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“Is this too hard to hear?”
She shook her head and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “It’s not easy to know what you went through. Imagining you as a scared boy is…difficult. I won’t lie about that. But I want to share every part of you, River, not just the good parts.”
River took a deep breath and continued. “So, Joey was out of it. His mind had slipped away, and I could see it happening. What he’d just gone through…” River choked back emotion. “I know exactly what he was feeling, because it’d happened to me too. Larry was an animal.” He sat and stared down at the floor, bringing the memories of that day to the surface. It was the first time River could remember talking about it openly. He only hoped Jeanette didn’t look at him with revulsion afterward.
“I bent down and shook Joey’s shoulders, only to have him wail and scream in a pitiful attempt to save himself from any more abuse. I tried to tell him it was over. That Larry wasn’t going to hurt him anymore.”
“Did it help?” Jeanette asked in a quiet tone.
“Joey stopped crying.” River closed his eyes tight to block out the ugly visual racing through his mind like a bad horror film. It didn’t help. It would always be his constant compa
nion, whether he was awake or not. “When Joey opened his eyes, it was as if he was coming awake from a deep sleep. He looked up at me as if he had no idea what had just happened. He wanted to know why he was on the floor. Then he looked over to where Larry still lay in a pool of his own blood, and he started to scream all over again.” He took a breath before saying, “I didn’t know if it was seeing all the blood or if seeing Larry again had caused Joey to remember the immoral things that had been done to him. Either way, I knew Joey’s mind wouldn’t be the same. Not ever again.”
Jeanette’s voice cracked when she asked, “Was Larry dead?”
“We thought so, and God help me, I wasn’t sorry.”
She reached out and placed a hand over his. He hadn’t realized he was shaking until Jeanette touched him. Her warmth slipped inside him and eased him like nothing else could. “No one would blame you, River. You were defending a helpless little boy. Anyone would do the same.”
“Maybe, but not all of it was for Joey’s sake. I hated that man, Jeanette. Hated the very ground he walked on. If I were given a choice to undo what I did that day, I would still pick up that billy club. I don’t regret it.”
Jeanette sat in silence for a moment before asking, “What happened next?”
“I had to get Joey to snap out of it. So I shook him really hard and smacked him across the face a couple of times. When Joey finally stopped screaming, he looked at me with terror in his eyes. The boy I once knew was gone, thanks to Larry. That innocent kid who made everyone’s day brighter wasn’t ever coming back.” He looked at Jeanette, hating himself for telling her about such ugliness. He’d never wanted her to know. Didn’t want it touching her. “I needed his help, though. Larry was bleeding all over the damn place, and we needed to get him out of there. There were only two scenarios, and neither of them was good. I knew if Larry was alive and came out of it, he’d kill both of us. If he was dead, we had to do something with the body. We couldn’t just leave him there, right?”
“Why didn’t you call the police? It was self-defense.”
River cursed under his breath. “They hadn’t been real helpful in the past, sunshine. I sure as hell didn’t trust them to help us then.” Jeanette stayed silent, so River continued. “Together, we worked for what seemed like hours, dragging Larry out through the back door. He was a tall man, well over six feet, but he was thin, so that helped. Probably from the alcohol and years of abuse he’d put his body through. He’d never been a clean-cut man, but seeing him all bloody, his hair matted and stuck together, nearly turned my stomach.” That day was so clear in River’s mind it might have been yesterday, if he didn’t know better. “His eyes were closed. I didn’t know that meant he was just unconscious. I thought I’d killed him. Even so, I was sure Larry would rise up and punish us for doing what we’d done.”
“D-did you bury him?”
“No, but I remembered that Larry had a dolly. We left his body on the back stoop; then we walked out to the shed. We both hated that shed. It was Larry’s very own torture chamber.”
She cocked her head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“He used to bring us out there and tie us up, then whip the hell out of us. He was sadistic. He got his rocks off on seeing us in pain.”
“But you needed the dolly, and it was in the shed?”
“And so was the rope Larry kept there. Joey and I went out and got what we needed.” He snorted. “Hell, neither of us wanted to go in. It was as if by going in, Larry would suddenly wake up and our nightmare would start all over again.” River balled his fists as he remembered walking into the dark, damp building. “The only light to be seen was from the open door where Joey stood with his arms wrapped around his middle, waiting. He was still so out of it. Anyway, I found the dolly and the rope and grabbed both. It struck me then.”
“What’s that?”
“I was about to tie Larry up with the same rope he’d taken such pleasure in using on us. When I looked up at Joey, I knew he was thinking the same thing. There was a sick sort of justice in that.
“Once we got back to the house, it was only a matter of holding on to the dolly while we slid Larry off the stoop and onto it. Joey held it still while I did the rest. We were scrawny kids, so it took us a while.”
“And Larry never came to?” Jeanette asked.
“Nope. I told Joey to get the blanket that we’d used to wipe up the blood. While he did that, I tied Larry down. When Joey came back with the blanket, I grabbed it and covered Larry’s face. We both felt a huge sense of relief. Together, we walked into the woods with Larry strapped to the dolly.”
“Where did you take him?”
“As far into the woods as we could and just left him there. It was dumb, I know. Anyone could have come along and found him. But we weren’t exactly criminal masterminds, you know?”
A smile appeared at the corners of her lips, but River noticed it didn’t quite reach her eyes like it usually did. He hated that. “So, we worked side by side the rest of the day and into the night, cleaning up the mess. We rehearsed our story. If anyone asked, we’d say that Larry had taken off. He’d done it before, so it was believable enough.”
“You knew that keeping it simple would be the key to escaping suspicion,” Jeanette mused.
