One Thousand Words for War by Hope Erica Schultz

Author:Hope Erica Schultz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CBAY Books
Published: 2016-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

It’s all fine until Kevin discovers the broken lock on Callie’s father’s storage shed. Busy half-heartedly tossing apples at Billy in the tree, Callie doesn’t see Kevin go into the shed. She only becomes aware of what the other boy is up to when Kevin emerges from the shed, shaking cans of wasp spray and gear lubricant.

The sound brings Billy out of the tree with a solid “thwump,” and a thick lower branch, perhaps weakened from age, perhaps not, crashes down under him. The bigger boy lands hard and grimaces as he loses his balance. He probably landed wrong on his ankle, Callie thinks, but he won’t show any weakness. Callie stills her face, no indication that she’d seen the grimace or that she knows she could have jumped from higher in the tree and landed without rolling an ankle. No indication at how the sight of the downed branch, or the moist sappy spot where moments ago it still connected to the tree’s trunk, makes her heart ache.

She knows every branch of this tree, her favorite from when she was a babe. At his first birthday, the story goes, Cal’s uncle had carried him around the yard, pointing to different plants and naming them. Cal coo’ed and ahh’ed as babies do, until they reached the tree in the corner of the yard. The uncle told him it was a crabapple tree, and baby Cal laughed, reached out, wrapped his arms around the nearest branch and said something that sounded to everyone at the party like “MINE!” Cal cried when his uncle walked him away from the tree and crawled back to lay on the tree’s roots four times that afternoon.

Callie stands frozen as the two bigger boys talk quietly, passing the metal aerosol cans between them. Before Callie can even react, Kevin paints a nonsensical pattern with the lubricant across the side of the shed and into the shrubs next to it. Billy arches a thumb at the fence that separates Callie’s yard from the Jogin’s.

Billy produces a cigarette lighter.

“Awesome,” Kevin grunts.

Billy depresses the nozzle on the aerosol can, flicks the strikewheel on the lighter. A breath of flame shoots from the nozzle, and Billy advances on the crabapple tree, waving the makeshift flamethrower left and right. Some of the dryer, lower leaves spark.

Callie’s blood boils. It doesn’t matter what the plan was—burn the tree or something in the shed or launch a flaming projectile at the Jogin’s dog—it would not stand. She would not let them do the same damage to her own property, or the Jogin’s, that they were known to do to every public space in town.

“No!” Callie shouts. “Put the cans down, and get the hell off of my property.”

“Little boy’s got spunk,” Billy laughs, turning back to the apple tree with the aerosol can in one hand, finger still on the nozzle, flame now licking the bark. “Like to see you stop me, Cal. Or try.”

Callie makes a move towards Billy, knowing she’ll just end up knocked on her ass or with a faceful of flame to scare her backwards.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.