Bridgetown, Issue #1: Arrival by Giovanni Iacobucci Read Free Book Online

this vandalism is fairly recent,
judging by the tools used."
    "Gah," Jesse said. "You're such a
know-it-all. Have to take the fun out of everything."
    "You know, Jesse," Wayne began. "If this
stuff does belong to someone, what happens if they come back?
They're probably not going to be too happy—"
    But Jesse was already in the raft and pushing
off into the swamp waters, cupping the scummy water to wash his
hands of silt.
    Wayne saw him, and started to exclaim. "Hey!
Hey! Don't leave me here! What are you doing?"
    Jesse started to laugh. This was too
rich.
    As the raft pulled away from the island, he
spotted, in chicken-scratched thick black paint, a rockside scrawl.
It read:
    "Crupp's Rock."
    He didn't yet know that name, but in time
he'd come to know it well. Crupp was the biggest, most vile,
spiteful paragon of racist Confederate hillbilly trash the Cole
brothers would have the misfortune of going to school with. The
only people Crupp hated more than black people or eggheads were
"Yankees," which apparently Californians like Jesse and Wayne
qualified as. Likewise, it seemed like Crupp had been going to high
school since the Civil War, and wasn't about to graduate any time
soon.
    Jesse heard a deranged, wolfish howl emanate
from the waters behind his raft. He turned and saw the troglodyte
he'd later come to know as Crupp, along with his lackeys, Verne and
Mud. The home-fried trio was floating towards the little island
with Wayne on it, aboard a skiff of their own.
    Wayne ran to the shore, alternately cursing
Jesse and pleading with him to circle back around and pick him
up.
    Crupp held in his hand a
Louisville slugger, which he ominously patted in his meaty paws
like a medieval club. Crupp pointed it at Wayne. "Just
what-in-the-hell-dya-think yeeeeeeer doin' on my island?" he shouted across the
way.
    Wayne shrieked and jumped into the waters,
paddling like mad just to stay above the surface.
    Jesse was still watching the commotion with
amused horror at this point. It served his know-it-all brother to
get knocked down a peg or two every now and then.
    Crupp pulled Wayne out of the water like a
wet cat, by the scruff of his shirt. Then he dragged him back up
onto the little island.
    Then the three brutes commenced roughing him
up.
    A sucker punch to the gut.
    A kick to the shins.
    Wayne cried out for Jesse to help him. It was
a pathetic, mewling sound.
    The scene no longer amused Jesse.
    Crupp smacked Wayne and threw him against the
ground. Then he muttered something in Wayne's ear—Jesse, paddling
furiously to close the gap, couldn't make out any of it.
    The bully handed his bat to Mud, the shortest
of the three. The stocky lackey twirled it about in a menacing
wind-up.
    Jesse paddled faster towards the atoll.
"Hey!"
    All three brutes turned their attention to
him.
    As the raft listed onto the sandy bank, Jesse
leapt from it and hit the ground running, oar in hand, his forward
momentum unbroken. He was smaller, skinnier than either of the
three older boys, but he would not be intimidated.
    He swung his wooden oar just as Mud had swung
the bat a moment earlier.
    Mud was the first to go down. He dropped the
bat.
    Jesse pivoted and jabbed his oar, using it as
a splintery, jagged spear. Verne high-tailed it out of the scene
and into the water, limbs flailing akimbo.
    Crupp picked up the Louisville slugger, while
Mud, dazed, followed Verne to the far side of the landing.
    Crupp took a swing at Jesse, but the younger
boy whirred around evasively, spinning his rotten oar. It connected
with the bully's thick skull with enough force that its compromised
form gave way, and it snapped in two. Wood chips burst in all
direction. Crupp lifted up his bat to deliver a counter-blow.
    But Jesse kneed him in the groin, yanked the
bat out of his hands, and began a savage beat-down of his own,
hitting Crupp against the backside.
    Mud and Verne could only watch, mouths agape,
unsure of what to do. And certainly too embarrassed to look at