Excerpt from Karaoke Lion Excerpt from Children of Granite
Angel and Hector's mothers warned them to stay away from the railroad tracks in the back of their neighborhood. The tracks were unused, abandoned, and rusted. There was no chance a train would run them over.
But the prevailing feeling in the neighborhood treated that area as an evil place, frequented by junkies, perverts, and the homeless alcoholic population. The Back Central part of Lowell, Massachusetts, had somehow earned a bad reputation.
By 1985, the Back Central area of downtown Lowell was primarily home to many emigres from Brazil.
Angel and Hector were fourteen, and their hormones were raging. Hector had secretly taken a magazine from the local bodega. The title, “Playboy”, meant nothing to them. All they wanted were the pictures. They walked down the tracks towards a tunnel where they could turn the pages undisturbed.
Halfway there, Angel stopped and pointed. Lying on the side of the tracks was a young girl with a man’s striped tie wrapped around her throat. It looked like she had been strangled to death.
One summer evening, at the onset of twilight, she parked her truck a few hundred yards down the dirt road that led to the building. The hospital had long since ceased its intended function and sat isolated and padlocked. No one had been working there for many years. The contents were the subject of their multi-year court battle and were undisturbed.
Taking the chainsaw, she moved towards the structure until she found a tree large enough to block the road. Felling the tree onto the road was easy. The hard part was dragging the gasoline up to the building. She broke the glass in the rear entrance. Once inside, she poured gasoline over all the records, then doused most of the interior and exterior. One match and the fire spread quickly.
When she heard sirens from approaching fire engines, she sped off in her truck in the opposite direction. Once again, she came through with a favor. She wondered if this would be the end of his requests.