I left. Put on my backpack and set off on a big detour, in the hope of avoiding the other Fiset brother. I took off behind the Dubé farm to pick some strawberries, up on the headland where there’s too much wind for trees to grow. The headland is an empty tract of land that must belong to someone, but no one knows who. A no man’s land where older kids go to make campfires, and finders keepers is the only law. The morning rain had done its work; you could almost hear the berries ripening along the ground. The ants were industriously fighting over the same spoils. My parents liked to joke that they made a great strawberry-ant pie.

As I thought about what I had done, a sense of satisfaction stole over me, almost a feeling of euphoria. The beaming sun helped. My initial disappointment metamorphosed into something more joyful. No one would ever know it was me. My fingerprints were nowhere to be found. And no one had any idea where I hung out on nice days like that one.

I didn’t see what happened, but I did have a theory. Obviously my aim was off. Instead of hitting Fiset’s ass, I must have hit him on the back of the head, and he must have gone down like a clotheslined hockey player. He was already squatting, so the impact knocked him over. Then his head hit one of the big rocks along the bank. Without a sound. Or rather the sound of his fall was lost in the burbling of the creek and the rustling of leaves in the wind.

The only downside, aside from the impossibility of boasting about my great work, was that Fat Fiset would never know who took him out. Sitting there in the headlands, I wondered whether he was really dead, though I didn’t have the courage to go see for myself. I was afraid his brother would come back before I managed to get away. I’d have to wait for the news. I’d have to act surprised.

Even before casting the stone, I had a fleeting vision of myself kneeling on Fat Fiset, cleaving his skull with a big rock. Sitting in the beating sun, another vision of that moment came back to me. I pictured myself as the caveman in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but instead of using a bone, I’d bash his head in with a rock from the river bank. It’s all there in my mind: the arc of the water following the movement of my arm, my other hand sliding along my victim’s throat, holding him still as he tries to bite my fingers; the muffled thud of the rock hitting his temple; the kickback in my arm, like when you drive a nail; the swell of triumphant music, the rhythm of mallets battering kettledrum.