(A Section from a Larger Piece)

then

Isaac watched the squad car drift by. It did not slow down in front of their place. It did not have to. It was the third one that week.

He had felt this way before. Eleven. Coming home from the pool. Cutting through the public park between the pool and the long uphill walk to his home with the neighbor boy, who was two years younger, whom Isaac spent time with because it was easy. A boy whose family moved away and whom Isaac hadn’t thought about except when he thought about this.

Off the path before the bridge that crossed the Kishwaukee River, they stopped. Glass glistened in the sunlight. They left the path, searching the high grass for bottles they didn’t have in their collection. Brands their fathers didn’t drink.

They set them up in a row along the edges of the picnic tables. They found thirteen new ones in all.

They knew what to do with the rest.

The glass chimed against the horseshoe spikes. Green and brown and blue beads of glass reflected the sun like cool drops of rain. One after another, glass ripping over the iron.

What the hell you boys doin’

They turned, bottles raised above their heads ready to be thrown into the growing piles. Neither boy spoke. The neighbor began to cry. Isaac looked at the neighbor boy, then back at the officer who took the bottles from their hands.

“Don’t tell our moms,” he said, voice steady, eyes locked on the large man before them.

They raked the glass into trashcans under the officer’s supervision. He made them rake the whole area and just a little beyond that, too.

They walked home and waited.

The call never came.

if

Isaac and Sarah slept.

Tomorrow became them.

then

“This has to end.” Isaac said to Alex, staring blankly down at the opened suitcase. He meant his own running.

Alex didn’t look up from his work. “I know,” he said matter-of-factly, licking the flap of the bag to secure it. He meant his own, too.

Alex rolled the bag closed and laid it on top of the row of bags inside the briefcase. It was the fist of the second layer.

“I know,” he said again, absently, already forgetting everything, weighing an empty bag to measure it against the weight of the universe already resting there.

He pulled out an empty bag and filled it with a large bud from the half-pound bag.

“Hold on to that,” Alex said, tossing it at Isaac. Isaac trapped it against his chest with his hand.

He clasped the baggie in his fingers and tossed it back at Alex. “Keep it.”

He knew Alex knew what he meant. He could tell by the silence that followed him out of the room.