LITMIR.BIZ

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as a baby and my insides turned green. I didn’t know any lullabies. Momma wasn’t the singing type, unless it was on a table in Gum’s or humming Patsy Cline in the bath.

      Bandaged up, limping but mostly undamaged, Jenny was on her feet. She took the untouched lemonade from Rudy and drew down half the glass.

      Then it was my turn with Mandy and her thick, hard hands.

      ‘You telling who did all this to you chickies?’ she said as I pulled my ripped-up shirt off over my head and sat down.

      Gloria stopped pacing and locked eyes with Rudy and Jenny. Then me. A minuscule shake of her head. Mandy was a talker, we all knew, and no one liked a snitch.

      ‘We were up at Barks,’ Rudy said before I could think of a lie. ‘The cliff side, you know Fisher’s Point? The Evel Knievel twins here got too close to the edge. Scared the shit out of us.’

      ‘Hush your nasty tongue,’ Mandy snapped, ‘don’t be cussin’ in my ears.’

      Rudy met my eyes, winked. If there was anything Mandy hated more than a torn sock she had to darn, it was foul language. Piss, shit, fuck, all would shut her up quicker than a drunk can pop a bottle cap.

      Dozens of small cuts and bruises covered my back and shoulders, but none as bad as Jenny’s knee. It took Mandy most of an hour to clean me up. Wet wool, dab dab, then the sting of Bactine. It pulled tears from my eyes and I couldn’t stop it, I tried, but it was tiny spikes all over my body, stabbing, piercing, deep down into my muscles. Be a man, John Royal, I heard Momma’s voice in my head, but it hurt, all kinds of hurt. Each spike was a reminder of the stone that made it, the hand that held the stone, the kid that threw it. Classmates. Friends.

      ‘You all done, mister man.’ Mandy gathered the soiled wool in one arm and the bowl of red water in the other.

      ‘Shoo shoo shoo,’ she said until Gloria moved away from the sink. ‘Go on now, go play outside.’

      Gloria wasn’t allowed boys in her room. The only place me and Rudy could be with her was outside.

      The house was a great whiteboard castle with red shutters and columns at the front pulled straight out of a Roman history book. Gloria said her father had the shutters repainted every year. Nothing like a fresh coat of paint to make you forget the troubles of the past year, he said. Sand them down, paint them over, good as new, it’s like those rain storms never happened.

      The house sat in private gardens, surrounded on three sides by thick trees. Rose bushes ringed the front grass. A gazebo in the back. The back lawn was pristine, as if nobody had ever stood on it. Table and chairs on the patio. Pots of plants that had no business growing in this part of the world dotted all over. Going to Gloria’s house was like going on vacation. We’d be brought lemonade. We’d be cooked dinner. Me and Jenny never wanted to leave but Rudy never wanted to stay. He shuffled and fidgeted until we were outside. A bad kid in a good house never quite felt comfortable, he’d say. He always said he was bad. Bad stock, bad blood, bad name. A Buchanan through and through. A name isn’t anything, I told him once at the edge of Big Lake, you can change it like you change your shoes. You can be anybody. He liked that but he didn’t believe it.

      On the far side of the back lawn, the trees crowded, came together like secret agents protecting the president in one impenetrable line. We weren’t allowed on the lawn, Gloria’s mother was particular and Jerry, her gardener, would take the blame if we rutted the grass. We went slowly, Jenny still limping hard on that right leg, across the flagstones to the edge of the trees and through. Gloria strode ahead, kept telling us to hurry.

      The Roost and Fort weren’t our only spots. A wall encircled Gloria’s property way back into the trees. There was a break in the brick from when a beech dropped a branch two winters past. Too expensive to repair, thank you very much Gloria’s father. It was our exit. Doorway to our secret.

      One step outside that wall and Rudy was Rudy again. A stopper pulled out of his back and the poison air hissed out.

      ‘Come on, Jenny,’ he said softly and helped her over the broken wall.

      Rudy settled Jenny on the ground then held out his hand for Gloria, as if asking the lady to dance.

      We sat with our backs to the outside of the wall, dried-out leaves beneath us, bright green life above us. No matter the steaming summer day, beneath the canopy our skin prickled and cooled, natural air conditioning.

      ‘So I’ve been thinking,’ Gloria started but Rudy held up his hand and shushed her.

      ‘No serious talk before a smoke. You know the rules.’

      Gloria huffed but didn’t argue. Rules were rules.

      Rudy took a crumpled pack of Camels from his back pocket and a matchbook from his front. He tapped out a joe and lit it up. Only one between us. They were precious, worth far more than money.

      ‘Took these off my old man,’ he said, took a drag and passed it to me. ‘He won’t notice. If he does, he’ll blame Perry. Big bro is always swiping off the bastard.’

      I breathed in the smoke, let it fill me up and heat me from the inside. Then out, in one long delicious breath. I didn’t smoke much and Jenny never touched it. Both of us too scared Momma would smell it and show us Pa’s belt. But when I did partake, it was old man Buchanan’s Camels, lit with a proper match, not one of those gas lighters. Rudy was particular about that, which meant we were too.

      I passed the butt to Gloria who took a short puff, followed by a cough. She never quite got the hang of it. We didn’t bother offering it to Jenny, she always said no.

      But today, Jenny snatched the joe right out of Gloria’s hand. Took a drag. Too long, too deep. Blasts of grey smoke, one, two, cough up your lungs, then she spat. Rudy’s eyes bugged. Gloria cough-giggled. And I just stared.

      ‘Momma will smell it on you,’ I said.

      In response, Jenny took another pull. The orange tip blazed.

      ‘Don’t care,’ she said, coughed some more.

      The buzz was back in her bones. She shifted, tried to get comfortable on the ground. Raised her cut leg, rested it on a flat rock, then decided not and drew her knees to her chest. Rudy plucked the joe from her fingers and showed her how to hold it, how to breathe it in.

      If anyone should be showing my sister how to pull on a joe, it was me but I didn’t move to take over. I was still wary of Jenny, still confused by her behaviour, felt like for the first time in our whole lives, I didn’t know my own sister.

      Gloria refused another drag, tapping her foot with impatience.

      Rudy noticed and, with a smile, kept the conversation away from her.

      ‘Heard you’re seeing the pastor tomorrow,’ he said to me.

      ‘Heard right.’

      ‘What are you going to talk about?’ he asked, ground the butt out on a rock and tucked the end in his shirt pocket. Rudy didn’t litter. He said it made the world ugly.

      ‘The body I guess,’ I said.

      Rudy laughed. ‘Watch he don’t quote Bible at you. Did that to me once, some Sunday. He took me outside after, asked me where my old man was. I said he was working but you know that’s a lie.’

      Nobody quite knew what Rudy’s dad did, one job one winter, another through the summer, selling, buying, this and that. Can’t quite put your finger on it. Ask around Larson what Bung-Eye Buchanan was up to and they’d walk the other way. One of those Town Truths everybody knew, like the secret of the Three Points.

      ‘Pastor Jacobs took me round the side of the church, away from people, then squatted down beside me like he was readying a shit. He asked me if I knew where my dad was this Sunday. When I said no, Jacobs, he said,’ Rudy shuffled, raised up his hands, took on the pastor’s mannerisms, ‘he said, “Rudy, one day you’ll tell me the truth. The more you lie, the longer the devil’s roots grow inside

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