“The one with the bat. I mean, the one who took the bat, when Jerr sort of let it drop. Like, he’d gotten scared. Freaked. So I took the bat, his hands were weak. It was like my hands took it from him, like the bat took my hands, and—I guess—I killed the black kid. Guess it was me. It wasn’t ‘killing’ exactly, it was like finishing something that was started. But it wasn’t Jerr like you all thought. Dad thought, too. And Mom.” Lionel swallows a large mouthful of beer, chokes a little, laughs. “It was me—‘Lionel.’”

Your skin is crawling. Your mouth has gone dry. You are trying to remain calm. This is just conversation, you think. Just something your brother is saying in this secluded place where no one will hear him. Except you.

Lionel laughs, with that air of wonder, incredulity. That he has made this confession to another person? To you? That he once did such a thing? Committed such an act? Laughter like pebbles shaken inside a tin container. Laughter that turns into a fit of coughing.

Lionel has succumbed to coughing several times since you’ve seen him. Harsh, hurtful-sounding as if his throat is scraped raw.

Saying now, ruefully: “Christ! Like I got lung cancer or something. Had to quit smoking at Marcy after twelve fucking years when they banned it. Let you smoke all you could afford until the last year I was there, then stopped it cold, like they didn’t give a shit if we all went crazy. Like, we would’ve killed for a smoke.”

When you don’t reply to this vehement outburst, standing very still, staring at the hawks above the river, Lionel adds, laughing in the way he’d laughed as a teenager, joking with a friend: “A fuck or a smoke. You’d kill for the one but you’d really kill for the other.”

Quickly turning, to walk away from your brother. A mistake! A mistake to have come here.

Your accelerating heartbeat is a signal: you will have to run.

But Lionel has been awaiting this moment, lunging after you just as you break into a run, seizing your left wrist and turning it, hard.

“Where’re you going, you! Rat-bitch. Cunt. You ruined my life. And then you fucked up my parole.” The hoarse voice is bitter and aggrieved and yet elated. At last!

Hopeless to plead with Lionel, you know it will be futile. Only make him more furious.