Oyster 15


Make everything look normal, Dad thinks, as he pokes at a chicken leg on the grill with a miniature pitchfork. For the kids' sake, for Susie's sake. Just go on like there isn't a big gaping bleeding hole in the world where our youngest son used to be. Make believe he stands before Jesus in his golden youth, and will be an angel hovering over us forever, until we're all reunited in that heavenly white palace above the clouds.

And not some wizened little skeleton rotting in an unmarked grave for the wild dogs to dig up and gnaw on somewhere in this Godforsaken shithole of a state.

A coal from the grill pops when the fat sizzles down on it, and it blazes up and burns Dad's finger.

"SHIT!"

Little Brittany drops the plastic shovel she was using to scoop up gravel from the garden and claps her hands over her mouth, big eyes round above her fingers. The boys by the pool look in Dad's direction, but he hunches his back at them and keeps his head down, glaring at the goddamn fucking hotdogs and hamburgers and chicken legs that won't be eaten by his little tow headed boy today.

Or so he is thinking, when there is a sound like cloth tearing, like a train whistle at highest pitch,

yeeeeeeeeooooooOOOWWWWWWWWLLLLLLLLL

and a huge splash as John Van Dyke drops from the innocent blue sky into the sparkling waters of the swimming pool with enough force to backsplash everyone within twenty feet and completely put out the flames of the family barbeque.


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