That Was Then, This Is Now

  Outside I spotted M&M at the corner. There were three guys trailing him. When you see something like that around here you know right away somebody is about to get jumped. In this case, it was M&M.

  "Come on," Mark said, and we cut through an alley so as to come up behind those guys.

  Three against three. The odds would have been even except that M&M was one of those nonviolent types who practiced what he preached, and me and Mark weren't carrying weapons. We slowed down to a walk when we came to the end of the alley. I could hear the voices of the three guys who were following M&M, and I recognized one of them.

  "Hey, flower child, turn around." They were taunting him, but M&M just kept right on moving.

  "It's Shepard," Mark whispered to me. We were waiting at the end of the alley for them to come by. They didn't. They must have had M&M up against the wall. We could hear them.

  "Hey, hippie, don't you answer when you're spoken to? That ain't nice."

  "Curly, why don't you leave me alone?" M&M sounded very patient. I moved over to the other side of the alley just in time to see Curly pull out a switchblade and reach over and cut through the rawhide string on M&M's peace medal. It fell to the ground. M&M reached down to pick it up, and Curly brought his knee up sharply and hit M&M in the face.

  Me and Mark looked at each other, and Mark flashed me a grin. We both liked fights. We ran out and jumped on them, and the one we didn't get took off, which was a wise thing for him to do. Since we had surprised them, it wasn't too hard to get them pinned. I had Curly Shepard in a stranglehold with one arm twisted behind his back, while Mark had the other guy pinned on the ground.

  "How'd you like a broken arm, Shepard?" I said through gritted teeth, careful not to loosen my grip. His switchblade had fallen on the sidewalk, but I didn't know what all he might be carrying. He liked to play rough.

  "O.K., you proved your point. Let us go, Douglas." Curly said a few more things that I'm not going to repeat. He must have figured out who it was twisting his arm when he saw Mark. Me and Mark were always together. Curly had a special grudge against me anyway. I used to go with his sister; she says she broke up with me, which was the truth, but I was spreading it around that I broke up with her and was giving all kinds of cool reasons. Curly was a little dumb--he belonged to a gang led by his brother Tim and known as the Shepard Gang. Really original. Tim was all right--at least he had a few brains--but I considered Curly a dumb hood. "Look, we didn't hurt him."

  That was a lie, because M&M was sitting there against the wall and already his cheek was swelling up and turning purple. He was trying to tie the ends of the rawhide string together and his hands were shaking.

  "Let them go," said M&M. "I'm O.K."

  I gave Curly's arm an extra twist for good measure and then gave him a shove that almost sent him sprawling. Mark let the other guy up, but when he was almost to his feet, Mark gave him a good swift kick. They left, cussing us out, partly in English and partly in sign language.

  Mark was helping M&M up. "Come on, kid," he said easily. "Let's get you home."

  The whole side of M&M's face was bruised, but he gave us one of his rare, wistful grins. "Thanks, you guys."

  Mark suddenly laughed. "Hey, look what I got." He waved three one-dollar bills at me.

  "Where did you get that?" I asked, although I knew good and well where he got it. Mark was very quick; nobody had to teach him how to hot-wire a car--or to pick a pocket.

  "It was a donation," Mark said seriously, "for the Cause."

  This was an old joke, but M&M fell for it. "What cause?"

  "'Cause we owe it to Charlie," Mark said, and M&M almost laughed, but instead winced with pain. I was really feeling good. I could quit worrying about Charlie's beating us up.

  Mark suddenly poked me. "You still in the mood for a little action?"

  "Sure," I said. Mark motioned toward the next intersection. There was a black guy standing there, waiting for the light to change. "We could jump him," Mark said, but suddenly M&M spoke up.

  "You make me sick! You just rescued me from some guys who were going to beat me up because I'm different from them, and now you're going to beat up someone because he's different from you. You think I'm weird--well, you're the weird ones."

  Both Mark and I had stopped walking and were staring at M&M. He was really shook up. He was crying. I couldn't have been more stunned if he had begun to dissolve. You don't see guys crying around here, not unless they have a lot better reason than M&M had. He suddenly took off, running, not looking back. I started to take a few steps after him, but Mark caught me by the arm. "Leave him alone," Mark said. "He's just all uptight from getting jumped."

  "Yeah," I said. That made sense. That had happened to me before, and I could remember how scared it could get you. Besides, M&M was only a kid, just turned thirteen.

  Mark picked something up off the ground. It was M&M's peace medal. It must have dropped off when M&M started running. He hadn't tied the ends of the string together very well.

  "Remind me to tell him I have this," Mark said, stuffing the medal and the string in his pocket. "Let's stop by and give this three bucks to Charlie before I buy some cigarettes with it."

  "O.K.," I said. I didn't feel quite as good as I had before. I was thinking about what M&M had said about beating up people because they were different. There was a lot of truth to that. The rich kids in town used to drive around over in our part of the city and look for people to beat up. Then a year or so ago a couple of kids got killed in that mess and the fad slowly died out. But there were still gang fights around here and social-club rumbles, and things like Shepard's jumping M&M happened every day. I didn't mind it much, unless I was the one getting mugged. I liked fights.

  "Come on," Mark called, "maybe there's somebody to hustle in Charlie's." I grinned and ran to catch up with him. Mark was my best buddy and I loved him like a brother.

  2

  The next afternoon after school Mark and me went downtown to the hospital to see my mother. She had just had a big operation, one that cost a lot of money. We had sold our car, an old Chevy--our TV, a little black-and-white job--and anything else we could find to sell, but we were still short of money. I had been trying for weeks to find a job. Mark scrounged around and came up with some money--I didn't ask him where he got it, and he didn't tell me, so I figured he stole it somewhere. Mark was really bad about stealing things. He stole things and sold them, or stole them and kept them, or stole things and gave them away. It didn't bother me. He was too smart to get caught. He had been stealing things since he was six years old. I wasn't above taking a pack of cigarettes from a drugstore, but that was about it. I was the hustler and Mark was the thief. We were a great pair. One thing about it, though. Mark couldn't see anything wrong with stealing stuff. I could. It didn't much matter to me whether or not Mark was a thief, but I still felt that stealing was wrong--at least it's against the law. I think Mark was only dimly aware of that fact. Stealing was a game to him, something to do for fun and profit, and he was careful not to get caught because that was one of the rules.

  So that was how we lived, stealing stuff and selling stuff, trying to save money and eat at the same time. I never thought about it then, but I can see now that it was a pretty rough time for us.

  Anyway, Mark and I hitched a ride almost all the way to the hospital. The guy who gave us a ride was a hippie with long hair and a beard and a Volkswagen bus. Those buses are very big with hippies, I don't know why. The guy said his name was Randy and that he went to college in town, majoring in English. I figure he was a pretty brave guy. Mark and I looked like tough guys--the kind who go around jumping hippies, which we had done once before. We had gone over to the city park where the hippies hang out, just to beat up somebody. I wouldn't do it again though. I hadn't realized those guys refuse to fight back, and what happened to the one we got hold of, it made me sick. Mark felt the same way. So after that we left them alone.

  Randy was telling us about this really cool
house where a bunch of his friends lived, an old house they all rented and everybody who wanted to could live there and groove in peace and good will. I didn't much believe him--there had to be a few sponges in a setup like that--and living with a bunch of people would get on my nerves, especially if they were hairy and dirty. But I was polite and said, "Sounds cool," even though it didn't particularly appeal to me. Mark was interested, though, and asked Randy all kinds of questions about where this place was and who all lived there and if he knew about any other places like that. Mark was interested in lots of things--he knew all about the Old West and was nutty about Warner Brothers' cartoons--so it didn't bug me when he got all excited about hippie living.

  When we got out of the bus Randy held up two fingers and said, "Peace," and Mark held up M&M's peace medal, which he was wearing around his neck as a joke, and made a wisecrack. Then we looked at each other and cracked up laughing. But we weren't being hateful; it was just funny.

  Mom was glad to see us, but she hadn't been lacking company. We had the kind of neighborhood where everyone knew everybody else's business, and all the ladies came up to see her, at least two a day. They also brought me and Mark junk like pies and potato salad. I got the pies and Mark took whatever else there was, since he couldn't stand sweet stuff. Cokes and an occasional M&M, just to be polite to M&M, was as much sweet stuff as he'd take. As a result, I was putting on weight--I wasn't in much danger of getting fat since it seemed like I was growing an inch taller a week--and Mark was staying as slight and slender as ever. You'd never guess Mark was as strong as he was by looking at him, but I knew from our wrestling matches that he was as tough as a piece of leather.

  As usual, the last thing on Mom's mind was herself. We had no more than got there and got hugged when she started telling us about this poor kid across the hall who never had anybody visiting him.

  "How do you know that?" I asked. "There's so many people comin' and goin' around here. How do you know about some kid across the hall?"

  "The nurse told me. Poor kid, he's not any older than you and Mark--"

  It figured--I mean her finding out about it. If there was a lame dog within three miles, she'd find it. It didn't bug me much though. Thanks to her, I had a brother.

  "Bryon, promise me you'll go over and see him."

  I frowned. "Look, I don't know the guy. I'm not going to just walk in and say, 'Hi there. Want a visitor? My mother tells me you don't have any.'"

  "Bryon," Mom said, "just go talk to him. He won't talk much to the nurses. He's been hurt pretty badly, poor thing."

  "I'll go see him," Mark said. "Bryon'll come with me." I gave him a dirty look but he continued, "Who knows, maybe one of us'll end up in the hospital sometime with nobody to come and see us."

  That was just the kind of junk my mother eats up, and Mark knew it. When we left I stopped him in the hall. "What's the idea of telling her you were going to go see that kid?"

  Mark shrugged. "I am going to. Why not?"

  This was typical of Mark as it wasn't typical of anyone else. "Well, I'm not going. I'm going down to the snack bar here and get a hamburger. Ain't you hungry?"

  Mark shook his head. "Naw. I'll meet you down there later."

  I took the elevator to the basement, where the snack bar was. I sat on a stool at the counter--after sitting at the bar at Charlie's I had got used to it--reading the menu over and over, thinking about all the food I'd get if I could. I loved to eat. I could put away more food than anyone I knew. I was five-ten at sixteen and still growing, but I went through my lanky period at fourteen and I had a good build, of which I was proud. I should have gone out for football, I guess, but it didn't much appeal to me. I liked neighborhood football games, but all that practice for the real thing seemed like a bore to me. Besides, I knew I couldn't put up with a coach telling me how to play. I never have been able to accept authority. I don't know why. I figure it was because of this cop--these two cops--who beat me up once when I was thirteen years old. I had gone to the movies with these other guys--I forget where Mark was--and we drank a fifth of cherry vodka in Coke and got drunk. That stuff tasted terrible, but I was a dumb kid and I drank it just to show I was as super-tuff as the rest of them. When the movie was over and I was staggering around alone on the streets in the dark, these two cops picked me up, drove me out to a hill on the other side of town, slapped me around, and left me there. I never forgot it. It didn't stop me from drinking, but it sure ruined any respect I ever had for cops. Yeah, sure there are good cops somewhere. I just never met any. Ever since then I've made it a point to mouth off to cops. That's probably why I never met any good ones.

  So I was sitting there, reading the menu, when I heard a voice say, "Can I take your order?" and I looked up at this really cute chick. She gave me a big smile and said, "Hi, Bryon! What are you doing here?" I was racking my brain trying to think where I knew her from; she did seem kind of familiar, so to stall for time I said, "I'm here to see my old lady. She's just getting over an operation. I didn't know you worked here."

  "I just started this week. But you knew I just got back, didn't you?"

  "Oh, yeah," I said, about to go crazy trying to remember who she was. She had this groovy long dark hair with a sheen to it like charcoal--long hair with bangs just drives me crazy. There aren't too many chicks who can wear their hair like that and still look good. And she had these big, beautiful gray eyes, dark gray with black eyelashes and the eyelashes were really long, but they weren't fake. I am a long-practiced studier of girls, and I can tell about things like that.

  "Gosh, you've grown," she said. "You must be a foot taller than when I saw you last."

  "Yeah, well, it's been a long time," I said. If I had grown a foot it must have been. "How you been doing?"

  "Oh, pretty good. I was lucky to get this job. Listen, give me your order. I'm not supposed to stand around talking to the customers."

  "Sure. I'll have a hamburger and a Pepsi."

  She took my order and left, and I was about to lose my mind. She couldn't have been someone I had dated--I date a lot of girls, but I was sure I could remember them if I saw them again. Anyway, she seemed friendly, and, after you break up with someone, she's not usually friendly. She seemed so familiar I could have sworn I'd seen her recently. Whoever she was, I wanted to see her again. I had already noted that she wasn't wearing a boy's ring around her neck, or any other sign that she was somebody's personal property--I'm in the habit of looking for things like that. I have gotten into some tight spots with boyfriends I didn't even know existed.

  "Here's your hamburger."

  I looked up at her and she gave me this really great smile, a smile that lit up her face. I knew I'd seen that smile recently, and then it struck me who it was, and I was so surprised that I said it out loud: "Cathy!"

  "Yeah," she said, almost as surprised as I was, "who'd you think it was?"

  "The last time I saw you you had short hair and braces," I said, forgetting that a lady-killer should never remind a girl of her gawky age when she was skinny and ugly, or fat and ugly, or short-haired with a mouth full of metal.

  "Yeah, that's the truth. Bryon, you mean you didn't recognize me?"

  "No, I didn't." I couldn't see why that should shock her so much. Even back in the days of braces and short hair we weren't exactly best friends. I had never paid any attention to her. "I just recognized you because you look so much like M&M when you smile."

  "I am going to take that as a compliment," she said, giving me my check. "M&M is a beautiful child and he has a beautiful smile to match his mind."

  "He's a good kid," I agreed. She turned to go, and I said, "Wait!" without thinking, so when she turned, I stuttered a little. "I mean--I haven't seen you in a while--I'd like to talk to you sometime--" I really wasn't living up to my self-image. I never stutter.

  "All right," she said, "we'll talk sometime."

  I wanted to ask when, but didn't. You should never be too eager with chicks. It gives them ideas.

/>   I waited around for Mark, but he didn't show up so I took the elevator back to Mom's floor. I went and looked in the room across from Mom's where that kid was supposed to be. I saw him all right, but no sign of Mark. That kid had been hurt bad. He had bandages around his head and across one eye, both arms in slings, and stitches in his lower lip.

  "Hey, are you Bryon?" He looked at me out of his good eye. "Mark said to wait for him here; he'll be right back. He went across the street to the drugstore to buy me some comics."

  I could tell from the way he talked that he came from a neighborhood like mine. This was likely--it was a charity hospital. "Come on in," he said. "Pull up a chair."

  I did. I didn't know what to say to him.

  "You're Mark's brother? You don't look much alike."

  For a minute I really felt good about Mark's telling this guy we were brothers. Of course, we didn't look alike--Mark with his gold hair and strange gold eyes and slight, tense body, and me, big and husky with dark brown hair and eyes--so I said, "No, I guess we don't."

  "I got a brother--older--we don't look much alike either."

  I looked around for a No Smoking sign. "Can I smoke in here?"

  "Sure, as long as you don't get caught. Would you mind giving me a few puffs?"

  "O.K.," I said. I lit up a cigarette and put it between his lips. When I took it back he said, "Thanks. I haven't had a cigarette in a week. My name's Mike Chambers."

  "Mine's Bryon Douglas. Man, you look awful. What happened?" I asked. I was beginning to be glad I had come in after all. It must have been rough, being kept in a hospital that gave you the creeps, with nobody to talk to.

  "I got beat up," he said with a wry smile.

  I couldn't believe it. I thought he'd been in a car wreck or something. "What does the other guy look like?" I said finally.

  "It's a long story," Mike said. "You got time for a long story?"

  "Sure," I said. I really do like listening to stuff that's happened to other people. I guess that's why I like to read.