Murder Under the Cold Moon

Duke was never one to find his place with the other children on the street. It not like he couldn't just go up to them and ask them to play. They would easily bring him into his group. But he never felt connected to any of them, honestly. The kids were a few years younger than him. Just starting first grade or kindergarten while he was nearing middle school. They were just other kids that his mom forced him to play with whenever she was in sight. But since she wasn't, he wasn't about to pretend to play with these children. The ones who really only played with him because their parents forced them to do so.

Rather, his pants were rolled up to his ankles and his sleeves pulled up to his elbows. His shoes were half a mile down the creek and his jacket a mere quarter of a mile downstream. The water neared body temperature and if you were already in the water by the time its temperature started rising, you didn't feel it at all. Duke's hands finished in the water for tadpoles. Each time he dipped them in, his hands came out as red as a tomato but only a few degrees warmer than his skin. Not too hot but just warm enough to feel a difference.

Duke rummaged around in the water for a few more minutes before he came up empty-handed again. He had heard the frogs at night, so why were there no tadpoles? Were they just too far away for him to get to them? The calls of the other children neared. His cue to pack up and leave even though he wanted to wade in the water alone for a bit more. Duke rushed back to his clothing. The mud clinging to his feet with every step he took until the mud-caked on his feet was nearly a pound of extra weight.

Duke pulled himself up the bank and to the top of the drop-off. His church jacket-a light beige in color and too thick for the weather outside-was in the place he last put it, hanging on a small oak tree branch that still had some bend to it. He stomped off the mud as best as he could, wiping what little was left of the mud onto the grass. Duke only had to walk a bit before his dress shoes came into view. Then, his house which lay on the right side of the creek a mile and a half from where Duke had been before the kids had come. Even from all the way back where he was, he could see the smiles on their still chubby cheeks. No more than four years younger than Duke right now.

"Duke," His mother chastised as he walked through the door and into the mudroom where he began stepping down to his underwear. "I thought I told you not to play in the creek today."

"No, you said not to play in the creek tomorrow. That's when Charlie is coming."

"I said Sunday, Duke. Sunday. Not Monday." His mother let out a sigh. "I'll go put out some more Sunday clothes for you but no more playing outside, do you hear me? I want you to look nice when your cousin gets here."

It wasn't like Duke needed to make a good first impression on Charlie. He had already made the first impression when the whole family had a reunion at Kings Island and he threw up on Charlie after one of those tilt-a-whirl rides. Even though he barely remembered the memory, only the stories, Charlie had still been old enough at the time that he would remember the incident with more clarity than he did.

Duke placed his dirty clothes into the washer with the rest of the clothes that waited to be washed. From there, he headed to the bathroom to wash what little mud remained on his body. His own room connected to the bathroom much like his mother and father's room was. Soon, the number of toothbrushes would go from three to four with the arrival of his cousin. He wasn't all too sure about how he felt. On one hand, he was excited to see the cousin that he had seen so long ago. On the other, he wondered if Charlie would even feel the need to come out of his room. That he really only needed to come out for mealtimes and that Duke wouldn't see him for the year that he stayed at their house. Like a ghost that they couldn't get rid of.

His father said he was a troublemaker. That he had been sent here to straighten up as a last resort before he was off to military school. Charlie could not have been that bad. The last time Duke saw him, he was still blonde-haired and blue-eyed. The spitting image of Captain America. They only really saw each other at family reunions and those stopped back when Charlie was around eight or nine. His mother and father wouldn't tell him why How bad could he have messed up in the year or two since he had last seen him? Duke knew he had been raised in nearly the same God-fearing household as Duke did.