Town Burning by Thomas Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

nothing—he thought the rock maple had grown perceptibly. Nothing else had changed very much. The birdhouse in the first fork of the tree was about to fall down, as it was always about to fall down. He had put it up himself fifteen years ago, tying it with half-inch rope which even then showed signs of rot.
    That was the day he shot the red-shouldered hawk, and the bird-house was a kind of payment to all birds, necessary to help absolve him of the sin of the hawk’s murder. It was murder; murder pure and simple, with all of murder’s thick feeling of pleasure and power. He knew that boys must do this. Boys step on caterpillars and shoot English sparrows with their BB guns because the little birds are unprotected by law and because boys like to kill. Was there ever a boy who never pulled the wings from a fly? He had known this at the age of fifteen, known then that among his friends he, at least, found this weird joy mixed with pity and guilt.
    He found the hawk sitting on the branch of a white birch, on Pike Hill, sitting erect and motionless, bemused for some bird-reason by the bright day. It would not fly even when he shook the tree. He ran home and got his .22, ran back and shot the hawk through the breast. He heard the thunk when the little bullet pushed through feathers and bone, and the hawk slowly raised its wings and flew down, losing altitude quickly, half gliding. One leg dangled. It hit the road and twirled around on the one good leg, wide wings raising a cloud of dust as they supported the bird in place of the useless leg. He ran up to the hawk, but the expression in the bright eyes kept him back. The hawk hissed and snapped his beak, ready to fight. Fearfully, John watched the brave animal arrange what weapons he had left—one talon, beak, and most of all his pure and fearless hate. John fired the rest of his ammunition directly into the breast, the feathers shredding, bullets digging up the dirt behind. Finally the hawk fell to its side and died.
    At least he did not hate forever afterward the objects of his cruelty. Bruce did that. Whatever Bruce hurt he hated. John remembered very well the time Bruce had sealed his hatred for toads. He had been there on the beach at Lake Cascom with Bruce. John was five and Bruce was twelve, and that year there were toads of all sizes around the beach; little toads as big as a fingernail and toads bigger than a fist. Under every piece of driftwood, in every clump of grass, beneath every root of the shore trees there were toads, and Bruce killed them. He had an anchor, a tin coffee can filled with cement, and he dropped it on the toads. John followed him excitedly as he found more and more toads to squash. Finally Bruce found the granddaddy toad of them all and kicked him, rolling and ugly, covered with sand, out into the middle of the narrow beach. Like a fat old man, very dignified, the toad righted himself and looked around. He saw no way of escape—just the two boys above him. Then he put his hands over his head. Squatting there alone and in the open he didn’t try to get away; he just covered his head with his stubby hands and waited. Bruce held the anchor high.
    “Look,” John said. “He’s got his hands—”
    And the anchor fell on the toad, blotting him out. Bruce went back to the cabin and didn’t come out all afternoon. John was allowed to go fishing with his father, who even let him hold the tiller of the outboard motor for a while, and in all that excitement he forgot about the toads. Two years later, when he was seven, he remembered them because of the thing Bruce did when he found the toad on the lawn. Bruce got into a lot of trouble over that, because he took his father’s deer rifle out of the upstairs closet and the ammunition out of the bureau drawer and shot the toad, point-blank, on the lawn, right in town. Nothing was left of the toad but some odd gore in a smoking hole six inches wide. Miss Colchester, the high-school teacher, was going by, and