1. Blooded
Remember (1 of 9)
Billy, Jack, and the freshman Tommy Kelley ran back to the truck. Jack carried the boy’s bike, which he placed into the bed. No reason to leave marks on the liner. Then, he got in the car, turned the lights on, and headed up Milestone Road.
Jack played drums on the dashboard.
Billy roared and hammered the steering wheel.
Tommy smiled in the crew seat, then turned around. No cars were following them. No blue lights. The e-bike, with a crushed front wheel and blood on the handlebars, drew his eyes.
Jack noticed this.
“Don’t worry about it. We’re ditching it soon.”
“Okay.”
“You can help. Would you grab that rag?”
An oily cloth was at the foot of the seat. He picked it up.
“Would you wipe off the flashlights?”
Tommy looked at the two of them.
Jack appeared as serious as a heart attack. Though still elated.
“Sure.”
Jack handed the boy a two-foot-long, black, mag-lite. The boy wrapped the rag around it and wiped it off.
Jack handed him the flashlight Billy had used. He watched the boy wipe it down.
“When we left him, he was alive.” Jack said. “But he was fucked up.”
Jack looked at Billy. Billy smiled.
Together, they shouted, “He got…Fucked up!”
Tommy joined them on the third try.
Near Low Beach in Sconset, the boys found a large construction dumpster. They tossed the bike and the rag into it.
They kept the flashlights. You never knew when you would need them.
After they dropped off Tommy, the two boys drove to the old Navy base at the end of the Tom Never’s Road.
They turned on the lights inside the truck’s cab.
Jack took a gray disposable phone out of his pocket.
“What’s on it?”
Jack shrugged and smirked. The phone opened.
“No security.”
He scrolled through the text messages. He only found one. It read “Love.”
“I think the DeSalvo chick gave it to him.”
“Who?”
“The girl in the water.”
“Right.”
“Let’s have some fun.”
“Absolutely. Something she will remember.”
The boys laughed.
Milestone Road
Preview:
The Inn on Brant Point (Substack…)
Milestone 1: The Boy Who Climbed the Windmill.
Milestone 2: Remember
Chapter Three: Nothing Happened!!
Chapter Four: Jane Doe Will Remember
Chapter Five: Nothing Good Comes Home at Two in theMorning.
Chapter Six Initiation in the the Brotherhood of Rangers:
Chapter Seven: Great Expectations
Chapter Nine: Lost in the HarborSome of my writing…
Barr’s For Life: A substack of essays and claptrap
The Boat at the End of Lover’s Lane
The Inn on Brant Point (Novella)
Her Lover on Monomoy Road. (Novella)
Winter: A Collection of Island Living Essays set between January and April 1.
Spring: The next collection of Island Living Essays set in April and May
June, Essays about Nantucket in June.
July Essays about Nantucket in July
August: Essays about Nantucket in August
Autumn: Essays about Nantucket in Autumn.
The Boys: A collection of essays about my two sons, written as they grew.
Rolling in the Surf: Essays on Teaching.
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Second note: Substacky Meta. My most popular writing are essays, usually about Nantucket and some issue of the moment. After a few months of putting fiction on this platform, I figured I would free Barr's For Life up for essays and return the fiction to a dusty corner. then I looked at the numbers and the fiction does a lot better than I thought, it just takes longer. My novellas average a thousand readers a chapter, but the readers come in over a three week window. So, more fiction is on its way.
Nice and short. Not often I bring a piece of fiction that tops out under 800 words, but I am trying. The Milestone story is the oldest novel, and it has been recut, rejiggered and re-envisioned a thousand times. This Chapter is new. I resisted including it because it gives away something that I thought was meant to be a mystery, but it just was confusion. Also, in this serial format, mysteries don't work well week to week. It does rely a bit on "the Boy Who Climbed the Windmill" and the scene were Billy got his thumb broken for him.