I dropped my schoolbooks on the sidewalk and ran. I was busting my buns but
they caught me before I even made the end of the block. Ace hit me with a flying
tackle and I went full-length on the paving. My chin hit the cement and I didn’t see
stars; I saw whole constellations, whole nebulae. I was already crying when they
picked me up, not so much from my elbows and knees, both pairs scraped and
bleeding, or even from fear–it was vast, impotent rage that made me cry. Chris was
right. He had been ours. I twisted and turned and almost squiggled free. Then Fuzzy
hoicked his knee into my crotch. The pain was amazing, incredible, nonpareil; it
widened the horizons of pain from plain old wide screen to Vista Vision. I began to
scream. Screaming seemed to be my best chance.
Ace punched me twice in the face, long and looping haymaker blows. The first
one closed my left eye; it would be four days before I was really able to see out of that eye again The second broke my nose with a crunch that sounded the way crispy cereal
sounds inside your head when you chew. Then old Mrs Chalmers came out on her
porch with her cane clutched in one arthritis-twisted hand and a Herbert Tareyton
jutting from one corner of her mouth. She began to bellow at them: ‘Hi! Hi there, you
boys! You stop that! Let ‘im alone! Let ‘im up! Bullies! Bullies! Two on one! Police!
Poleeeece!’
‘Don’t let me see you around, dipshit,’ Ace said, smiling, and they let go of me
and backed off. I sat up and then leaned over, cupping my wounded balls, sickly sure
I was going to throw up and then die. I was still crying, too. But when Fuzzy started
to walk around me, the sight of his pegged jeans-leg snugged down over the top of his motorcycle boot brought all the fury back. I grabbed him and bit his calf through his
jeans. I bit him just as hard as I could. Fuzzy began to do a little screaming of his own.
He also began hopping around on one leg, and, incredibly, he was calling me a dirty
fighter. I was watching him hop around and that was when Ace stamped down on my
left hand, breaking the first two fingers. I heard them break. They didn’t sound like
crispy cereal. They sounded like pretzels. Then Ace and Fuzzy were going back to
Ace’s ’52, Ace sauntering with his hands in his back pockets, Fuzzy hopping on one
leg and throwing curses back over his shoulder at me. I curled up on the sidewalk,
crying. Aunt Evvie Chalmers came down her walk, thudding her cane angrily as she
came. She asked me if I needed the doctor. I sat up and managed to stop most of the
crying. I told her I didn’t. ‘Bullshit,’ she bellowed–Aunt Evvie was deaf and bellowed everything. ‘I saw where that bully got you. Boy, your sweetmeats are going to swell
up to the size of Mason jars.’ She took me into her house, gave me a wet rag for my
nose–it had begun to resemble a summer squash by then–and gave me a big cup of
medicinal-tasting coffee that was somehow calming. She kept bellowing at me that
she should call the doctor and I kept telling her not to. Finally she gave up and I
walked home. Very slowly, I walked home. My balls weren’t the size of Mason jars
yet, but they were on their way. My mom and dad got a look at me and wigged right
out -I was sort of surprised that they noticed anything at all, to tell the truth. Who were the boys? Could I pick them out of a line-up? That from my father, who never
missed Naked City and The Untouchables. I said I didn’t think I could pick the boys
out of a line-up. I said I was tired. Actually I think I was in shock–in shock and more than a little drunk from Aunt Evvie’s coffee, which must have been at least sixty per
cent VSOP brandy. I said I thought they were from some other town, or from ‘up the