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Jimbo Fuller kneeled in front of the little girl and kissed her on the eyes. His right hand burned and he laughed quietly about what he had seen on the television. "We're winners, Cindy. We'll win in the end." The little girl smiled and giggled and said nothing. In her mind, they already had. Cindy had come to live with her aunt and uncle two months prior. Her parents had just divorced, her dad skipped town and her mother decided she needed a little time to herself. So, Mom packed Cindy up and pawned the inconvenience off on her sister. Cindy adjusted quickly, though, and became fast friends with her cousins Jimbo and Timothy. They both talked funny and she liked that. Everyone in Texas talked funny. The gunshot woke most of the neighbors that were still in bed. Old Miss Allan nearly had a heart attack. The Thompsons, who were both getting ready for work, figured that the retard boy across the street had gotten into his father's gun cabinet again. Mr. Thompson grunted while pulling up his socks. "Jesus, that kid is going to kill somebody some day. Why the hell do they even keep a gun in that house?" No one in the neighborhood even bothered to call the police. No reason to embarrass the family with the slow kid yet again. Three months ago the boy had gotten the gun out and shot at a squirrel in the back yard. The shot damn near caught the Twiller's beagle. It might have been a bigger deal had the Twiller's not been so unpopular. As it was, the incident just became fodder for jokes at the next dinner party that the Twiller's were not invited to. Everything is funny when it happens to someone else. It was Timothy who found the body some hours later. He lifted Cindy's head out of the cool puddle of blood and held her limp body in his arms. Timothy's mother came home to find her son rocking back and forth, pressing Cindy's cold body to his chest, muttering over and over, "Why is this? Why is this? Why is this?" Timothy did not understand what had happened or why. In his confusion and shock, calling the police - or anyone else, for that matter - had not even crossed his mind. His Cindy was gone. Jimbo had been growing more and more envious at how close Timothy and Cindy had become. He bristled at the way she laughed at and with him. He was constantly interrupting the games Timothy and Cindy made up and then played together. He had a hard time understanding the words Timothy and Cindy said to one other - at times he thought they were speaking a foreign language. The final straw was the incident in the basement. Cindy's rebuff of his fumbling and impotent sexual overture threw Jimbo into a fit of rage. Timothy looked on in wonder. Amidst the twirling Police and Ambulance lights and the din of television cameras and bustling cops, Clay Street was abuzz. Neighbors gawked and whispered to each another, waiting for the police to bring out the retarded Fuller boy. Mr. Thompson yawned, then pointed as the front door of the Fuller house opened up. A collective gasp rose up from the random groups that had formed on various porches here and there. Was this right? Jimbo kept his head down as Officer Ramirez lead him across the lawn to the awaiting police cruiser. Halfway to the car, however, he started to feel the eyes of his neighbors cutting into him. He looked up at them through the tears tumbling down his cheeks. He sneered. "That goddamn retard doesn't deserve her. I fucking loved her!" Timothy stood in front of the picture window rocking back and forth. |