Callisto by Torsten Krol Read Free Book Online

recognizes it’s too late for a surprise attack because he made the mistake of whispering my name when what he should’ve done is poke me awake with the gun barrel like I predicted. Well, it was too late now for him to succeed in his criminal intent because he’s falling backwards away from me with his eyes wide open still . . .and hits the floor with a thud.
    I stood over him with the bat raised again. There’s blood hammering through my head and my heart going
budumbudumbudum
so fast I thought it might bust out of my chest. Dean didn’t move, so I must have whanged him good. He looked dead, he’s so still. He only had pajama pants on without the jacket, so I could see his scrawny chest heaving the breath in and out of him so he’s okay, only unconscious, which made sense because I only hit him the one time and not all that hard neither because I was rising up from the sofa at the same time I whanged him, not the best position to swing a baseball bat. The shotgun was next to him. I picked it up and opened it up. No shell inside. Now why the fuck would he come downstairs to kill me with no shell in the gun? He said, just before I hit him, he thought he heard something, meaning a prowler, I guess, but again, how would an empty gun be useful as a threat against intruders, unless he was only going to bluff them with it? Or bluff me into going out to the hole to await execution. With what, though? None of it was making any sense.
    I listened to him breathing kind of ragged for awhile,waiting for him to come around so I can ask him what’s going on here. After a time my heart slowed and I started thinking I must have hit him too hard even if I didn’t have a good swing for maximum impact. I was even starting to feel a little sorry for having hit him at all, but I mean, what else did he expect, whispering in my ear like that and a shotgun beside him? It was the dumbest way to wake someone up you can think of, so it’s all his own fault, that’s how I saw it. There was no way I could go back to sleep, not with Dean lying next to the sofa that way with air whistling through his nose, so I went and had a glass of water and come back. Here’s a strange thing – I almost felt like crying, I really did. I had never before hit anyone with nothing but my fist and only when they asked for it by needling me about this or that. I had hit someone now with a baseball bat, which is a truly awful thing to do when you think about it, not so bad as hacking at them with a machete or shooting a bullet into them, but plenty bad enough.
    Listening to him was more than I could take, so I lifted him and carried him upstairs to his room and put him on the bed in a nice comfortable position, then I turned out the light and left. All kinds of thoughts kept galloping through my head and I knew sleep was not going to come back again to comfort me. I tried a few pages of
The Yearling
but the words kept switching around and making no sense so I quit and went outside to sit on the porch rocker and listen to the night.

THREE
    I t was a chicken that woke me. I was on the rocker fast asleep and the stupid bird flapped up onto my chest and pretty near gave me a heart attack. I jumped up so fast it squawked and went running away down the porch steps. I waited a minute to calm down then went inside just as the clock is striking five.
    Up the stairs and into Dean’s room, where I found him still unconscious or maybe just asleep, it’s hard to tell. He had gone and urinated in the crotch of his pajamas but I wasn’t about to peel them off and put on another pair in case he woke up while I’m doing it and figures I’m doing weird homo stuff with him while he’s helpless. So I left him like he was and looked at his head, then felt it. There’s a good-sized lump there on top where the bat connected but no bleeding, a good sign I didn’t hit him all that hard. I felt better knowing that and