I remember how Benny and me would get under the blanket draped over the chairs and watch a DVD. “Fort Blanket,” he called it. Wayne, let’s go to Fort Blanket. I’d pop a bag of corn if there was any. We didn’t have much to choose from in the movie department. Barney, which we both hated. The Reanimator, which I loved but Benny was too scared to watch all the way through. His favorite was A Bug’s Life, especially how that little ant made a tiny telescope from a dew drop and a rolled-up leaf.

I miss him so much.

 

 

It was God punished him.

Just like I prayed for.

The top of that ol’ silo got took by the storm, the barn burned and the woman got sick, just like I prayed.

Oh, he had it coming all right, all of it—the fever cows and the horses shitting their guts onto the field in long strings.

I may have helped with some of them retributions, like mixing the poisons into the feed and maybe helping that barn get burning.

The old lady was sickly besides.

But I had nothing to do with the silo.

That part was God.

 

Skanks has plan.

You know down in the yard, in the ball cage?

How they got that old fashioned water tank in the corner?

Well, Skanks said the faucet is solid bronze.

He said the back of it is the perfect diameter for a marble.

He’s been saving matches and coffee creamer packets to make gunpowder, so alls we need is to get that faucet somehow.

Fucker’s like sixty caliber!

I mean, it won’t go far or nothin’, but pushed upside a guard’s head it would do some damage.

We use him as a hostage, Skanks says.

So, you in?