The Last Exit to Normal by Michael Harmon Page B

I was supposed to.”
    “You shoot a cat today?”
    Billy nodded.
    “Particular reason?”
    “Strays get into the garbage and the garden. Make a mess.”
    The sheriff nodded. “Fair enough.” Then he sighed, taking a minute. “I’ll
tell you what. You abide what your father says from now on, okay?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    He straightened up. “Get on back to work, then.”
    Billy walked back, and the sheriff turned toward his truck.
    I stopped raking and called to him: “You know what’s going to happen if you talk to Mr.
Hinks!”
    He looked at me, then stopped walking. A moment passed. “What’s that supposed to
mean?”
    “You know what it means, Sheriff. He’ll just get more of the same.”
    He took a toothpick from his breast pocket and popped it in his mouth, hitching his belt up. “I
suppose I don’t know that.” Then he tipped his hat to me. “Take care.”
    As I watched him go, I realized one thing: Billy Hinks was alone in this world, and nobody cared about it.
I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. “Sheriff?” He turned. “So you can just shoot shit
around here any time you feel like it?”
    He smiled. “This isn’t the city, Ben.”

CHAPTER 10
    B y the time I got out of the shower, got dressed, and went downstairs, it was
four-thirty. I didn’t want to be late, and I realized I wouldn’t be having dinner, so I grabbed a couple
pieces of bread from the bread thing, spread some peanut butter on them, and walked out, saying goodbye to whoever
was around to hear it. Miss Mae called to me from her room: “Get in here.” I walked to her door,
looking in. She sat in a chair by the window, reading a book. She looked up. “You have manners at that Johan
house, understand? I won’t have my good name smeared around this town on account of some boy who
don’t know no better.”
    “Your name is different than my name. Me Campbell, you
Evil.
”
    She snapped her book shut, fire in her eyes. “I don’t need
you
to tell
me
what my last name is, and the first day I do, I’ll be in a pine box being laid to rest next to my dead husband.
Now get. And don’t smart off to me.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    As I hit the lawn, I saw Billy out by the curb, on the skateboard I’d left him. The bag lay
crumpled on the driveway. He glanced at me, then hit the board, skating a few feet before hitting a pebble and tumbling
to the pavement. Just then an old Ford Bronco, with three guys in it around my age, passed, slowing as it came by Billy.
One of the passengers, a guy with blindingly white, straight teeth and a high school baseball cap, leaned out the window
and smiled. The Bronco idled next to Billy. “Hey, freak, you all right?” The other guys laughed.
    Billy stood up, shifting from one foot to another and looking anywhere but at them. The guy laughed
again. “Your daddy know you’re in the street, scaring people? Get inside, boy!” More laughter
ratcheted from the Bronco.
    Right then Miss Mae’s voice cackled from behind me: “Ronald Jamison, you get off my
street an’ leave that boy alone ’fore I call your daddy and have you strapped for bein’ the
no-account you are! You hear me?”
    Ronald Jamison laughed; then the driver goosed the Bronco and they were gone. I turned, giving a
questioning glance to Miss Mae. She shook her head disgustedly and tottered inside, slamming the screen door
shut.
    As I passed Billy, he ignored me. “They hassle you a lot?” I asked.
    He didn’t look up. “I ain’t supposed to talk to you.”
    “Then don’t.” I walked on.
    “Hey.”
    I turned.
    He picked up the board, looking away. “It’s cool.”
    “Yeah.” I started walking again.
    “Hey.”
    I turned.
    He looked at my outfit, then at my cowboy hat. “That hat ain’t gonna do.”
    I smiled, then tipped my Stetson to him and moved on down the street.

    Kimberly’s house, like so many other places in the town, was a three-story Craftsman with a
porch running along the front.