“Smokey the Bear. You all right?”

“Yeah. I guess I threw most everything up.”

“I shouldn’t have brought the beer.”

Cal lifted a shoulder, glanced toward Fox. “We’re okay, and now we won’t have to wonder what it tastes like. We know it tastes like piss.”

Gage laughed a little. “It didn’t make me feel mean.” He picked up a stick, poked at the little flames. “I wanted to know if it would, and I figured I could try it with you and Fox. You’re my best friends, so I could try it with you and see if it made me feel mean.”

“How did it make you feel?”

“It made my head hurt. It still does a little. I didn’t get sick like you, but I sorta wanted to. I went and got one of the Cokes and drank that. It felt better then. Why does he drink so goddamn much if it makes him feel like that?”

“I don’t know.”

Gage dropped his head on his knees. “He was crying when he went after me last night. Blubbering and crying the whole time he used the belt on me. Why would anybody want to feel like that?”

Careful to avoid the welts on Gage’s back, Cal draped an arm over his shoulders. He wished he knew what to say.

“Soon as I’m old enough I’m getting out. Join the army maybe, or get a job on a freighter, maybe an oil rig.”

Gage’s eyes gleamed when he lifted his head, and Cal looked away because he knew the shine was tears. “You can come stay with us when you need to.”

“It’d just be worse when I went back. But I’m going to be ten in a few hours. And in a few years I’ll be as big as he is. Bigger maybe. I won’t let him come after me then. I won’t let him hit me. Screw it.” Gage rubbed his face. “Let’s wake Fox up. Nobody sleeps tonight.”

Fox moaned and grumbled, and he got himself up to pee and fetch a cool Coke from the stream. They shared it with another round of Little Debbies. And, at last, the copy of Penthouse.

Cal had seen naked breasts before. You could see them in the National Geographic in the library, if you knew where to look.