They liked to throw stones and shoot guns, and the more creeping, crawling, or flying creatures that they could send to the far country, the happier they were, apparently.

Nor did they like it at all when he asked them if they were sure all these creeping, crawling, flying creatures wanted to leave this beautiful world and to be made dead.

They sneered and called him a sissy.

David did not know what a sissy was; but from the way they said it, he judged it must be even worse to be a sissy than to be a thief.
And then he discovered Joe.
David had found himself in a very strange, very unlovely neighborhood that afternoon.

The street was full of papers and tin cans, the houses were unspeakably forlorn with sagging blinds and lack of paint.