you overcharged on the groceries, Mr Dusset I was gonna throw some Hostess
Twinkies on top of that order but now I guess I won’t.’ I spanged two dollars and
thirteen cents down on the Schlitz placemat in front of him.
He looked at the money, then at me. The frown was now tremendous, the lines
on his face as deep as fissures. ‘What are you, kid?’ He said in a low voice that was
ominously confidential. ‘Are you some kind of smartass?’
‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘But you ain’t gonna jap me and get away with it. What would
your mother say if she knew you was japping little kids?’
He thrust our stuff into the paper bag with quick stiff movements, making the
Coke bottles clink together. He thrust the bag at me roughly, not caring if I dropped it and broke the tonics or not. His swarthy face was flushed and dull, the frown now
frozen in place. ‘Okay, kid. Here you go. Now what you do is you get the Christ out of my store. I see you in here again and I going to throw you out, me. Yuh. Smartass
little sonofawhore.’
‘I won’t come in again,’ I said, walking over to the screen door and pushing it
open. The hot afternoon buzzed somnolently along its appointed course outside,
sounding green and brown and full of silent light. ‘Neither will none of my friends. I guess I got fifty or so.’
‘Your brother wasn’t no smartass!’ George Dusset yelled.
‘Fuck you!’ I yelled, and ran like hell down the road.
I heard the screen door bang open like a gunshot and his bull roar came after
me: ‘If you ever come in here again I’ll fat your lip for you, you little punk!’ I ran until I was over the first hill, scared and laughing to myself, my heart beating out a
triphammer pulse in my chest. Then I slowed to a fast walk, looking back over my
shoulder every now and then to make sure he wasn’t going to take after me in his car,
or anything.
He didn’t, and pretty soon I got to the dump gate. I put the bag inside my shirt,
climbed the gate, and monkeyed down the other side. I was halfway across the dump
area when I saw something I didn’t like–Milo Pressman’s portholed ’56 Buick was
parked behind his tarpaper shack. If Milo saw me, I was going to be in a world of hurt.
As yet there was no sign of either him or the infamous Chopper, but all at once the
chain-link fence at the back of the dump seemed very far away. I found myself
wishing I’d gone around the outside, but I was now too far into the dump to want to
turn around and go back. If Milo saw me climbing the dump fence, I’d probably be in
dutch when I got home, but that didn’t scare me as much as Milo yelling for Chopper
to sic would.
Scary violin music started to play in my head. I kept putting one foot in front
of the other, trying to look casual, trying to look as if I belonged here with a paper grocery sack poking out of my shirt, heading for the fence between the dump and the
railroad tracks.
I was about fifty feet from the fence and just beginning to think that
everything was going to be all right after all when I heard Milo shout. ‘Hey! Hey, you!
Kid! Get away from that fence! Get outta here!’
The smart thing to have done would have been to just agree with the guy and
go around, but then I was so keyed up that instead of doing the smart thing I just
broke for the fence with a wild yell, my sneakers kicking up dust. Vern, Teddy, and
Chris came out of the underbrush on the other side of the fence and stared anxiously
through the chain-link.
‘You come back here!’ Milo bawled. ‘Come back here or I’ll sic my dawg on
you, goddammit!’ I did not exactly find that to be the voice of sanity and conciliation, and I ran even faster for the fence, my arms pumping, the brown grocery bag