33 Snowfish Read Free Page B

around at all these retards and they would be staring at me like I
was
the devil. Just cuz maybe I was taking their fruit cups or stuffing French fries in my pockets or some harmless shit like that.
    Every one of them retard kids got them mouths that don’t never close and them little bald eyes that look like they was pressed too close together.
    I
know
I would’ve started turning into a retard if I didn’t skate from that Streator church basement. Cuz when you hang around certain types of people for a long time you start to
look
like them and shit. That’s how come dogs start looking like their masters.
    I knew this man who lived on a park bench and after a while he started
looking
like the park bench. He even started turning green, too.
    But even though I skated from that Streator church basement, Sister Blister teached me enough to read street signs and cereal boxes if them letters is big enough. I can even read them sex books in Old Man Turpentine’s Fun Shop if I go slow and use my finger.
    If I had enough time, I’d look in Boobie’s book.
    But I’d do it in private, cuz he’d jack you up if he caught you.
    Boobie don’t let
nobody
touch that book.
    It’s been almost a day since we skated. Boobie won’t take none of them big toll roads like Interstate 80 or Highway 55. Curl says he’s smart cuz that’s the first place the five-oh starts looking.
    So I just keep scouting pigs, and Curl’s got her birds to count.
    She’s like, “Custis, you see any?” and I’m like, “There ain’t none to see,” and she’s like, “Yes there is, you just have to look better!”
    When someone’s got a bazooka habit it’s like the most boringest shit you’ll ever see, I swear.
    This morning Boobie stuck this Abraham Lincoln–looking sucker in the face for calling us white trash. All we wanted was some water from his hose. It wasn’t like we was gonna wash the Skylark. That man came out all waving his arms and calling the Joliet pigs on his cell phone. And the Joliet pigs will come a lot quicker than the pigs in Rockdale. They’ll bust you a lot quicker, too, cuz they get paid more money.
    Before he could get them numbers dialed, Boobie snatched his cell phone and stuck that man square in the eye. He stuck him good, too.
    That man’s eye swolled up so fast he had to sit in his bushes for a minute. After he stopped bleeding Boobie made him give us some money and this fancy metal pen from his pocket. But he smashed up that cell phone. He didn’t want them cell phone pigs tracking us.
    So now Boobie uses that pen to draw his pictures.
    Even though he ain’t but seventeen, Boobie’s bigger than most men. He’s definitely bigger than Bob Motley. He ain’t fatter but he’s taller. He’s bigger than all of Bob Motley’s boys, too. And he’s already got whiskers.
    Me and Boobie was making our crib in the woods till we skated. We had this tent with a dome and sleeping bags and pots and pans and everything.
    The woods wasn’t in Rockdale or Joliet. They wasn’t nowhere really. No one goes out there no more, cuz they found some woman under a tree with her head torn off.
    Boobie’s parents kicked him out after he tried to set their house on fire. They had one of them fancy Joliet cribs by the Inwood Golf Course.
    In the tent we had us about twenty-five extension cords hooked up to a paper company on the other side of the woods. We had a radio and a camping lamp and a double-burner stovetop that Boobie stole from the Costco in Crest Hill.
    At night we would build fires and eat barbecued beans and watch the lightning bugs do somersaults.
    Curl started living with us a few weeks later. You could hear her coming through the woods. She was calling out Boobie’s name the way kids call for their moms when they get lost at the mall.
    When we found her she was sitting under a tree with a bag of groceries. She was crying and her makeup was all smeared and she was wearing this rabbit-skin coat and a pair of bowling shoes