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Show 67 pants from the back buttons of his shirtwaist, and smacked his bare backside again and again until Hunnie screamed with pain. "Karl found him," he heard Francis X's voice call from the alley. "He was in the woodshed. Karl's giving him a beating." Realizing that he'd hit his little brother much too hard, Karl sank down on the floorboards and pulled the sobbing child into his arms. "Hunnie, you don't know how scared I was," Karl told him. Hunnie pulled away violently, his dirty face streaked with tears and red with rage. "My...name ... is...HENRY!" he shouted through his sobs. "All right, all right, I'll try to remember that from now on," Karl said, mentally cursing Francis X. "But do you know why Francis X told you Hunnie was a girl's name? Because Francis sounds the same as a girl's name. He even has a little sister named Mary Frances." Bridey Culley had such deep devotion to Saint Francis Xavier that she'd named two of her children after him. "I don't care about that," Henry stuttered, his chest still heaving. "I keep telling people my name's Henry, but no one listens." Karl drew his little brother into his arms again, resting his chin on top of Henry's head. The blond hair felt springy and stiff, and smelled of little-boy sweat and woodshed dust. Karl was swept with love for his brother, with relief that he was safe, with regret because he'd hit him too hard. "Hun...Henry," he said, "that was a terrible thing you did, hiding from me when I was trying to find you. I was scared to death |