cauterize:
to burn the surface (of living tissue) with a caustic or a hot iron in order to destroy infection or stop bleeding.
For a couple of minutes, no one said anything. I watched carefully as we drove. We were on back roads, heading into Portsmouth, but it was farm country. There were no streetlights. It was hard to figure out where we were.
“Shit, I’m hungry,” Moe said. “Is anything open?”
I got hopeful. If they stopped for food, I could get out.
“Nothing is open after midnight in this stupid state.”
“What about Dicey’s?” Moe suggested.
“They don’t serve food,” Larry said.
“I have a peanut-butter sandwich somewhere. Thomas,” Moe accused, “you’re stepping on my sandwich.”
Curly looked under his foot at the squashed, flat sandwich. “It’s a pancake.”
“I don’t care. My blood sugar’s going ape shit. I want my sandwich.”
“What? Did your mommy make it?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
Curly passed the sandwich across me to Moe. “Mama’s boy.”
“Wanna bite?” Moe asked Larry.
“Hell, no.”
“You?” Moe offered it to me.
I felt like crying at Moe’s kindness. Despite my hunger, I shook my head.
“Remember in second grade, that kid Sherman was allergic to peanuts?” Larry said.
“Yeah,” Moe agreed. “And he was always going on about it in class, like if a mom brought in cupcakes for someone’s birthday, Sherman would be like …”
“’Miss Corey, if there’s peanuts in there, I could die.’” They said it together.
“Yeah, he was annoying,” Moe said.
“Then one day, we’re in the cafeteria and they’re serving like chicken chow mein. They’re trying to be ‘multicultural’ or some shit, and Sherman takes a bite of this other kid’s chow mein. I guess there was, like, peanut oil in it.”
“Oh, man. I’d forgotten about that.”
“So what happened?” Curly asked. I guess he hadn’t gone to school with them.
“He turns bright red, and his face swells up. He’s gagging for breath, and all of us are just, like, watching him, because it was kind of cool—”
“But also scary.”
“Yeah. His eyes are swelling up and everything, and he’s gasping. Finally, the teacher comes rushing over, and then the nurse. The nurse has this shot in her hand, a syringe, and everyone’s crowding around trying to see what she’s doing, and someone shoves into her and she drops it. Crash. The thing breaks. Man, that was such a scene.”
“So what happened to the kid?” Curly asked.
“What happened?” Moe asked Larry. “Do you remember?”
“They took him out of there, like to an ambulance or something. But he died.”
“Shit,” Curly said.
I felt relieved. At least Curly had some feeling for the kid. Maybe they’d just drop me off at Portsmouth and let me go.
“Sounds like the little bastard deserved it,” he added.
“Anyway,” Moe added, “I guess he had a point in being such a pain in the ass about peanuts.”
“But why did he eat the chow mein, if he was always so worried?” Curly asked.
“Yeah, we all wondered about that. Maybe he was just sick of being careful. Or maybe he had … you know, like a death wish.”
“Yeah,” Curly said. “That might’ve been it. So how’d you capture this shit?”
I wasn’t thrilled about the link in his thoughts.
“We didn’t capture him,” Moe said pleasantly. “He just wanted a ride.”
“He fucked me up in there,” Curly sneered. “He’s gonna get more than a ride. He’s gonna get a lesson. You know how you take a cow and burn your letter into its side?”
“It’s called branding,” Larry said.
“I know what it’s called,” Curly said. “I’m gonna brand this guy with my fist.”
“I don’t get it,” Moe said. “I thought we were just giving him a ride.”
“We’re gonna kick his ass,” Larry hooted, like the thought had made his night. He was one of those guys who would go along with anything, I could tell, just to belong. Jacks was like that, and he’d landed in juvenile detention three or four times, then been kicked out of school for attempted arson.
“Do we have to kick his ass?” Moe asked. “Can’t we just drop him off somewhere and let him walk?”
“You don’t know anything about justice,” Curly said. “You know that? An eye for an eye. Ever hear that? It’s from the Bible. I live by the Bible.”
My mom was right. When people did something terrible, half the time they used God for a justification. My stomach turned. I was almost home, but Curly lived by the Bible.