Sentence 2

This is the second sentence I received. The sentence I was given was "Thaddeus was stuffing the KY jelly, peanut butter and durian into his backpack, when he realized that the weed-whacker was out of gas."

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"Before you go," mother shouted up from the bottom of the stairs, "make sure you edge the lawn!"

"Yeah, yeah," Thaddeus said under his breath.

"Did you hear me?" mother shouted even louder. The rising tone in her voice wasn't impatience so much as worry that her son was going deaf.

"Yeah, yes! OK!" he shouted over his shoulder as his hands worked feverishly, packing quickly with the fear that mother would come up to see he was ok. Thaddeus was stuffing the KY jelly, peanut butter and durian into his backpack, when he realized that the weed-whacker was out of gas.


"Shit!" he exclaimed, yanking the zipper closed and slinging one of the straps over a shoulder. He couldn't skip the edging or mother would call around his friend's houses trying to find him. Which meant she'd start with Will's place and find out that he wasn't, as he had told her, staying the night there to work on their science project. But getting the gas would ensure he missed the bus into the city.

"Shit," he repeated again quietly, locking his door behind him. He stood for a moment in thought and then turned back to his room, fumbling his key out and twisting it in the lock.

A quick dig through his closet revealed a three foot length of plastic tubing left over from a less than satisfactory experiment. Next time, Thaddeus promised himself, he'd spring for rubber hose instead of the less flexible plastic. He looped it and stuffed it on top of the other contents in his bag and hurried down the stairs after re-securing his room.

He slid down the hall and out the back door silently, knowing that he had about five minutes before mother came to check that he was edging the grass. With three long strides he crossed the backyard to the shed and hooked up the empty one gallon gas can with his fingertips as his foot hit the woodpile. With a step up the stacked logs and a jump he was over the back fence and into the alley.

Mr. Cadre's OIdsmobile was parked outside his garage, as Thaddeus had hoped. The old man's life, it seemed, had been spent gathering piles of useless crap that filled his garage. After learning how to jimmy the lock on the side door when he was ten, Thaddeus had spent hours searching through the stuffy building. Moldering furniture and discarded sets of golf clubs took up the bulk of the space, but he had found Mr. Cadre's nearly unbroken run of an Italian pornographic magazine called Ciao! At thirteen Thaddeus had spent the summer staining the most accessible couch and learning Italian phrases that would have killed the Pope.

The packed items had made the garage unusable for parking a car so Mr. Cadre's boat of a car had always lived just outside. It was cared for but shabby looking. Cadre had never bought a locking gas cap.

Thaddeus quickly uncoiled the plastic tubing and set the gas can on the ground. He flipped up the license plate and unscrewed the cap. Sticking one end of the tube into the tank he sucked on the other. The fumes made him choke and gag violently.

He twisted his head to the side and retched, tasting bile and lunch mixing with the stink of fuel that seemed to cling to his teeth. Steeling himself he turned back and sucked again. He watched the piss colored liquid snake through the tube and pulled away at the last second, shoving the end into the gas can to let the gasoline siphon into the can.

He let it flow for only a few seconds, enough for his purposes, and then pulled the tube from the tank. He screwed the cap back on the car with one hand and twisted the cap on the can with the other. He prided himself on the dexterity it took to do this. Others had commented on this talent, but in much different contexts.

He stood with the can just as the hand grabbed the bag strapped to his back. Thaddeus didn't look back, it was obviously Mr. Cadre, but took a long step as he started running.

The hand didn't let go and the zipper of his bag simply ran open to the bottom on both sides, spilling out its contents onto the alleyway. The glass peanut butter jar didn't break though it made a loud clinking noise when it hit, then rolled to Mr. Cadre's feet.

Thaddeus had stopped, startled, when his bag had opened. He was perfectly frozen by fear at being caught, horror at someone else seeing the contents of his bag, and abject misery that he was now certainly going to miss the bus and not get a chance to use the durain. It had been extremely hard to find.

Mr. Cadre, letting go of the bag, leaned down slowly, favoring his old knees as he squatted over the peanut butter jar. He picked it up and then looked at the KY, the spiky Asian fruit, and the very telling bits of clothing that had scattered in a small circle at his feet.

"Sta migna! Iarrusu!" he said, looking up at Thaddeus.

"I am not," Thaddeus replying with a calm he didn't feel, "a faggot."

Mr. Cadre's eyebrows shot up, "Eh, you speak Italian?"

Thaddeus knelt to gather up his things, not looking at the older man. "I've picked up a few words."

He snatched the peanut butter from Cadre's hand. The man let him take it easily and then pushed himself back up. When he had groaned upright onto his complaining knees he suddenly snapped his fingers and slapped his forehead simultaneously. Thaddeus was impressed with his dexterity.

"Ciao! You seen the magazines, yeah?" He stressed the "you" so hard it was clear that this had cleared up a long-standing mystery for Mr. Cadre.

Thaddeus just nodded, sealing his bag and squeezing the zipper heads together nervously as though that would help them stay closed. Mr. Cadre surprised him by laughing. "Hey, that's ok!" He patted the boy's arm, "you're ok, yeah? Take the gas now."

Thaddeus released a breath he didn't realize he was holding.

"But," Cadre added, shaking a finger at him. Thaddeus drew another breath and held it. "Next time, you ask, ok?" With a smile the older man tapped the boy's cheek with his fingertips, then turned away to head back into his yard.

Thaddeus made the bus and Will covered for him when mother called to ask why he hadn't put the weed-whacker away properly.