Characters in Bad Little Kid

… During my final year at Pitt, I concentrated on my business classes, especially accounting, and Carla Winston. The year I graduated, we were married. My father was my best man. He died three years later. One of the mines he was responsible for was …

She ate her lunch out of it same as always, she said, and put it back on the shelf in the cloakroom next to Cathy Morse’s pink Barbie lunchbox, just like she always did, but when the going-home …

Carla didn’t see any of this. She was standing at the top of the steps and talking to Father Patrick, telling him she’d enjoyed his homily, it had given her so much to think about. Those steps were granite, and they were steep.

“George Peter Hallas, you have been condemned to death by a jury of your peers, a sentence affirmed by this state’s supreme court and the Supreme Court of the …

Carla broke an ankle and got a concussion. And she lost the baby. She lost Helen. The kid who actually threw the M-80 walked into the police station the next day with his mother and owned up.

I heard some woman—a stout lady with dyed blond hair—scream, That man has a gun! Mrs. Jane Hurley. She testified at the trial. The kid tried to get up. I said, This is for Marlee, you little sonofabitch, and shot him in the back.

Leonard Bradley sat down on his side of this communication port and opened his briefcase. He put a yellow legal pad and a Uniball pen on the table.

If I want a part in The Music Man, I should go back and suck Mandy Patinkin’s cock. Then she laughed, and this time it was real laughing, the kind that comes all the way up from the belly.

… which made me remember all the times I walked back and forth to Mary Day Grammar holding hands with Marlee Jacobs. I won’t say those thoughts summoned him, but I won’t say they didn’t, either. I don’t know. I only know that some nights I lie awake in my …

Exercise periods were canceled on days when an execution was scheduled. McGregor had told him this. And sure enough, when he turned his head, he saw the Chicken Run was empty. Bradley thought, It comes as a child.

Mrs. Gibson said, Oh my goodness. Was he wearing a little hat with a propeller on top? Why, yes, I said, keeping my voice nice and steady.

Her mama would be standing in the doorway and she’d say Hey now, Georgie, and I’d say Hey now, Mrs. Jacobs, and she’d say You children be good, and Marlee would say We’ll be good, Mama, and then Marlee would take hold of my hand and off we’d go …

The same way I’m sure Mrs. Peckham blamed herself for what happened to Marlee. She came across Vicky in the downstairs lounge that afternoon, staring at the TV.

That’s a little south of Ironville, where he still lived with Nona McCarthy—Mama Nonie—as his “housekeeper.” The mine was called Fair Deep.

Hallas smiled, but it was a mere stretching of the lips. “That’s rather naïve, Counselor. You might as well ask why one baby is born with a misshapen cornea, as Ronnie Gibson was, and the next fifty delivered in the same hospital are just fine.

The first play I was cast in was She Stoops to Conquer, and that’s where I met Vicky Abington. I was Tony Lumpkin and she was Constance Neville. She was a beautiful girl with masses of curly blond hair, very thin and high-strung.

“One more thing, I guess. Where in the Christ did you get that shirt?” Warden Toomey blinked as if someone had suddenly flicked cold water in his face, then turned to the doctor. “Are you prepared?”