“Check this out,” Ted Ball said. “They go ape-shit over their nuts and bolts in here,” and you checked the aisles to see who might go ape-shit in the hardware store at the version of the Miracle Mile closest to your house. You didn’t see anybody except two grandfathers and a bored clerk as Ted picked up a wrench and looked around like an apprentice thief. His twin brother Thad handled screwdrivers and pulled his coat together; he fondled a power drill and jammed both hands deep into the trench coat’s pockets. “Come on,” Ted said, and, sure enough, as soon as all of you cleared the front door, you heard “Boys” from behind. The twins kept walking, so you kept pace. There were two other possible targets on the sidewalk. And then Roy Sellers, Store Manager, according to his red tag, stepped in front of you and demanded that you open your coats and turn out your pockets right there on the sidewalk of the shopping center in front of the anchor store, a crowd blooming around you like dandelions.
“Not you,” Roy Sellers said when you unbuttoned your pea coat, but the twins were so slow with their pockets he kept saying, “The coats. Open the coats.” And then Ted and Thad peeled down their zippers and spread those coats, turning circles so everyone
could see they had nothing to hide. “You little pricks,” Roy Sellers said. “You goddamn bastards.”
The twins laughed about it while you hiked the mile back to their street. “You little prick,” Ted said, shoving Thad. “You goddamn bastard.”
When you threw rocks at stray cats with the Ball twins, you hurled your stone when they did, trying to make sure they didn’t notice your rock always missed. To keep your secret, you cheered like they did when one of the stones made the cat squeak and run. They always quit after that, the cat quickly gone. “Boring,” Ted would say. “Same old, same old,” Thad would agree. “Yeah,” you said each time. The Ball twins lived across the street. There weren’t any other boys your age within half a mile. You watched them, one Saturday, set out tuna from a can, something to hold any cat’s attention while they got close enough for Thad to spray it with lighter fluid while Ted dropped a lit match.
The cat seemed to expand and then it ran a few steps and rolled, extinguishing flames which leapt back as soon as it turned. “Nice,” Ted said, but already, as you backed up, he seemed far away. By the time the cat stopped rolling, the fire spotty across its body, you’d doubled the distance, so intently watching the last of the flames go out that the twins could have come at you from either side with the rest of the lighter fluid and an open flame. “You little prick,” Thad said to Ted. “You goddamned bastard.” They didn’t say anything to you because you had already crossed the street.
“Nobody lives in that direction,” Ted said, pointing, one afternoon when their parents were gone for the day, toward the vacant lot that ended where the woods began. “We can shoot anything over there.”
Thad was excited. “Squirrels,” he said. “They’re almost tame around here.” Ted had the .22 in his hands, bringing it up to his shoulder while the nearest squirrel busied itself among the acorns near a stand of oaks. “Your turn is next,” Thad said to you, moving up on Ted’s right to get a better look.
You clapped your hands together, the squirrel skittered, and Ted half-turned, his finger still on the trigger. “Damn it,” he started, and then the gun went off and Thad grabbed at his leg above the knee, and went down. “Oh Christ,” Ted said. “Oh Jesus. Now what?”
You held your breath and released it slowly, something your junior high track coach had told you to do as you settled into your starting blocks. You watched Thad’s jeans darken; you saw how pale he was. Get hold of yourself, you thought, but you couldn’t, even as your father ran by, pulling off his belt as he knelt, tying it around Thad’s thigh, knotting it and then lifting Thad to carry him to the blue station wagon as Ted followed.
The doors slammed and they were gone, but you could still hear Thad wheezing as he went by, small dry coughs exploding from his open mouth. You wanted to tell somebody. To explain. But there was nobody bursting from any other nearby house to ask what you were doing there when a rifle fired. Instead, you had time to form an answer: Just watching, mostly fascinated, almost innocent, not some little prick who needed a lesson even though now you’d had one.
