Henry turns first to Jonesy and then to the Beav. Both of them are standing firm. Beaver, in fact, is doing a little more than that. He bends swiftly, picks up a couple of stones-they are the size of eggs, only with jagged edges-and begins to chunk them together. Beav’s narrowed eyes shift back and forth between Richie Grenadeau and the biggest boy, the galoot. The toothpick in his mouth jitters aggressively up and down.
“When they come, go for Grenadeau,” Henry says. “The other two can’t even get close to Pete.” He switches his gaze to Pete, who is pale but unafraid-his eyes are shining and he is almost dancing on the balls of his feet, eager to be off “Tell your ma. Tell her where we are, to send the cops. And don’t forget this bully motherfucker’s name, whatever you do.” He shoots a district attorney’s accusing finger at Grenadeau, who once more looks uncertain. No, more than uncertain. He looks afraid.
“Richie Grenadeau,” Pete says, and now he does begin to dance. “I won’t forget.”
“Come on, you dickweed,” Beaver says. One thing about the Beav, he knows a really excellent rank when he hears it. “I’m gonna break your nose again. What kind of chickenshit quits off the football team cause of a broken nose, anyhow?”
Grenadeau doesn’t reply-no longer knows which of them to reply to, maybe-and something rather wonderful is happening: the other boy in the high-school jacket, Duncan, has also started to look uncertain. A flush is spreading on his cheeks and across his forehead. He wets his lips and looks uncertainly at Richie. Only the galoot still looks ready to fight, and Henry almost hopes they will fight, Henry and Jonesy and the Beav will give them a hell of a scrap if they do, hell of a scrap, because of that crying, that fucking awful crying, the way it gets in your head, the beat-beat-beat of that awful crying.
“Hey Rich, maybe we ought to-” Duncan begins.
“Kill em,” the galoot rumbles. “Fuck em the fuck up.”
This one takes a step forward and for a moment it almost goes down. Henry knows that if the galoot had been allowed to take even one more step he would have been out of Richie Grenadeau’s control, like a mean old pitbull that breaks its leash and just goes flying at its prey, a meat arrow.
But Richie doesn’t let him get that next step, the one which will turn into a clumsy charge. He grabs the galoot’s forearm, which is thicker than Henry’s bicep and bristling with reddish-gold hair. “No, Scotty,” he says, “wait a minute.”
“Yeah, wait,” Duncan says, sounding almost panicky. He shoots Henry a look which Henry finds, even at the age of fourteen, grotesque. It is a reproachful look. As if Henry and his friends were the ones doing something wrong.
“What do you want?” Richie asks Henry. “You want us to get out of here, that it?”
Henry nods.
“If we go, what are you gonna do? Who are you going to tell?”
Henry discovers an amazing thing: he is as close to coming unglued as Scotty, the galoot. Part of him wants to actually provoke a fight, to scream EVERYBODY! FUCKING EVERYBODY! Knowing that his friends would back him up, would never say a word even if they got trashed and sent to the hospital.
But the kid. That poor little crying retarded kid. Once the big boys finished with Henry, Beaver, and Jonesy (with Pete as well, if they could catch him), they would finish with the retarded kid, too, and it would likely go a lot further than making him eat a piece of dried dog-turd.
“No one,” he says. “We won’t tell anyone.”
“Fuckin liar,” Scotty says. “He’s a fuckin liar, Richie, lookit him.”
Scotty starts forward again, but Richie tightens his grip on the big galoot’s forearm.
“If no one gets hurt,” Jonesy says in a blessedly reasonable tone of voice, “no one’s got a story to tell”
“Grenadeau glances at him, then back at Henry. “Swear to God?”
“Swear to God,” Henry agrees.
“All of you swear to God?” Grenadeau asks.
Jonesy, Beav, and Pete all dutifully swear to God.
Grenadeau thinks about it for a moment that seems very long, and then he nods. “Okay, fuck this. We’re going.”
“If they come, run around the building the other way,” Henry says to Pete, speaking very rapidly because the big boys are already in motion. But Grenadeau still has his hand clamped firmly on Scotty’s forearm, and Henry thinks this is a good sign.
“I wouldn’t waste my time,” Richie Grenadeau says in a lofty tone of voice that makes Henry feel like laughing… but with an effort he manages to keep a straight face. Laughing at this point would be a bad idea. Things are almost fixed up. There’s a part of him that hates that, but the rest of him nearly trembles with relief.
“What’s up with you, anyway?” Richie Grenadeau asks him. “What’s the big deal?”
Henry wants to ask his own question-wants to ask Richie Grenadeau how he could do it, and it’s no rhetorical question, either. That crying! My God! But he keeps silent, knowing anything he says might just provoke the asshole, get him going all over again.
There is a kind of dance going on here; it looks almost like the ones you learn in first and second grade. As Richie, Duncan, and Scott walk toward the driveway (sauntering, attempting to show they are going of their own free will and haven’t been frightened off by a bunch of homo junior-high kids), Henry and his friends first move to face them and then step backward in a line toward the weeping kid kneeling there in his underpants, blocking him from them.
At the corner of the building Richie pauses and gives them a final look. “Gonna see you fellas again,” he says. “One by one or all together. “’Yeah,” Duncan agrees.
“You’re gonna be lookin at the world through a oxygen tent!” Scott adds, and Henry comes perilously close to laughing again. He prays that none of his friends will say anything-let done be done-and none of them do. It’s almost a miracle.
One final menacing look from Richie and they are gone around the comer. Henry, Jonesy, Beaver, and Pete are left alone with the kid, who is rocking back and forth on his dirty knees, his dirty bloody tearstreaked uncomprehending face cocked to the white sky like the face of a broken clock, all of them wondering what to do next. Talk to him? Tell him it’s okay, that the bad boys are gone and the danger has passed? He will never understand. And oh that crying is so freaky. How could those kids, mean and stupid as they were, go on in the face of that crying? Henry will understand later-sort of-but at that moment it’s a complete mystery to him.
“I’m gonna try something,” Beaver says abruptly.
“Yeah, sure, anything,” Jonesy says. His voice is shaky.
The Beav starts forward, then looks at his friends. It is an odd look, part shame, part defiance, and-yes, Henry would swear it-part hope.
“If you tell anybody I did this,” he says, “I’ll never chum with you guys again.”
“Never mind that crap,” Pete says, and he also sounds shaky. “If you can shut him up, do it!”
Beaver stands for a moment where Richie was standing while he tried to get the kid to eat the dog-turd, then drops to his knees. Henry sees the kid’s underwear shorts are in fact Underoos, and that they feature the Scooby-Doo characters, plus Shaggy’s Mystery Machine, just like the kid’s lunchbox.
Then Beaver takes the wailing, nearly naked boy into his arms and begins to sing.
4
Four more miles to Banbury Cross… or maybe only three. Four more miles to Banbury Cross… or maybe only-
Henry’s feet skidded again, and this time he had no chance to get his balance back. He had been in a deep daze of memory, and before he could come out of it, he was flying through the air.
He landed heavily on his back, hitting hard enough to lose his wind in a loud and painful gasp-“Uh!” Snow rose in a dreamy sugarpuff, and he hit the back of his head hard enough to see stars.
He lay where he was for a moment, giving anything broken ample opportunity to announce itself When nothing did, he reached around and prodded the small of his back. Pain, but no agony. When they were ten and eleven and spent what seemed like whole winters sledding in Strawford Park, he had taken worse hits than this and gotten up laughing. Once, with the idiotic Pete Moore piloting his Flexible Flyer and Henry riding behind him, they had gone head-on into the big pine at the foot of the hill, the one all the kids called the Death Tree, and survived with nothing more than a few bruises and a couple of loose teeth each. The trouble was, he hadn’t been ten or eleven for a lot of years.