Peek

< Previous | Next >

Sheriff Louie paused in the act of riding an imaginary horse across the backyard. "Now I gotcha!" he yelled, and plugged the grim outlaw Bad Bart with a few imaginary bullets.

The grim outlaw, for his part, seemed to be paying no notice to the little drama in which he was involved. He was kneeling in a manner wholly unbecoming to a corpse, hands pressed up against the wooden fence that separated their yard from the one next door, one eye glued to a knothole. The sheriff tried shooting him a few more times, then gave up in disgust.

"Hey, Bart, what are you -- "

The older boy whipped his head around and fixed Louie with a glare. "Shh!" he hissed, turning back to the fence.

Louie joined his brother at the fence, sitting down cross-legged beside him. "What are you doing?" he repeated in a loud whisper.

"'M watching Missus Lee be naked," Bart replied in the tone of voice often used to describe religious experiences.

Louie, for his part, merely sat there for a few moments, digesting this. Then he cocked his head. "Yeah?"

Bart nodded. "She's sittin' in a chair by her pool an' I think she's sleepin', and she's naked. All she's wearin' is just a little thing of underwear." He gave his little brother a meaningful look. "And not nothing on top."

"If she's got underwear on, she's not naked," Louie argued. Bart shrugged, his attention turned to the knothole again. After a second Louie raised up onto his knees. "Come on, Bart, I'm bored. Let's play some more."

"You can play stupid little kid games if you want," Bart replied, not looking at him. "But I don't wanna."

Stung, Louie stood up and backed away a few steps. "Fine," he replied; then, pitching his voice to a shout, "If you wanna look at Missus Lee be naked, go ahead!" He turned and pelted back to the house as from the other side of the fence came the sound of another set of footsteps, hurrying away across poolside concrete.