Eddie’s Revenge
My ninth birthday party was the biggest of my life. There were 30 guests, not including the parents of my classmates that showed up that day. There were so many presents I had to leave them out on the front porch, they would have taken up too much room inside—and our house was the biggest one in Bell County, Kentucky. I had passed out the invitations one week ahead of time to all my classmates at school, all except one. Junior McDonald sat in the back of the class with a dirty toboggan on his head (even during the hot months), never doing any classwork, grunting in disapproval whenever the teacher would call on him in class, stinking as if he had never had a bath in his life. Mrs. Robbins pulled me aside after I passed out the invitations. “Richard, did you forget to invite Junior?” she whispered. “No,” I said, and she simply nodded and began the day’s lessons. I was one of the many students in class who had been on the receiving end of one of Junior’s unprovoked physical attacks and there was no way in hell I was inviting that foul-smelling imbecile to my birthday party.
Our house sat atop a hill overlooking the Cumberland River and had a forest of pines and poplars for a backyard. All my classmates ran though the house, peeking into rooms and closets, oohing and ahhing in astonishment before the party started—it was the biggest house they’d ever seen. My father sold heavy equipment to the mines around Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia during those coal boom years of the 70’s and made a fortune. (In addition to the house we got a new family car every year, too.) After cake and ice cream, all of us kids went out to play, my mother telling me to keep an eye on my little brother Eddie, who was only six at the time. After about an hour or so of throwing footballs, frisbees, shooting BB guns, and other assorted birthday party activities, two of my classmates came running around the corner of the house from the woods screaming hysterically. Eddie was hanging from a tree branch, noose around his neck.
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Read the whole short story here Eddie’s Revenge by Hugh Blanton
Hugh Blanton combs stories and poems out of his hair during those moments he can steal away from his employer’s loading dock. He has appeared in Rye Whiskey Review, Dope Fiend Daily, The Abyss and other places. He lives in San Diego, California.
RAMINGO! 