side of his head. He staggered back a step, and then he was falling with the word stroke ping-ponging around inside his skull, bouncing off the walls of his brainpan. He hit the pavement ass-first, teeth clacking together like castanets. Instinct brought his hands down to keep him from falling all the way over and really cracking his skull, and when his left palm smacked into the asphalt it felt like he’d plunged his arm into a hornet’s nest, all the way to the elbow. He threw his head back and shrieked in raw bestial agony. Over the roar of blood in his ears he heard the tinkle of glass breaking and then the world went fuzzy for a while as Garraty and his consciousness fought to stay married.
Something was running down his face. He raised a hand that seemed disconnected, like it was tethered to a helium balloon that lifted it from the road to his temple, and cautiously pressed it to the side of his head. Even that soft touch brought a wave of pain so strong his stomach clenched and he thought for a moment he was going to upchuck warm beer all over his pale, flabby legs. Each beat of his heart delivered a throb that began in his head and ended in his knee by way of the palm of his left hand, only to him the normal lubDUB lubDUB lubDUB the rhythm sounded like tooMEY tooMEY tooMEY . When he lowered his hand to look, whatever was on his fingers was clear. Not blood. Cold.
Shards of wet glass lay on the pavement around him, sparkling in the afternoon light. Thick glass, like you might find in a heavy tumbler. Mother fucker. The old woman had thrown her iced tea at him, just reared back and let loose like Sandy Fucking Koufax sending a fastball right down the center. Runner take your base , he thought. Whee!
“That’s for being a dirty old man,” the crone cawed, and cackled her raspy laugh. “Now get up out of the street ’fore I come down there and really show you what for. We got kids living around here!”
Kids.
The boy.
He ignored the laughing woman for a moment and looked to the spot next to the stoop, where the dead boy had been standing in the bed of pansies a moment before. The flowerbed was empty, as Garraty had expected it to be, because the dead boy was in the ground under the Barlowe house. Maybe his overactive imagination was laying somewhere on the asphalt with the broken glass now. Good riddance.
Garraty closed his eyes. God, but every part of him hurt! He couldn’t concentrate for shit with the throbbing, and he didn’t have any meds for pain here outside of the aspirin and Tylenol PM. Back at home there was a whole cabinet of good stuff, Lorcets and Percocets and even a handful of oxycodone tablets Tina got when she had her gallbladder taken out. She was religious about saving that shit— for a rainy day , she always said, even though that rainy day never seemed to come—and practically kept enough around to open her own drugstore if she wanted to. But that was all the way across town, and Garraty knew he wouldn’t be welcome, even if he showed up sporting a lump on the side of his head to rival the one on the boy he’d buried barely twelve hours ago.
“I’m calling the sheriff myself,” he said, but his voice didn’t sound nearly as defiant as he’d wanted. She’d really done a number on him with the glass. Maybe he’d have a concussion to go with the tetanus. “Get you for battery. Maybe even attempted murder.”
“I wish you would!”
He wouldn’t, of course. That would be even more stupid than wandering out of the trailer in his underwear had been. He still needed to take care of the Prius; he hadn’t even looked at it yet to see how much visible evidence there was on the front bumper. The last thing he wanted was some Deputy Dawg sniffing around here because of his dispute with the woman across the way. What happened to your hand, Mr. Garraty? Why are you limping? And why is there blood all over your car?
No. What he needed was to get his ass back inside the house for
Something was running down his face. He raised a hand that seemed disconnected, like it was tethered to a helium balloon that lifted it from the road to his temple, and cautiously pressed it to the side of his head. Even that soft touch brought a wave of pain so strong his stomach clenched and he thought for a moment he was going to upchuck warm beer all over his pale, flabby legs. Each beat of his heart delivered a throb that began in his head and ended in his knee by way of the palm of his left hand, only to him the normal lubDUB lubDUB lubDUB the rhythm sounded like tooMEY tooMEY tooMEY . When he lowered his hand to look, whatever was on his fingers was clear. Not blood. Cold.
Shards of wet glass lay on the pavement around him, sparkling in the afternoon light. Thick glass, like you might find in a heavy tumbler. Mother fucker. The old woman had thrown her iced tea at him, just reared back and let loose like Sandy Fucking Koufax sending a fastball right down the center. Runner take your base , he thought. Whee!
“That’s for being a dirty old man,” the crone cawed, and cackled her raspy laugh. “Now get up out of the street ’fore I come down there and really show you what for. We got kids living around here!”
Kids.
The boy.
He ignored the laughing woman for a moment and looked to the spot next to the stoop, where the dead boy had been standing in the bed of pansies a moment before. The flowerbed was empty, as Garraty had expected it to be, because the dead boy was in the ground under the Barlowe house. Maybe his overactive imagination was laying somewhere on the asphalt with the broken glass now. Good riddance.
Garraty closed his eyes. God, but every part of him hurt! He couldn’t concentrate for shit with the throbbing, and he didn’t have any meds for pain here outside of the aspirin and Tylenol PM. Back at home there was a whole cabinet of good stuff, Lorcets and Percocets and even a handful of oxycodone tablets Tina got when she had her gallbladder taken out. She was religious about saving that shit— for a rainy day , she always said, even though that rainy day never seemed to come—and practically kept enough around to open her own drugstore if she wanted to. But that was all the way across town, and Garraty knew he wouldn’t be welcome, even if he showed up sporting a lump on the side of his head to rival the one on the boy he’d buried barely twelve hours ago.
“I’m calling the sheriff myself,” he said, but his voice didn’t sound nearly as defiant as he’d wanted. She’d really done a number on him with the glass. Maybe he’d have a concussion to go with the tetanus. “Get you for battery. Maybe even attempted murder.”
“I wish you would!”
He wouldn’t, of course. That would be even more stupid than wandering out of the trailer in his underwear had been. He still needed to take care of the Prius; he hadn’t even looked at it yet to see how much visible evidence there was on the front bumper. The last thing he wanted was some Deputy Dawg sniffing around here because of his dispute with the woman across the way. What happened to your hand, Mr. Garraty? Why are you limping? And why is there blood all over your car?
No. What he needed was to get his ass back inside the house for
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