Read Bad Bones (Claire Morgan) for Free Online Page B

bleeding and crying. He had to stay there alone a while and suffer some pain to teach him a lesson, and then his father would take him to the doctor, if need be. That was the rule. Punk dragged himself to the back porch and lay down on the bottom step. His head was spinning around and around and making him sick to his stomach. He was seeing two of everything, and he couldn’t make them come together. He squeezed his eyes shut because he felt like he was going to throw up. Everybody was leaving now, climbing into their cars and pickup trucks and pulling out on the road with lots of revving engines and roaring motorcycles. And then it was dark and quiet and he felt very alone.
    After a while, Pa stopped beside him, his boots planted apart and his fists on his hips. He looked furious. “You know what I gotta do now, don’t ya, boy? You acted like a ’fraidy cat out there. It’s downright embarrassin’ what that woman made you into. You got in one good punch but that’s it. Maybe after you spend a coupla nights out in the pen with the dogs, you won’t act like a big baby anymore. Now git on out there with them dogs and don’t you come outta there ’til I come git you out. You hear that, Punk? You hear what I’m sayin’?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Punk staggered his way out to the dog runs alongside the barn, and then he felt so completely exhausted that he fell on his hands and knees and crawled the rest of the way. His pa raised coon hounds and beagles to hunt and to breed, as well as some really vicious pit bulls and Rottweilers that he used for the bloody dog fights they had every Wednesday night. Punk hated the way Pa made his older brothers go down into town and steal other people’s little poodles and other fluffy little dogs that he called “poms,” so that he could use them as bait dogs to rile up the killer dogs. Punk never could bear to watch those tiny little sweet ones get torn apart inside the ring. It made him sick, and he wished he could save them, but there wasn’t anything he could do but go off by himself and cry for them.
    When he reached the chain-linked gate of the closest dog run, he opened it and crawled inside. The dogs were no longer barking, not now after all the cars had driven away and all the yelling and cheering was over. They were back inside the barn, sleeping, probably. He looped the rope around the post again, and made his way to the swinging dog door. Crawling inside, he lay down in the straw. Most of the dogs were lying around inside, snuggled up close together. Truth was, Punk didn’t mind so much being with the dogs. He liked them a lot better than he liked his brothers, except for his twin, who was okay and tried to protect Punk when he could. But he was the only one who did. The rest of them liked to slap him up the side of the head or shove him hard in the back so that he’d fall down in the mud.
    It wasn’t long before his favorite puppy, a little beagle named Banjo, roused up and left the other pups in her litter, stretched lazily, and walked slowly over to him, her tail wagging. Punk was so tired now that he couldn’t sit up any longer, so he collapsed down and lay on his back. Banjo licked his face like she always did, and her little rough tongue felt so good on his cuts and bruises. It was nice that somebody was showing him all that love, almost like his ma used to. That sweet little dog loved him, even if nobody else did. The summer night was cooler now, and after a little while, more of the beagles and coonhounds moved over and settled in close around him, too. They licked his face and kept him warm, just like they always did when Pa punished him and put him inside their pen. He sure did love them, each and every one.
    All through the night and every time he roused up, afraid, and not knowing where he was, Banjo licked him and made him feel better. Punk loved it so much that he decided to lick Banjo back and see how that felt. So he started licking the little puppy’s