On the red brick wall behind this little group, printed in large white letters which are fading but still legible, is this message: NO BOUNCE, NO PLAY. Which probably means keep the games and the balls away from the building and out in the vacant lot where the deep ruts of the basepaths and the ragged hill of the pitcher's mound can still be seen, but who can say for sure? NO BOUNCE, NO PLAY. In the years to come they will say this often; it will become one of the private catch-phrases of their youth and has no exact meaning. Who knows? perhaps comes closest. Or What can you do? It is always best spoken with a shrug, a smile, and hands tipped up to the sky.
"Who the fuck're you?" one of the big boys asks the Beav. On his left hand he's wearing what looks like a batting glove or maybe a golf glove . . . something athletic, anyway. In it is the dried dog-turd he has been trying to make the mostly naked boy eat.
"What are you doing?" Jonesy asks, horrified. "You tryin to make him eat that? The fuck's wrong with you?"
The kid holding the dog-turd has a wide swatch of white tape across the bridge of his nose, and Henry utters a bark of recognition that is half surprise and half laughter. It's too perfect, isn't it? They're here to look at the pussy of the Homecoming Queen and here, by God, is the Homecoming King, whose football season has apparently been ended by nothing worse than a broken nose, and who is currently passing his time doing stuff like this while the rest of the team practices for this week's game.
Richie Grenadeau hasn't noticed Henry's look of recognition; he's staring at Jonesy. Because he has been startled and because Jonesy's tone of disgust is so completely unfeigned, Richie at first takes a step backward. Then he realizes that the kid who has dared to speak to him in such reproving tones is at least three years younger and a hundred pounds lighter than he is. The sagging hand straightens again.
"I'm gonna make him eat this piece of shit," he says. "Then he can go. You go now, snotball, unless you want half."
"Yeah, fuck off," the third boy says. Richie Grenadeau is big but this boy is even bigger, a six-foot-five hulk whose face flames with acne. "While you got the--"
"I know who you are," Henry says.
Richie's eyes switch to Henry. He looks suddenly wary . . . but he also looks pissed off. "Fuck off, sonny. I mean it."
"You're Richie Grenadeau. Your picture was in the paper. What do you think people will say if we tell em what we caught you doing?"
"You're not gonna tell anyone anything, because you'll be fuckin dead," the one named Duncan says. He has dirty-blond hair falling around his face and down to his shoulders. "Get outta here. Beat feet."
Henry pays no attention to him. He stares at Richie Grenadeau. He is aware of no fear, although there's no doubt these three boys could stomp them flat; he is burning with an outrage he has never felt before, never even suspected. The kid kneeling on the ground is undoubtedly retarded, but not so retarded he doesn't understand these three big boys intended to hurt him, tore off his shirt, and then--
Henry has never in his life been closer to getting good and beaten up, or been less concerned with it. He takes a step forward, fists clenching. The kid on the ground sobs, head now lowered, and the sound is a constant tone in Henry's head, feeding his fury.
"I'll tell," he says, and although it is a little kid's threat, he doesn't sound like a little kid to himself. Nor to Richie, apparently; Richie takes a step backward and the gloved hand with the dried turd in it sags again. For the first time he looks alarmed. "Three against one, a little retarded kid, fuck yeah, man, I'll tell. I'll tell and I know who you are!"
Duncan and the big boy--the only one not wearing a high-school jacket--step up on either side of Richie. The boy in the underpants is behind them now, but Henry can still hear the pulsing drone of his sobs, it's in his head, beating in his head and driving him fucking crazy.
"All right, okay, that's it," the biggest boy says. He grins, showing several holes where teeth once lived. "You're gonna die now."
"Pete, you run when they come," Henry says, never taking his eyes from Richie Grenadeau. "Run home and tell your mother." And, to Richie: "You'll never catch him, either. He runs like the fucking wind."
Pete's voice sounds thin but not scared. "You got it, Henry."
"And the worse you beat us up, the worse it's gonna be for you," Jonesy says. Henry has already seen this, but for Jonesy it is a revelation; he's almost laughing. "Even if you really did kill us, what good would it do you? Because Pete does run fast, and he'll tell."
"I run fast, too," Richie says coldly. "I'll catch him."
Henry turns first to Jonesy and then to the Beav. Both of them are standing firm. Beaver, in fact, is doing a little more than that. He bends swiftly, picks up a couple of stones--they are the size of eggs, only with jagged edges--and begins to chunk them together. Beav's narrowed eyes shift back and forth between Richie Grenadeau and the biggest boy, the galoot. The toothpick in his mouth jitters aggressively up and down.
"When they come, go for Grenadeau," Henry says. "The other two can't even get close to Pete." He switches his gaze to Pete, who is pale but unafraid--his eyes are shining and he is almost dancing on the balls of his feet, eager to be off. "Tell your ma. Tell her where we are, to send the cops. And don't forget this bully motherfucker's name, whatever you do." He shoots a district attorney's accusing finger at Grenadeau, who once more looks uncertain. No, more than uncertain. He looks afraid.
"Richie Grenadeau," Pete says, and now he does begin to dance. "I won't forget."
"Come on, you dickweed," Beaver says. One thing about the Beav, he knows a really excellent rank when he hears it. "I'm gonna break your nose again. What kind of chickenshit quits off the football team cause of a broken nose, anyhow?"
Grenadeau doesn't reply--no longer knows which of them to reply to, maybe--and something rather wonderful is happening: the other boy in the high-school jacket, Duncan, has also started to look uncertain. A flush is spreading on his cheeks and across his forehead. He wets his lips and looks uncertainly at Richie. Only the galoot still looks ready to fight, and Henry almost hopes they will fight, Henry and Jonesy and the Beav will give them a hell of a scrap if they do, hell of a scrap, because of that crying, that fucking awful crying, the way it gets in your head, the beat-beat-beat of that awful crying.
"Hey Rich, maybe we ought to--" Duncan begins.
"Kill em," the galoot rumbles. "Fuck em the fuck up."
This one takes a step forward and for a moment it almost goes down. Henry knows that if the galoot had been allowed to take even one more step he would have been out of Richie Grenadeau's control, like a mean old pitbull that breaks its leash and just goes flying at its prey, a meat arrow.
But Richie doesn't let him get that next step, the one which will turn into a clumsy charge. He grabs the galoot's forearm, which is thicker than Henry's bicep and bristling with reddish-gold hair. "No, Scotty," he says, "wait a minute."
"Yeah, wait," Duncan says, sounding almost panicky. He shoots Henry a look which Henry finds, even at the age of fourteen, grotesque. It is a reproachful look. As if Henry and his friends were the ones doing something wrong.
"What do you want?" Richie asks Henry. "You want us to get out of here, that it?"
Henry nods.
"If we go, what are you gonna do? Who are you going to tell?"
Henry discovers an amazing thing: he is as close to coming unglued as Scotty, the galoot. Part of him wants to actually provoke a fight, to scream EVERYBODY! FUCKING EVERYBODY! Knowing that his friends would back him up, would never say a word even if they got trashed and sent to the hospital.
But the kid. That poor little crying retarded kid. Once the big boys finished with Henry, Beaver, and Jonesy (with Pete as well, if they could catch him), they would finish with the retarded kid, too, and it would likely go a lot further than making him eat a piece of dried dog-turd.
"No one," he says. "We won't tell anyone."
"Fuckin liar," Scotty says. "He's a fuckin liar, Richie, lookit him.
"
Scotty starts forward again, but Richie tightens his grip on the big galoot's forearm.
"If no one gets hurt," Jonesy says in a blessedly reasonable tone of voice, "no one's got a story to tell."
Grenadeau glances at him, then back at Henry. "Swear to God?"
"Swear to God," Henry agrees.
"All of you swear to God?" Grenadeau asks.
Jonesy, Beav, and Pete all dutifully swear to God.
Grenadeau thinks about it for a moment that seems very long, and then he nods. "Okay, fuck this. We're going."
"If they come, run around the building the other way," Henry says to Pete, speaking very rapidly because the big boys are already in motion. But Grenadeau still has his hand clamped firmly on Scotty's forearm, and Henry thinks this is a good sign.
"I wouldn't waste my time," Richie Grenadeau says in a lofty tone of voice that makes Henry feel like laughing . . . but with an effort he manages to keep a straight face. Laughing at this point would be a bad idea. Things are almost fixed up. There's a part of him that hates that, but the rest of him nearly trembles with relief.
"What's up with you, anyway?" Richie Grenadeau asks him. "What's the big deal?"
Henry wants to ask his own question--wants to ask Richie Grenadeau how he could do it, and it's no rhetorical question, either. That crying! My God! But he keeps silent, knowing anything he says might just provoke the asshole, get him going all over again.
There is a kind of dance going on here; it looks almost like the ones you learn in first and second grade. As Richie, Duncan, and Scott walk toward the driveway (sauntering, attempting to show they are going of their own free will and haven't been frightened off by a bunch of homo junior-high kids), Henry and his friends first move to face them and then step backward in a line toward the weeping kid kneeling there in his underpants, blocking him from them.
At the corner of the building Richie pauses and gives them a final look. "Gonna see you fellas again," he says. "One by one or all together."
"Yeah," Duncan agrees.
"You're gonna be lookin at the world through a oxygen tent!" Scott adds, and Henry comes perilously close to laughing again. He prays that none of his friends will say anything--let done be done--and none of them do. It's almost a miracle.
One final menacing look from Richie and they are gone around the corner. Henry, Jonesy, Beaver, and Pete are left alone with the kid, who is rocking back and forth on his dirty knees, his dirty bloody tearstreaked uncomprehending face cocked to the white sky like the face of a broken clock, all of them wondering what to do next. Talk to him? Tell him it's okay, that the bad boys are gone and the danger has passed? He will never understand. And oh that crying is so freaky. How could those kids, mean and stupid as they were, go on in the face of that crying? Henry will understand later--sort of--but at that moment it's a complete mystery to him.
"I'm gonna try something," Beaver says abruptly.
"Yeah, sure, anything," Jonesy says. His voice is shaky.
The Beav starts forward, then looks at his friends. It is an odd look, part shame, part defiance, and--yes, Henry would swear it--part hope.
"If you tell anybody I did this," he says, "I'll never chum with you guys again."
"Never mind that crap," Pete says, and he also sounds shaky. "If you can shut him up, do it!"
Beaver stands for a moment where Richie was standing while he tried to get the kid to eat the dog-turd, then drops to his knees. Henry sees the kid's underwear shorts are in fact Underoos, and that they feature the Scooby-Doo characters, plus Shaggy's Mystery Machine, just like the kid's lunchbox.
Then Beaver takes the wailing, nearly naked boy into his arms and begins to sing.
4
Four more miles to Banbury Cross . . . or maybe only three. Four more miles to Banbury Cross . . . or maybe only--
Henry's feet skidded again, and this time he had no chance to get his balance back. He had been in a deep daze of memory, and before he could come out of it, he was flying through the air.
He landed heavily on his back, hitting hard enough to lose his wind in a loud and painful gasp--"Uh!" Snow rose in a dreamy sugarpuff, and he hit the back of his head hard enough to see stars.
He lay where he was for a moment, giving anything broken ample opportunity to announce itself. When nothing did, he reached around and prodded the small of his back. Pain, but no agony. When they were ten and eleven and spent what seemed like whole winters sledding in Straw-ford Park, he had taken worse hits than this and gotten up laughing. Once, with the idiotic Pete Moore piloting his Flexible Flyer and Henry riding behind him, they had gone head-on into the big pine at the foot of the hill, the one all the kids called the Death Tree, and survived with nothing more than a few bruises and a couple of loose teeth each. The trouble was, he hadn't been ten or eleven for a lot of years.
"Get up, ya baby, you're okay," he said, and carefully came to a sitting position. Twinges from his back, but nothing worse. Just shaken up. Nothing hurt but your fuckin pride, as they used to say. Still, he'd maybe sit here another minute or two. He was making great time and he deserved a rest. Besides, those memories had shaken him. Richie Grenadeau, fucking Richie Grenadeau, who had, it turned out, flunked off the football team--it hadn't been the broken nose at all. Gonna see you fellas again, he had told them, and Henry guessed he had meant it, but the threatened confrontation had never happened, no, never happened. Something else had happened instead.
And all that was a long time ago. Right now Banbury Cross awaited--Hole in the Wall, at least--and he had no cock horse to ride there, only that poor man's steed, shank's mare. Henry got to his feet, began to brush snow from his ass, and then someone screamed inside his head.
"Ow, ow, ow!" he cried. It was like something played through a Walkman you could turn up to concert-hall levels, like a shotgun blast that had gone off directly behind his eyes. He staggered backward, flailing for balance, and had he not run into the stiffly jutting branches of a pine growing at the left side of the road, he surely would have fallen down again.
He disengaged himself from the tree's clutch, ears still ringing--hell, his entire head was ringing--and stepped forward, hardly believing he was still alive. He raised one of his hands to his nose, and the palm of his hand came away wet with blood. There was something loose in his mouth, too. He held his hand under it, spat out a tooth, looked at it wonderingly, then tossed it aside, ignoring his first impulse, which had been to put it in his coat pocket. No one, as far as he knew, did surgical implants of teeth, and he strongly doubted that the Tooth Fairy came this far out in the boonies.
He couldn't say for sure whose scream that had been, but he had an idea Pete Moore had maybe just run into a big load of bad trouble.
Henry listened for other voices, other thoughts, and heard none. Excellent. Although he had to admit that, even without voices, this had certainly turned into the hunting trip of a lifetime.
"Go, big boy, on you huskies," he said, and started running toward Hole in the Wall again. His sense that something had gone wrong there was stronger than ever, and it was all he could do to hold himself to a fast jog.
Go look in the chamber pot.
Why don't we just knock on the bathroom door and ask him how he is?
Had he actually heard those voices? Yes, they were gone now, but he had heard them, just as he had heard that terrible agonal scream. Pete? Or had it been the woman? Pretty Becky Shue?
"Pete," he said, the word coming out in a puff of vapor. "It was Pete." Not entirely sure, even now, but pretty sure.
At first he was afraid he wouldn't be able to find his rhythm again, but then, while he was still worrying about it, it came back--the synchronicity of his hurrying breath and thudding feet, beautiful in its simplicity.
Three more miles to Banbury Cross, he thought. Going home. Just like we took Duddits home that day.
(if you tell anybody I did this I'll never chum with you guys again)
Henry returned to t
hat October afternoon as to a deep dream. He dropped down the well of memory so far and so fast that at first he didn't sense the cloud rushing toward him, the cloud that was not words or thoughts or screams but only its redblack self, a thing with places to go and things to do.
5
Beaver steps forward, hesitates for a moment, then drops to his knees. The retard doesn't see him; he is still wailing, eyes squeezed shut and narrow chest heaving. Both the Underoos and Beaver's zipper-studded old motorcycle jacket are comical, but none of the other boys are laughing. Henry only wants the retard to stop crying. That crying is killing him.
Beaver shuffles forward a little bit on his knees, then takes the weeping boy into his arms.
"Baby's boat's a silver dream, sailing near and far . . ."
Henry has never heard Beaver sing before, except maybe along with the radio--the Clarendons are most certainly not churchgoers--and he is astounded by the clear tenor sweetness of his friend's voice. In another year or so the Beav's voice will change completely and become unremarkable, but now, in the weedy vacant lot behind the empty building, it pierces them all, astounds them. The retarded boy reacts as well; stops crying and looks at Beaver with wonder.
"It sails from here in Baby's room and to the nearest star; Sail, Baby, sail, sail on home to me, sail the seas and sail the stars, sail on home to me . . ."
The last note drifts on the air and for a moment nothing in the world breathes for beauty. Henry feels like crying. The retarded boy looks at Beaver, who has been rocking him back and forth in rhythm with the song. On his teary face is an expression of blissful astonishment. He has forgotten his split lip and bruised cheek, his missing clothes, his lost lunchbox. To Beaver he says ooo or, open syllables that could mean almost anything, but Henry understands them perfectly and sees Beaver does, too.
"I can't do more," the Beav says. He realizes his arm is still around the kid's shirtless shoulders and takes it away.