, tiltin’ off balance. Like I said before, that moss was slick and my other foot went out from under me. I fell onto my ass, mud and moss clingin’ to my breeches. My cane pole went into the water. I’d have to go in after it. Wade, he started laughin’ like he saw somethin’ funny. I saw nothin’ funny about what had happened and anger got the best of me.
I grabbed a rock from the edge of the water and stood. Wade laughed until he saw me comin’ at him. By then my hand was reared back and I was about to clock him one good. He hit the ground and the rock slid from my hand. That boy hollered like a brayin’ horse, his head all split open and blood spillin’ from the wound, through his fingers and down his face. I yanked him by one leg, pulled him into the water with me. About waist deep, I grabbed his head and shoved it under. He kicked and splashed, his hands beatin’ at my arms until he went all still. I lifted his head out the water and looked into those dead brown eyes then lowered him back into the pond. I gave him a good shove and he floated a little ways before sinkin’ on down.
I got my cane pole and headed on home. That’s the good thing about livin’ out in the country back a few years, ain’t nobody ever knew when you did somethin’ wrong and there ain’t no fancy city folk there to do any real lookin’ into someone’s death. Wade drowned and that was the end of that.
See, kids ain’t never been for me. Like I said, I never wanted them and almost every girl I’ve ever met has. It’s never really been a good combination.
Then I met Barbara. I was nineteen and she was seventeen. She wasn’t the best lookin’ gal in our neck of the woods, but she had all of her teeth and didn’t want no kids and that was good enough for me. I didn’t mind that she was a little overweight, not fat or anything, but she had some pounds in her gut that looked like a spare tire, except when she was on her back, and that’s where I liked her most anyway.
Me and Barb got along right nicely there for a while. Decent conversation and she was a wild one in the hay. And she wasn’t the clingy type. She left me to my own when I wanted to be. Then one day she comes by the house while I was feedin’ the pigs. She looked all sheepish and wouldn’t meet me eye to eye.
“What’s a matter with you, Barb?” I asked.
She started cryin’ and if there’s one thing I hate more than youngins, it’s a bawlin’ woman.
“What in hell has come over you?” I yelled, left the pen.
“I’m gonna have a child.”
I ain’t said a thing for a few moments, just took in what she had said. She gave me that sheepish look, like she didn’t know how that shit happened. Then that anger come over me again, just like it did with that kid a few years back. I stomped on over to her and took her by her dark hair—got a big old handful of it so she couldn’t run away from me—and pulled her head back.
“I told you, I ain’t no daddy and I ain’t havin’ no youngins.”
She yelled out like a wounded mutt and I slapped my hand over her mouth to shut her up. I took her round to the barn where we had fooled around many times. We climbed on up into the hayloft and I tossed her on the floor. She didn’t like it none and started to say so, but I didn’t care much for her speakin’ to me. She took the back of my hand across her face. A knuckle split on one of her teeth and her head rocked to the side. Barb yelled at me again and tried to get up, said she was leavin’.
Like hell she was.
I brought my foot down on the side of her head and she fell like a wounded doe. I took hold of the rope that runs the pulley system in the hayloft. We used it to raise and lower bails. While she was all dazed, her mouth bleedin’, a bloom of purple risin’ up on one side of her face, I took that rope and slipped it over her head, pulled it tight ‘round her neck.
Barb’s eyes grew wide and she tried to get that rope from ‘round her throat. Her face turned all pink then red. I yanked on the rope, letting it slide over the pulley. Barb come up off her back and slid across the hayloft until her feet met the edge. Another tug and she was danglin’ out over the barn’s floor, legs all a kickin’ and her face turnin’ dark purple. Her mouth hung open and her tongue lolled up out of it. It only took a couple minutes before she stopped strugglin’ and her arms fell down to her sides. She spun in circles for a few more minutes like a cow on a meat hook. One eye had popped out and sat by her nose. I let go of the rope and let her fall to the hard ground where she bust open like a pumpkin.
Remember what I said about livin’ in the country? I buried Barb out near the trees where Pa’s old tractor sat. I could have buried her out where Ma and Pa were, but she wasn’t family and I’ll be damned if she was going to be treated as such. No one thought much about her after that. Barb had just left town, got tired of bein’ a whore for a mean old country boy I reckon.
Like I said before and I’ll say it again, I never wanted no kids. Barb, she knew that and still got herself pregnant. She had it comin’.
It was a few years later before I met my wife, Mae Elizabeth. She had been workin’ at the feed store. Now that was a fine woman, unlike Barb. Sure she had all her teeth, but they was white and when she smiled she lit up the damn room. She didn’t have no spare tire in her gut either—her stomach was as flat when she stood as it was when she was on her backside. I ain’t gonna sit here and lie—I was right smitten by that little blonde-haired philly.