Rem stood quietly at the edge of the wood, staring at the grass, at the ants, at nothing. John and Tony twisted their heads and eyes back and forth looking to see if someone had seen. Looking for adults. Looking for anyone, but there was no one. No one for a long long while.
Crandle sat in the tall grass with his arms wrapped around his legs and his face buried in his knees, crying.
Weeping.
Francis stood perfectly still over the body. The bat that he held in his hand dripping small dots of blood onto the golden summer grass.
"Y-y-ou guys saw, h-h-he at-t-t-tacked me." he stuttered in a raised voice.
His voice breaking.
Cracking.
Trailing off into a guilty whisper.
"Yeah, but you didn't have to hit'em so many times Francis!"
Crandle was now wide legged with his hands hanging to the grass, his head hung low. His back curving, warmed by the sun of the summer. Raising his head only to yell at the boy with the bat.
"I didn't do anything wrong!" shouted Francis.
Regretful words from a regretful mouth.
The boys body lay dead in the field at the feet of the boy with the bat. His head bloody and misshapen. His tongue hanging out of the mouth as if he had been caught panting by a still frame photograph. Or maybe he was licking crumbs from the corner of his mouth.
Rem got sick of having to look at the body and took off into the woods. Not ever looking back he disappeared into the thicket. Crandle is now standing and wiping his moist cheeks, reddened with shame.
"We have to tell someone." says Tony.
"Yeah, we have to tell our parents!" shouts Crandle.
"NO."
Francis is still looking down at the body, his eyes look crazy. Insane. He's out of himself.
"No one tell's anybody about this. I'll take care of Rem and Mary-beth."
They can tell that he knows the wrong that he has done. They know as well as he that things, from now on, will be different. They know that they all, whether in action or viewing, have done bad things. They also know that they'll have to do more bad things to make this bad thing go away.
They'll have to feed the river that nears the edge of the town.
They all huddle around the body and stare. Francis drops the bat into the grass and starts to talk softly about the lies that they will need to knit together so that they can all grow old and love women and have children.
But by now they all know that anything normal will never be possible. The reality of the bad thing has sunk into their stomachs like stones into a deep and dark pool.
Ten years from now they know that Rem will be at Dartmouth and that John will be at the state college and that Tony and Francis will be working at the mill and that once a day all of their thoughts will turn to the boy who lived one town over. The boy who died in the tall blonde grass. The boy who fed the river.
They'll remember the bad thing that happened on that bad day with the boy with the bat.
But for now they have to put a body in a dark place near the searching roots of the trees in the forest dark. And they'll cover it with earth and bark and leaves. Here for just a while. For just a moment before they take it and feed it to the river.
