Boy Who Shoots Crows (9781101552797) by Randall Silvis Read Free Book Online Page B

“Yes, well . . . as much as can be expected, I suppose.”
    She invited Mike to sit and have some lemonade, and soon, without much coaxing, she pulled a fuller explanation out of him. According to Mike, Dylan had a well-documented history of antiauthoritarian behavior. A handful of arrests as a minor for vandalism and destruction of private property, a regular routine of smart-mouthing and defying his teachers, of fistfights in the school corridors with other students—he harbored a particular animosity for the athletes—and a general attitude of contempt for the world at large.
    â€œHis father has just about wore himself out trying to beat some sense into the boy,” Mike said. “And I mean that literally. He was at the end of his rope when he came and asked if maybe I could find something to keep Dylan busy. So last year we got him enrolled in the co-op program. To this day there are teachers who want to shake my hand every time they see me. In fact there’s one who’s even offered to sleep with me. A female teacher, mind you.”
    â€œYou take her up on it yet?” Charlotte asked.
    He grinned. “I left it up to my wife. She’s still thinking it over.” He finished off his lemonade then, thanked her for her hospitality, and headed on back to his own place.
    Charlotte remembered that afternoon, remembered it all quite clearly, so much clearer and more real than even the past twenty-four hours. Dylan has a history, she told herself. So you shouldn’t feel bad about what you said. You told it the way you remember it, didn’t you?
    She winced then, a cold shiver out of nowhere.
    You should get a sweater, she told herself, but did not get up from the porch swing.
    You should get yourself a cup of tea.
    She thought of the younger boy then. Jesse. Did not want to think of him because it made her heart ache. All the sorrow in the world, all the tears. If you stop too long to think about all the pain in the world, it will be too much, she told herself. It could turn a soul to stone.
    She tried instead to pull up a mental image of the painting under the sheet in her studio, but instead of the face of the little Amish boy, she saw Jesse’s face. She saw Jesse sitting in the woods on a fallen log.
    The previous winter she had seen Jesse close up, had stood within a foot or so of him. Why hadn’t she told the sheriff that? Because it was months ago, she told herself, and counted back—April, March, February, January. Four months ago. Ancient history.
    The trees had been bare then, the sky gray. A chilly morning, she remembered. It sent a chill through her even now.
    Several times before that morning she had seen the boy going into or coming out of the woods. To her eyes he appeared the size of a ten-year-old, maybe four-and-a-half-feet tall, though it was difficult to be sure at that distance, but too young, she thought, to be out there alone, trudging across the far edge of the field, following the tree line before disappearing into the darkness of trunks and limbs. Too young to be carrying a shotgun that seemed as long as he was tall. It would be just after dawn, usually, while she was repositioning the easel so as to catch the coming light from the dining room’s bay window. On a few other occasions she had spotted him at dusk, when she was busy with something or other outside, sweeping leaves off the back porch or splitting wood for the fireplace, or she would be washing dishes at the sink, or just standing by the window and sipping a glass of pinot grigio. Maybe a dozen times between the fall and the spring she had watched him entering or coming out of the woods.
    But it was that very first time—that first jarring volley of gunshots, three blasts in rapid succession echoing across the field while the crows squawked and burst from the treetops—that made her begin to bristle at the sight of the boy, to always associate him with that thunderclap of