He had no face, had a mass of bubbling red for a body. My chest sucked in, my whole body kind of undulating, and when I looked up, it was because the sheriff’s deputy was standing beside me, naked. A lot of grown men would have simply backhanded the upstart twelve-year-old punk who had taken a gun, unloaded it out the back door like that, just for attention. Not this sheriff’s deputy. His name was Larsen. Years later he would run for sheriff. His campaign speech probably didn’t include driving his knee into my side, so that I ragdolled over into the paneled wall. He probably didn’t put on any
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