My legs raced my bicycle to Mr. Turner’s home on the Saturday morning following the morning my family awoke to discover those dolls swaying from our trees. I hurried to reach his home before the brown bag I clutched attracted unwanted attention. I shook like a nervous wreck when I stood at the counter in the small gas station in town that then doubled as a liquor store, but the attendant seemed to think there was nothing strange about a boy purchasing a bottle of cheap gin. He believed me when I told him my father needed the liquor to celebrate a birthday. He didn’t ask me about my age, or how he might trust that I wouldn’t use the gin to throw my own party. He didn’t say anything at all after I darted out of his shop’s door after his register chimed. So I raced on my bicycle, certain that Addieville’s lone police cruiser would appear at any moment to put me in handcuffs for my underage purchase of gin.
Unfortunately, my arrival at Mr. Turner’s home failed to save me from unwanted attention.
“How do you like that music, old man? How’s that song help with your hangover?”
I would’ve turned my bicycle around and locked myself back in my bathroom to save myself from the attention of those half-dozen boys smoking cigarettes in Mr. Turner’s carport, but I hesitated to watch one of those boys gather a rock from the edge of the road before throwing the stone through a pane of glass remaining in one of my old friend’s windows. That hesitation allowed another boy to spot me before I had the chance to escape.
The tallest and skinniest boy, with thin arms awkwardly extending from a sleeveless shirt screamed. “There’s the Frost pervert! He’s come first thing this morning to get his taste of that old man!”
The boys laughed, and the fat face of another boy grinned. “Or maybe it’s the old man who needs to get a taste of him!”
“There’s no way to know with these ugly perverts,” returned the skinny boy. “They probably just take turns on all the giving and the taking.”
A redheaded boy in a thick pair of spectacles increased the volume of guitars shrilling from a boombox, and I knew without a doubt that boy was their leader when he dolled out a pair of fresh cigarettes to Skinny and Fat-face. I just let my bike drop when glasses crooked his finger to pull me into the carport. Courage didn’t move my feet. I knew any attempt to flee would only make whatever those boys planned for me all the worse. Those boys owned little mercy to show anyone, but I knew they possessed all kinds of cruelty.
I could barely hear the boy in the glasses over the shrilling guitars when he snarled at me. “You picked the wrong day to visit your friend, pervert.”
“I didn’t know you would be here,” cracked my voice.
Fat-face laughed at that. “You’re an idiot, James Frost. We come here real early every Saturday morning to do our part to help old Mr. Turner get himself out of bed after another Friday night spent in the bottle. All that drinking’s real bad on a person as old as Mr. Turner, so we’re doing what we can to discourage the habit. So we come here first thing every Saturday morning to blare our metal music through his window so his skull feels the pain of that time in the bottle.”
All of the boys laughed at that. All of them save Glasses, who stared real hard at me. “Yeah, you shouldn’t have come here, James Frost. Mr. Turner’s not going to be in any mood to noodle with you.”
None of those boys noticed it because their attention remained locked on me, but I saw the plywood shift behind a broken window. I caught the smell of sizzling bacon a breath later, and the aroma made my stomach growl, no matter that apprehension already filled my stomach.
Glasses snarled at me. “Seeing as we’re here to help, maybe we can cure you of your wicked ways as well, James. You’re going to be real thankful for the lesson I give you. The sooner you learn to keep clear of perverts like Mr. Turner, the better off you’re going to be. I just have to decide how I’m going to teach you.”
“Punch him in the balls!”
“Kick the spokes out of his bike tires!”
“Make him drink a cup of his own pee!”
“Throw him to the Mr. Selleck’s junkyard dogs!”
“They all miss the point,” Glasses shook his head. “We need to help James shatter his friendship with Mr. Turner, help him break his bond. He needs to throw a stone through one of Mr. Turner’s windows. There’s still a little bit of glass left in those panes.”
“What if he refuses to throw a stone?” asked Fat-face.
“Then we fill a sock with the biggest rocks we can find and beat him with it until he gets a little common sense.”
My heart quickened as the boys hurried to collect the stones needed to make a weapon of a sock.
“You know what you have to do if you want to prove to us that you’re not a pervert like Mr. Turner,” grinned Glasses. “You know what you have to do to show us that Mr. Turner hasn’t ruined you yet. You better find your stone real quick. I wouldn’t waste much time aiming at a window, because I don’t think it’s going to take the boys very long to fill a sock with rocks.”
Glasses turned up the volume of his shrilling guitars to the maximum. I peeked at Skinny and Glasses and saw that stones filled both of their hands. I hurried to the street to find a rock of my own. I desperately shifted through pebbles and bits of broken asphalt, wondering how something as simple as a stone could be so difficult for me to find. It was as if Addieville refused to give me such a simple thing out of spite. Fat-face laughed as he watched me crawl around on my knees looking for something to throw, and Skinny started kicking dirt in my face when he saw how closely I put my nose to the ground.
Even in the middle of my frantic search for a stone, my stomach continued to growl, and my appetite kept growing as that aroma of morning bacon thickened in my nose. Why would I think of breakfast while Glasses and his goons loomed over me? I was going to feel a lot of hurt if I failed to find a stone, and yet I could hardly concentrate for the smell drifting out of Mr. Turner’s home. My hand finally felt a suitable rock, and I jumped to my feet and drew back my hand as I searched for some piece of glass still not shattered on the beaten windows. I aimed the best I could on a small, jagged piece of glass found in the corner of one pane.
I sighed and lowered my arm. “I can’t do it.”
Skinny dumped rocks into his sock as quickly as he could.
Glasses laughed. “You’ll do it. You’ll have to bruise and bleed first. But sooner or later, you’re going to throw that stone.”
That smell of bacon saved me before any of that gang could strike me with a sock. Skinny and Fat-face’s eyes widened as they clutched at their guts and started gagging. All of my tormentors were vomiting a second later, splattering their shoes with a vile substance that looked like pink cottage cheese. The vomit streamed from their mouths. It dripped from their noses. Somehow, I just knew that scent of bacon drifting out of Mr. Turner’s home was responsible for onslaught of sickness. My tormentors forgot all about me. They quickly forgot all about shattering windows. They were still vomiting as they pedaled their bicycles down the street. Glasses even forgot his stereo.
The kitchen screen door opened, and Mr. Turner winked at me.
“Are you hungry?”
“I’m starving, Mr. Turner. I don’t know why, but my stomach is roaring for a second breakfast.”
Mr. Turner laughed. “Then come on inside to my table, and bring that blaring radio with you. It sounds dreadful at the moment, but I think it’ll play the afternoon baseball game just fine.”