Bad Seed

Back at the school, Alice tried to go to her classes, but it got around the school that she had sex with those boys, and that she was the one that started it. The other boys in the school, when they would see her, they would say what about me, can I get a little of that too, or as long as you like it that much, how about me. The girls called her a tramp and a slut, and the teachers were having a bad time with the students, for they didn’t want to be in the same class as that slut. Finally the principal of the school told Alice that it would be better for everyone, if she would go home for a while. Then let’s see if everything calms down, and then after awhile you can come back here, for he knew what kind of a student she was and he didn’t want to believe what he had heard about Alice. As far as the boys went, they had been spreading the rumors about her, all over the school. Alice left and she went home, and she told her mother, what they were saying about her in school, and that the principal thought it would be best if I went home, for an unknown length of time. “Honey we will get through this, what I miss is your father, for he would know what to do. One day that sheriff, and his bunch and their boys will get theirs, I promise you.” Robert Topper was sitting in the sheriff office, and he was going over the papers about Tom’s shooting of Bob, and as far as he could see, it was just as the sheriff had said. That when he was talking to Clara, Bob was on the porch with the gun, and neither he nor Clara had seen him there. And when the sheriff called her a bitch and her daughter a liar, Bob told him to get off his property or he would shoot him, and then he fired his gun. Tom said I thought that he shot at me, so I shot back, and I hit him in the heart, he was dead when I left there, and then I called the coroner to pick up the body, end of report. It was like Clara had said, except that she didn’t think that Bob would have shot at anyone. He felt that there was not too much he could say about that report, unless there was another eyewitness, but the other matter may be different, first he had to talk to the boys. He had just finished the sheriff’s report, as the two young fellows and two of the fathers came to the office, and they introduced themselves to the lawyer, the sheriff was already there. All I want is to talk to the boys for a few minutes, (Robert had hoped that one of the fathers would say, that he didn’t want his son in there with him, that boy may have something to hide). Then again they all looked too comfortable, as if they had done nothing wrong, this also bothered him. After that the two boys and Robert went into another office. “Can I hear from one of you at a time, about what happened on that day, that the two of you, I’m sorry five of you? I understand that two of your friends and their fathers are out fishing or something. I wish I had the time to fish.”