And maybe also, could they argue they’d been drinking, and their judgment was off. Buying six-packs and nobody asking them who it was for, how old. None of it would’ve happened except for that. Which wasn’t their fault—there were adults to blame. And the car, his father had given him. Christ! He hadn’t even asked for it, he’d known better than to ask his father would’ve made him crawl, if he had. Surprising the hell out of him, just giving him the car which would have been worth something at least, a few hundred at least, on a trade-in. But he’d given Jerr the car, which put Jerr in his debt big-time. And made Jerr anxious, taking care of it. Every time he came to the house the old man would go out into the driveway and inspect the car and if he didn’t say anything that could be worse than if he did for at least, if he did, you’d know what he was thinking. And Jerome Kerrigan was always fucking thinking.

Which led to Jerr swerving the damned car off the road. Like wanting to get rid of it. A few beers, you started thinking that way. Hitting the black kid was just collateral damage. You could argue that was an accident, nobody’d known the kid was even there until they saw him. He’d been meaning just to scare the kid, make the guys laugh, impress his brother who thought he was a cool dude but the front wheels hit gravel and swerved, right front fender struck the kid and lifted him, and the God-damned bicycle leaving a dent in the fender him and Lionel would have to try to even out with their bare hands, panting and struggling to unbend it but still the dent is there. Fucking rust on their fingers.

And blood from the bat, they’d have to scrub like hell.

Chain of circumstances, accidents. Could happen to anyone.

None of it premeditated. That’s the crucial point.

Realizing then, his father had given him the fucking baseball bat. Sure. That’s who it was, had to be, making a big deal of it, bringing him to the store downtown to pick it out for his birthday: Louisville Slugger. The best.

Now you got to live up to it, kid.

The Little Sister

WAKENED BY—SOMETHING . . .

Not a flash of headlights on the wall of the darkened room. Not the expansion of headlights on two walls of our room, if a vehicle turned into our driveway.

So that I would think, but only later—They cut the headlights. Not wanting to wake anyone.

Still less would I think, at the age of twelve—This part of it would be premeditated. Leaving nothing to chance.