Lambs Read online

  The bullies immediately shut up.

  Movie Day was a big deal and the threat held serious weight. For a few minutes anyway. The fools, barred from picking on Arthur, unable to control themselves (so it was with the emotionally disturbed) started calling one another “fags” instead. Marvin knew the score, picking battles was a job skill required of group home staff, and he chose to let the dumbasses go at it as he drove on in silence.

  Like this morning, Arthur ignored it all. Connor sat next to him and kept asking him if he wanted to play cards, but he kept quiet, head down, watching the blood spread serpentine as it filled in the grooves and crevices of the van floor.

  * * *

  After dinner and chores he snuck off to bed. Marvin asked him if he was okay and Connor continued to hassle him about cards. Arthur shrugged them both off and drifted upstairs to bed.

  Before turning in he brushed his teeth and ignored the blood spattering the white sink. A few veiny, ropy things managed to slip from his sleeves and waver in the air like alien antenna. Arthur tucked them back in just as Connor came bounding into the bathroom.

  “W-W-Wuz up my b-b-brotha?” The poor kid’s stutter was bad. He was super short. He shook constantly.

  “Just tired man.” Arthur put the cap back on the toothpaste and put his toothbrush in the cabinet on his shelf. Arthur was written upon it in black Sharpie.

  “N-n-no c-cards P-P-Prince?”

  Arthur gave him a half smile. “Not tonight Kingsley.”

  Living in a group home left lots and lots of time for daydreaming. Many Saturdays and Sundays were spent in a daze. After chores and homework there was nothing to do. None of them were readers. TV was always lame on Saturday afternoons. Hence the cards. Hence the goofy names, Prince and Kingsley.

  During one of their afternoon card sessions Arthur mused that in order to make it in the real world they needed strong, successful names. He and Connor dreamed of running away to Hollywood and making it in the movie business. Once they hit eighteen, once they were free, that was the plan.

  Arthur was always the dealer. He dealt and talked and let fantasy twist and turn. “Yep, when we’re outta here my man, it’s straight to Hollyweird.”

  “H-H-Hell y-y-yeah!” Connor turned over two kings.

  “Damn. Kingsley Prescott Scott, Esquire, wins again.” That was Connor’s success name. Kingsley Prescott Scott, Esquire. They came up with it during a late night giggle fest. They couldn’t sleep and they lay in their beds, staring up at the ceiling trading dumbass jokes.

  “I-I-I al-al-always w-w-win. Th-Th-That’s b-b-because C-C-Constantine Pr-Pr-Prince El-El-Elevation, the th-th-third is a l-l-loser!” Connor laughed and threw his cards back.

  Constantine Prince Elevation, the third. That was Arthur’s success name.

  When they got to Hollywood they planned on riding the monikers all the way to the top. Penthouse condos. Fast cars. Fine women.

  But not tonight.

  Tonight, Arthur was in no mood for fantasy or playing cards or hanging with Connor (which was unfortunate because nobody else liked the spazzy, stuttery, little guy—Arthur was his only friend).

  “Goodnight.” He ruffled Connor’s wild, red hair and made for bed.

  Connor groaned, “N-N-Night,” and stomped off.

  Arthur got under the covers and let out a monster sigh. Here we go, he thought as he settled in for a long night of worry and fearful contemplation. Mercifully, heavy, obliterating sleep powered in, superceded thought, and carried him away in its dreamless embrace.

  2. THE FLAME

  It was Connor’s everlasting dream to blow up the world (or at least the group home).

  He’d always been interested in combustion and given his mom’s penchant for the flame, a bright, burning gift birthed from countless lighters, vaporizing countless drugs, caressing her craving organs, corroding her womb and at long last spitting him forth a fidgety, unmade bundle of tics and paroxysms, it was only fitting.

  Born of fire, an inferno continually blazed within and the only thing capable of cooling the flames and calming his frenetic nerves was the promise of destruction coming together piece by piece within his shaky mind.

  He had been accumulating supplies for a little over six months and had planned on taking all the time he needed to get things just right, but Arthur’s date on Saturday was a once in a lifetime opportunity and Connor had to be ready. He had to work fast.

  The fuckers may laugh at his jitters and stop-stutter spasms, but his hyperdriven metabolism only required a few hours of sleep per night and whilst the rest of the sheep gave themselves to dreams, Connor tucked himself into the corner of his closet and worked at devising his masterpiece.

  Though Arthur went to bed early, it took forever for him to go under. Connor was hoping he’d already be out by the time he went to bed a few hours later, but his roommate tossed and turned. Something was bothering him and earlier he didn’t even want to play blackjack. They always played blackjack. It kind of pissed Connor off and sent him into a bit of a paranoid spiral—was he really his friend? Did he really care like he said he did?

  Maybe he should just blow Arthur up along with everyone else—but instead of giving in to doubts and hassling too much he gave it a rest.

  There was probably just a lot on his mind what with his date on Saturday. Connor understood. It was going to be a big day for everyone (whether they knew it or not). But Arthur didn’t seem happy-nervous or good-excited. He seemed depressed and on edge. Something seemed wrong. Something weird. Connor didn’t want to push too much, but suspicions arose. Had Arthur somehow discovered his secret stash?

  If he had, if he stumbled upon it or found the contraband snooping about the closet they shared would he have the gall to narc? Could he be so heartless?

  Connor didn’t think so, he was a good friend, the best he’d ever had and he was sure Arthur would talk to him first if he found the cache, but people, even those whom you thought you could trust, tended to get sketchy about explosives. Hell, that’s why he was stuck here at Cottonwood, wasting away in this near prison instead of lounging around a cushy foster home or playing videogames at a less restrictive group home.

  When Arthur finally fell into a deep sleep and started steadily snoring, Connor quietly climbed out of his bed. He adjusted the pillow and blankets in such a way that they looked like his diminutive body snuggled up beneath the sheets and then he crept over to the closet. Careful, careful, he eased opened the door, knelt down and crawled toward the back corner of the space. Careful, careful, pushing aside a pile of shoes and upending a wire shoe rack, he removed a 2’ x 2’ square of carpeting and then an equal sized piece of plywood.

  Who put in the arm-deep hole that was there was a mystery.

  Connor figured it was probably another crazy kid with crazy frustrations and crazy shit worth hiding.

  Why the hole hadn’t been found until he lucked upon it was also a mystery.

  True, the carpet blended fairly well, but a mere squint was all it took before the edges of the 2’ x 2’ square blazed into clear view. Then again, if Connor wasn’t apt to curl up in closets when depression struck, he probably wouldn’t have spotted the abnormal square either.

  Chalk it up to fate or luck, since discovering the arm-deep hole and its well-worn collection of porno magazines (traded away at school for supplies), the dark cavity had remained his secret. Careful, careful, careful, he reached in and slowly withdrew a large canvas tote bag that was given to him back in elementary school at a library book fair. Meadowview Eagles was printed on the tan bag in fading blue script. As he pulled it upward glass clinked softly within. Connor gritted his teeth, paused with care, and then resumed the delicate excavation.

  He set the bag gently beside him, restored the hiding spot with its plywood and carpet and then wedged his small body into the niche and sat down upon the covered hollow. Taking the bag into his lap he leaned forward, stretched his short arm as far as he could, got a weak hold on the door
knob, and then managed to pull the closest door shut.

  In the pitch black, Connor felt through the bag until he found the mini-flashlight he stole from his PE teacher’s keychain. He clicked it on and then propped it up on the wire shoe rack so that it cast some light in his general direction.

  Next he worked at drawing five glass bottles from the bag. They were wrapped loosely in an old white T-shirt and he tried his hardest to suppress his shakes while freeing them. After a few tense moments, Connor disentangled the bottles, stood them in an uneven line against the closet door, and beamed with pride at his glass army.

  They were a ragtag bunch to be sure. A tall, fat, behemoth of a wine bottle, two small beer bottles, a large 40 oz malt liquor bottle and a pear shaped sparkling water bottle. Each of them a hard-won victory. Each of them nearly ready for war. Four of the five had been properly indoctrinated. Connor blessed them with his seed and a milky substance slimed about their insides.

  Once the fifth had been inseminated they would be ready to be filled with gasoline (the mere idea of his spunk, his biology, his essence intermingling with the combustible, conflagrating catalyst sent shudders up and down the length of his spine), corked with cloth, lit and thrown.

  An ocean of fire danced in his mind’s eye as he lovingly admired each of the bottles.

  There was a liter Carlos & Rossi wine bottle (inseminated) he lucked upon in the bushes in front of the group home. He spied it while the van was bringing them back from school. He had trash duty that night and he was able to sneak the bottle in right after dinner when the house was abuzz with evening chores.

  At Cottonwood they weren’t allowed to use glass products of any sort. All of their plates and cups and bowls were plastic. Mirrors were made out of a weird, reflective shatter proof super plastic or something. In order for Connor to realize his dream he needed glass, real glass, real fragmenting, shattering, exploding under pressure glass. Things that melted did him no good. Though it was tougher than tough to sneak in outside contraband (the staff watched him particularly close—he had a reputation that followed him from group home to group home for bringing things in that didn’t belong), Connor was resourceful and tenacious. The wine bottle found in the bushes was a godsend, the others not quite so miraculous—he had to convince classmates to bring him the bottles (and keep quiet about it) and since he didn’t have any friends it wasn’t easy, or cheap.

  Luckily his high school peers were base idiots. Two empty Corona bottles (inseminated) cost him half of the porno magazines. Not bad. Though in hindsight that fuck Freddy Perez screwed him over. He promised two bottles. Two large bottles. And Connor figured a stack of (decade old) spank material was well worth it. When the little bitch produced two twelve-ounce beer bottles, Connor wanted to punch him in the face and scream “No deal!” If Freddy wasn’t three times his size and mean as ass he probably would have too. Instead he had to hold his tongue and take what he could get.

  The 40 oz Crazy Horse bottle (inseminated) was a much better bargain. It came full (Connor chugged the malt liquor last Friday night and fell asleep in the closet only to wake up in a panic just after dawn—luckily the house slept in a little later on Saturday mornings) and only cost him the remaining nudie magazines. The next day, his 40 oz supplier Carlos got caught. Apparently his dad kept tabs on his beer stock and beat the shit out of him, but Carlos was a trooper and kept his mouth shut.

  The last bottle, a green Perrier (presently in need of his seed) was won on a dare. Rudy Seeley bet Connor he couldn’t eat an entire burrito in one bite. Connor looked at the kid like he was stupid and quickly proved him wrong. Rudy made good on the wager and stole the Perrier bottle from Ms. Bishop’s desk.

  Getting the bottles home was tricky. Staff were supposed to perform daily backpack checks, but they were lax and their irregular inspections generally stemmed from suspicion or George the Destroyer getting on them about protocol. There were easy instances where Connor could put a bottle in his backpack and bring it from point A to point B, no problem. But, there were other skin flushing, sweat inducing situations where he had to quickly ditch a bottle, hiding it in a set of bushes before using chore time or ballsy, ballsy, sneaking off and stealthily transferring it to yet another group of bushes before finally, when the moment was right and the planets aligned, returning it to his backpack and getting it to the safety of his closet stash.

  Connor broke communion with the lovely bottles and returned to the tote bag. Next, he pulled two plastic bottles of Pennzoil motor oil. These were a little easier to steal. Him, Alberto and Johara were responsible for cleaning the garage every fourth Saturday of the month. It was a cake duty. They swept, moved a few things around and tried to kill as much time as they could to avoid any other weekend chores George the Destroyer might try to saddle them with. The last two times they cleaned the garage, Connor simply pilfered a bottle from a full box stored between a stack of Kirkland bottled water and canned beans. There were ten left and two glaring holes in the box he pulled them from, but so far so good, no one had noticed.

  From the bottom of the bag he retrieved a roll of duct tape (also stolen from the garage), three lighters (Leon constantly left them in the van and never noticed when they went missing), a three foot length of tubing (snatched from an open cabinet in Biology class), an odd assortment of stoppers, corks and bottle caps (collected from the ground, the trash and other random places) and his most revered, most precious piece of contraband, a MK2 “Pineapple” fragmentary hand grenade.

  The grenade came from Doyle Bright. In their special day classes, Doyle was barely hanging on to the lowest rung. Connor had no idea how the school system worked, but it didn’t take a genius to see that it was broken. There were honors classes with the smart kids, general education classes with the regular kids and then special day classes with the other kids who didn’t fit into either of the other groups. Connor wasn’t stupid, but his brain couldn’t hold a consistent thought long enough to figure through algebraic equations or read novels. Arthur couldn’t spell that well. Johara was illiterate. Alberto uninterested. Gabe dyslexic. Santos had opposition disorder. And on and on, all of his group home brothers were in special day classes because they had a variety of learning disabilities. Same for most of the other kids in SDC. But a kid like Doyle Bright, and a few of the students in the rest of Connor’s classes, had physical and mental handicaps that were far more severe, their maladies unsightly, but the system didn’t differentiate and it lumped all of the underperforming students together.

  Regardless, Doyle’s great grandpa had been to Vietnam or Korea or WWII or whatever war old fuckers fought in and he had a shit load of military crap lying around. One day his grandpa came in and did a Show and Tell with their world history class. He held the grenade aloft in his gnarled hands and told the class, “This little sucker is a MK2 “Pineapple.” It’s live and lethal kiddies. If I were to pull the pin and throw it right there,” the old guy pointed to a spot on the ground in the center of the room, “Blam! You’d all be nothing more than paste and parts!” Mr. Bosch, the SDC history teacher, quickly, nervously, stepped in and redirected conversations away from explosives and back to acceptable subject matter like honor and national pride.

  The moment Connor got a look at the grenade his whole body went electric. His heart beat fast and his breath came quick and he pictured himself floating high above the earth, excited, sweaty fingers wrapped tightly around the grenade. He pulled the pin with his teeth, dropped the bomb and bathed in the sweltering afterglow of white-hot destruction. The earth burned to ash beneath him.

  After the presentation Connor moved in and smooth as silk, swiped the grenade from Mr. Bright’s box of military paraphernalia while the class gathered close with their idiot questions. Nobody noticed and not a word had been said about it since. Connor took a huge risk bringing it home, but luckily he was able to get it from school directly to his secret stash without incident.

  He caressed the grenade, touched its cool, knobby surf
ace to his cheek and then stood it in line with the bottles. He was almost ready. All he needed now was some gasoline.

  And he needed it by Saturday.

  And if things were going to work he had to man up, sneak downstairs and get it tonight.

  If only the date was next week or the week after or the week after that. If only he had a little more time to work something out. Something safe. A plan of action that didn’t require so much risk.

  But alas, come Saturday, Arthur would be out for the night and it was Connor’s only opportunity to strike without mercy. A circumstance like that at a secure home like this would never ever, ever happen again. It was a fluke, a moment of kindness on the stupid staff’s part (testament to their idiocy or ambivalence—as employees they were sure to get fired or quit before long). Whatever it was, he didn’t want to hurt Arthur, and here was his chance to make the rest of the fuckers burn.

  In theory, the gas shouldn’t be too difficult to get ahold of. He had a length of tubing and the van sat in the garage all night. All he had to do was get himself, the tubing and his five bottles downstairs and into the garage where he could siphon off the gas he needed. He’d never done such a thing, but he had seen it on TV a million times. He even remembered seeing it on TV, long before his plan to incinerate Cottonwood, and thinking Pay attention! One day, I’m going to try this. Weird. Destiny. Whatever. It seemed easy enough. You just stick the tube into the gas tank, suck, lower the tube, and then presto—the gas comes flowing out.

  Easy.

  The only problem here was Leon.

  He worked graveyard and it was his job to stay awake and make sure everybody stayed asleep. Connor had to figure out how to sneak past him, get enough time in the garage to fill his bottles and then sneak past yet again.

  He had been turning ideas over in his mind for the past two weeks, but failed to act upon any of them.