1976

What happened was the Bradberrys were a family had a whole bunch of stories told about them, stories Danny Brogan had heard even before he got to Jefferson Junior High and was put sitting next to Jackie. Nowadays, people would describe their domestic situation as chaotic, and you’d hope they’d be the subject of assorted child protection investigations and have caseworkers on their backs all the time, although given the stories you read almost every day about this murderer and that abuser with precisely the same kind of background, you might be hoping in vain, but in any case, thirty years ago, they seemed to fly under the radar, maybe because they once had money, or the remnants of it. The father was a doctor, and used to be a good one, long as you caught him before lunchtime, but he had been struck off for malpractice (people said he’d misjudged a prescription and killed a man), and the mother was lace-curtain Irish from Chicago, Lincoln Park, with notions about how much she had sacrificed for the man she referred to as a country physician. Maybe she had, although when Danny saw her, whatever looks she might have thought she had were long gone. Maybe it was the drink, because it wasn’t just him, she drank too. A family can just about survive one drunk parent, as Danny well knew; much harder to get past two, especially when the mother seemed to be drinking to spite the father, and all the kids got caught in the crossfire.

Anyway, there was a Bradberry in every class, and everyone knew they were trouble. One of the elder Bradberrys had been in juvie in Racine for some kind of assault, Danny heard it was rape, back when you were eight and rape was a word like sex or breasts, and you knew it was wrong but it was kind of exciting too, because you didn’t have a clue what it really meant. All the Bradberrys were kind of unkempt, bordering on smelly, and underfed, and they used to fall asleep in class, and they never had the right textbooks or permission slips or milk money, and the brothers were quick to start fights and the sisters wore the year before last’s tattered clothes and ratty hair styles, and were whispered about by the other girls, and like their brothers, they were quick to bully and to fight.

After his first day, when Danny was put up the front of the class sitting next to Jackie Bradberry, instead of down the back beside Dave Ricks, Danny and Dave forever, and behind Gene Peterson and Ralph Cowley, which is where he had sat all the way through elementary school, Danny came home and complained to his mom about how Jackie Bradberry was kind of dumb, and his fingernails were filthy and he couldn’t do multiplication, and his mom just said it was a shame, what had happened to that Bradberry family, and there but for the grace of God, and Danny should make an extra special attempt to be nice to little Jackie, for her sake, and Danny saw how sad his mom looked and thought of laying awake at night listening to his dad yelling at her and he resolved to be Jackie Bradberry’s friend.

The only thing was, he wasn’t really cut out to be Jackie Bradberry’s friend. For a start, Jackie had his own buddies, a couple of dim kids called Jason and Chad who laughed at his jokes and did what he told them, which was mostly to persecute the soft boys who couldn’t or wouldn’t fight back. And Jackie didn’t play sports, or watch sports, and he didn’t read books, not even comic books (he had dyslexia or something) and he didn’t listen to music, and the only movies he had seen were horror flicks like The Omen and The Exorcist and The Evil Dead that Danny wasn’t old enough to watch. And the guys, Dave and Ralph and Gene, well, they didn’t give a damn about Jackie Bradberry, and none of their moms had said a word to them about maybe trying to be kind to him, and after a week of grunts and shrugs from Jackie, who didn’t seem interested in Danny either, Danny decided enough was enough and went back to ignoring Jackie as best he could, given he was sitting beside him, and then Gene’s mom, who was on the school’s board of management, had a word with the assistant principal and suddenly Danny was back sitting beside Dave, and Jackie was back with one of his cronies, and their class teacher Mrs Johnson’s experiment in social integration – which was what it had been, Danny discovered later – came to an end. And when Danny took his place by Dave, Dave leant into Danny and whispered in his ear a sketch he’d learned by heart from Monty Python, which Danny and Dave loved and used to recite at each other. And Danny laughed and laughed, at the silliness of the sketch, and the voices Dave used, and with relief that he was back among his own people. And when he looked around the class, still laughing, he saw that Jackie Bradberry was looking at him, staring at him with a mean look in his eyes. A half-hour later, the first note arrived.

Laugh at me an you are dead.

Danny simply ignored it, didn’t even connect it with Jackie.

The second note came an hour later.

You are dead meat. Killer.

This time it did register. Danny remembered Jackie insisting Jason and Chad call him ‘Killer’ and getting pissed at them because they kept forgetting to. Danny glanced across the class at Jackie, as if to say, ‘What’s this about?’ Jackie’s cronies looked astonished and outraged, as if Danny was some kind of telepath to have worked out who had sent the note in the first place. Jackie stared back at him, red-rimmed eyes dull, mouth slack, and shook a finger in the air. The third note was to the point:

Death ground. back of the Cemetary after school. come alone.

There used to be a patch of scrub ground hidden by pine trees between Forest Hill Cemetery and the adjacent golf course where older kids went to settle scores. The stories attached to it were legion: that kids who got killed in fights had to be buried there; that Hell’s Angels used it as a site for their initiation ceremonies; that the ghosts of the Union dead from Camp Randall and their Confederate prisoners arose from their graves and did battle every night. Danny and his buddies had long speculated over which of them would be first to be called out to the death ground, a junior-high rite of passage they were all simultaneously dreading and dying to get out of the way.

Now Danny was the first chosen, but it wasn’t the way he had imagined it. He thought it would be, this big bully would challenge him, and he’d accept, and then all his buddies and all the bully’s gang would assemble at the death ground and the last man standing would be the victor, and it would be Danny, and the next day, the whole school would know. Instead, Jackie Bradberry had called him out alone, and when he had done it, when he had shaken his finger at him as if he was defiant and angry, well, Danny could see that he wasn’t really, that there was something in his eyes that looked a lot like fear.

Danny hadn’t shown Dave or any of the other guys the notes Jackie sent, had been almost embarrassed by them, as if it was all happening the wrong way and he was somehow implicated in that. After school, he told Dave he had to pick up a book in the library and to go on without him, and then he cycled straight to the death ground, coming in off Speedway Road, swarming over the wall at the golf-course end and dropping down among the pines.

Jackie Bradberry was waiting, alone, no sign of Jason or Chad, and Danny looked at Jackie, at how slight he was, at how his bike was an old hand-me-down caked in rust, at how the dull glow in Jackie’s eyes was less violent than reproachful, peevish, even, as if Danny had hurt his feelings in some way. This isn’t a proper fight, Danny thought, where it’s you against a bully or a creep. This is like at home, after Dad has stopped yelling and is sleeping and Mom is sitting in the living room with the blinds drawn even though it’s daytime, and no one is allowed to speak, and you don’t know what you’ve done but somehow it’s not just their fault, it’s your fault too. But how is this Danny’s fault?

‘What’s up, Jackie? Or would you prefer if I called you Killer?’

Jackie flinched, and his freckled face reddened. Almost all the Bradberrys had red hair and pale blue eyes (except for the elder brother who’d been in juvie in Racine, who was dark and who people said was a bastard, in both senses of the word), but Jackie had the worst of it, hair that looked like it had faded in the sun and tiny, watery eyes, and when his face flushed, he looked like a little pig, the runt of the litter, and Danny suddenly realized he wasn’t afraid, not remotely, remembered Jackie was the Bradberry his brothers picked on, Eric and Brian, even his sisters used to slap him across the back of the head, Jackie Bradberry who stopped playing sports because he’d always get picked last. Danny Brogan could take Jackie Bradberry with one hand tied behind his back.

‘Killer,’ Danny said, and laughed, fed up with having to feel guilty for his father making his mother so sad. He had done what she asked, he had tried to be Jackie’s friend. It hadn’t worked out. He wasn’t to blame.

‘What’s up? What’s up, “Killer”?’ Danny said, taunting now, not bothering to hide his contempt.

‘What’s up? I called you out, that’s what’s up,’ Jackie said, his voice creaking, its pitch uncertain.

‘Why? I didn’t do anything. I don’t want to fight you.’

‘Oh, what, are you chicken? You afraid to fight me, is that it?’

‘Nah, I just … I just don’t see the point. I mean, a fight should be for a reason, and I didn’t do anything to you, did I?’

‘I saw you,’ Jackie said, and he contorts his face into a snarl so cartoonish it makes Danny laugh, involuntarily.

‘That’s right, laugh. That’s what you were doing with your buddies, weren’t you, laughing at me?’

‘Why would I laugh at you, Jackie? Sorry, Killer. Why would I bother? I mean, you’ve got your friends, I’ve got mine. What’s the big deal?’

Jackie flinched again, like Danny sort of knew he would, like a dog that’s been hit too often, all you’ve got to do is raise your hand; Jackie’d been told he was dumb so many times he smarted at the hint of it. He flashed back to their second day, when Danny was trying to make the effort with Jackie, for his mom’s sake. Some kid had brought in his father’s Purple Heart from the Korean War for Show and Tell and it had gone missing, and Mrs Johnson started this whole big investigation where she asked everyone in the class if they had taken it, and then she was going to search everyone’s bag, and she said she had ways of finding out who had taken it so the guilty person had better just own up now, and Danny leaned into Jackie and said, ‘Who does she think she is, Sherlock Holmes?’ And Jackie had looked at him blankly, and said, ‘Who is Sherlock Holmes?’ And even if he hadn’t read any Sherlock Holmes stories, ’cause he couldn’t really read properly, he should have heard of Sherlock Holmes from the old movies, which were always on TV, or when Daffy Duck played Dorlock Holmes, and without meaning to, just by reflex, Danny made a face, the kind of face he would have made with Dave or Ralph, a face that said, ‘what’s the matter, are you dumb or something?’ And Jackie’s face just fell, like he’d been asked that question for real a hundred times a day every day of his life. He flinched and he flushed and he turned away, humiliated, belittled, back in his box. Who is Sherlock Holmes?

Jackie was trying to say something, to explain, to justify himself, but he couldn’t get past the sneer on Danny’s face, past the barrage of words: what’s the big deal, why would I laugh at you, why would I fight you, why would I give a damn about someone like you? So he gave up trying, and hurled himself at Danny, like a maddened girl, Danny told the guys later, like your sister when you got her worked up good and mad till she can’t be teased any more and loses it. The guys had cracked up at that, he remembers them laughing, for real this time, all laughing at Jackie Bradberry, gathered on their bikes outside Mallatt’s on Kingsley Way later that evening drinking sodas, Dave and Ralph and Gene, laughing at Jackie Bradberry who fought like a girl, who Danny tried to go easy on, but even though Jackie couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag, he kept on coming until Danny bloodied his nose and blackened his right eye and doubled him up with a punch to the solar plexus that made him bring up his lunch. Danny left him there, hawking his guts up in the dirt. He hadn’t felt like laughing at him then. But later, with all the guys, he told the story, and they laughed and he laughed.

It was the last time he would laugh at Jackie Bradberry.

The next day, Brian and Eric Bradberry were waiting for him when he was cycling along Vilas Park Drive to school. He sometimes wonders, maybe if he had just kept cycling … what? He would never have started the fire, and Brian and Eric, not to mention Jackie, and all the other Bradberrys, would still be alive? That was lame reasoning. You couldn’t run away forever. They were going to get him sometime. May as well be now. He pulled into the side of the road and followed them, wheeling his bike. They had their dog with them, a 57-varieties mutt called Killer. Jesus, Danny thought as he followed them in among the trees of Vilas Park, Jackie wanted Jason and Chad to call him after his brothers’ fucking dog?

The worst of it wasn’t the beating, although Eric and Brian didn’t leave anything out: not content with bloodying his nose and blackening both eyes and making him throw up, Eric and Brian, who were thirteen and fourteen, used their boots. They kicked him in the balls, and in the head, and in the ass, right up the ass, which hurt in the worst fucking way, like a needle or something, and they kicked his shins and his back. They kicked the shit out of him, and Killer danced around, barking with excitement. And when he thought they were finished, when he begged them for mercy, when he wept, they stopped, panting.

‘Now you see, you little bitch,’ Eric said.

‘Squally little brat.’

‘You touch our brother again, you get that ten times over, you hear?’

‘Yes,’ Danny whimpered.

‘You squeal on us, you get it twenty times.’

‘You hear?’

‘Yes.’

‘You swear?’

‘I swear.’

‘What do you swear?’

‘I swear I won’t touch Jackie again. I swear I won’t tell.’

‘Little bitch. Look at the little bitch, weeping for his mommy.’

Danny was kneeling, heaving, crying, trying not to cry, eyes closed. The dog had stopped barking. He wondered if they had gone. He was afraid to open his eyes and check. But then he found out that they hadn’t gone. The dog had stopped barking to take a crap, and Eric and Brian found a couple of sticks and skewered the fresh dog shit and dumped it on Danny’s hair, rubbing it in with the sticks, through his hair, down his neck, around his cheeks, up his nose, down the front of his sweatshirt. It took him weeks before he didn’t think he smelled of dog shit; months before he didn’t think he could smell dog shit.

‘Smelly little bitch.’

‘Bitch stinks of shit, doesn’t she?’

And that wasn’t the worst of it.

The worst was what followed.

Every day, Jackie Bradberry passed a note along the class to him, written for him by Jason or Chad, mostly Jason, because Chad was even dumber than Jackie.

you are dead. killer

and

death ground after school dont be Late KILLER

and

See what a fare fight is like, bitch boy

Once, Danny put his hand up immediately after one of the notes had arrived, to answer a question, except he couldn’t help notice the stricken expression on Jackie’s face, as if he thought he was going to rat him out. Jackie was still scared, and Danny still almost felt sorry for him. Who is Sherlock Holmes?

But whether he was scared or not, it amounted to the same thing: Jackie could do what he liked now, and Danny couldn’t lay a finger on him.

At first, Danny just tried to avoid him, slipping out of school before he got a chance to catch him, taking the long way home and into school, keeping constant watch on where he might be at any time. But you couldn’t run away for ever. He met him one afternoon at the death ground. Jackie’s note had said:

death ground call you out and bring two of yore fag freinds for back up

Dave and Gene came with him.

Jackie was there with Jason and Chad, who looked petrified, and with good cause, as Eric and Brian had said nothing about protecting either of them, and before Jackie could raise a hand, Gene Peterson was on top of the pair of them and actually knocked their heads together, twice, and they took off over the wall like they had jet engines up their asses. Jackie started squealing about his brothers, and Gene, who was a head taller than anyone else in the class, and the guy they’d all have liked to be – not the smartest, or the coolest, but the most manly; the one whose approval you looked for; the guy you tried to make laugh and wanted to impress – Gene looked at Jackie Bradberry and said, ‘Go ahead, Jackie, you can do what you like now, on account of your brothers.’

And Jackie walked up to Danny and hit him hard in the stomach, and in the ribs, and hit him a few times in the face, splitting his lip, and then swung at him with a left hook that knocked him down. When Jackie tried to follow through with his feet when Danny was on the ground, Gene Peterson came in and bundled him out of it.

‘My brothers said …’

‘“My brothers said.” You little sissy boy,’ Gene said. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself. What do you think you’ve got here, target practice? “My brothers said.” Fuck off. Now!’

And Gene lifted a right hand the size of a shovel, and waved it at Jackie, and Jackie took off. But he walked slowly, and resentfully, reluctantly, stopping at the wall.

‘I’m gonna tell Eric and Brian about this.’

‘That figures,’ Gene said. ‘A snitch, a little rat as well as a sissy. Go tell your brothers.’

Jackie told Eric and Brian, and two days later, they caught Gene Peterson in Wingra Park and broke his arm with a tire iron. Gene said he caught them each a couple of good shots, and maybe he had, but everyone knew it didn’t make any difference. That was it as far as the resistance to the Bradberrys went. From then on, it was note after note, threat after threat, all from Jackie to Danny. Danny went back to the death ground twice more on his own, didn’t even tell the guys, because Jackie didn’t want him to, or because he feared they wouldn’t come and back him up even if he asked them, for fear of what Jackie’s brothers might do, and let Jackie Bradberry kick the shit out of him each time, and stopped feeling sorry for him pretty smartly. And then he tried to deal with it in other ways. First, he’d play sick at home, and get off school that way. But the doctor would be called, not all the time, but often enough. So then, what Danny did was, when he’d get the note, he’d start to shake, and he’d feel the heat in his brow, and he’d actually start to cry, and when Mrs Johnson noticed him, or some kid brought it to her attention, Danny’d say he had a terrible pain in his stomach, some kind of cramp, or spasm, and sometimes he’d get to see the nurse, and sometimes he’d just get sent home, and every one of these times, he’d see the stricken, scared face of Jackie Bradberry.

And everyone else’s face was kind of weird, because everyone else in the class knew what was happening, but it wasn’t happening to them, so they didn’t really give a shit, and besides, Danny was eleven, and look at him, every other day, there he was, crying. Jesus. What a fucking crybaby.

And that’s when Danny decided that there was only one solution: Jackie Bradberry was going to have to die.

Extract from

Trick or Treat

Unpublished manuscript by Ralph Cowley