Heed the Thunder by Jim Thompson

and jammed there, and their mother whined with glee as she lashed them. The whip sliced through the air, mercilessly, cracking against their shoulders with the sound of an exploding rifle.
    “H-I’ll h-show you! H-I’ll peel you down to yooor d-dirty stinkin’ bones!…Funny, ain’t you? Awful dooorn funny! Why don’t you laugh, hey?”
    The boys howled with pain and laughter. The two older girls looked on from the kitchen, their tanned faces frightened and amused. Sherman roared and snorted, and little Ruthie jiggled on his quaking belly. Robert giggled fearfully.
    Gus and Ted squirmed through the door at last, and fled scrambling up the stairs. Panting, Mrs. Fargo turned to Robert and made an angry shooing motion. He darted past her, receiving a light tap from the blacksnake, and followed the boys.
    “And don’t you raise no devilment up there!” she gasped. “You go to bed so’s you can start to school tomorrow.”
    Robert said, “All right.” His cousins made subdued farting noises with their lips. They all went into the icy bedroom with its huge featherbed.
    Gus and Ted slapped at each other, their close-set little eyes dancing. Gus rubbed his backside.
    “You son-of-a-bitch, what’d you get in my way for?”
    “You got in mine, you son-of-a-bitch.”
    “Ask Bob, by God. He’ll tell the truth.”
    “Bob don’t want to have nothing to do with a bastard like you.”
    They guffawed aimlessly.
    “Did you steal any of the old man’s tobacco?” Ted demanded.
    “Why, hell yes,” said Gus. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a handful of rough-cut tobacco, somewhat adulterated with lint and cow manure.
    “Well, let’s light up. Can’t you see Bob wants a smoke?”
    Gus secured three corncob-and-grapevine pipes from the rear of the bottom bureau drawer, and packed them with tobacco. Ted passed matches. They sat down in a row at the head of the bed, their backs braced against the worn mahogany, their knees drawn up. Robert puffed his pipe with solemn expertness. The boys had introduced him to smoking at their first meeting, and he had practiced at each succeeding one.
    “I thought you were—was building an airplane,” he said, bringing up a topic that was much on his mind. “You said you was going to build one and take me riding in it.”
    Gus looked at him blankly. “Hell, Bob, didn’t we tell you about that?”
    “Huh-uh,” said Robert; then, “Hell, no.”
    “We already got ’er made,” Ted explained. “We got her hid in the hay up in the barn loft. She’s a humdinger, too, ain’t she, Gus?”
    “A humdinger,” Gus nodded, billowing smoke from his nostrils. “We got her made out of two-by-fours, Bob—even the wings. That way it won’t break up so easy when it hits the ground.”
    “What you got for wheels?”
    “We got wheels,” said Ted proudly. “I took ’em off the mower.”
    “Yes, you son-of-a-bitch, and the old man hided me for it.”
    “Hidin’ will make your arse grow. You ain’t as broad across the arse now as a good man is between the eyes.”
    “Yah. You ought to know.”
    “Yah.”
    They punched each other, careful not to strike Robert.
    “Well, when we goin’ to go flyin’?” he inquired.…“Huh, Gus, huh, Ted? When you goin’ to take me for a ride?”
    “We got to wait a while for that,” said Gus regretfully. “You see, we ain’t been able to steal no engine for it, so we’re going to have to fly her out of the barn loft, so she’ll sail, see?”
    “Uh-huh. How you going to make it—her—go out, though?”
    “Well, we figured you could steer her and me and Ted would give it a good push. Get it all the way back to the end of the loft so we could go out a-hellin’. Just before we get to the door, we’ll jump in with you.”
    “Oh,” said Robert, pleased. “When we going to do it?”
    “That’s what I was goin’ to tell you about. We got the wings too wide to go through the door, and we got to saw ’em off some. We’ll get around