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This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue... Down in the Dirt magazine (v116) (the March / April 2013 Issue) You can also order this 5.5" x 8.5" issue as an ISSN# paperback book:

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The Killers

Doug Downie

    They were four adolescent boys and they were walking down the sidewalk of a suburban street on a gray overcast day. The rain had stopped some hour or two before and the shrubs and hedges drooped with their load of raindrops and the trees dripped with great plocks of water beneath them. Sometimes they walked four abreast with one walking over lawns and another in the street while the other two held the sidewalk, sometimes they walked two in front and two behind, sometimes one fell back, temporarily out of the group. They constantly jostled for position and they constantly goaded and taunted one another.
    They were four friends and they knew each other well and this was a familiar journey, with familiar landmarks and familiar activities.
    The one on the lawn side of the sidewalk was talking. The walkway cut through a small hill here and he had to walk along the side of the hill with a sort of independent suspension, one leg taking the high side and the other the low side.
    “The Dodgers are gonna go all the way! They can’t miss! Sandy Koufax! Drysdale! Maury Wills! Koufax is my man! Did you see him last night on TV? The batters looked like jerks!”
    His arms waved about as he talked, he pitched an imaginary ball as he spoke of Sandy Koufax, his hero.
    “Aw, they’ll never get by the Yankees!” the tall lanky one said. Dark-haired, walking along the grassy strip between curb and sidewalk (dogshit territory), his bony hand waved off his friend.
    “The Yankees? Forget the Yankees!”
    Looks were being exchanged though. Up ahead a large and dense privet hugged the sidewalk, saturated with the day’s rain it stood directly in the path of the Dodger fan. The foursome shifted as they came up to it and the Dodger fan found himself on the sidewalk now with Billy in dogshit territory and Earle and Keith in the street. As if by telepathy and before he had a chance to realize his predicament, the other three joined in a robust block, like a 300 pound linebacker to a puny quarterback, sending Jack the Dodger fan sprawling into the dark, green soaking cavern of the privet. The others knew that clambering out of that cold and soggy jungle was even more uncomfortable than being thrown in.
    This too was familiar, almost tradition, which made it all the more funny when someone could be caught with their guard down. The other three were falling out laughing all over the place.
    “Goddamnit! I forgot again!” Jack bitched.
    “Hoo! Hoo!” Billy had fallen onto the street and was rolling around, gripping his stomach with one hand and pointing at Jack with the other. “Hoo! Got you again! Got you again!”
    “Yeah, yeah...you’ll get yours Slade.”
    It was the mid ‘60’s in a fairly well-off bedroom community not too far from New York City. It was the definitive suburb: a place where people went to escape the crowds, the dirt, the noise, the crime, the general grime and grit of the big city. They went to get a little taste of the country, to have some trees about, and some green, and their little plot of land. But they didn’t want too strong a taste of the country. They wanted their conveniences. They didn’t want the feeling of being overrun by the country any more than they wanted the feeling of being overrun by the city. So they kept migrating and creating their dream homes. And what they got was not much; what they created was a people tied not to the land and not knowledgeable in its ways and lacking a deep reverence of its life. What they also created was a people isolated from the great cultural assets of the great cities of the world. They were an amorphous sort of people, neither here nor there.
    But Jack Dugan, Billy Slade, Earle Twig, and Keith Herman knew nothing of this yet, at least not consciously.
    Their path had intersected with the railroad tracks and they turned off the street and followed the tracks. Billy’s head was now as wet as Jack’s from the shower he’d gotten when Jack, full of grace, had jumped up and shaken the branch of a soaked sycamore. Keith and Earle walked the rails, seeing how far they could tight rope them. As usual Keith didn’t get very far. He’d teeter along, full of determination, careen forward and fall off the rail, tripping along the ties.
    “Stanky (his nickname), you’re so uncoordinated!” Earle couldn’t quite believe this persistent lack of coordination.
    “Yeah...well...your mother!” blurted Keith.
    No one knew what this was supposed to mean but you used it when you were helpless and needed to be nasty.
    On one side of the tracks was the newest housing development, on what had recently been a cornfield. On the other was an avenue of factories and warehouses. On that side of the tracks was a different town than theirs, which you knew if for no other reason than the fact that industry was not admitted into their town.
    Up ahead was the overpass where Central Ave. sailed over the train tracks. You could see pigeons flying from under it and returning; the concrete pilings were pelted with their droppings.
    Looks were being exchanged.
    “Let’s.” said Billy.
    “Yeah.” said Jack.
     They moved quickly, but not loudly, taking up positions under the bridge, up the slope near the bottom of the roadway. Pigeons were perched all along the girders and cross-struts and posts of the bridge. Jack was the first to throw. He’d been studying Sandy Koufax and he demonstrated his best imitation of the master. His rock sailed straight and true, a fastball that knocked a pigeon off a guy-wire to fall splat on the tracks below.
    “Alright!” shouted Billy.
    “Yeah, Jack!” from Earle.
    “Good shot!” now Keith.
    Then Billy threw, with more a quarterback’s technique, trying to grace a stone onto a pigeon’s head. He missed.
    “Damn!”
    Earle threw side-armed and flattened a bird against the side of a huge I-beam.
    “Oooo.”
    “Yeah!”
    “Ah-ha, ha, ha!”
    Keith’s shot fell short, not even reaching within ten feet of the target.
    “Jesus, Stanky!”
    Pigeons were flying everywhere. Grey and white feathers fluttered to the ground, long stiff ones, small soft ones. The birds would disperse but always come back. The boys would wait.
    “Watch me get this one in mid-air!” shouted Jack. Rearing back in full wind-up he threw and missed.
    “You’ll never get one on the fly.” said Earle.
    “Yes I will.”
    “Yaaah!” Billy battle-shouted, pegging a pigeon with a sharp rock. The body fell onto a piling with a small exclamation of red trailing from its beak.
    “C’mon, let’s go.” said Keith. They’d killed nine pigeons by this time. It was a record. “Let’s go down to the Black Diamond.”
    “Alright.”
    “Yeah, let’s get something to eat.”
    Jack had one palm-sized stone in the heft of his hand and his eye on one bird about to alight from its perch. The bird flew, its wings outstretched, flying, really flying, defying gravity in an act that no human could match, and as the others climbed from under the bridge Jack threw his stone, leading the bird in flight, a beautiful thing, and the stone and the bird flew to meet at a certain point. With a thwick they met and the pigeon crumbled into a mass of bent wings and flying feathers and fell out of control directly toward Jack. The dead thing hit him on the side of the head with force and fell to the ground at his feet.
    One red and malevolent eye looked up at Jack from the shit-strewn soil beneath the Central Ave. overpass. Something vile oozed out of the bird’s asshole. A trickle of blood coursed down Jack’s forehead.
    Jack was frozen looking at that pigeon.
    The pigeon twitched.
    So did Jack.
    “C’mon Jack! What’re you doing?”
    He ran from under the bridge. They were all going to get hamburgers down at the Black Diamond.

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