Saturday, July 24, 2010

Opening salvo of Sexton (Sexton Chronicles)

Saturday October 22, 1983

  He stared at the bottom of the ravine and waited to shoot his friends. Some of the enthusiasm he felt when he took his position was gone. Tom Benton hoped this BB gun fight would turn out better than the last one. Last time they wandered around the woods, or hid, or both, and no one shot anyone before they ran out of time. He wasn’t going to let that happen again. The air was cool and crisp. He could hear cars on the road a quarter mile to the west as he listened for any sound of his friends…nothing so far. He could hear leaves move along the ground in the stiff breeze, and the dry swaying of twigs on the bare branches overhead. He looked at his watch: three o’clock. The fight would end in an hour.
  He reached in his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He didn’t smoke, but planned to use the cigarettes as timers. He pulled out one of three packages of firecrackers from the back pocket of his jeans. The red paper wrapper made more noise than he wanted when he opened the package, but that didn’t bother him. His preference would be to use the noise to direct his friends to his advantage, but if he had to take a few shots to get the action going, he wasn’t opposed to the idea. Shooting people was the point of this game; the rest was simply buildup. He thought for a second, then decided to leave his rifle behind. The trap would work best from the bottom of the ravine. He would be vulnerable when he set it. Without the rifle his only option would be to run if they saw him.


1 comment:

Jeffrey Miller said...

I like how this reads. This is crafted so well.