Who is Lou Sciortino? Read Online Free PDF Page B

says.
    â€œWait. As the Commander was turning around to get the sling off the sling shelf, I saw a cardboard box with a colored drawing of a rat with these enormous fangs and a smile on its face. So I asked him, ‘What’s in there?’ And the Commander smiled and said, ‘ Minchia, Uncle Mimmo, why didn’t I think of that before?’
    â€œIt was a crossbow,” Uncle Mimmo says, spreading his arms wide. “The Commander told me that officially they’re used for killing rats. Though I find that hard to believe, because to kill a rat with a crossbow first you gotta corner it, and that’s the hardest part with rats. Unless, like the Commander said, there are people who like trapping rats with glue to use for target practice!”
    â€œThat’s disgusting!” Turi cries.
    â€œShut up,” Cosimo says, “you don’t know anything about target shooting. And then?”
    â€œThen I went to open up the store, with this nice crossbow all wrapped up under my arm. I sat down at the cash register, I read the instruction booklet, and I put it under the counter stretched really tight and ready to go.”
    â€œLike a hard-on…” Turi says to regain his credibility, and indeed they all smile, except for Uncle Mimmo, whose face grows serious.
    â€œIt’s no laughing matter,” Uncle Mimmo says. “You see, when the sergeant came in, I wanted to tell him about the crossbow. Just to show off, you know, to tell somebody who knew from weapons. But I could just see the sergeant saying, ‘Hmmm … let me see that crossbow, Uncle Mimmo … hmmm … don’t need a permit, eh?’ and then taking it away and giving it to the laboratory for analysis, and then after a few months an article coming out in the paper saying they’d made a law that you couldn’t buy these crossbows anymore without a permit. What did I know? So I thought, Better keep it to yourself. So I just said, ‘Good evening,’ to the sergeant and he said, ‘Good evening,’ and went off into the back on the left—where the men’s toiletries are. Thinking about it now, God, thinking about it now, if I’d told him about the crossbow, then maybe the robber would have seen him talking to me at the cash register and wouldn’t even have come in, he’d have put off the robbery, and the sergeant would still be alive.”
    Uncle Mimmo shakes his head and looks down, his mournful expression reflected in his Punt & Mes.
    â€œWhen it’s your turn to go…” Cosimo says.
    â€œ Minchia, I don’t want to think about it,” Tano says. “There were pieces of the sergeant’s brain dripping from the deodorant shelf and falling on his face.”
    â€œAll right, all right,” Cosimo says, wiping his hands on his pants. “It’s late, time to go.”
    *   *   *
    A few hours earlier, Uncle Mimmo had turned on the light at the exact moment when the dark outside was really dark. (The only lighting in the store is from two small naked bulbs but, due to a strange phenomenon he’s never understood, they don’t light anything at all when it’s just starting to get dark.) The sergeant came in, as he always did at that time, and the flies stopped buzzing. Uncle Mimmo said hello, and the sergeant returned his greeting absentmindedly, and walked straight, as he always did, to men’s toiletries.
    With his knee, Uncle Mimmo pushed the crossbow farther into the shelf under the counter. The stool he was sitting on rose dangerously on two legs. Uncle Mimmo felt the hard wood of the shelf against his knee, a sign he couldn’t push anymore, and he let himself fall back.
    The stool made a sharp noise against the tiles.
    The sergeant, lost in thought, heard the noise. He’d already put on his glasses to read the label on a bottle of aftershave, and was looking puzzled. Maybe he wanted to try