“Hey, just don’t tell anyone what happened today, all right?” Tony said.

“I wouldn’t,” Joseph said firmly.

“What are you going to tell your mom?” Tony prodded.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, think of something,” he said. “Don’t tell her anything. We don’t need that.”

“Of course not,” Joseph said. “I wouldn’t.”

“Cool. I’ll see you later, man.” Tony ruffled Joseph’s hair. “You kicked some ass out there, man. He’s older than you. You were great.” And then he jogged away toward 7-Eleven.

Joseph didn’t say anything to his mother. He didn’t have to. He came home covered with dirt and blood and his lip almost big enough to cover his nose. She wasn’t that stupid.

She called Ronnie and Tony’s mother immediately, and when he came out of the bathroom, she was still on the phone, bawling her out.

For the rest of the night Joseph brooded. He took a hot bath and ate a pork chop and a baked potato. Then he watched an old western on TV. He considered calling Tony and telling him what had happened, how his mother had acted against his will, but he had never talked to Tony on the phone before and he knew it would seem strange. He could only hope that the group understood he had done his best. He had kept the day’s secrets as closely as possible. During commercials he imagined sitting on Michael’s chest, pounding his face into a mush of blood and crushed bone.

Every half hour Joseph’s mother checked on him and he refused to acknowledge her. Finally, to escape her attention, he slipped from the living room to his grandfather’s bedside.

The old man was sleeping. His beard moved softly on his chest. His eyebrows were bushy gray caterpillars. Joseph sat at the window, relieved to get out of his mother’s sight for a while. He watched the woods, powdered in moonlight, a bluish, barely moving world of branches and leaves.

When the old man awakened, he seemed frightened at first, but then his red eyes sparked with recognition. He saw Joseph and seemed to remember something, and the fear seemed to recede. Joseph’s fat lip didn’t register at all.

“Animals,” the old man said huskily. “The animals. We’d come to the animals, hadn’t we? We are all animals here, Joseph. We are all animals on this earth together.”

“That sounds about right,” Joseph said.

“They came and built their nests and molehills everywhere,” the old man said. “They lived in their caves and in their coral reefs. The animals made the earth their home, which was good for the earth, because the earth was hungry. The earth ate them all in the end.”