Laura Lippman - The Innocents

“What about the chickens?” Gwen asked.

“What about them?” countered Tim.

“They’ll die out here. Animals will eat them.”

“So what? Chicken George was going to eat them, too. What’s the difference?”

“But Chicken George would have been more humane.”

Tim laughed. “You think so, Gwen? You think that snapping an animal’s neck is that much more humane than being snatched up in the jaws of a dog or a fox? Dead is dead.”

Go-Go liked that. “Dead is dead,” he raved. “Dead is dead!” He began throwing rocks at the chickens, then running among them, scattering them. But those chickens were tough. They spread out, giving Go-Go room, but they didn’t disperse.

Mickey and Sean had been quiet throughout, systematically looking through George’s things, trying to find clues. Mickey, although uninterested in school, had a talent for deduction. Gwen’s father, noticing how she examined facts and reached conclusions, had tried to interest her in the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, but she had no patience for Sherlock Holmes. Or Nancy Drew, or Trixie Belden, or books in general. She was disdainful of people who read but not in a defensive, anti-intellectual way. She thought reading was a ruse, a completely wasteful activity. If Mickey were the kind of person who trafficked in similes or metaphors, she might have compared reading to rules such as not swimming an hour after a meal, or never going out of the house with wet hair. Instead, she just didn’t read and was baffled by those who did. She didn’t like television much, either. Mickey plain didn’t like sitting still. She wanted to make things happen. She wanted to see if she could jump from mossy stone to mossy stone without falling. She wanted to poke snapping turtles with sticks, and if one snapped, well, that was the point. She would have liked to live like Chicken George—in a cabin, accountable only to herself, although preferably with indoor plumbing.

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