was steady again.
The roaring downpour and the accompanying thunder had completely covered the
sound of cars approaching along the Back Harlow Road, which lay bare yards beyond this
boggy tangle. It likewise covered the crackle-crunch of the underbrush as they blundered
through it from the dead end where they had parked.
And the first we knew of them was Ace Merrill’s voice raised above the tumult of the
storm, saying: ‘Well what the fuck do you know about this?’
26
We all jumped like we had been goosed and Vern cried out -he admitted later that he
thought, for just a second, that the voice had come from the dead boy.
On the far side of the boggy patch, where the woods took up again, masking the butt
end of the road, Ace Merrill and Eyeball Chambers stood together, half-obscured by a
pouring grey curtain of rain. They were both wearing red nylon high school jackets, the
kind you can buy in the office if you’re a regular student, the same kind they give away
free to varsity sports players. Their da haircuts had been plastered back against their
skulls and a mixture of rainwater and Vitalis ran down their cheeks like ersatz tears.
‘Sumbitch!’ Eyeball said. That’s my little brother!’
Chris was staring at Eyeball with his mouth open. His shirt, wet, limp and dark, was
still tied around his skinny middle. His pack, stained a darker green by the rain, was
hanging against his naked shoulderblades.
‘You get away, Rich,’ he said in a trembling voice. ‘We found him. We got dibs.’
‘Fuck your dibs. We’re gonna report ‘im.’
‘No you’re not,’ I said. I was suddenly furious with them, turning up this way at the last
minute. If we’d thought about it, we’d have known something just like this was going to
happen … but this was one time, somehow, that the older, bigger kids weren’t going to
steal it – to take something they wanted as if by divine right, as if their easy way was the
right way, the only way. They had come in cars – I think that was what made me angriest
They had come in cars. “There’s four of us, Eyeball. You just try.’
‘Oh, we’ll try, don’t worry,’ Eyeball said, and the trees shook behind him and Ace,
Charlie Hogan and Vern’s brother Billy stepped through them, cursing and wiping water
out of their eyes. I felt a lead ball drop into my belly. It grew bigger as Jack Mudgett and
Fuzzy Brackowicz stepped out behind Charlie and Billy.
‘Here we all are,’ Ace said, grinning. ‘So you just -‘
‘ ‘VERN!!’ Billy Tessio cried in a terrible, accusing, my-justice-cometh-and-that-right-early voice. He made a pair of dripping fists. ‘You little sonofawhore! You was under the
porch! Cock-knockerl’
Vern flinched.
Charlie Hogan waxed positively lyrical: ‘You little keyhole-peeping cunt-licking
bungwipe! I ought to beat the living shit out of you!’
‘Yeah? Well, try it!’ Teddy brayed suddenly. His eyes were crazily alight behind his
rainspotted glasses. ‘Come on, fightcha for ‘im! Come on! Come on, big men!’
Billy and Charlie didn’t need a second invitation. They started forward together and
Vern flinched again – no doubt visualizing the ghosts of Beatings Past and Beatings Yet
To Come. He flinched … but hung tough. He was with his friends, and we had been
through a lot, and we hadn’t got here in a couple of cars.
But Ace held Billy and Charlie back, simply by touching each of them on the shoulder.
‘Now listen, you guys,’ Ace said. He spoke patiently, just as if we weren’t all standing
in a roaring rainstorm. ‘There’s more of us than there are of you. We’re bigger. We’ll give
you one chance to just blow away. I don’t give a fuck where. Just make like a tree and
leave.’
Chris’s brother giggled and Fuzzy clapped Ace on the back in appreciation of his great
wit. The Sid Caesar of the jd set.
“Cause we’re takin’ him.’ Ace smiled gently, and you could imagine him smiling that same gentle smile just before breaking his cue over the head of some uneducated punk
who had made the terrible mistake of lipping off while Ace was lining up a shot. ‘If you
go, well take him. If you stay, well beat the piss outta you and still take him. Besides,’ he
added, trying to gild the thuggery with a little righteousness, ‘Charlie and Billy found him,
so it’s their dibs anyway.’
‘They was chicken!’ Teddy shot back. ‘Vern told us about it! They was fuckin’ chicken
right outta their fuckin’ minds!’ He screwed his face up into a terrified, snivelling parody
of Charlie Hogan.’ “I wish we never boosted that car! I wish we never went on no Back
Harlow Road to whack off a piece! Oh Billee, what are we gonna do? Oh Billee, I think I
just made a pile in my Fruit of the Looms! Oh Billee -“‘
That’s it,’ Charlie said, starting forward again. His face was knotted with rage and
sullen embarrassment. ‘Kid, whatever your name is, get ready to reach down your fuckin’
throat the next time you need to pick your nose.’
I looked wildly down at Ray Brower. He stared calmly up into the rain with his one
eye, below us but above it all. The thunder was still booming steadily, but the rain had
begun to slack off.
‘What do you say, Gordie?’ Ace asked. He was holding Charlie lightly by the arm, the
way an accomplished trainer would restrain a vicious dog. ‘You must have at least some
of your brother’s sense. Tell these guys to back off. I’ll let Charlie beat up the four eyes el
punko a little bit and then we all go about our business. What do you say?’
He was wrong to mention Denny. I had wanted to reason with him, to point out what
Ace knew perfectly well, that we had every right to take Billy and Charlie’s dibs since
Vern had heard them giving said dibs away. I wanted to tell him how Vern and I had
almost gotten run down by a freight train on the trestle which spans the Castle River.
About Milo Pressman and his fearless – if stupid – sidekick, Chopper the Wonder-Dog.
About the bloodsuckers, too. I guess all I really wanted to tell him was come on, Ace, fair
is fair. You know that. But he had to bring Denny into it, and what I heard coming out of
my mouth instead of sweet reason was my own death warrant: ‘Suck my fat one, you
cheap dime-store hood.’
Ace’s mouth formed a perfect O of surprise – the expression was so unexpectedly
prissy that under other circumstances it would have been a laft riot, so to speak. All of the
others – on both sides of the bog – stared at me. dumbfounded.
Then Teddy screamed gleefully: “That’s telling ‘im, Gordie! Oh boy! Too cool!’
I stood numbly, unable to believe it It was like some crazed understudy had shot
onstage at the critical moment and declaimed lines that weren’t even in the play. Telling a
guy to suck was as bad as you could get without resorting to his mother. Out of the corner
of my eye I saw that Chris had unshouldered his knapsack and was digging into it
frantically, but I didn’t get it — not then, anyway.
‘Okay,’ Ace said softly. ‘Let’s take ’em. Don’t hurt nobody but the Lachance kid. I’m
gonna break both his fuckin’ arms.’
I went dead cold. I didn’t piss myself the way I had on the railroad trestle, but it must
have been because I had nothing inside to let out He meant it, you see; the years between
then and now have changed my mind about a lot of things, but not about that. When Ace
said he was going to break both of my arms, he absolutely meant it.
They started to walk towards us through the slackening rain. Jackie Mudgett took a
DeMano switchknife out of his pocket and hit the chrome. Six inches of steel flicked out,
dove-grey in the afternoon half-light Vern and Teddy dropped suddenly into fighting
crouches on either side of me. Teddy did so eagerly, Vern with a desperate, cornered
grimace on his face.
The big kids advanced in a line, their feet splashing through the bog, which was now
one big sludgy puddle because of the storm. The body of Ray Brower lay at our feet like a
waterlogged barrel. I got ready to fight… and that was when Chris fired the pistol he had
hawked out of his old man’s dresser.
KA-BLAMl
God, what a wonderful sound that was! Charlie Hogar jumped right up into the air.
Ace Merrill, who had been staring straight at me, now jerked around and looked at Chris.
His mouth made that O again. Eyeball looked absolutely astounded.
‘Hey, Chris, that’s Daddy’s,’ he said. ‘You’re gonna get the tar whaled out of you —’