Tim Read Free Page B

like?" Mick grinned.
    "Well, I dunno. ..." Tim's golden brows knit in fierce concentration. "I dunno! It just tasted different, like."
    "Why don't youse open that last bit and take a real good look, mate?"
    Tim's square, beautifully shaped hands fumbled with the two fragments of bread and pulled them apart. The last piece of sausage was squashed out of shape, its edges slippery and sticky-looking.
    "Smell it!" Mick ordered, glancing around the helpless circle and wiping the tears out of his eyes with the back of his hand.
    Tim brought it to his nose; the nostrils twitched and flared, then he put the bread down again and sat looking at them in puzzled wonder. "I dunno what it is," he said pathetically.
    "It's a turd, you great ding!" Mick answered disgustedly. "Christ, are you dim! You still don't know what it is, even after taking a whiff of it?"
    "A turd?" Tim echoed, staring at Mick. "What's a turd, Mick?"
    Everyone collapsed in a fresh storm of laughter, while Tim sat with the small remnant of sandwich between his fingers, watching and waiting patiently until someone recoverd sufficiently to answer his question.
    "A turd, Tim me boy, is a big fat piece of shit!" Mick howled.
    Tim shivered and gulped, flung the bread away in horror and sat wringing his hands together, shrinking into himself. They all moved away from his vicinity hastily, thinking he might vomit, but he did not; he just sat staring at them, grief-stricken.
    It had happened again. He had made everyone laugh by doing something silly, but he didn't know what it was, why it was so funny. His father would have said he ought to be a "wakeup," whatever that meant, but he hadn't been a wakeup, he had happily eaten a sausage sandwich that hadn't been a sausage sandwich. A piece of shit, they said it was, but how could he know what a piece of shit tasted like, when he had never eaten it before? What was so funny? He wished he knew; he hungered to know, to share in their laughter and understand. That was always the greatest sorrow, that he could never seem to understand.
    His wide blue eyes filled with tears, his face twisted up in anguish and he began to cry like a small child, bellowing noisily, still wringing his hands together and shrinking away from them.
    "Jesus bloody Christ, what a lot of bastards you dirty buggers are!" the Old Girl roared, erupting from her back door like a harpy, yellow and purpie pansies swirling about her. She came across to Tim and took his hands, pulling him to his feet as she glared around at the sobering men. "Come on, love, you come inside with me a little minute while I give you something nice to take the nasty taste away," she soothed, patting his hands and stroking his hair. "As for you lot," she hissed, sticking her face up to Mick so viciously that he backed away, "I hope you all fall down a manhole arse-first onto a nice iron spike! You oughta be horsewhipped for doing something like this, you great myopic gits! You'd better see this job is finished today, Harry Markham, or it won't be finished at all! I never want to see you lot again!"
    Clucking and soothing, she led Tim inside and left the men standing staring at each other.
    Mick shrugged. "Bloody women!" he said. "I never met a woman yet what had a sense of humor. Come on, let's get this job finished today, I'm sick of it too."
    Mrs. Parker led Tim into the kitchen and sat him on a chair.
    "You poor flaming little coot," she said, moving to the refrigerator. "I dunno why men think it's so bloody funny to bait dimwits and dogs. Listen to 'em out there, yahaing and yawhawing, real funny! I'd like to bake 'em a dirty great chocolate cake and flavor it with shit, since they think it's so bloody funny! You, you poor little bugger, didn't even throw it up again, but they'd be spewing for an hour, the walloping great heroes!" She turned to look at him, softening because he still wept, the big tears spilling down his cheeks as he hiccoughed and snuffled miserably. "Oh, here, stop