We'd been doing nothing for the three weeks, ever since school let out, except watch TV with his parents in their air-conditioned front room, old man Parker usually passing out in his blue recliner and the old lady knitting quaintly knitted away like old folks should do. Or we'd occasionally take Mr. Parker's primer-gray '82 Ford pick-up truck to cruise the town, or we'd drive out to blind Tom Abernathy's place on the hill overlooking the town because at twenty-four Tom would always sell us beer.

This routine got old in a hurry. I mean, how many nights can you watch Vanna White? How many re-runs of Mash and Cheers can you sit through before wanting to shove your fist through the wall? How often can you cruise a town of less than 200 residents, hoping that one of the local sluts (generally a real pig) will go for a drive into the country, take off her top, and let you admire and touch her tits? Again, what a life.

"This is no fuckin' life, Axel," Johnny said as we two sat in the truck, smoking weed, drinking beer, and listening to the radio. Something by AC/DC was playing. I like AC/DC. The full moon shone brightly overhead, and I was slightly buzzed from the beer.

"Hey, Axel!! You there, you big piece o' shit?" Johnny squealed. He hated it when I didn't say anything, so he reverted to nasty language. I generally did nothing about Johnny's choice of words. Maybe I was afraid of Johnny, who at around 145 pounds was about half my size. "Hey, Hog, ya there?" Johnny slapped me hard on the arm, and it brought tears to my eyes. In the darkness, he couldn't see me cry. I didn't like to be called Hog. But then sometimes I called him Porky.

Don't get me wrong. I loved Johnny. But Johnny's meanness was sometimes hard to take. He's the kid who liked to run over the neighbor's cats and dogs. I'm sure you know the kind. He never went to church and sang Sunday hymns and prayed out loud like the rest of us, and that would have made a big difference.

"I'm here," I sullenly snorted, wallowing in the muddy darkness of the pick-up and thinking maybe sometime I should pray for Johnny's rotten soul. Sometimes, God forgive me, I wanted to crush him. I was much, much stronger than Johnny.

"Look, Hog," Johnny lashed at me, "here we are in Shithole, Nevada, drinkin' like swine, wasting away our fuckin' teenage years, the best years of our lives, when kids in other places are living it up. Holy shit. I mean, you think we'd be doing this if we lived in Vegas? Or Phoenix? or LA? Christ, no! Hell, no! We'd be out chasin' some good ole American pussy or goin' to a ball game."

Hidden in the darkness of the cab, I looked at Johnny for about twenty minutes. Just looked, like I was examining a dead snake in the road. I don't think he knew I was watching. Then suddenly I had an idea, a thing to do that would be exciting and would bind us as soul buddies for all time.

"Let's go to Las Vegas," I said.

"Now?!! Now?" Johnny laughed. "Axel, you ass, it's getting on towards nine! Anyway, we can't just drive to fuckin' Vegas unless we got a full tank. And anyway, it'll take us all damned night."

"I got all night," I said, "and I got enough money to buy gas to get us there and back." Mom's check had arrived two days ago, and I had cashed it, keeping only a small portion.

"So you got all night, huh? All fuckin' night?" When he got going like this, Johnny sounded just like his old man. "Well, shit, hell, Hog, I got all fuckin' night, too."

Johnny paused. I knew he was thinking. I knew I had him.

"How far to Vegas?" I asked in a hushed tone, controlling my anger.

Johnny paused, thinking over the proposition.

"I got a thing for us to do," I added, casting the line. "It just might turn out to be a whole lot of fun."

"What is it?" Johnny sneered. I could tell by his tone that he was sneering at me because he thought, come hell or high water, I was dumb as a pig in shit.

"It's somethin' we both gotta do," was all I said. "Mean fun," I teased. Johnny, bloodthirsty as a rule, was going to like this. I knew I was.

Two hours later we hit the outskirts of North Las Vegas, and I told Johnny to look for the Cheyenne Avenue turn-off. "My uncle lives down there—or used to," I told him.

"That right, Hog?" he said, mockery in his voice. By now, I could feel the hair on the back of my neck bristle every time he put me down. "This wouldn't be your great uncle Ned, would it, the one that screwed your sister Mabel a thousand times in front of you and your crippled mom?" My mother is a quadriplegic and my sister is a whore. I was beginning to hate Johnny's jokes. I was getting mad at Johnny but didn't show it.

"That's right, Porky," I responded, a dark storm of judgment clouding my brain. It felt like there was a leopard loose in my brain. "That's the one. Now here is your turn-off."

The big green sign announcing Cheyenne Avenue was illuminated on the side of the I-15 freeway, about one hundred feet from the exit. We took the ramp at about ninety, and drove west a mile beyond past the truck stop and the garbage dump.

On the other side of the dump, the full moon bathing the landscape in ethereal splendor, I told Johnny to take the first road to his right. I was familiar with this area. My heart was pounding excitedly, I was thinking rapidly, and I no longer felt rage, just joyful anticipation. "It's called Regal Drive," I told Johnny. "Just take the turn-off and go all the way to the end of the road."

Johnny did as he was told, turning onto a gravel road just past the trash plant. "Just keep on driving," I told Johnny, "it's just at the end."

After twenty minutes of driving through more desert, we came to the end, and all that stood in front of us was a dark dilapidated old trailer whose windows were broken out. There were no lights. By the light of the moon, we could see the huge old sign that had been place on top of the trailer. It read "Jeremiah's Hog Farm." According to my uncle, whose dismembered body had been found in the mountains to the west of Las Vegas some time ago, it was a place where they butchered pigs.

"Hey, Axel," Johnny said, more irritated but getting nervous, "what the fuck is this all about? I mean, no one is here, man. You led us on a wild goose chase, Hog."

"Yeah," I responded in a sepulchral tone that would turn a Catholic Bishop into a frightened mass of slippery jelly. "There's someone here, all right. But we gotta get out first to see who it is. Just switch off the engine and let's go, Porky."

Johnny paused, wide-eyed, before saying anything. He'd never heart that tone is my voice. "Hog," Johnny then raised his voice, "there ain't anybody here! Anyone with a first-grade education can see this. Besides, this place gives me the creeps." I admit it was a little spooky with the wind howling, the trailer and the green sign above it bathed in the moon's glow, and the two old trees behind the trailer blowing like they were dancing. Out back you could see miles of fences that once were used to keep the pigs for slaughter.

"C'mon inside," I said, knowing that when I stepped out of the pick-up Johnny would first just sit there, arms folded, swearing to himself. But then he would get out of the truck and follow me.

So I lumbered to the front of the trailer and knocked, knowing no one would answer. And when Johnny came up to me, as I opened the door and pretended to be looking inside for signs of life, he said, "OK, Axel, you win. Where's the people?"

Opening the battered door, whose lock had rusted away, I stepped inside the dark trailer and commenting "The people are inside," waited for Johnny to follow. When he did, I slowly moved behind him, keeping my huge frame at the door.

"Christ, it's dark!" Johnny said, looking around the trailer in the moon's glow. "Holy Christ."

"Try your lighter, Porkchop," I advised. I wanted him to see.

Johnny pulled out his lighter, flicked it, and held it up so he could see around the place. "God damn, it stinks in here!!" Johnny suddenly choked, and I hoped he was near retching. It did smell bad. "It smells like rotting flesh or something, but I've never smelt rotting flesh before."

"You have now, " I mumbled, suppressing laughter.

Johnny stopped, turned around, and put the lighter closer up to my face. "What's that you say, Axel?" he asked, a quiver in his voice. "'You have now.' What does that mean?" Johnny was scared.

"Shine your light over yonder," I told him, pointing to a corner in the small kitchen. When Johnny held the light over towards that corner, he saw it, the badly decomposed body of an eighteen year old girl who had been kidnapped one year ago out of a small Nevada town not far from here, taken to this trailer, and then strangled to death, her throat slit neatly and her heart removed. The body of this wandering tramp was stuffed into a huge transparent bag, which couldn't contain the smell. There were others in the trailer as well.

"Jesus!" Johnny screamed, looking around, dropping his lighter, and turning to rush out of the trailer. "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!" he screamed, trying to push me out of the way. "Hog, old buddy, lemme out!" Of course, it was too late.

I already had my two huge hands around Johnny's scrawny neck and, as Johnny's squeals diminished in volume, I squeezed until I heard bone and gristle crack. It sounded like Rice Krispies.

Knowing I had to get back home, kneeling over Johnny's limp body, I took out my hunting knife and slit his throat from ear to ear. It's just something I felt moved to do. Then, in a moment of religious ecstasy, I crossed myself, said a brief prayer, and then used the great knife--a gift from my grandfather, who died five years ago sitting in front of his TV watching "Leave It to Beaver" reruns--to carve a cavity in his chest and remove the heart. I slowly ate the heart, an act I always savor because it fills my soul with the power to sustain myself for the next few months. "God is good," I always say at this part of the ritual.

When I drove back home, I knew Mr. and Mrs. Parker would be in bed and wouldn't start asking questions about their son for several days. Basically, they didn't care about Johnny. My plan was to simply park the truck where Ray and I had found it, under that huge oak tree in the Parker's front yard, and let them worry about their son, who was now in a very safe place.

Finally. I would go home, take a shower, pray and sing maybe one or two of mom's and my favorite hymns before going to bed, and then sleep through the day until the night came again.