Ashes

'Got my. 22 hid in the woods,' Riley said, showing the gaps in his teeth as he grinned. His eyes gleamed under the shade of his Caterpillar ball cap.

'Cool, dude. Let me get my BB gun.'

Riley waited by the back door. Dexter dropped his books in a pool of gray grease on the dining room table, then got his gun out of his room. Mom wasn't around. Maybe she'd gotten one of her boyfriends to make a liquor run to the county line. A note was stuck to the refrigerator, in Mom’s wobbly handwriting: “Stay out of trouble. Love you.”

Dexter joined Riley and they went into the woods. Riley retrieved his gun from where he had buried it under some leaves. He tapped his pocket and something rattled. 'Got a half box of bullets.'

'Killed anything with that yet?'

'Nope. But maybe I can get one of those stripedy-assed chipmunks.'

'Them things are quick.'

'Hey, a little blood sacrifice is all it takes.'

'What do you mean?'

'Breaking it in right.' Riley patted the barrel of the gun. 'Making them pay for messing with me.'

Riley led the way down the trail, through Dexter's pet cemetery and over the creek. Dexter followed in his buddy's footsteps, watching the tips of his own brown boots. October hung in scraps of yellow and red on the trees. The shadows of the trees grew longer and thicker as the sun slipped down the sky.

Riley stopped after a few minutes of silent stalking. 'What's up with your dad?' he asked.

'Not much. Same old.'

'That must be a pain in the ass, seeing him every other weekend or so.'

'Yeah. He ain't figured out the game.'

'What game?'

'You know. Love. Like you said.'

'Oh, yeah. Gotta tell 'em that you love 'em.'

'If he played the game, we wouldn't have Social Services messing around all the time.'

'Them sons of bitches are all alike. The cops, the truant officers, the principal. It don't matter what the fuck you do. They always get you anyway.'

'I reckon so.' Dexter's stomach was starting to hurt. He changed the subject. 'What was it like, with Tammy Lynn?'

Riley's face stretched into a jack-o'-lantern leer and he thrust out his bony chest. 'Hey, she'll let me do anything. All you got to do is love ‘em. I know how to reach 'em down deep.'

'Did she let you…?'

Riley twiddled his fingers in the air, then held them to his nose and sniffed.

'What about the other stuff?' Dexter asked.

'That's next, buddy-row. As soon as I want it.'

'Why don't you want to? I thought you said she'd do anything.'

Riley's thick eyebrows lowered, shading the rage that glinted in his eyes. He turned and started back down the trail toward the creek. 'Ain't no damned birds left to shoot. Your loud-assed yakking has scared them all away.'

Dexter hurried after him. The edge of the sky was red and golden. The forest was darker now, and the moist evening air had softened the leaves under their feet. Mom would be waking up soon to start on her second drunk of the day.

They walked in silence, Riley hunched over with his rifle tilted toward the ground, Dexter trailing like a puppy that had been kicked by its master. It was nearly dark when they reached the clearing. Riley jumped over the creek and looked back. His eyes flashed, but his face was nothing but sharp shadows.

Dexter hurdled the creek, caving in a section of muddy bank and nearly sliding into the water. He grabbed a root with one hand and scrambled up on his elbows and knees, his belly on the rim of the bank. When he looked up, Riley was pointing the rifle at him. Dad had taught Dexter about gun safety, and the first rule, the main rule, was to never point a loaded gun at somebody. Even a dickwit like Riley ought to know that.

'You ever kill anybody?' Riley was wearing his jack-o'-lantern expression again, but this time the grin was full of jagged darkness.

'Kill anybody?' Dexter tried not to whimper. He didn't want Riley to know how scared he was.

'Blood sacrifice.'

Riley was just crazy enough to kill him, to leave him out here leaking in the night, on the same ground where Dexter had carved up a dozen animals. Dexter tried to think of how Dad would handle this situation. 'Quit screwing around, Riley.'

'If I want to screw around, I'll do it with Tammy Lynn.'

'I didn't mean nothing when I said that.'

'I can get it any time I want it.'

'Sure, sure,' Dexter was talking too fast, but he couldn't stop the words. He focused on the tip of Riley’s boot, the scuffed leather and the smear of grease. 'You know how to tell 'em. You’re the magic man.'

Riley lowered the gun a little. 'Damn straight.'

It was almost as if Dexter were talking to the boot, he was close enough to kiss it. 'Just gotta tell 'em that you love 'em, right?'

Riley laughed then, and cool sweat trickled down the back of Dexter's neck. Maybe Dexter wasn't going to die after all, here among the bones and rotten meat of his victims. The boot moved away and Dexter dared to look up. Riley was among the thicket of holly and laurel now, the gun pointed away, and Dexter scrambled to his feet.

He saw for the first time how creepy the clearing was, with the trees spreading knotty arms all around and the laurels crouched like big animals. The place was alive, hungry, holding its breath and waiting for the next kill.

'Tell you what,' Riley said, growing taller in the twilight, a looming force. 'Come here tomorrow after school. Be real quiet and watch from behind the bushes. I'll get her all the way.'

Dexter nodded in the dark. Then he remembered. “But tomorrow’s Halloween.”

“ What the hell else you got to do? Go around begging for candy with the babies?”

He couldn’t let Riley know he was scared. “No, it’s just-”

'Better fucking be here,' Riley said.

Dexter ran down the trail toward home, his stomach fluttering. He was half scared and half excited about what he was going to witness, what he dared not miss.

Mom was slumped over the kitchen table, a pile of empty beer cans around her chair. An overturned bottle leaked brown liquid into her lap. Dexter hurried to the bed before she woke up and asked for a goodnight hug or else decided he needed a beating for something-or-other.

The next day after school, he went straight from the bus to the clearing. The sky was cloudy and heavy with dampness. He heard voices as he crawled on his hands and knees through the undergrowth. He looked through a gap in the branches. Riley sat on the ground, talking to Tammy Lynn, who was leaning against the big oak tree.

Tammy Lynn's blonde hair was streaked with red dye. She already looked fourteen. Her chest stretched the fabric of her white sweater. Freckles littered her face. She had cheeks like a chipmunk's, puffed and sad.

Riley rubbed her knee beneath the hem of her dress. He glanced to his left at the bushes where Dexter was hiding. Dexter gulped. His stomach was puke-shivery.

'I love you,' Riley said to Tammy Lynn.

She giggled. She wore lipstick, and her mouth was a thin red scar across her pale face. Riley leaned forward and kissed her.

He pulled his face away. She touched her lower lip where her lipstick had smeared. Riley's hand snaked farther under her dress. She clamped her legs closed.

'Don't, Riley,' she whispered.

'Aw, come on, baby.'

'I don't want to.'