Chapter Two

Millbury, CT – 1993

“Come on, you little ball sack. I know you’re up there.” Mark McNeil, Mick to everyone but his mother, and he hadn’t seen her in months, sat on top of the dented Airstream trailer, the BB gun held in both hands pointed at the trees. The Airstream looked to have rolled off the production line right around the time Hank Williams had last sung he was so lonesome he could cry. Mick’s long vermilion hair was tied back with the rubber band that had held yesterday’s mail together. (The same mail Mick hadn’t bothered to open, merely using it to start a fire.) He squinted down the sightline, waiting for the woodpecker to poke its head out from behind the branch full of leaves it had been hiding behind.

The end-of-summer air smelled of onion grass and mud, two days of storms having found new holes in the Airstream’s rusted roof within which to deposit steady drips of water. Mick had pots all around the trailer, the steady plop-plop of water enough to qualify as torture under the guidelines of the Geneva Convention.

No matter how many leaks the Airstream sprung, nothing grated on Mick’s nerves more than that goddamn woodpecker. The bird had made his mornings and days a living hell. Mick was sure the woodpecker knew exactly what it was doing and took great pleasure in screwing with him. This was the start of week three since the peckerhead had made Mick’s part of the woods his home and there would not be a fourth.

In place of the usual round BBs, Mick had swiped a box of the pointed-tip ammo from Baterman’s the other day during his weekly run for pilfered comics and purchased smokes and Slim Jims. If you are what you eat, Mick was a thin stick of overly salted beef jerky.

He didn’t want to just hurt ol’ Woody. No, this head-banging son of a biscuit eater had pecked his last tree.

I wonder how many in a bush a dead bird in hand will get you.

He shouldn’t count his woodpeckers before they’d death-spiraled into the forest carpet.

Mick’s nose twitched from an incoming sneeze. He pinched his eyes shut, willing the sneeze to go away. He couldn’t make a noise and spook Woody now. If he was woken up one more morning just before sunrise, he was going to lose his mind.

Or whatever was left of it, if you asked every teacher and administrator in his school. He’d heard there was a big math test today and a social studies project was due. Not that he gave a frog’s fat ass.

Wings flapped above. The branches shifted under a gusting wind. Daylight sparkled through the gaps in the leaves. Mick winced as he came eye-to-supernova with the sun.

“Dammit.”

The second he regained his vision, the woodpecker sprang into view, settling on a dead branch as if daring him to shoot it.

Mick took aim, squaring his ass on the Airstream’s roof.

“Whatcha shooting at?”

The woodpecker took off in a mad flurry. Mick squeezed the trigger but was too late. The deadly BB embedded itself in the old bark.

He turned to face the intruder who had just ruined his tomorrow, his eyes radiating nuclear anger. Without hesitation, he swung his arm down and around and pulled the trigger.

“Shit! Oh shit! That hurts. Holy shit that hurts!”

Anthony Ventarola, Vent not only to his friends but his teachers and even his mother, writhed on the ground clutching his right thigh. There was a hole in his dirty, faded jeans. Underneath that hole was another hole in the meat of his leg. The back end of the BB could be felt if he dared stick his finger in the hole. At the moment, he settled for rocking back and forth and howling at Mick.

“You’re an asshole, man! You fucking shot me!”

“Calm down. It’s not like I took you down with a .44.” Mick jumped off the trailer and tucked the gun into his waistband.

“You think it’s nothing? Give me the gun and I’ll return the favor.”

Mick’s initial anger easily gave way to amusement. Pissing Vent off wasn’t just a fun pastime. It was a vocation. He offered his hand to help his friend up. Vent smacked it away.

“Kiss my ass, psycho,” Vent seethed. Now he had his hand over the wound as if to stanch a heavy flow of blood. So far, there’d barely been a trickle.

“You messed up my shot.”

“And for that you shoot me instead?”

“I’ve had a really bad morning.” Mick pinched the bridge of his nose. Aside from not getting enough sleep, he hadn’t eaten in two days. He really needed food. Maybe they could swing on down to 7-Eleven and while Vent bought a Big Gulp, Mick could stick a few Slim Jims in his pockets.

Vent got up, unbuckled his belt and let his jeans drop. It was easy to find the BB entrance wound. The skin around the hole was red and puckered with a penumbra of blood. “I can’t afford to go to the hospital, man.”

Mick picked up a folding lawn chair from the side of the trailer and set it behind his friend. “Pop a squat. You don’t need a hospital.”

Vent’s face was red as an apple. “Oh, so you’re a doctor now?”

“Even better. My dad used to take potshots at me when I was ten to, in his words, knock the pussy out of me. Those BBs hurt like a motherfucker, but they don’t go in deep. It’s like taking out a splinter.” Mick took a switchblade out of one pocket and a Zippo lighter from the other. He sparked the Zippo to life and flicked the tip of the knife over the flame until it glowed.

Vent covered the wound with both hands. “You don’t remove splinters with knives, dude.”

“I said it’s like removing a splinter. Same concept, bigger needle. Now hold still.”

Before Vent could protest, Mick straddled his knees, locking him into the chair. He pushed Vent’s hands away and plunged the knife right in, the metal-on-metal sound the proof he needed that he’d hit home. His hand and the switchblade were one. He could feel the blade scrape down the side of the BB and knew the instant he struck the meat beneath it. With a flick of his wrist, the BB slipped out of the now bloody hole and thumped on the pine-needle-strewn ground.

It was all over in seconds. Vent waited for Mick to get off of him before letting out a sharp cry of pain, followed by a choice selection of particularly blue phrases.

“You want a bandage and a kiss to make it all better?” Mick asked, a devilish grin on his face.

Vent tugged up his pants. “What I want is to punch you in the face. It’s not funny.”

“I never said it was.”

“So why do you have that retard smile on your face?”

“Retard?” Mick placed his hand over his heart. “I guess it takes one to know one.”

Vent reared back to punch him. Mick became instantly serious. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

There was a brief moment of consideration on Vent’s part, and then logic won the moment. He dropped his fist. Mick hated to be touched, everyone knew that. That would get you a stiff punch in the chest or worse. And if Vent punched him back….

Hitting Mick would set him in a blackout rage. When those came over him, there was no rationalizing with him, no telling him when to stop, unless several people made a concerted effort to bring him to the ground. No one wanted to mess with Mick when he was in a blackout.

“You can at least say you’re sorry.” The pain and anger bled from Vent like draining an old radiator.

“I thought that goes without saying.”

“Actually, it doesn’t.”

Mick kicked a pine cone and watched it bang against the Airstream. “I fixed you up, didn’t I?”

Vent paused, and then shook his head, realizing defeat. “I came to give you something, but maybe I shouldn’t.”

Mick arched an eyebrow. “Is it weed?”

“Yeah, I came to drop off a dime bag.” The sound of the woodpecker hammering at a distant tree echoed over them. Mick felt like shooting Vent again. “Dummy. Here, take this.” He handed Mick an envelope. Inside was a small stack of dollar bills.

“What is this?”

“I found it in the lost and found at school. I was waiting to see Mr. Templeton when that fat secretary with the mole on her nose dropped the box next to me and just walked off. I thought you could use it. Last time I saw, you were low on beer.”

Truth was, Mick was low on everything. That’s what happened when your mom and stepfather were MIA and you were a seventeen-year-old stoner who everyone assumed would end up in prison or dead by nineteen, so what was the sense of trying to help?

If anyone else had given him charity money, he would have told them exactly where to stick it. But he’d been friends with Vent since they were just out of diapers. No one knew the real story of what went on in Mick’s family but Vent, and he was going to keep it that way.

Mick took the envelope and shoved it in his back pocket. “Thanks, man. I owe you.”

Vent looked at his leg. “Yeah, you do.”

“Did you take that math test?”

“I cut right after. It was easy.”

“Easy for you. You’re a math egghead.”

“Hey, I saw the video store just got a copy of The Hills Have Eyes. I asked them to put it on hold for me for Saturday. Wanna come over and watch it?”

“That sounds cool.”

“Bring a bar of soap and some clothes while you’re at it,” Vent said.

“You saying I smell?” Mick puffed up his chest.

Vent took a loud sniff in his direction. “Yeah. You stink, bro. I’d stink too if I was living in a trailer without running water.”

“That’s still fucked up, man.”

“I want my mother to leave us alone, not bug me to get you to leave so we can air the place out.” Vent smirked and wiggled his eyebrows. Mick was self-conscious about his hygiene lately and would have felt hurt, then exceedingly angry, with most people. Vent had a point and he was only trying to help, which earned him a pass.

“Look what else I got.” Vent pulled a CD of the Stone Temple Pilots album, Core, out of his well-worn jacket pocket. The jacket had been a thrift store find, like most of his clothes, and looked like it had been worn by someone who had subsequently been blown up wearing said jacket. Then he waved a dime bag in Mick’s face.

“I knew it,” Mick said.

“So, you wanna get high and listen to STP?”

Who was Mick to say no?