“Here we go.”
Tean was about to point out another hazard—what if they interrupted a home burglary in progress?—but Jem planted a foot on one of the crossbars and started to climb.
For lack of any better options, Tean went after him.
On the other side, the gravel drive continued toward the house.Their steps raised little puffs of dust, and aside from the wind, the only sound was the click and crunch of the stones underfoot.
“If somebodyisin there,” Jem said, “and theydoshoot us, what are we looking at?In terms of a worst-case scenario, I mean.”
“Well, we probably wouldn’t die right away.”
“Uh huh.”
“So, we’d be lying on the ground, in a tremendous amount of pain.”
“Jump ahead to the good stuff.”
“We’d probably get sepsis and die.”
“Don’t jump that far ahead.Would they cut off our dicks?”
“What?”
“Our dicks.Our dongs.Would the bad guys cut them off?”
“Why would they cut off our— Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know.”Jem shrugged.“Trophies.Or to make a warning out of us for other trespassers.”
“Well, they wouldn’t let anyone ever find our bodies.They’d feed us to the pigs.”
“Holy shit, that’s so cool.”
“It wouldn’t be cool to spend the rest of eternity as pig excrement.”
Jem seemed to consider this for a few steps before he said, “If theydocut off our dicks, I hope they cut mine off first.”
“I’m not going to ask why.”
“Because I love your dick, babe.I don’t want anything bad to happen to it.And maybe they’d be cool with just one dick trophy, and they’d leave you alone.”
Tean opened his mouth.And then he shut it again.
“What?”Jem asked.
“I’m having a lot of trouble with that statement.How can it sound so genuinely sweet?”
“Uh, we’re in love.Now, if they cut off our dicks and we survive and we can choose our replacement dicks, I’m definitely getting one of the ones with the nubs all over it.”
“Okay,” Tean said.“And now this conversation is over.”
Fortunately, by then they were almost to the house.It was a two-story frame structure with a fieldstone foundation, and the paint looked like blisters that had popped and cracked in the sun.On the shallow porch, plastic stargazer lilies were nestled in a food storage can that had once held strawberry slices.A painted wooden sign, which Tean guessed had come from a chain home decorating store, said HOWDY, PARDNER.The letters had been painted so that they looked like they were made out of rope.
Jem walked up to one of the windows and glanced in.While he stood there, examining the interior, Tean turned in a circle, just in case.In a neat rectangle around the house, a dormant lawn suggested that this—like the tract around the high school—would be a vibrant green once spring came.A line of cypress ran parallel to the drive.Tean could hear the wind, a kind of low-frequency sound that was almost in his bones, but the trees were still.Farther back, the patch of lawn ended, and the hard-baked scrub of the basin ran for a hundred yards until the barn.This structure looked older than the house, the paint gone except in streaks that might have once been red.The bay doors had a timber latch holding them shut, but a single window in the hayloft was open, and it was like—
“It’s like staring into Satan’s butthole, isn’t it?”Jem asked.
“Uh.”
