Jess Walter - Land Of The Blind

The next day, he organized a kind of boxing tournament with gloves he had left over from his Golden Gloves days. He enticed a couple of little kids into the tournament as lightweights; they sent each other home bleeding and crying. Next were Everson and me, whom Pete called the middleweights. We swung wildly and connected each time with the other's ear, until our ears were red and sore, which is when Pete realized we were purposefully not hitting each other in the face. He stopped the fight and informed us that we were pusses and that if we didn't fight each other, we'd have to move up in weight class and "get your pussy ass fucked up by me." So we ventured out slowly, our gloved hands in front of us, jabbing each other in the nose or the chin or the brow. Then I caught Everson with a shot to the jaw and he got mad and nailed me in the nose, and the rest was just a mess of bleary eyes and blood in my mouth and swinging fists, until I remember looking down on Everson on the ground and Pete pulled me away, whooping and shouting that I had scored the upset.

That night we went with Pete to steal bicycles from the other end of the neighborhood. We rode the bikes over the rabbit hills, then put them in Pete's garage, where he stayed up all night, taking them apart and putting them back together with parts from other bikes, trying to make them unrecognizable, although when kids saw Pete riding their stolen bikes they never said anything anyway.

In the morning, Pete gave Everson and me each a stolen bike and had us sit a block apart, facing each other. He gave us each a crutch from when he'd broken his leg.

"Now ride at each other," he said.

"What?"

"You know, like them old guys used to do." Pete struggled for the word. "What's that called? You know, guys on horses, with them long spears?"

"Jousting?" Everson asked, and was immediately sorry.

We passed twice without touching, just holding our crutches out in front of us, but Pete was becoming impatient, and the third time Everson caught me in the shoulder with the rubber stopper on the bottom of his crutch. The impact spun me sideways and my front tire slammed into his back tire and we were both thrown onto our knees and elbows, instantly skinned, our bikes collapsed in a heap of spokes and gears.

"Motherfuck," Pete said reverentially. The next day we shoplifted cigarettes and sunflower seeds and looked at dirty magazines. On and on the summer seemed destined to go, an ever-descending spiral. We drank bottles of sweet red wine that Pete liberated from a neighbor and took pills that Pete said were speed, although, again, the only thing I remember feeling was slightly sick and edgy. We broke into a garage and stole gasoline, which we proceeded to sniff until we were dizzy and sick. We used the rest of the gas to start fires, and burned things that Pete had stolen: purses and clothes and toys. We engaged in all of this behavior with no sense of fun or purpose – other than fighting off Pete Decker's boredom, but that was enough. We feared Pete's boredom far more than we feared being caught stealing or drunk.

"I'm bored," Pete said one day, after he'd been out of juvie for about two weeks. "Let's do something." We sat in the draw between the rabbit hills, in the thick weeds, smoking one of Everson's joints. He and I exchanged a worried glance, but Pete just stood up and wandered away and Everson and I sighed with relief.

The next morning, something felt different in my house. I wandered around the house, scratching my head, trying to put my finger on it. My parents didn't seem to notice it, nor did my sisters or my brother. They went about their business, Dad getting ready for work at the cement plant, pulling on his coveralls and packing his aluminum lunch pail, Mom folding clothes, my brother and sisters eating their cereal in front of the TV. Dad couldn't find his wallet and he stormed around a little bit, but finally he just headed off for work without it, kissing my mom and ruffling my hair, like I was still a little kid. Then it hit me. I ran back into my bedroom. Something was different in my room. The top of my dresser was clean. The top of my dresser where I kept my baseball cards. I looked behind the dresser, knowing that four hundred baseball cards were not going to fall back there. I checked the drawers and under my bed, and asked Ben if he'd taken them. He looked up from his Count Chocula cereal, a spot of milk on his lower lip, and then shook his head and turned away from me to the TV.

Pete. Pete Decker had broken into my house and stolen my father's wallet and taken my baseball cards. He could have killed us or taken one of my little sisters away or… there was no telling the damage he could've caused, and there was nothing I could do. I went outside and threw a baseball against our front porch, grinding my teeth together.

"Hey, queer."

I turned to see Pete standing in the street, Everson at his side, looking sheepish. They were both dressed in several layers of clothing, heavy winter coats and hats, making them appear to be bloated. It was already almost eighty degrees, and yet they stood there under heaps of heavy clothing, as if they were preparing for the final assault on Everest. I even forgot my stolen baseball cards for a minute, venturing toward them. "What-"

Pete held out a handgun. "You comin'?"

I must've looked horrified, because Pete laughed – giggled, almost. "Change your shorts, junior. It's a BB gun." And to prove it he turned and shot my neighbor's German shepherd in the ass, sending it yelping around their yard. "Get dressed."

"Where'd you get the guns?" I asked.

"Found 'em," Pete said, and he smiled at me, a smile as cruel as that particular arrangement of lips and teeth can be made to appear.

Mom looked in on me as I put on sweatshirts and extra pants and my heaviest coat. "What are you doing, Clark?"

"Nothing."

"But why are you dressing like that?" I shot her a glare. "I'm not doing anything, Mom." She stared as if she didn't know me. I went outside, and Pete and Everson began walking before I reached them, and together we headed down the street, bulked up in our winter clothes like the sons of some fat gunslinger. Pete tossed me the BB pistol he'd shown me; Everson was carrying one just like it, an air-powered gun that fired one BB at a time, in a slow arc that you could see from behind the gun. For his part, Pete had a more dangerous weapon, a rifle that shot pellets that gained speed by being pumped as many times as a bony pair of arms could pump.

Pete seemed giddy with the dangers that lay ahead as we walked across the rabbit hills and toward the river. "Fuckers ain't gonna know what hit 'em." He walked a few feet ahead of us and my fist kept tightening around the air pistol, watching his back, thinking about my baseball cards, about Pete roaming our house while we slept. I imagined the BB going into the back of his neck, then rolling him over and firing over and over into his face. Finally we reached the spot where Pete hid his stolen beer, marked with a two-by-four stuck in the ground, and Pete went into the woods and returned with three welding masks. He gave one to each of us and we put them on, lowering the green glass visors over our faces. We walked toward the river like valiant white trash, like knights of the end table, knights of the TV tray, knights of the white ghetto.

As we walked, Everson leaned in toward me and whispered, with dread, "We're fighting Woodbridge. And some of his friends." But I could only imagine killing Pete.

"Here's what we do," Pete said as we entered the rail yard above the river. "We pin 'em down in a gunfight, and while you guys keep 'em down, I'm gonna circle around and ambush the motherfuckers from behind. Got it?" He began pumping his rifle, bringing his arms together in a scissor motion until he strained against all the air pressure he'd built up in his gun. "You mother-fuckin' got it?"