‘I know you, too,’ Milo said ominously. ‘Your name’s Lachance.’ He pointed to where Vern and Chris were finally picking themselves up, still breathing fast from
laughing so hard. ‘And those guys are Chris Chambers and one of those stupid Tessio
kids. All your fathers are going to get calls from me, except for the loony up to Togus.
You’ll go to the ‘formatory, every one of you. Juvenile delinquents!’
He stood flat on his feet, big freckled hands held out like a guy who wanted to
play One Potato Two Potato, breathing hard, eyes narrow, waiting for us to cry or say
we were sorry or maybe give him Teddy so he could feed Teddy to Chopper.
Chris made an O out of his thumb and index finger and spat neatly through it.
Vern hummed and looked to the sky.
Teddy said, ‘Come on, Gordie. Let’s get away from this asshole before I puke.’
‘Oh, you’re gonna get it, you foulmouthed little whoremaster. Wait’ll I get you
to the constable.’
‘We heard what you said about his father,’ I told him. ‘We’re all witnesses. And
you sicced that dog on me. That’s against the law.’
Milo looked a trifle uneasy. ‘You was trespassin’.’
‘The hell I was. The dump’s public property.’
‘You climbed the fence.’
‘Sure I did, after you sicced your dog on me,’ I said, hoping that Milo wouldn’t
recall that I’d also climbed the gate to get in.’ What’d you think I was gonna do? Stand there and et ‘im rip me to pieces? Come on, you guys. Let’s go. It stinks around here.’
“Formatory,’ Milo promised hoarsely, his voice shaking. ‘Formatory for you
wiseguys.’
‘Can’t wait to tell the cops how you called a war vet a fuckin’ loony,’ Chris
called back over his shoulder as we moved away. ‘What did you do in the war, Mr
Pressman?’
‘NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESSr Milo shrieked. ‘YOU HURT MY
DAWG!’
‘Put it on your t. s. slip and send it to the chaplain,’ Vern muttered, and then
we were climbing the railroad embankment again.
‘Come back here!’ Milo shouted, but his voice was fainter now and he seemed
to be losing interest.
Teddy shot him the finger as we walked away. I looked back over my shoulder
when we got to the top of the embankment. Milo was standing there behind the
security fence, a big man in a baseball cap with his dog sitting beside him. His fingers were hooked through the small chain-link diamonds as he shouted at us, and all at
once I felt sorry for him–he looked like the biggest third-grader in the world, locked inside the playground by mistake, yelling for someone to let him out. He kept yelling
for a while and then he either gave up or we got out of range. No more was seen or
heard of Milo Pressman and Chopper that day.
13
There was some discussion–in righteous tones that were actually kind of forced-
sounding–about how we had shown that creepy Milo Pressman we weren’t just
another bunch of pussies. I told how the guy at the Florida Market had tried to jap us,
and then we fell into a gloomy silence, thinking it over. For my part, I was thinking that maybe there was something to that stupid goocher business after all. Things
couldn’t have turned out much worse–in fact, I thought, it might be better to just keep going and spare my folks the pain of having one son in the Castle View Cemetery and
one in South Windham Boys’ Correctional. I had no doubt that Milo would go to the
cops as soon as the importance of the dump having been closed at the time of the
incident filtered into his thick skull. When that happened, he would realize that I
really had been trespassing, public property or not. Probably that gave him every right in the world to sic his stupid dog on me. And while Chopper wasn’t the hellhound he
was cracked up to be, he sure would have ripped the sitdown out of my jeans if I
hadn’t won the race to the fence. All of it put a big dark crimp in the day. And there was another gloomy idea rolling around inside my head–the idea that this was no lark