Rumble Fish

  "Russel-James," my father said, settling down with a book and a bottle. "Please be more careful in the future."

  The Motorcycle Boy was quiet for so long I finally thought he was upset about Cassandra.

  "She said she wasn't hooked," I told him. Even though I didn't like her, I thought maybe this would cheer him up.

  "Who?" he asked me, surprised.

  "Cassandra."

  "Oh, yeah. Well, I believe her."

  "You do?"

  "Sure. You know what happened to people who didn't believe Cassandra."

  I didn't. My father said, "The Greeks got 'em."

  Now see what I mean? What the hell did Greeks have to do with anything?

  "You don't like her anymore, though, huh?" I asked him.

  He didn't answer me. He just got up and left. I went to sleep right away. Smokey came by around midnight with his cousin who had a car, so I went to the lake and drank beer with them. There were some girls there and we built a fire and went swimming. When I got home it was early in the morning. The old man woke up and said, "Russel-James, I heard a rumor going around that a policeman was determined to get one of you. Is it you or your brother?"

  "Both of us, but mostly him."

  I knew who he meant. The cop was a local who had hated us for years. I wasn't worried about that. I was a little worried that I might have got my side infected from swimming in the lake, but it looked all right.

  I was tired again, so I cut school and slept till noon.

  6

  That afternoon turned out to be more interesting than I'd bargained for. I got expelled, and Patty broke up with me.

  I went to school about one o'clock. I had to check in at the office and let them know I was there. I told them I had been sick that morning but was okay now. They didn't believe me, but I wasn't going to say I'd been to a beer blast till five in the morning.

  I had done the same thing lots of times before, so I was surprised when, instead of giving me a pass back to class, I was sent in to see Mr. Harrigan, the guidance counselor.

  "Rusty," he said, shuffling through some papers on his desk to let me know I was taking up his valuable time. "You have been to see me before."

  "Yeah," I said. I can't stand for people to call me just "Rusty." It makes me feel like I'm not wearing my pants or something.

  "Too many times," he said.

  I was wondering what was coming. I mean, I didn't go in there and waste his time on purpose. All they had to do was quit sending me there.

  "We have decided that we can no longer tolerate your kind of behavior." He went on to list all the things I'd been sent to the office for that year: fighting, swearing, smoking, sassing the teacher, cutting classes...

  It was quite a list, but I already knew about it. He acted like he was telling me something I didn't know about. My mind went kind of blank. There was something about Mr. Harrigan that made my mind go kind of blank, even when he was swatting me with a board, like he had two or three times before.

  All of a sudden I realized he was kicking me out of school.

  "We have arranged for you to be transferred to Cleveland," he was telling me. Cleveland High was the school where they sent everybody they didn't like. That didn't bother me. But Biff Wilcox and his gang ran Cleveland. Since our fight, Biff and me had left each other alone. He stayed in his neighborhood, I stayed in mine. But if I just walked into his home territory, I was a dead man. It'd be me against half the school. Biff had had his chance to fight me fair. He wasn't going to try that again. Sure, I'd go to Cleveland. All I needed was a submachine gun and eyes in the back of my head.

  "I don't want to go," I said. "Look, I done lots of things worse than cutting school for half a day. Why now?"

  "Rusty," he said, "they are equipped to handle your kind in Cleveland."

  "Yeah? They got bars on the windows and bullet-proof vests?"

  He just looked at me. "Don't you think it's time you gave some serious thought to your life?"

  Well, I had to worry about money, and whether or not the old man would drink up his check before I got part of it, and whether or not the Motorcycle Boy would pick up and leave for good, and I had a cop itching to blow my brains out. Now I was getting sent to Biff Wilcox's turf. So I didn't have much time for serious thinking about my life.

  I gave some serious thought about punching Mr. Harrigan. I mean, they were kicking me out anyway. But I was still a little hung-over, so I decided not to waste the energy.

  "You start at Cleveland next Monday, Rusty," Mr. Harrigan said. "You are suspended until then."

  "I won't go," I said.

  "The alternative is the Youth Detention Center." He rattled his papers again, to show that my time was up.

  The Youth Detention Center. Big deal. Those guys had a lot of paperwork to get straightened out before they came after me. I had weeks to think of something to do, before they showed up.

  I left his office with the intention of heading straight for his car and slashing his tires. But I ran into Coach Ryan in the hall.

  "Rusty-James, man, I'm sorry," he said. He really did look kind of sorry. "I told them you were a good kid," he said. "I told them you never gave me any trouble."

  Which was a lie, since I gave him trouble. He just tried to laugh it off.

  "But it didn't do any good. I couldn't talk them out of it."

  "Don't worry about it," I told him. He looked at me like I had been sentenced to death. He must have really thought I loved that school. I didn't, but my friends were there, and it was easier to go to than someplace where Biff Wilcox's friends were.

  "Kid," he said to me, "don't go getting into trouble, okay?"

  I must have looked at him like he was nuts, because he went on: "I mean trouble you can't handle."

  "Sure," I said, and added "man."

  It made him so happy. I hoped to hell when I was grown I'd have better things to do than hang around some tough punk, hoping his rep would rub off on me.

  It really felt weird not being able to stay in school. I had always found something to do in the summer, though, and over Christmas, so I figured I'd get along.

  Nobody was in Benny's besides Benny, and even though he was better than nobody, I don't like shooting pool without an audience. I went down the street and over a couple of blocks to Eddie & Joe's Bar. A couple of guys who used to be in the Packers hung out there. But as soon as I went in, Joe (or maybe Eddie) threw me out. Then I tried Weston McCauley's place. He was there, with some other people, but they were all spacey and nervous and dopey, doing horse. Junkies can't stand to be around straight people, so I left, feeling really sad because Weston had been second lieutenant in the Packers. He had been the closest thing to a friend that the Motorcycle Boy had. The Motorcycle Boy didn't have any friends, I realized when I got over being sad about Weston. He had admirers and enemies, but I'd never heard anybody claim to be his friend.

  Then it was time for Patty to be getting home from school. She went to an all-girl Catholic school. Her mother didn't want her to be around boys. Patty thought this was really funny. She was the kind of girl who had boy friends when she was nine.

  I waited for her at the bus stop, smoking a cigarette and fooling around, smarting off to people passing by. You'd be surprised at how many people are afraid of a fourteen-year-old kid.

  Patty hopped off the bus and went swinging on by me like she didn't even see me.

  "Hey," I said, dropping my cigarette and running a couple of steps after her, "what's up?"

  She stopped sharply, glared at me, and really told me what I could do.

  "What's with you?" I asked her. I was getting mad, myself.

  "I heard all about your little party," she said. I must have looked as blank as I felt. She went on: "Up at the lake. Marsha Kirk was there. She told me all about it."

  "So what? What does that have to do with anything?"

  "Do you really think you can treat me like that?" She started off swearing at me again. I wondered whe
re she'd learned to swear so good, then remembered she'd been going with me for five months.

  "What does a dumb party have to do with anything?"

  "I heard all about you and that girl, that black-haired tramp." She was so mad she couldn't even speak for a second.

  "Just get lost," she said finally. Her eyes were shooting sparks. "I don't want to ever see your face again."

  "Don't worry, you won't have to," I told her, and added a few comments of my own. I almost slapped her. Then, when she went stalking on down the street, her hair bouncing on her shoulders, her head up, a tough, sweet little chick, I thought how I wouldn't be going over to her house to watch TV anymore. We wouldn't hug close, trying to make out without her little brothers catching us. I wouldn't have her to hold anymore, soft but strong in my arms.

  I couldn't see what messing around with a chick at the lake had to do with me and Patty. It didn't have anything to do with me and Patty. Why would she let something stupid like that louse us up?

  I felt funny. My throat was tight, and I couldn't breathe real good. I wondered if I was going to cry. I couldn't remember how crying felt, so I couldn't tell. I was all right in a little bit, though.

  I just walked around for a while. I couldn't think of anything to do, or anyplace to go. I spotted the Motorcycle Boy in the drugstore reading a magazine, so I went in.

  "You got a cigarette?" I asked. He handed me one.

  "Let's do somethin' tonight, okay?" I said. "Let's go over to the strip, across the bridge, okay?"

  "All right," he said.

  "Maybe I can get Steve to go, too." I wanted Steve to go in case the Motorcycle Boy forgot I was with him and took off on a cycle, or went in some bar where I couldn't go.

  "All right."

  I stood there and looked at the magazines for a little bit.

  "Hey," I said, "what you reading?"

  "There's a picture of me in this magazine." He showed it to me. It was a picture of him, all right. He was leaning back against a beat-up cycle, kind of propped up on his hands. He was wearing blue jeans and blue jean jacket and no shirt. He and the motorcycle were against a bunch of trees and vines and grass. It made him look like a wild animal out of the woods. It was a good picture. A photograph that looked like a painting. He wasn't smiling, but he looked happy.

  "Hey," I said, "what magazine is this?"

  I looked at the cover. It was one of those big national magazines, one that went all over the country.

  "Is there anything about you in here?" I looked through the magazine again.

  "No. The photograph is one of a collection by a famous photographer. She took my picture out in California. I'd forgotten it. Actually, it was one hell of a shock to open a magazine and find my picture in it."

  I looked at the other photographs. They were mostly of people. They all looked like paintings. The magazine said that the person who took them was famous for her photos looking like paintings.

  "Wow," I said. "Wait till I tell everybody."

  "Don't, Rusty-James. I'd rather you didn't tell anybody. God knows it's gonna get around soon enough."

  He had been acting a little weird ever since he got back. He had a funny look on his face now, so I said, "Sure."

  "It's a bit of a burden to be Robin Hood, Jesse James and the Pied Piper. I'd just as soon stay a neighborhood novelty, if it's all the same to you. It's not that I couldn't handle a larger scale, I just plain don't want to."

  "All right," I said. I knew what he meant about being Jesse James to some people. The Motorcycle Boy was very famous around our part of the city. Even the people who hated him would admit that.

  "Hey, I get it," I said. "The Pied Piper. Man, those guys would have followed you anywhere. Hell, most of them still would."

  "It would be great," he said, "if I could think of somewhere to go."

  As we were leaving the drugstore, I saw the cop, Patterson, across the street, watching us. I stared back at him. The Motorcycle Boy, as usual, didn't even see him.

  "That is really a good picture of you," I said.

  "Yes, it is." He was smiling, but not happy. He never smiled much. It scared me when he did.

  7

  We went downtown that night, across the bridge, to where the lights were. It wasn't as hard to talk Steve into going along as I'd thought it'd be. Usually I had to hound him and stop just short of threatening him to get him to do anything his parents wouldn't like. This time, though, he just said, "Okay, I'll tell my father I'm going to the movies." Which was the easiest time I ever had talking him into something. Steve had been acting peculiar lately. Ever since his mother went into the hospital he'd had a funny kind of empty recklessness to him. He looked like a sincere rabbit about to take on a pack of wolves.

  He met us at our place. I never went to his house. His parents didn't even know he knew me. I poured half a bottle of cherry vodka into a bottle of sneaky pete to take with us.

  "Here, take a swig of this," I said to Steve as we went across the bridge. There wasn't much space for walking. You were supposed to drive across. We stopped in the middle so the Motorcycle Boy could look at the river awhile. He'd been doing that ever since I could remember. He really liked that old river.

  I handed Steve the bottle, and to my surprise he took a drink. He never drank. I'd been trying to get him to for years, and had just about given up on it. He gagged, looked at me for a second, then swallowed it. He wiped his eyes.

  "That stuff tastes awful," he told me.

  "Don't worry about the taste," I said. "It'll get you there."

  "Remind me to chew gum before I go home, okay?"

  "Sure," I said. The Motorcycle Boy was ready to move on again and we trotted along behind him. He covered a lot of ground with one stride.

  It was going to be a good night. I could tell. The Motorcycle Boy was basically a night person. He'd come home in the morning and sleep past one or two, and really just be getting awake good around four. He was hearing pretty good, too, and didn't seem to mind us going with him. He didn't use to like me following him around. Now it seemed like he barely noticed we were there.

  "Why do you drink so much?" Steve asked me. Something was bugging him. He always was kind of nervous and bothered, but I couldn't believe he'd ever try to pick a fight with me.

  "You can't stand your father drinking all the time," he went on doggedly. "So why do you? Do you want to end up like that?"

  "Aw, I don't drink that much," I said. I was over into the city, on the strip, where there were lots of people and noise and lights and you could feel energy coming off things, even buildings. I was damned if Steve was going to mess it up for me.

  "Man, this is gonna be a good night," I said, to change the subject. "I love it over here. I wish we lived over here."

  I swung myself around a light pole and almost knocked Steve into the street.

  "Calm down," he muttered. He took another swallow from the bottle. I figured that would cheer him up some.

  "Hey," he said to the Motorcycle Boy, "you want a drink?"

  "You know he don't drink," I said. "Just sometimes."

  "That makes a hell of a lot of sense. Why don't you?" Steve asked.

  The Motorcycle Boy said, "I like control."

  Steve never talked to the Motorcycle Boy. That wine had really made him brave.

  "Everything over here is so cool," I went on. "The lights, I mean. I hate it on our block. There ain't any colors. Hey," I said to the Motorcycle Boy, "you can't see the colors, can ya? What's it look like to you?"

  He looked at me with an effort, like he was trying to remember who I was. "Black-and-white TV, I guess," he said finally. "That's it."

  I remembered the glare the TV gave off, at Patty's house. Then I tried to get rid of the thought of Patty.

  "That's too bad."

  "I thought color-blind people just couldn't see red or green. I read somewhere where they couldn't see red or green or brown or something," Steve said. "I read that."

  "
So did I," the Motorcycle Boy answered. "But we can't be everything we read."

  "It don't bother him none," I told Steve. "'Cept when he's cycle-ridin' he tends to go through red lights."

  "Sometimes," said the Motorcycle Boy, surprising me since he didn't usually start conversations, "it seems to me like I can remember colors, 'way back when I was a little kid. That was a long time ago. I stopped bein' a little kid when I was five."

  "Yeah?" I thought this was interesting. "I wonder when I'm gonna stop being a little kid."

  He looked at me with that look he gave to almost everybody else. "Not ever."

  I really thought that was funny, and I laughed, but Steve glared at him--a rabbit scowling at a panther. "What's that supposed to be, a prophecy or a curse?"

  The Motorcycle Boy didn't hear him, and I was glad. I didn't want Steve to get his teeth knocked out.

  "Hey," I said. "Let's go to a movie."

  There were some good ones right there on the strip. We were passing the advertising posters.

  "That sounds like a great idea," Steve said. "Let me have the bottle."

  I handed it to him. He was getting happier every time he took a drink.

  "Too bad," he said. "You have to be eighteen to get into this movie. That is too bad, since it really looks interesting." He was studying some of the scenes they had on the advertising posters.

  The Motorcycle Boy went to the ticket seller and bought three tickets, came back and handed us each one. Steve stared at him, openmouthed.

  "Well," said the Motorcycle Boy. "Let's go."

  We walked right in.

  "Was that guy blind or something?" Steve said loudly. In the movie-house dark I could hear people turn around to look at us.

  "Shut up," I told him. I had to wait so my eyes could get used to the dark. It didn't take long. The Motorcycle Boy had already found us seats right in the middle.

  "I got in here before," I told Steve, "and the place was raided. That was a blast. You shoulda seen the movie they were playing that night. It was somethin' else."

  I was going on to tell him about the movie, but he interrupted me with "Raided? Police raid?" He was quiet for a little while, then said, "Rusty-James, if you're arrested or something, can you refuse bail? I mean, can't you stay in jail if you'd rather do that than go home?"