Accidental Evil by Ike Hamill Read Free Book Online Page A

she had taken a left into the parking lot of Dawn’s, she would have waited forever trying to back out of one of those slanted spaces. None of the Summer People going south on 270 would have given her an inch of space to back out. The only way to get out of those spaces was to get lucky and find a Summer Person who wanted to take her spot.  
    Somehow in the strange psychology of Summer People, she would easily get someone to stop and wait if she was trying to take a left turn out of the bait store parking lot. They were a weird bunch. But it wasn’t just the ease of exit that made her turn right. She also had to pick up her little boy, George. To pick him up, she would first need to find him. He had left the house that afternoon with a heavy can full of fat, stretchy earthworms. He was either using them to pull in pike from the stream, or he had sold them to Roger Emmonds to re-sell in his bait store.
    She saw a boy crouching near the stone wall that divided the parking area from the short stretch of lawn in front of the bait store. He was trying to flick the wheel on a rusty lighter. It looked like trash he had picked up from the road.
    “Peter?”
    He barely glanced at her before he ran.
    “Peter!” she yelled. “Peter Jankovic, you stop right there.”
    She caught him with the order just before he rounded the corner of the building. She strode fast—her mom-in-charge walk—to reach him. He turned to face her. His hands were empty—he had probably chucked the lighter in the tall grass next to the building.
    “Heaven’s sake, Peter, I just wanted to ask you if you’d seen George,” she said. She swallowed as her breath came back to her.
    He shook his head but his eyes darted towards the back of the bait store. Roger’s store had a deck cantilevered off the back that extended over the stream. The kids would sometimes sit in the shade there and cast their lures into the deep part of the channel. Roger’s wife, Lois, hated when they did that. At least once a week a kid would hook a duck by the leg. The result was a hysterical cloud of quacking feathers. It was bad for business.
    “Go home, Pete, I’m sure your grandma is looking for you,” she said.
    “She is?”
    Mary frowned at the boy. He glanced at where he had thrown the lighter and then ran off. He was probably reminding himself to come back for the thing, but he would forget.
    Mary took her time walking down the grass towards the stream. The kids down there were like cockroaches. They could sense an adult coming and they would scatter if she made too much noise.
    She stopped.  
    Mary turned around and looked back up the slope. Once she walked back to where Pete had stood, the thing was easy to find. She picked up the orange lighter and held it up to the sun. It was still half full of fluid. Pete had been smart to try to scavenge it. Fireworks were everywhere since the ban had been lifted, but parents had been pretty good at keeping matches and lighters out of the hands of the kids. If Peter did remember to come back for the lighter, there was no telling what he would have blown up later that day—probably his own fingers.
    Mary put the lighter in her pocket and turned back for the stream. She poked her head around the corner of the building and saw her son there. He wasn’t fishing. He didn’t even have his pole. He was just sitting there on a rock, elbows propped on knees, face propped on hands, and staring down at the water.
    “George?”
    He glanced at her and then looked back to the running water.
    “Are you okay?”
    He nodded. His face looked funny with his cheeks all pressed up by his hands. The whole thing would have been adorable if it wasn’t so troubling. George was an exuberant kid. When he was mellow it meant that something was really wrong.
    She ducked under the deck and found a spot to sit down next to him. The structure overhead concentrated the sound of the running water and filled her head with it. It was cool and