Ask the Dark by Henry Turner

with’m, munching on the goddamn things as he’s running along after me. I get away, but Brest, he calls Skugger back, and Skugger comes to give’m a ride. Then they both go off to party somewheres with the man, and Brest leaves them chips he was eating in the car, and Skugger leaves his hat.
    Damn. Getting all that straight in my mind almost gave me a headache. But I was thinking, maybe this was the last time anybody seen’m, seen Jimmy Brest, I mean. Course I couldn’t prove nothing, and what was there to prove? Can you ’magine me walking in the police station holding some chip bag and saying it belonged to Jimmy Brest? But along with the boxes and the mittens and the car and the man, it all might add up if I was sure it was the same bag I’d seen Brest holding when he chased me.
    So just to be sure, I had to see that car again.
     
    When Marvin dropped me off it was still afternoon and instead of going home I went to the dark house. I walked past looking at it for just a second, ’cause I didn’t know if anybody was inside and I be damned to let’m catch me spyin’. But there weren’t no sign of anybody, and I was thinking of sneaking around back to see if the car was there, but tell the truth I was a little worried to do it by daylight.
    Then I hear a noise comin’ up the street, noise goes, swap! Then a minute passes and you hear another swap! I turn around fast and what I see is my boy Sam Tate coming up the middle of the street, chucking his papers at houses both sides.
    When he comes by I say, Hey, Sam, c’mere a minute, I gotta ask you something.
    Hi, Billy, he says, and he comes on over.
    Now Sam Tate, he’s my friend. Got long hair, blond like me just longer, and he’s about my size, which ain’t tall, but he got a face which I swear looks like a church angel, it’s so straight and regular and not like mine which is all stubby and beat. He sort’f likes me. He ain’t like the average boy around here, I mean all snooty. First, his daddy’s crazy. Yells at him all the time, a sort of yelling that drove Sam’s mother away and his brother and sister, too, until now it’s just Sam in the house with his daddy climbing the walls from all those bad memories he got, ’cause that’s what I s’pose Sam’s daddy has, bad memories, I mean.
    I heard him yelling. Won’t deny it. Used to hide in the bushes out front of the house just to hear. And he could yell, believe me. Whole neighborhood knows. It’s so fuckin’ loud is why. Sort of like he got a terror in him. But I won’t say what it’s all about, the yelling, I mean. That’s nosy. You go ask Sam Tate if you really wanna know.
    Funny thing is I never heard Sam yell. In the house I heard him screaming and crying, but never outside. Outside he’s calm as could be, and quiet and real inside himself, and don’t hardly talk at all. Some boys think that’s funny and it do make me smile, until I think how Sam feels inside.
    You see, me, I got scars on my face. But this Sam Tate, this friend of mine? All his scars are on his heart.
    Still, he really easy to fool, and I played tricks on’m plenty of times, can’t help it. You just listen to this.
    Sam, I said, duck on down! Come inside here.
    I was acting really sneaky and I’d figured he’d go for that, so what I did was duck down’n he did too and followed me inside a hedge about four/five foot, where we sat in a clear space where nobody could see us, even walking right by.
    What is it? Sam said, sitting there picking prickles off his shirt.
    I waited a second before I talked, looking up through the bush brambles at the house now again like I was waiting for something to happen, looking at a front window that didn’t have no cover inside and let on to an empty room. Then I looked at Sam.
    You know that boy Skugger, right?
    Yeah, Sam said.
    Know him good?
    We don’t hang out like we used to. He does different stuff now, Sam said.
    I knew that meant they weren’t good friends ’cause he