However fond he was of Boots, at that moment Cole wanted to punch him. Monster! If only he’d never told anyone that stupid story.
“Yeah, but it was nothing. It’s not like I was scared.” (Like he really thought a dead dog could hurt him.) “They were just trying to show me because of something I said. They said I dissed them.”
“Why? What did you say?”
“That I didn’t believe they killed the dog.”
It still bothered him. The only person to whom he could remember saying he didn’t believe Kid Hammer and Dude Snake had killed the dog was Mama Ho. But she wouldn’t have gone and repeated it, would she? He couldn’t believe she’d be that clueless. On the other hand, he could think of plenty of instances of an adult getting a kid in trouble just by being uncool. Like the girl in his class who wrote a poem about touching her girlfriend between the legs (well, more than just touching), and whose teacher showed it to both girls’ parents. Even Cole’s mother said that was wrong.
It was possible someone else had overheard him. He remembered a kid named Kelvin hanging around that day, weak little nerd, no shoulders, no chin, chief bully target and one of the first to be locked in with Jaw Head. Possibly really pissed at Cole for not lifting a finger to help him.
They treated Cole the same as they treated Kelvin or Arnie or any other little kid, shoving and bitch-slapping him as they pushed him inside, barking and snarling like dogs themselves as they trapped him by sitting with their backs against the door. They knew he wasn’t scared, but they weren’t trying to scare him; they were trying to do to him what they did to other kids when they stripped them and forced them to march around naked.
You would have sworn Jaw Head was singing to itself, but it was the flies. A black velvet mask of flies. Maggots frothing in the eye sockets. Every inhale torture. Cole breathed through his mouth, cupping his hand over it so he wouldn’t inhale a fly. That was the worst of it, the flies landing on him, the same flies that had touched the putrid head settling on his skin, his face, even on his lips before he covered them. He’d been in a rage then, a rage that had stayed with him for days, maybe longer, but that rage was gone now. He was less angry at what those boys had done to him than at being reminded again how far he was from being a hero.
By the time the reporter came, Jaw Head had long since been seized and tossed into the trash like a worm-eaten cabbage, but no one had forgotten it. Not the worst Here Be Hope story by far, but one a lot of kids would rather tell than any other. The reporter heard it many times, and though it wasn’t the only story she wrote about in her article, it was the one that got into the headline.
Not that Cole was going to go into all this on the radio. According to a large clock on a wall outside the booth, fifteen minutes were almost over. Which would have been a vast relief if it hadn’t meant that now Boots was going to invite people to call in. Always when Pastor Wyatt was on the show there were plenty of callers. Cole was thinking he’d never make it to the end when he saw Boots lean sharply toward him, a worried look further warping his crooked features.
Boots was dressed as usual: Western shirt, bolo tie, Wrangler jeans, rodeo belt buckle, ostrich boots. Cole had often seen him dressed like this, had seen him in this very outfit before. But at this particular moment he looked different. He looked very strange. Cole knew, of course, it was Boots, “Grandpa” Boots, sitting there. But somehow at the same time sitting there was a person Cole didn’t know at all, and suddenly he was afraid. Who was this weird old dude? What did he want? What were they doing there in that tiny room, into which some kind of gas was now being released?
Cole’s heart bulged as if he were trying to lift something too heavy for him. Then a dark, smothering cloud pressed down on him. The headphones hurt like a vise. Tiny bright lights flashed at the corners of his eyes, and a force like