|
081106
Bobby fell into the hole on his way home from our house. We had lured him there with the promise of homemade cookies. He didn't know they were from a Pillsbury roll. After he left, we watched him through the blinds, our gaze unabashed, seeing his stubbly adam's apple, the slight crease in the knees of his jeans, the breeze as it rippled his red windbreaker. His hair was the color of shells we had found last summer on the Jersey Shore. His hands were broad but his fingers short. His cuticles were ragged.
And then the earth swallowed him. Just like that.
We snapped the blinds shut, sure that he had seen us. Everything was silent. The baked earth said hush. Bobby hung by a dead root in the hole. He knew better than to let go, he would later tell us. Still later, he would also tell us that he saw the eyes of the devil in that hole and, for a while, we'd believe him.
The heat rolled out of the ground and lapped against our house. We checked the oven to make sure we had turned it off. "Where did he go?" we asked ourselves. Had he run from us? Was this some kind of game?
There were noises in the front yard. We turned back to the blinds, our fingers tentative in the slender folds, and had the hole revealed to us. It was bellowing: there was smoke, and heat, and the coal dust made a halo where Bobby had used to be.
|
|
