Who Caught The Child's Blood Excerpt

An excerpt from, Who Caught the Child's Blood

Sam took me up to the Avalon pier in the summer of eighty-seven. He gave me a dollar in quarters and I played RoadBlasters while he talked to one of the anglers that ran the pier. He was trying to convince the old timer to give me a job for the summer. Sam shook his head in disappointment and then bought a box of Forbes Salt Water Taffy. He walked up to me, "let's get the fuck out of here. Come on, chop-chop." Sam and I walked under the pier to catch some shade. I remember it being excruciatingly hot that July. Sam handed me a few pieces of taffy. He unwrapped the wax paper and stared off into the ocean. He was silent for what seemed like an eternity and then said, "My family owned a horse farm back east. By the

I could see at least thirty miniature skulls covering his right arm. I then remembered what his drunk Vietnam buddy said one night at the house. He said, "that every tattooed skull was for the Baby Sans he killed." Baby Sans were what they called Vietnamese children during the war. "Sam killed more kids than cancer, I shit-you-not" He also warned me, "not to talk back to Sam Hill. The son of a bitch made a Mephistophelian deal with the devil over there. There's no way that son-of-a-bitch should still be alive. If you needed a tunnel rat or a job was too... extreme - you called on Sam Hill to kill." I didn't like Sam's friend. I didn't much care for drunks. The majority of my Mother's previous boyfriends had been alcoholics. Most of them liked to kick our ass from time-to-time when they got drunk. Maybe that's the reason I liked Sam so much. He never touched booze. He saw me looking at his arm. "Do they frighten you?" I shook my head no. I actually thought they were kind of cool. The tattoos reminded me of Castle Greyskull. Sam continued his story, "One of my most important jobs around the farm was to