Ralph laughed. “Hey, you’re okay. Listen, I’ll help you out. In the gym. I know a lot about fighting.”
“Why should you help me?”
Ralph’s face started to look mean. “I don’t like to see white guys gettin’ picked on. And I want that Lacey creamed. He needs his head busted. Only, they won’t let me fight him. I’m a heavyweight.”
Grinning, Danny asked, “Why wait for the first of the month? Get him outside.”
“Boy, wouldn’t I like to!” Ralph said. “But it ain’t as easy as it sounds. Too many TV cameras around. Step out of line and they catch you right away…. But you got the right idea. Boy, I’d love to mash that little crumb.”
Nodding, Danny said. “Okay… uh, I’ll see you in the gym sometime.”
“Good,” said Ralph. “I’ll look for you.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Ralph headed back for one of the classroom buildings. Danny started out again for the trees.
It was colder in the woods. The bare branches of the trees seemed to filter out almost all of the sun’s warmth. The sky had turned a sort of milky-gray. The ground under Danny’s sneakers was damp and slippery from melted snow and the remains of last year’s fallen leaves.
Danny hated the cold, hated the woods, hated everything and everybody except the few blocks of city street where he had lived and the guys who had grown up on those streets with him. They were the only guys in the world you could trust. Can’t trust grown-ups. Can’t trust teachers or cops or lawyers or judges or jail guards. Can’t trust Tenny. Can’t even trust this new guy, Ralph. Just your own guys, the guys you really know. And Laurie. He had to get back to Laurie.
His feet were cold and wet and he could feel his chest getting tight, making it hard to breathe. Soon his chest would be too heavy to lift, and he’d have to stop walking and wait for his breathing to become normal again. But Danny kept going, puffing little breaths of steam from his mouth as he trudged through the woods.
And there it was!
The fence. A ten-foot-high wire fence. And on the other side of it, the highway. The outside world, with cars zipping by and big trailer trucks shifting gears with a grinding noise as they climbed the hill.
Danny stood at the edge of the trees, a dozen feet from the fence. Two hours down that highway was home. And Laurie.
He leaned his back against a tree, breathing hard, feeling the rough wood through his thin shirt. He listened to himself wheezing. Like an old man, he told himself angrily. You sound like a stupid old man.
When his breathing became normal again, Danny started walking along the fence. But he stayed in among the trees, so that he couldn’t be seen too easily.
No guards. The fence was just a regular wire fence, the kind he’d been able to climb since he was in grade school. There wasn’t even any barbed wire at the top. And nobody around to watch.
He could scramble over the fence and hitch a ride back to the city. He wasn’t even wearing a prison uniform!
Danny laughed to himself. Why wait? He stepped out toward the fence.
“Hold it Danny! Hold it right there!”