Pieces for the Left Hand: Stories

by J. Robert Lennon

In my second year of high school, I attempted, along with two other boys, to drive mad a fourth boy, L., who was the shyest and most awkward member of our small group of social outcasts. The three of us called ourselves the ITO, or Independent Terrorists’ Organization, and tortured L. in a variety of ways, including the mailing of anonymous threats, the vandalizing of his car, the dedication to him of hit songs on the local FM radio station, and all manner of obscene and disruptive telephone calls. We invited him to meet us in the middle of a park, arrived early, deposited at the meeting place a cardboard box containing a cow’s heart with his name seared into it with a soldering iron, then hid in some nearby trees and took surveillance photos of the event, which photos we subsequently mailed him; we set afire in his yard a small but extremely detailed effigy of him that we had constructed from chicken wire and papiermâché and soaked in kerosene; we issued an invitation to a nonexistent formal party at the home of a girl he secretly loved, which he dutifully attended, carrying a bouquet; we placed an order at the drive-up window of the fast food restaurant where he worked and came to the pick-up window in a borrowed car, wearing plastic Richard Nixon masks. Though our true identities could never have been far from his discovery, he never accused us, as we three were his best, if not only, friends; and in fact he confided his anxieties to us, and we dutifully promised to hel...