"What are we going to do?" Geo wasn't sure what he was feeling. Excitement, sure. Fear? Maybe a little. Guilt? He was surprised because he didn't feel any of that. It had been an accident, and why feel guilty about something when you didn't intend it to happen? If you spill the sugar when taking a teaspoon of it for your breakfast cereal, do you feel guilt? No. This was much the same.

But then, he had sorta intended it to happen. No, no he hadn't. He'd intended to scare the man away. That was much different than intentionally drilling him in the head. Everyone would agree to that. No-brainer, really.

Huh! Now that was something Geo hadn't considered. He'd just assumed he'd done the deed. He'd fired what, ten times the number of shots that Eff had?

"You're asking me? You're the one who always knows what to do. You need to figure this out."

Eff said, "Well, we need to think. We killed a man. That's a big deal. We have a responsibility to report it, to admit we did it."

"What good would that do? Get us into a world of trouble, is all. He was just an old pervert living in the woods, probably eating raw squirrels and chipmunks and catching boys for sex. Maybe eating them, too. Probably crazy as a rabid raccoon and someone in great need of killing. We may have done the world a favor."

"Well, maybe you're right about reporting it to the police being off the table." Eff stopped to think again before going on. "The first thing they'll ask is who shot him. And we don't know. But if we said that, they'd assume we're lying. Then they wouldn't believe anything we said. No, reporting it would cause more problems than it would solve."

"Well, you'll think I'm crazy, but I think we should bury him. If we just leave him here, the animals will take care of him eventually, but maybe he'd be found before that. Then the police will start asking who goes into these woods with a .22. Won't take them long before they'll come calling at your house. They'll find out Ken has a .22. Someone will tell them that. Bound to. Then they'll think he killed the guy. And we couldn't say different because then we'd get in trouble for taking his gun without his permission. He'd probably get the electric chair, and I'd feel bad about that, but we can't tell anyone we had the gun. I'd probably be grounded for a week—and maybe no TV."

"Yeah. Bad, but not all that much," Geo agreed. "We confess, Ken would pound me for sure before they got around to frying him. You're absolutely right; we can't tell."

"Maybe a tarp, too. We need to replace the dirt, and all of it won't fit with him taking up space in the hole, and if we leave the extra dirt on the ground, it'll be seen and look suspicious. What if there's a missing person report and the police are wondering where someone is, and then a pile of dirt out in the woods is reported? We can't risk that. So, we need to put the dirt we dig up on the tarp, then replace all we can in the hole with this guy and carry the rest away. Maybe dump it in the lake."

"That's a great plan, Eff. I knew you'd figure this out. You're good at this shit. Uh, does it bother you, knowing you missed his dick and hit him in the head?"

"Me? Oh no, not me. You shot three times more bullets than I did, so you're three times more likely to be the murderer."

"I already said no," Eff said, then reflected. "I don't feel much of anything, really. The guy was a creep. I think he was living in the woods. And he was preying on young boys; he said so! Like he was proud of it. Like he was doing the boys a favor! I think you did all the boys around here a favor by offing him. And you can trust me. My lips are sealed."

Then he couldn't help teasing Geo again. It was what they did. "The only thing I feel," he said, "is relief that you're the one that'll hang if they find out about this."

They found a shovel and spade in Geo's shed. There was an old ground cloth there, too, and Eff carried that while Geo carried the tools.

The body was still where they'd left it. There were some ants on it, and flies were buzzing around.

"We should have brought some bug repellent," Geo said. "Why didn't you think of that?"

"Because I was busy thinking about burial considerations, what's proper and all. And besides, it's not repellent. You mean insecticide. We don't want to discourage them; we want to kill them."

"I'm still thinking about what the guy said. He said he wanted to do, you know, that word you said, to us. He said he's done it to other boys. I think if he'd caught us, he would have. So in a way, it's good he's no longer with us. We're saving other boys from something worse than death. Actually, we're heroes."

"Saved us, too," Geo said. "Think about it. We were going to camp out here later this summer. What if we were tenting and he popped in?"

"I guess you'd have been in trouble. You're cuter than I am, and it looked like he was talking to you about doing that thing he said rather than to me. I think he had the hots for you."

"Well, what could I have done? He was a lot bigger than I am, and besides, I've never seen that done, and I could have learned how. Gotten pointers."

Geo grunted. "Well, now I know not to expect much help if I'm ever being attacked like that."

"Not necessarily. If you're being assaulted by three eight-year-olds, say, and two of them are holding you down and the third is getting ready to deflower you, dropping his trou, I might lay into them. If they weren't big eight-year-olds."

"I'm joking!" He wasn't, and he'd been overly bold just saying what he said in jest. He did like seeing Geo naked, and he was sure Geo like seeing him naked. They'd never talked about it, though. Someday . . .

They had to decide where to bury the body. After much discussion, they decided that right where he was would be best. The convincing argument, voiced by Eff, was that this way they didn't have to move him, which was good because he weighed more than both of them together.

They worked together, one picking, one digging, both spreading the dirt on the ground cloth. Even though the ground wasn't too hard, being close to the lake and all, digging a large hole was still a lot of work what with roots and stones being a problem. Geo had said it would be best to make it not very large around but deep so they could bury him vertically.

Geo: "Because if we put him in head first, anyone finding him probably wouldn't bother pulling him all the way out and so wouldn't notice that you shot him. Think how disgusting it would be, pulling a half rotten corpse out of the hole, all six feet of him. I think you'll get away with it better if he's in the hole head first. I'm just thinking of you."

"I'll get away with it anyway because I'll rat you out. Like you did me with those candy bars you stole from Safeway."

Geo demurred. "I didn't rat you out. I just said someone else must have done it and pointed at you as a likely suspect. I knew they couldn't prove anything on you because I had the candy and you didn't. Besides, we already settled who the killer was and it's rude of you to bring it up again."

"Now that you're making it clear that you did the murder, I apologize for rubbing it in. But you're full of beeswax thinking we can dig a six-foot-deep hole only about two and a half feet in diameter. Impossible. You'd have to be down in it, and there wouldn't be enough room to throw the dirt out. No, we need to dig a more traditional grave. Have you thought about what you're going to say when we inter him?"

"Hmmm. Another good point, Geo. Maybe we don't need to say anything. Or we could say something like, 'Hey, mister. You got what you deserved,' or, 'that's what you get for being a pervert.'"

"Kinda cold, but appropriate. Hey, Eff." Geo sort of looked embarrassed and quickly started digging again, but with his back to Eff.

"Uh, what do you think he was doing? When he was shot? With his, you know, hand where it was and his pants down?"

"I think he was doing what you think he was doing. Like they said in our Sex Ed class that guys do."

"But jeez, Eff, that guy must have been close to 100 years old. What they said was that all boys do that. Do old men, too?"

"I was just checking to see if what we were told was true. You know how I like to know things. If all boys do that, then you must, too. If you don't, then all boys don't. I'm just checking if they were being honest with us."

Eff shook his head, looking disgusted. "Did you just hear me? I'm fact-checking. I know whether I do it or not, so that's beside the point. Finding out if you do or don't is what needs to be checked here."

Geo stopped digging and turned back to Eff. "There's something wrong with that, something screwy about your logic. Like—"

Eff interrupted, not wanting that train of thought to continue. "We've dug deep enough. Now we just have to make the hole wider and longer. Here, I'll take over for a spell. Then we'll put him in, cover him, and you can drag the rest of the dirt that's left on the ground cloth to the lake and dump it. Hopefully, we'll use most of it so what's left won't be too heavy to drag."

It took them till late in the afternoon to get the hole big enough. They didn't have to drag the man far to get him into it. In fact, they didn't drag him at all. He was stiff by then, and they just pushed him in.

"That stiffness is called Rubber Tortoise," Geo said. "Saw it on TV. Don't know why. Rubber is all loosey-goosey and he didn't look a bit like a turtle. The guy on TV was stiff as a board, and there was no shell around him."

"Don't see what difference it makes. It hides his dick, so we're preserving his modesty. We're doing something good! And it might be better from another viewpoint. This way, the worms will get to his face quicker and maybe eat away the bullet hole."

"Vampire worms do. I don't know if we have that kind here or not. I've never been bitten while putting a fishhook in one, so maybe not."

They replaced the dirt that was needed, and Eff told Geo to walk on it to tamp it down.

"There's a dead guy under there! I don't want to walk on him. It's sacrificing."

"Sacrilegious. Look, if we don't pack it tight, it'll sink down on its own when it rains, and it'll be obvious someone's buried there. It'll look like a grave. People would find it, dig him up, and then they'd come for you. Don't worry. It should stay a secret if you tamp it down. Stomping on him won't hurt him none."

So, they both walked on the grave, and then Geo said, "Hey, if walking on him causes him to fart, will it puff up the dirt? We should have thought of that and turned him over."

They were 13, this was a fart reference, and so that got them both giggling. They giggled on and off all the way home, although Eff was putting on a show for Geo. He didn't feel as good about the whole thing as he was letting on; it bothered him more than it did Geo.

Geo had no problems sleeping. He never did. Eff, on the other hand, wasn't as blasé about the killing as Geo was. The whole affair was weighing on him.

It was two days later when they were in McDonald's for lunch that they overheard what two men at the next table were saying.

Man No. 1: "I was out in the woods yesterday, getting a head start on hunting season. Scouting out where the deer are, where they're sleeping, watering, rutting—you know. Only another month. And you'll never guess what I found down near that lake."

Man No. 1: "A grave! Someone shot this guy and put him in a shallow grave. Looked to me like a coyote or something dug him up. They tore him up some, looked like they turned him over. Like he'd been on his stomach, but the critter wanted some front meat. Can you imagine that? Putting someone in their grave face down? What's that, some sort of religious ritual thing, wanting him to see down to Hell rather than up to Heaven? Kind of made my skin crawl. But the scavengers had sort of twisted him around, pulled him over some, and I could see his face. Get this: there was a bullet hole in his forehead! Someone wanted him dead all right; they shot him in the forehead. Bam! That did the trick. Then they buried him face down, and get this again: with his pants down! Sick bastard that did that! Damn, it was awful. But the thing is, what should I do?"

Man 2: "I'll tell you what you shouldn't do. Go to the police, that's what. You'd be in deep shit. They'd think you have a guilty conscience, that you shot him and after a few days thought you were free and clear and there was no reason not to tell them. But they always look at the person who reports a body as the most probable killer, and they're often right. People who kill someone, they can't just walk away, it's too much for them to handle, and they just have to tell someone. Not that they killed the guy, but to report it. Somehow that helps their conscience.

"But you have to just forget about what you found. Don't even tell anyone you were scouting deer. Stay out of those woods."

Man 1: "I don't know. You're right, I guess. But I don't know. He's just lying there, out in the open. It's not right, him being like that. All exposed, with his pants down and his hand on his dick and all. Like he was, you know, when he was shot. Hard to think about that."

The guys left then, and Eff looked at Geo, whose eyes were wide. "They found him," Eff whispered.

"But we were, and in books they always put some crack detective on the case to investigate, and he figures it all out."

Eff shook his head. "No, we can't let him be found. Somehow, they'd trace him to us. You know what we have to do, don't you?"

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Two Boys and the Pervert

by Cole Parker

Chapter 2