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          Finally, they stopped. Porky was still, crumpled in the corner. In the flickering light they stared at each other, at their dirty hands and faces, smeared with blood and dirt. And then they stared at Porky. He lay with his eyes open, as if in surprise, catching the candle light, his face gashed and bleeding, his mouth gaping, his front teeth broken. He didn't move.

          The boys stood up. Bertie retrieved Porky's flashlight. He picked up the hatchet. It was wet with blood, but whether it had been chopped into the body of Porky he didn't know. Perhaps it had only acquired blood from the wounds. Perhaps it hadn't been used. Bertie looked at Carmey, who was pulling up his pants. He gestured with the hatchet.

          "Did you chop him?" he asked.

          "No! No, I didn't," Carmey declared. He buckled his belt. "C'mon, let's get going!"

          Bertie shone the light around the little dirt room, which now looked like nothing more than a littered garbage hole, but with the sprawled body inevitably suggested a grave.

          "Maybe we should take some of his stuff," Bertie suggested. The light fell on the stack of precious comic books, a wooden box filled with pop and beer, a deck of cards, some military medals and insignia.

          "No! Leave it!" Carmey was possessed with anxious haste, now. "Let's go! Let's get out before someone else comes!"

          "Maybe we should cover him up," Bertie said.

          That idea seemed right. They began to scoop dirt and hurl magazines and scraps of blankets, junk, at the body. They got caught up in this frantic activity.

          But finally, Carmey said, "That's enough. Let's go. Let's go, let's go."

          So they crawled, or rather scurried in a hunched duck-walk, through the passageway until they burst into the precious but blinding daylight. It was still a dull, overcast day, but it seemed bright to them after the darkness of the tunnel and oh, so blessedly welcome.

          They ran from the site almost to the edge of the thinned woodlot, before Bertie stopped.

          "What?" Carmey said, looking back at him, anxiously. "Let's go! Let's run." He was frantic to be away.

          "You know what we did?" Bertie said. "We killed him. We murdered him! He's dead." He looked around. It was early afternoon, he thought, almost like coming out of a movie matinee, but earlier.

          The world seemed abandoned. There were few houses about here. The boys weren't aware of it, but this little woods was all that was left of farmer Crooks's woodlot, the rest of the farm having finally been sold off and subdivided. The men of this half-formed community were all away, enlisted in the armed services or at work, and many of the wives were at work, as well, in factories that made tanks and bombs and airplanes.

          It seemed to Bertie that Porky White must have had some unusual reason not to be in school. He must have stayed home, ill perhaps, or more likely, played hooky. There was no sign of his gang. So there was no great rush. Bertie was not exactly calm -- how could he be? -- but he was not panicked.

          They were in trouble, though. He knew that. And something told him that the biggest part of his trouble was his cousin, Carmey. The handsome lad was visibly shaken. They could not go home, not yet. There was no reason for them to go home. They weren't expected. They had been shooed out to play and normally that meant they would be outside until near dark, when Carmey's mother would stand on the porch and call, over and over again, "Carmey! Bertie!." He talked to Carmey and got him to calm down.

          They found a cold puddle of water, where Bertie was able to wash the blood and dirt off Carmey's and his hands and faces and bare legs. The blood on their clothes he rubbed with dirt. Then they went for a walk. It was only a few blocks over to the railroad viaduct; they often played over there, although warned against it. They hung around there until a train came by and flattened some pennies they had put on the tracks. Then they walked to the filling station on Crooks Road and got a couple of Cokes and shared an Oh!Henry candy bar.

          Carmey was in pretty good spirits, by now. It was as if he had forgotten what had happened in the bunker. But as they walked back toward the neighborhood, Bertie pointed out some important things. When Porky White's buddies got out of school they would go to the bunker and they would find their leader. The cops would be notified. They would question the gang boys, but they would deny having killed Porky. Maybe the cops wouldn't believe them, but they might also come around and question Carmey and Bertie, and any other kid who lived in the neighborhood. Maybe the cops had some way of knowing that Carmey and Bertie had been in the bunker. Maybe there were fingerprints or something. Bertie didn't know. They had heard about fingerprints and stuff on the radio, in "Gang Busters" and "The Shadow." Maybe there was something they didn't even know about, that detectives could use to find out who had been in the tunnel. Maybe they would be caught.

          Bertie wanted to alarm Carmey, because he was genuinely worried on just these lines, but he didn't want him to be too scared. But he had to be scared enough to keep his mouth shut. And so he made him swear that, no matter what, he would say exactly what Bertie said, even if the cops split them up and asked them separately. And what they would say was that they had gone out playing, had gone to the viaduct, had put pennies on the tracks, and then went to get pop at the filling station. And that was that. They didn't know what time it was because they didn't have watches. One thing they hadn't done, they hadn't gone anywhere near the woods. They had always been told to stay away from old man Crooks'es woods, so they never went near. That was their story. Bertie wished he had thought to take the hatchet, to throw it away, down a sewer or something.

          This much of the story Umberto recalled with ease, even after fifty years. Indeed, he knew this story, at least to this point. There were other details, he was aware, but he had forgotten them. If he worked at it, however, he could recall -- he thought -- that nothing ever came of Porky's murder, or death, or whatever you want to call it.

          Did they ever find the body? He was not sure. He supposed they must have. Some time after this, it may have been within days or weeks or even months, they had moved away. He remembered his uncle Dom saying Crooks Woods wasn't a good place for them to live and all the other grownups laughing. His other uncle was there, he recalled, Uncle Gags. That was his special uncle. Uncle Gags was somehow closer to him than Uncle Dom, Carmey's dad, although he didn't actually live with them. He came around a lot. Bertie didn't know why, then.

          The move may have had something to do with Porky. But he was sure that, at the time, he had not connected the events. Still, Uncle Gags had taken him aside at some point and asked some questions about Porky. He couldn't remember what the questions were. It wasn't anything like, Did you do this? Or even, What happened? Or, Were you there? Just some vague questions that, apparently, had satisfied Uncle Gags.

         Anyway, they moved. Bertie remembered feeling tremendously relieved, happy to move to the city, to the east side. He still lived with Carmey and his family. They were his family. Aunt Sophie was like the mother he'd never had. And then he didn't remember much of anything until Uncle Gags's funeral.

          Uncle Gags had been killed, shot by another man. Lots of men came to the funeral, dressed in black suits. Very important men, it seemed. There were a lot of flowers, the body lay in a casket in the front room, dressed in a suit with a flower in the lapel, the hands crossed on the chest. The men drank whiskey and beer and smoked cigars. The women talked. There wasn't much crying. The priest came and they all drove in big cars to the cemetery, where the casket was lowered into the ground. For some reason, Bertie was treated with some solicitude, which he didn't understand at the time. Older women hugged him and said they pitied him. Men shook his hand and patted him on the back and shoulder and said he should be strong.

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