“Not me!”
“Not me!”
“We ain’t got enough guns! Only the ones with the guns are in! The resta ya, get out! Yer black!”
“Gimme a gun!”
“I had it first!”
“C’mon, you meatballs — blacks is the best part. Ya get to charge.”
“Yeah, we get to lose!”
“Look — you can use beer cans for grenades. You can lob grenades!”
“Then you do it!”
“Well, somebody gotta be black, else we ain’t playin’. I’m counting. Time I hit ten, I wanna see five-a ya outta here. One…”
Russell counted. No one came out, not at “nine,” not at “ten,” not after “ten.” Maniac and Mars Bar stared in silence at the gunnery slots, where wide-open eyes began to appear, one pair atop another.
The three words that Mars Bar sneered, the joke that he spat out — “Yeah, bomb shelter” — did not even have the moment to themselves, for just then another word — “Geronimo!” — came plunging from the sky and landed with a floor-jarring, heart-stopping crash directly behind him. A Cobra had jumped from the hole, a fat, red-haired Cobra, who was now rolling on the floor and laughing so hard, as were all the Cobras, that his face matched the color of his hair. “Ya see him? Ya see him jump? I never seen ’ I never…See his face? Somebody check out his pants…check out his drawers…oh, man … oh … oh…”
Maniac had to wrap Mars Bar in a bear hug to keep him from charging the fat red roller. The laughter stopped as if cut by scissors. The Cobras were standing. John McNab sauntered forward. “You got a problem, sonny?”
“That wasn’t funny, John,” said Maniac. “He could’ve been hurt.”
McNab kept his eyes on Mars Bar. “I ain’t talkin’ to you, Magee. I’m talking to sonny here. Don’t you like our parties, sonny boy?”
Mars Bar strained against Maniac’s arms. “You ain’t got to worry about me comin’ to no more your parties, fishbelly. And you ain’t got to worry ‘bout me invading this pisshole. Anybody come to a block away, they faint from the smell.”
McNab advanced.
Maniac shouted: “John! You owe me one. I brought the boys back.”
McNab took another step, then stayed. The Cobras stayed, and Maniac, clamping the struggling Mars Bar for dear life, lugged him down a gauntlet of seething eyes to the door and the street.
Mars Bar wrenched free and stomped on ahead. Maniac followed. It was almost dark. High above, the streetlights were buzzing on, one by one.
After several blocks, Mars Bar wheeled. “You suckered me. You soften me up with them Pick-peoples, then bring me here. Wha’d you think? I was gonna cry? Okay, I come over. I did it. It’s done. And don’t you be comin’ ’round no more, ya hear me, fish? ’Cause you ain’t only seen me half bad yet.”
He turned and headed due east. Maniac walked another way.
It was a good question. What had he thought? What had he expected? A miracle? Well, come to think of it, maybe one had happened. While he was looking for one miracle, maybe another had snuck up on him. It happened as he was clamping and lugging Mars Bar down the gauntlet of Cobras, trying to keep him alive — and what was Mars Bar doing? Fighting him, Maniac, straining to get loose and bust some Cobras. Out-numbered, out-weighed, but not out-hearted. That’s when Maniac felt it — pride, for this East End warrior whom Maniac could feel trembling in his arms, scared as any normal kid would be, but not showing it to them. Yeah, you’re bad all right, Mars Bar. You’re more than bad. You’re good.
Maniac stopped. He had been walking in circles. It was dark. He turned one way, then another, for the briefest moment thinking to go home. Thinking, it’s time to go home now. Then remembering that once again he had no> home to go to.
43
He slept in the park that night, and for the next dozen or so. Sometimes in the buffalo shed; other times the band shell benches or the pavilion. The nights were warm now. June was on the way.
He ate when and where he could. For apples and carrots and day-old hamburger buns, you couldn’t beat the deer and buffalo pens. A new Acme had opened, and the bakery section always had a tray of free samples sitting on the counter.
And then there were always the Pickwells. It may have been an illusion, but it seemed that the hungrier he got, the farther Mrs. PickwelFs whistle traveled. Some dinnertimes, there was hardly a spot in town from which he could not hear it.
He read in the library. He joined pickup games in the park — baseball, basketball. School was letting out. There were more kids.
Mornings were the best. He would rise with the sun’s color, before the sun itself, before the bison, and set out. He came to think of these appleskin hours as his special time with the town. There was not a street or alleyway or house or store, not even a garage, that he did not recognize. His footsteps fell everywhere button the bridge over the Schuylkill, his eyes everywhere but on the P & W trolley trestle.
And the people — most of them he did not know by name or face, yet they revealed themselves to him even as they slept. He knew them by their windows and cars and porches and toys they left outside. But most of all, he knew them by their backyards. Flowers, weeds, junk, pet houses, tree houses, vegetable gardens, rubber tires, grass ranging from desert-sparse to shaggy to trim as a marine’s haircut — the backyards were as different, as individual as faces.
East End and West End, black and white would begin only when the alarm clocks rang. For now, before sunrise, there were no divisions, no barriers. There were only the people, the families, the town. His town. As much his town as anyone’s.
He knew he could be sleeping right then in the Beales’ house, or the Pickwells’, or even the McNabs’. But beyond that, for a few enchanted moments each newborn morning, he believed there was not a single home in Two Mills, not a single one, that would not happily welcome him to enter and to go upstairs and curl up between its sleepers. Maybe that’s why he left his band shell bench late one night in mid-June and went to someone’s backyard on Hamilton Street, someone whose leaf lettuce he had watched growing, and quietly opened the gate and closed it behind him and laid himself down on a white wicker loveseat on the back porch.
From then on, he slept in a different backyard or back porch every night. Once, finding the back door unlocked, he slept in a kitchen.
44
Ohe morning in early July, cruising down the appleskin hour, Maniac thought he heard footsteps other than his own. He stopped. Only the vast quietness responded.
It happened a few more times. Must be his own footfalls echoing down the row house canyons.
Two days later, passing an alley, he thought something moved at the other end. And once, turning onto a broad street, he had the feeling, more sense than sight, that something had just flashed around a corner two blocks away.
When these odd sensations continued for another morning or two, Maniac knew he was not alone.
So he was not totally surprised when, a few mornings later, he turned a corner and ran smack into another early-hour cruiser. No, it wasn’t the what that surprised him, it was the who: Mars Bar Thompson.
They quickly bounced off each other and went their separate ways. Neither paused. Neither said a word.
This was the first in a series of apparently random mergings. Intersections, alleyways — one never knew when he would come upon the other. Sometimes they found themselves running the same route, only a block apart. On one occasion, they trotted down the same street at the same time in the same direction, but on opposite sides of the street.
And then one day, as it happened, they each turned a particular corner at the same moment and headed off in the same direction, side by side. Still neither spoke. Not even their eyes met. They jogged silently for a block, then veered apart.
The next time they dovetailed, they stayed that way for two blocks, then three blocks, and so on. No words, no looks, just the rhythmic slapping of their sneaker soles upon the sidewalk and the pulsing duet of
their breathings. Stride for stride, shoulder to shoulder, breath for breath, till they were matching on all points, a harnessed pair, two runners become one.
Morning after morning it happened this way — the two of them dovetailing at an intersection, and, without the slightest hitch in stride, cruising off together. Though each face showed no awareness of the other, they were in fact minutely sensitive to each other. If Mars Bar cranked up the pace just a notch, Maniac would pick it up within a stride; if Maniac inched ahead, Mars Bar was there. If one veered to the left or right, the other followed like a shadow. One day one was the leader, the next day the other.
One day Mars Bar would lead Maniac down the river, down the tracks, past the railroad gondolas, each with its mountain of coal, to the rolling mill at the steel plant where his father worked. Another day, Maniac would head for the townships to the north and west, the farmlands of the county, where dew sparkled on spider webs, and nature was doing such fresh and wonderful things that you could almost hear the long, neat congregations of corn clapping “A-men” and “A-men!”
When the workingpeople began leaving their houses, the daybreak boys diverged, Mars Bar to the East End, Maniac to wherever.
A week passed. A second week. Morning after morning. Stride for stride, breath by breath. Never a word, never a glance. Each believing the other simply happened to be going where he was going.
They were cruising Main Street one morning, passing the Grand movie theater, when Piper McNab came screaming down the middle of the empty street. He was wild-eyed and crying and soaking wet. His feet were slathered in coal-black mud. He shrieked and babbled at them, but he made no sense, so they just followed as he raced frantically back up the street. As they ran, the belchlike toot of a whistle grew louder and louder.
He led them to the corner of Main and Swede, to where the platform of the P & W trolley terminal hung high above the sidewalk. He burst into the terminal building and up the steps. In a moment Maniac and Mars Bar were on the platform, gasping and following Piper’s pointing finger down the tracks. What they saw pulled the fragments of Piper’s babble together.
The boys had been playing Bombs Away. Piper’s part was to sail the raft down the river. Russell’s part was to wait on the trolley trestle that spanned the river, and when Piper passed underneath, bomb away from a bucketful of rocks.
Everything went as planned — unless you count Russell’s failing to sink the raft, and Piper’s practically drowning trying to beach it — until Piper returned to the terminal to find Russell still out on the trestle. Apparently, without the target below to focus on, Russell had suddenly discovered how high he was. One false step, and he could slip right between the ties to the river.
And that’s where Russell was now, out on the middle of the trestle, high over the water, frozen in terror, not even a railing to cling to, responding neither to Piper’s cries nor to the red-and-yellow P & W trolley, which also occupied the trestle, idling and tooting about twenty feet away.
Piper pulled at Maniac. “Save him! Save him!”
Mars Bar stared with growing astonishment at Maniac, whose wide, unblinking eyes were fixed on the trestle, yet somehow did not seem to register what was there. Nor did he seem to hear Piper pleading. With the drenched, mud-footed kid clawing at him, he turned without a word, without a gesture, and left the platform and went downstairs. Shortly he appeared on the sidewalk below. He crossed Main and continued walking slowly up Swede, Piper screaming after him from the end of the platform.
45
“Magee!….Magee! …”
Maniac’s first groggled thought was that it was the buffalo calling to him. Then he thought, It’s the Superintendent. He’s discovered me, and he’s come to kick me out.
He propped himself on his elbow, swatted a straw from his ear, and gave a better listen.
“Magee! … Magee!”
Mars Bar.
It was the second night following the morning at the trestle. Maniac had been asleep in the buffalo lean-to.
He stood.
“Magee!”
“Where are you?”
“Here. Over here.”
He headed toward the voice over the hoof-chopped earth. The moon was full. He could see Mars Bar’s dark form against the fence. Then he could see his eyes.
“What’re you doing here?”
“I been lookin’ for ya. I heard you hung out here.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“Amanda Beale. You really sleep here, man?”
“What do you want?”
“Where’s the buffaloes? I can’t see .”
“They’re sleeping. Like every other person that’s got sense. What’re you doing out here at this time of night?”
“I snuck out. I’m not there when they wake up, they’ll figure I’m out running, like usual. Ain’t you afraid in there?”
“No.”
Both fell silent. Crickettalk and fireflies held the night.
“Magee?”
“Yeah?”
“I got to ask you something.”
“Go ahead.”
“Why’d you … why didn’t you go after the kid? Why’d you go away?”
Maniac didn’t answer.
“Listen, man, I know you wasn’t scared. I know it. So I had to come ask ya.”
Maniac’s voice came faintly, “Is he okay?”
“I asked you first.”
Maniac drew a long breath. “You want to come in?”
Mars Bar laughed. “You kidding? Ain’t no buffalo gonna eat this dude.”
“They don’t eat people.”
“You come out here, man.”
Maniac climbed the fence. He started to walk. Mars Bar walked with him. Maniac told him the story of his parents’ death. He told about his problem with the trestle, how he had learned to avoid it. “And then, all of a sudden, there I was, on the platform, looking out at it, closer to it than I ever was before, up on the same level. I always saw it from below before. Now I was up there, too, where they were, looking down, and it was more real than ever. The nightmare was worse than ever. I saw the trolley coming … saw it … f-falling … them … them …”
They walked in silence past the silo-shaped cage of the broken-winged golden eagle.
Mars Bar swallowed hard. His voice was hoarse. “I knew you wasn’t scared.”
Maniac sniffed. “I don’t remember much. Next thing I knew, I was somewhere on Swede Street.”
“Somebody come down the East End like you did, all by hisself, a fishbelly, get all up in my face” — he rippled a stick along the deer-pen fence — “I knew scared wasn’t it.”
“So,” said Maniac, “what happened?”
Mars Bar laughed, wagged his head. “Happened? Man, I still don’t believe it.” He rippled the fence. “That little honky, he looks at me all his crybaby face and says okay, can I go out and get his brother? I look around, like, is somebody else here? I says to him, ‘Who you talkin’ to? Me?’ I’m just pullin’ his chain, only he don’t know it. ’Cause I’m ticked a little, y’know, ‘cause there he was hollerin’ for you up the street, and there I am standing right alongside the damn stupid white potata, understand what I’m sayin’?”
Maniac nodded, and out of the darkness came the strangest sound — a kind of amplified gulp.
Mars Bar jumped. “What’s that?”
“Emu,” said Maniac. “There.”
Behind the nearest fence loomed a tall, thin neck topped by a small head. “E-what?”
“E-mu. Second-largest bird in the world, after the ostrich. They’re from Australia.”
“I don’t remember studyin’ about no emu. You buddies with all these dudes?”
“No, just the buffalo. So, go ahead, what happened?”
“What happened” — Mars Bar snorted — “what happened was, I went out and rescued the dumb fish. Like to get myself kilt.”
Maniac touched Mars Bar’s arm. “He’s okay?”
Mars Bar s
nickered. “Yeah, he’s okay, but that ain’t the main part. The main part is, how he was all grabbin’ on to me comin’ off them tracks. Shakin’. Shiverin’. Huggin’. Like he wanted to climb inside me. I was afraid” — he shook his head, giggled — “afraid the fishbelly was gonna kiss me.”
They laughed. Maniac tried to picture it, the two of them, making their way across the trestle, tie by tie, arms wrapped around each other.
“And even that ain’t the mainest part,” said Mars Bar, his voice rising in wonder. “Even when we got off, the midget wouldn’t let me go. ‘We’re off it,’ I says to him. ‘You’re rescued.’ But all he does is grab me harder, like he’s a octopus or somethin’. Off the platform, down the steps, out to the street — he’s still doin’ it. I couldn’t pry him off nohow.”
“So,” said Maniac, “what did you do?”
“Wha’d I do? I took him home.”
Maniac stopped dead. “What?”
Mars Bar shrugged. “I figured, let my mom pry him off me. ’Course, the other one had to come too. But I made him leave them muddy sneakers outside.” He put his nose to a fence. “What’s in there? I don’t see nothin’.”
“Prairie Dog Town. They’re underground. So, what then?”
“So, my mother took over. She pried the one off me, and soon’s she does, he jumps right onto her, like a octopus. I go to pull him off and she gets all mad at me and says let him go, let him go. She gets the wet one dried off. Takes off his clothes and puts my old stuff on him. Stuff she been savin’ case I get a little brother someday. But I won’t, ’cause my mom can’t have no babies no more. And I ain’t even come to the craziest part yet.”
“What’s that?”
“They didn’t wanna go home. They stayed all day. My mother babyin’ ’em, feedin’ ’em. I tell her not to, she swats me away. Sometimes my mom ain’t got no sense. She makes me play games with them. Monopoly and stuff. Finally my father drives them home. It’s after dark. They’re getting out the car, and know what they say to me — I’m in the car too — “ He wagged his head. “They ask me to come in and play that game-a theirs. Rebels. They, like, beg me. They say, ‘Come on — pleeeeese — if you play with us, we’ll let you be white.’ You believe that?”