Five Minutes in Heaven Read Free Page A

leapt from one to another, thrusting his hips against their briefs with sharp jabs while the drummers pounded a syncopated beat. His face was dripping sweat in the candlelight and his licorice eyes gaped like the sockets in the skull on her father’s office counter.
    Jude got down on her knees, but Ace pushed her over with his foot. “Girls can’t do this,” he growled in a strange voice. “Men do this.”
    Then they crouched in a circle around the candle and Ace placed a cherry bomb in his palm. Gravely, he extended it to Jude. She took it. His lieutenant Jerry Crawford, a tall, gawky boy who had smiled shyly at Jude when no one else was looking, carried a cage over from the shadows. Inside was a matted barn cat Jude had seen lurking around the neighborhood. Her eyes were flashing chartreuse. One of her ears had been ripped off during a fight and the tip of her tail bent at a right angle. Several boys put on work gloves, dragged her from the cage, and pinned her against the dirt floor. Jude stroked her forehead with an index finger.
    â€œDon’t pet Hiroshima,” said Ace. “She’s been very bad.”
    â€œWhy do you call her Hiroshima?” asked Jude.
    Ace grinned, white teeth flashing like Chiclets in the shadow cast by the visor of his colonel hat.
    â€œWhy has she been bad?”
    â€œShe’s been stealing my dog’s food. But you ask too many questions, little girl. Just shut up and shove that thing up her hole.”
    Jude looked at the red cherry bomb with the green wick, then at the snarling, struggling cat.
    â€œIf you want to be a Commie Killer,” said Ace as he struck a match, “you have to do it. And you have to do it now.”
    As eerie shadows danced on the walls of clay like the flames of Hades, Jude looked at him with horrified comprehension. “No,” she whispered. “Don’t, Ace. Let her go. Please.” She looked to Jerry, who was staring hard at the floor.
    â€œHurry up! Do it!” ordered the boys as the cat hissed and howled.
    Jude scrambled to her feet and ran toward the doorway, clutching the cherry bomb.
    â€œGo bake cookies with that faggot Sandy Andrews!” someone yelled.
    â€œIf you tell,” called Ace, “we’ll hunt you down and do this to you.
    Jude stumbled through the maze of trenches, sliding on the slick orange clay. She’d get Clementine. Clementine would make them stop.
    She heard a bang. Slipping and falling, she lay for a moment in the sticky mud in her underpants, too stunned to get up.
    Pedaling her tricycle fast toward home, she could hardly see the sidewalk through her angry tears. She had saved herself and left the cat to die. She was not a Commie Killer, she was a coward. And if she told, Ace would do that to her next. She couldn’t jump rope, and she couldn’t speak in tongues. The Commie Killers were not champions of democracy, they were murderers. She would always be alone forever and ever in this horrible place where bullies tortured the weak just for fun. If only she could be safe in heaven with her mother. She stopped pedaling to wipe her wet cheeks with a muddy forearm.
    â€œDon’t cry, Jude,” said a husky voice beside her. “I’ll be your friend.”
    Jude opened her eyes. Molly was standing there, barefoot, shirtless, smoky eyes troubled, hand on Jude’s handlebars.
    â€œYou better not,” said Jude. “I’m in big trouble. I may be killed.”
    â€œI don’t care. I’ll help you.”
    A S J UDE STOOD IN the aisle leading to the altar, the adult choir in their white robes and red cowls were singing “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” The dreaded Ace Kilgore was directly in front of her. His brown hair had been furrowed like a plowed field by the teeth of a comb, and he was wearing a red polka-dot necktie. It matched that of his father, who was the usher assigned that morning to lead the children to the