The Rapscallion

Jerry was a clever troublemaker. He had put firecrackers in his grandmother’s boudoir and had blamed his older brother, having planted more in his sibling’s room. He had spray painted a crude image on the bathroom wall of his principal with a tiny penis, had broken into the locker of the resident bully and had planted the evidence. He had snuck out at night through his sister’s window and had left footprints down the side of the house. On a bright summer day with nothing more than whim and lazy bees buzzing around his head, Jerry had joined an impromptu game of baseball and had hit a ball clean through mean widow Underwood’s expensive plate glass window. As his erstwhile teammates fled to the four winds, Jimmy remained immobilized by the sight of the head of the widow in the window, as she stared malevolently at the baseball bat held by a boy who knew his day of reckoning had at last arrived.