"Eleven. I can remember it. I was in the Little Leaguers."
The Little Leaguers was the peewee branch of the local gang, the Packers. Gang stuff was out of style now.
"Man," I said, "a gang really meant somethin' back then."
"Meant gettin' sent to the hospital once a week."
Okay, so he was edgy. So was I. I was the one doing the fighting, after all. "You're almost talkin' chicken, Smokey," I said.
"I'm almost talkin' sense."
I kept quiet. It took a lot of self-control, but I kept quiet. Smokey got nervous, since quiet ain't my natural state.
"Lookit," he said, "I'm goin', ain't I?"
I guess the thought that he was really going made him brave again, 'cause he went on: "If you think this is gonna turn out to be a rumble, you're crazy. You and Biff are gonna go at it and the rest of us is gonna watch. I doubt too many's gonna show up for that much."
"Sure," I said, only half listening to him. We had come to the pet store. We turned into the alley that ran alongside of it, crawled through a hole in the back fence and came out onto the vacant lot that led right down to the river. The lot was damp and it stank. The area around here always stinks from that river, but it's worse in the lot. Further down, a bunch of plants and factories dump their garbage into the water. You don't notice the stink if you live there awhile. It's just extra strong in that lot.
Smokey was right--only four of the guys who were in Benny's were there waiting for us. B.J. looked around and said, "I thought Steve was gonna be here." He said it sarcastic. They never could understand why I let Steve hang around.
"So, maybe he's late," I said. I didn't really expect him to show up, except that he said he would.
Across the field was Biff and his gang. I counted them, just like the Motorcycle Boy taught me to. Know everything you can about the enemy. There was six. Even enough. I was getting so high on excitement I couldn't stand still.
"Rusty-James!"
It was Biff, coming across the lot to meet me. Oh, man, I couldn't wait. I was going to stomp him good. It seemed like my fists ached to be pounding something. "I'm here!" I called.
"Not for long, you punk," Biff said. He was close enough for me to see him clearly. My eyes get supersharp before a fight. Everything gets supersharp before a fight--like with a little effort I could fly. During a fight, though, I almost go blind; everything turns red.
Biff was sixteen, but not any bigger than me; husky; his arms hung off his shoulders like an ape's. He had a pug-ugly face and wiry blond hair. He was dancing around worse than I was.
"He's been poppin' pills," Smokey said behind me.
Now, I hate fighting hopped-up people. They're crazy. You get crazy enough in a fight without being doped up. You fight some cat who's been washing down bennies with sneaky pete and they can't tell if you kill 'em. Your only advantage is a little more control. I never do dope, as a rule. Dope ruined the gangs.
Biff looked high. The light from the street-lamps was bouncing off his eyes in a way that made him look crazy.
"I hear you're lookin' for me," I said. "Here I am."
I've done this lots of times before. I'd get in a fight about once a week. I hadn't lost a fight in almost two years. But Biff was a little tougher than the usual kid. If the gang wars had still been going on he would have been leader of the Devilhawks. He didn't like anybody to forget that, either. You can't take it for granted you're going to stomp some snotty-nosed seventh-grader, so when you go up against somebody like Biff Wilcox you think about it.
We started in on the warm up, cussing each other out, name-calling, threats. This was according to the rules. I don't know who made up the rules.
"Come on," I said finally. I like to get down to business. "Take a swing at me."
"Take a swing at you?" Biff's hand went to his back pocket and came out flashing silver. "I'm gonna cut you to ribbons."
I didn't have a knife with me. Most people didn't knife-fight these days. I usually carried a switchblade, but I got caught with it at school and they took it away from me and I hadn't gotten around to getting another one. Biff should of told me it was going to be knife-fighting. God that made me mad! People don't pay attention to the rules anymore.
Biff's friends were cheering and screaming and my friends were grumbling and I said, "Anybody lend me a blade?" I still thought I could win--Biff wouldn't have pulled a knife if he thought he could win in a fair fight. All I had to do was equal things up.
Nobody had a knife. That's what comes of not gang-fighting. People are never prepared.
Somebody said, "Here's a bike chain," and I held back my hand for it, never taking my eyes off Biff.
Just like I expected, he tried to make the most of that moment, lunging at me. I was quick enough, though, grabbing the chain, dodging the knife, and sticking out my foot to trip him. He just stumbled, and whirled around, jabbing at me. I sucked in my gut and wrapped the chain around his neck, jerking him to the ground. All I wanted to do was get the knife away from him. I'd kill him later. First things first. I jumped on top of him, caught his arm as he swung the knife at me, and for what seemed like hours we wrestled for that knife. I took a risk I thought was worth taking and tried holding his knife hand with one arm, and used the other to smash his face. It worked, he loosened his hold on the knife long enough for me to get it away from him. It fell a few feet away from us, far enough away that I didn't bother trying to reach for it, which was good. If I had gotten a hold of it, I'd have killed Biff. As it was, I was pounding his brains out. If he'd give up on that damned knife he might of stood a chance; he was older than me, and just as tough. But he didn't come there to fight fair, so instead of fighting back, he'd just keep trying to get away and crawl over to the knife. Gradually I started to calm down, the red tinge to everything went away, I could hear everyone screaming and yelling. I looked at Biff. His whole face was bloody and swollen.
"You give?" I sat back on his gut and waited. I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him. He didn't say anything, just lay there breathing heavy, watching me out of the one eye that wasn't swollen shut. Everybody was quiet. I could feel his gang tensed, ready, like a dog pack about to be set loose. One word from Biff would do it. I glanced over to Smokey. He was ready. My gang would fight, even if they weren't crazy about the idea.
Then a voice I knew said, "Hey, what's this? I thought we signed a treaty." The Motorcycle Boy was back. People cleared a path for him. Everybody was quiet.
I got to my feet. Biff rolled over and lay a few feet away from me, swearing.
"I thought we'd stopped this cowboys and Indians crap," said the Motorcycle Boy.
I heard Biff dragging himself to his feet, but didn't pay any attention. Usually I'm not that stupid, but I couldn't take my eyes off the Motorcycle Boy. I'd thought he was gone for good. I was almost sure he was gone for good.
"Look out!" somebody screamed. I whipped around, and felt the knife slide down my side, cold. It was meant to split me open from throat to gut, but I had moved just in time. It didn't hurt. You can't feel a knife cut, at first.
Biff stood a few feet away from me, laughing like a maniac. He was wiping the blood off the blade on his already-splattered T-shirt. "You are one dead cat, Rusty-James." His voice was thick and funny-sounding, because of his swollen nose. He wasn't dancing around anymore, and you could tell by the way he moved he was hurtin'. But at least he was on his feet, and I wouldn't be much longer. I was cold, and everything looked watery around the edges. I'd been knife cut before, I knew what it felt like to be bleeding bad.
The Motorcycle Boy stepped out, grabbed Biff's wrist and snapped it backwards. You could hear it crack like a matchstick. It was broke, sure enough.
The Motorcycle Boy picked up Biff's switchblade, and looked at the blood running down over the handle. Everybody was frozen. They knew what he had said about gang-fighting being over with.
"I think," he said thoughtfully, "that the show is over."
Biff
held his wrist with his other arm. He was swearing, but softly, under his breath. The others were leaving, breaking up into twos and threes, edging away, leaving quieter than you'll ever see people leave a battle ground.
Steve was there beside me. "You okay?"
"When did you get here?" Smokey asked him. Then, to me, he said, "You're hurt, man."
The Motorcycle Boy stood behind them, tall and dark like a shadow.
"I thought you were gone for good," I said.
He shrugged. "So did I."
Steve picked up my jacket, where I'd thrown it on the ground. "Rusty-James, you better go to the hospital."
I looked down at my hand, where it was clutching my side. I saw Smokey Bennet watching me.
"For this?" I said scornfully. "This ain't nothin'."
"But maybe you better go home," the Motorcycle Boy said.
I nodded. I threw an arm across Steve's shoulders. "I knew you was gonna show up."
He knew I would have fallen down if I wasn't leaning on him, but he didn't show it. He was a good kid, Steve, even if he did read too much.
"I had to sneak out," Steve said. "They'd kill me if they knew. Boy, I thought Biff was gonna kill you."
"Not me. It was Biff who was gonna get killed."
I could feel the Motorcycle Boy laughing. But then, I never expected to fool him. I tried not to lean on Steve too much. Smokey walked along with us until we came to his block. I guess I had convinced him I wasn't going to drop dead.
"Where ya been?" I asked the Motorcycle Boy. He'd been gone for two weeks. He had stolen a cycle and left. Everybody called him the Motorcycle Boy because he was crazy about Motorcycles. It was like a title or something. I was probably one of the few people on the block who knew what his real name was. He had this bad habit of borrowing cycles and going for rides without telling the owner. But that was just one of the things he could get away with. He could get away with anything. You'd think he'd have a cycle of his own by now, but he never had and never would. It seemed like he didn't want to own anything.
"California," he said.
"No kiddin'?" I was amazed. "The ocean and everything? How was it?"
"Kid," he said to me, "I never got past the river."
I didn't understand what he meant. I spent a lot of time trying to understand what he meant. It was like the time, years ago, when our gang, the Packers, was having a big rumble with the gang next door. The Motorcycle Boy--he was president--said, "Okay, let's get it straight what we're fighting for."
And everybody was all set to kill or be killed, raring to go, and some cat--I forget his name, he's in prison now--said, "We're fighting to own this street."
And the Motorcycle Boy said, "Bull. We're fighting for fun."
He always saw things different from everybody else. It would help me a lot if I could understand what he meant.
We climbed up the wooden stairs that went up the outside of the dry cleaners to our apartment. Steve eased me onto the platform railing. I hung over the railing and said, "I ain't got my key," so the Motorcycle Boy jimmied the lock and we went on in.
"You better lay down," he said. I laid down on the cot. We had a mattress and a cot to lay down on. It didn't matter which.
"Boy, are you bleeding!" Steve said.
I sat up and pulled off my sweatshirt. It was soggy with blood. I threw it over into the corner with the other dirty clothes and inspected my wound. I was gashed down the side. It was deep over my ribs; I could see white bone gleaming through. It was a bad cut.
"Where's the old man?" asked the Motorcycle Boy. He was going through the bottles in the sink. He found one with some wine still in it.
"Take a swallow," he told me. I knew what was coming. I wasn't looking forward to it, but I wasn't scared either. Pain don't scare me much.
"Lay down and hang on."
"The old man ain't home yet," I said, laying down on my good side and grabbing hold of the head of the cot.
The Motorcycle Boy poured the rest of the wine over the cut. It hurt like hell. I held my breath and counted and counted and counted until I was sure I could open my mouth without yelling.
Poor Steve was white. "God, that must hurt," he whispered.
"Ain't all that bad," I said, but my voice came out hoarse and funny.
"He oughta go to a doctor," Steve said. The Motorcycle Boy sat down against the wall. He had an expressionless face. He stared at Steve till the poor kid wiggled. The Motorcycle Boy wasn't seeing him, though. He saw things other people couldn't see, and laughed when nothing was funny. He had strange eyes--they made me think of a two-way mirror. Like you could feel somebody on the other side watching you, but the only reflection you saw was your own.
"He's been hurt worse than this," said the Motorcycle Boy. That was the truth. I got cut bad two or three years before.
"But it could get infected," Steve said.
"And they'd have to cut my side off," I added. I shouldn't have teased him. He was only trying to help.
The Motorcycle Boy just sat and stared and stayed quiet.
"He looks different," Steve said to me. Sometimes the Motorcycle Boy went stone deaf--he'd had a lot of concussions in motorcycle wrecks.
I looked at him, trying to figure out what was different. He didn't seem to see either one of us watching him.
"The tan," Steve said.
"Yeah, well, I guess you get tan in California," I said. I couldn't picture the Motorcycle Boy in California, by the ocean. He liked rivers, not oceans.
"Did you know I got expelled from school?" the Motorcycle Boy said out of the clear blue sky.
"How come?" I started to sit up, and changed my mind. They were always threatening to expel me. They'd suspended me for carrying that knife. But the Motorcycle Boy never gave them any trouble. I talked to a guy in one of his classes, once. He said the Motorcycle Boy just sat there and never gave them any trouble, except that a couple of the teachers couldn't stand for him to stare at them.
"How come you got expelled?" I asked.
"Perfect tests."
You could always feel the laughter around him, just under the surface, but this time it came to the top and he grinned. It was a flash, like lightning, far off.
"I handed in perfect semester tests." He shook his head. "Man, I can understand that. A tough district school like that, they got enough to put up with."
I was surprised. I don't surprise easy. "But that ain't fair," I said finally.
"When the hell did you start expecting anything to be fair?" he asked. He didn't sound bitter, only a little bit curious.
"Be back in a while," he said, getting to his feet.
"I forgot he was still in school," Steve said after he left. "He looks so old, I forget he's just seventeen."
"That's pretty old."
"Yeah, but he looks really old, like twenty-one or something."
I didn't say anything. I got to thinking--when the Motorcycle Boy was fourteen, that had seemed old. When he was fourteen, like me, he could buy beer. They quit asking for his ID at fourteen. He was president of the Packers then, too. Older guys, eighteen years old, would do anything he said. I thought it would be the same way for me. I thought I would be really big-time, junior high and fourteen. I thought it would be really neat, being that old--but whenever I got to where he had been, nothing was changed except he'd gone further on. It should of been the same way for me.
"Steve," I said, "bring me the old man's shavin' mirror. It's over there by the sink."
When he handed it to me I studied the way I looked.
"We look just like each other," I said.
"Who?"
"Me an' the Motorcycle Boy."
"Naw."
"Yeah, we do."
We had the same color of hair, an odd shade of dark red, like black-cherry pop. I've never seen anybody else with hair that color. Our eyes were the same, the color of a Hershey bar. He was six foot one, but I was getting there.
"Well, what's the difference?" I said f
inally. I knew there was a difference. People looked at him, and stopped, and looked again. He looked like a panther or something. Me, I just looked like a tough kid, too big for my age.
"Well," Steve said--I liked that kid, he'd think about things--"the Motorcycle Boy ... I don't know. You can never tell what he's thinking. But you can tell exactly what you're thinking."
"No kiddin'?" I said, looking in the mirror. It had to be something more than that.
"Rusty-James," Steve said, "I gotta go home. If they find out I'm gone, I'm gonna get killed, man. Killed."
"Aw, stick around awhile." I was scared he would go. I can't stand being by myself. That is the only thing I am honest-to-God scared of. If nobody was at home, I would stay up all night, out on the streets where there was some people. I didn't mind being cut up. I just couldn't stay there by myself and I wasn't too sure I could walk.
Steve shifted around, uneasy-like. He was one of the few people who knew about that hang-up. I don't go around telling people.
"Just for a little bit," I told him. "The old man oughta be back pretty soon."
"Okay," he said finally. He sat down where the Motorcycle Boy had been sitting. After a while I was kind of dozing off and on. It seemed like I went through the whole fight again in slow motion. I knew I was sort of asleep, but I couldn't stop dreaming.
"I never thought he'd go clear to the ocean," I said to Steve. But Steve wasn't there. The Motorcycle Boy was there, reading a book. He always read books. I'd thought when I got older it'd be easy for me to read books, too, but I knew by now it never would.
It was different when the Motorcycle Boy read books, different from Steve. I don't know why.
The old man was home, snoring away on the mattress. I wondered who'd gotten home first. I couldn't tell what time it was. The lights were still on. I can't tell what time it is when I sleep with the lights on.
"I thought you was gone for good," I said to him.
"Not me." He didn't look up from his page, and for a second I thought I was still dreaming. "I get homesick."
I made a list in my head of people I liked. I do that a lot. It makes me feel good to think of people I like--not so alone. I wondered if I loved anybody. Patty, for sure. The Motorcycle Boy. My father, sort of. Steve, sort of. Then I thought of people I thought I could really count on, and couldn't come up with anybody, but it wasn't as depressing as it sounds.