21

Shit.

Danny French's knuckles hurt like hell. He hid his hand against his side until the lunch period was over, then he went to the men's room, telling Joe and Fred he was going to sneak a smoke.

When he got a good look at his hand, he saw that the skin had been pulled off the top of all the knuckles. The middle one was swollen big as a cherry. He sluiced cold water over it but there was a sullen, throbbing pain that didn't go away.

He'd never hit anybody that hard before. Hell, he hadn't even meant to hit Billy Potter that hard. It had seemed like his fist had taken on a life of its own. And he knew why, but that was another thing, along with his hand getting banged up, that he wasn't going to tell anybody about. He wasn't even sure he wanted to tell himself. Because the fact was, he'd hit Billy so hard because he was scared of him. If he hadn't hit him hard and quick, he wouldn't have hit him at all.

When Mifflin first told him about Billy Potter, he thought it was funny. Mifflin was a little pussy, but not a bad guy. He'd once given Danny the five bucks he needed when his old man told him that if he didn't come home with a six-pack, he'd beat his head in. From past experience, Danny knew his old man meant it. He'd been punched out so many times that another beating was a sure bet. And something he wanted to avoid at all costs.

So Mifflin had helped him out, and he appreciated it. But when Mifflin had started talking about this Billy Potter, and getting all worked up about how this kid was bothering him, he thought Mifflin was being a pussy.

Joking, he told him as much, but John didn't laugh.

"I'm not shitting you," he said, taking a pull from one of the beers he'd bought for the two of them. As long as Manny Zelcker at the deli let Danny buy beer for his old man, John thought they might as well take advantage of it and have a few themselves in the parking lot behind the movie theater. Danny did the buying, but it was John's money.

"You're full of it," Danny said.

"The kid's scary," Mifflin went on. "It's the way he looks at you. You think he's going to use his eyes like ray guns on you."

"Bullshit."

Mifflin drained his second beer, then, impulsively, flung the empty across the parking lot, where the bottle shattered against the wall of the movie theater.

"You think I'm joking? When I lived at that goddamn orphan home, I saw him take apart a kid at school just by looking at him."

French sipped his own beer and smiled. "I still say bullshit."

"This kid Crane was pretty tough, and the son of a bitch wilted like a flower. He told me Potter's penny eyes went black, and then suddenly it wasn't Potter he was looking at but his dead father, telling him not to fight."

French laughed derisively. "The kid must have pussied out."

"He didn't pussy out. Potter did something to him."

French just shook his head slowly and finished his beer, then twisted the hissing bottle cap off a new one and tossed it aside. "Not me," he said.

Mifflin started on his third beer. It was obvious he hadn't had this many before. "I bet the same thing would happen to you."

French's eyes darkened; but he remembered the other six-pack in the bag for his old man, and the change Mifflin had let him keep. He knew there would be more afternoons with free beers like this ahead. "You're drunk," he said calmly.

"I say you'd pussy out."

Now French got mad. He put his beer down. "You calling me a pussy?"

"No," Mifflin said. "I'm saying you couldn't handle that bastard Potter. All he'd have to do is look at you."

French balled his fists. "I don't take this shit from anybody."

"Ten bucks says you can't hit him."

French relaxed his hands as Mifflin put down his beer, fumbled out his wallet, and rummaged through a wad of ones before pulling out a ten-dollar bill. "This one," he said, folding it and slipping it into his shirt pocket. He found his beer again.

French nodded. "Fine."

"Just hit him," Mifflin said. He was nearly shouting. "You can't hit him once."

"No problem."

Mifflin suddenly changed his expression.

He looked over at French. "Forget it," he said.

"We've got a bet."

"No." The beer in his hand dropped to the ground; it fell over and the foamy contents ran out onto the tarmac. He found his shirt pocket and took the ten out. "I'll give you the money now."

"Give it to me when I hit him," French said.

John was silent for a moment, then said, "I'm afraid he'll do to you what he was going to do to that other guy."

And now he had hit Billy Potter, and he had the money folded tight in the front pocket of his jeans, and he knew what Mifflin had meant.

He had been afraid. For the first time, he'd been afraid of another kid. When he saw Potter walking toward him across the school yard, with an absolutely cool, unconcerned look on his face, he immediately had second thoughts. He'd never seen anybody look like that before. But Shane and Grainger were with him, and there was no way he could walk away. It would have been a pussy thing to do.

It was when he had taken Billy's lunch away and Potter had looked up at him that he really saw what John Mifflin meant. There was nothing in his eyes. It was like looking at two flat pennies. Flat pennies that if he lifted them off would reveal only two deep black wells that never ended.

And he was scared, so scared that if his fist hadn't done its fast work, then he would have turned and run, pussy or not.

He knew that he wouldn't go near Potter again. He'd taken Mifflin's money, but that would be the end of it. If Mifflin got drunk again and had any more big ideas, he would laugh them off. Mifflin would be good for a few more beers, but not if anything involving Billy Potter came up.

French felt the front pocket of his jeans to make sure the ten-dollar bill was still there. Well, it had been worth it for that anyway. He could get his old man a six-pack and still have almost seven bucks left. Maybe a six-pack for himself, some cigarettes, an album over at the record store. His old man would leave him alone for the rest of the week if he brought a six home without being told to.

He pulled up short at the door to Manny's deli. The BE BACK IN TEN MINUTES sign was in the window. Manny Zelcker was always closing for ten minutes, to go upstairs and check on his dog or to take a crap. Damn. And Danny's old man would be home from work in a half hour. Well, he could always cut across the alley out back and get over to Wilson Street to the market. It would cost an extra thirty cents, but it would be worth it to get his old man off his ass.

He made a quick right turn around the side of Manny's and entered the alley. It was cluttered with full garbage cans, waiting for pickup. Behind a stack of milk crates was a bend in the fence that led to an adjoining alley that came out right next to the market.

As he pushed the bend in the fence aside, someone called his name. A chill shot through him. He turned and saw nothing, so he pushed through the fence to the other side.

More garbage cans, more empty milk crates, and Pampers and toilet-tissue cartons. There was the sour milk smell of discarded cheese.

Someone called his name.

It came from somewhere ahead of him. A precarious stack of boxes on top of a trash bin tilted, then fell over. Behind the trash bin, a crouching figure moved.

"Who the fuck are you?" French said.

"Danny?" a muffled voice answered.

Sudden annoyance pushed French's uneasiness aside and he stepped forward, knocking the trash bin aside. "Who the fuck—" he began.

"Remember me?"

The boy standing there was vaguely familiar. He was five or six years old, skinny, with thick horn-rimmed glasses and pale, lightly freckled skin. He wore jeans with rolled up cuffs, and a checked shirt with wide collars.

His lips were thin. There was a peculiar familiar odor . . .

"Puke!" Danny French said in surprise. It was Puke Carteret, a boy he'd known in first grade. They called him Puke because he had something wrong with his perspiration glands and smelled like vomit. Puke Carteret had been the first guy he'd ever beat up on; they'd been in the school yard one day when French decided he didn't like Puke's smell.

When two lunchtime monitors finally got them apart, Puke had a chipped front tooth and a swollen lip. Danny spent the afternoon in the principal's office but, the next day, discovered he was a kind of hero.

"You popped him, Danny," someone said to him.

"Hit him good."

They were afraid of him. He had beaten up a kid for no reason, and they thought he might do the same to them, and they were afraid.

It was a revelation. This must be what his old man felt when he hit his mother. He could get friends and keep them around just by acting tough.

"Remember what you did to me?" Puke said.

"Yeah," French said, smiling. But something wasn't right with Puke Carteret.

"Do I still smell, Danny?" Puke asked.

"Yeah," French said. "Why—" he continued, but then there was a sound at the other side of the alley, behind another trash bin.

Another figure stood up. He was big and beefy, with a dull glint in his eyes. He had been left back two years for failing three subjects. He could barely think.

"Wikowski?" French said. "Charlie Wikowski?”

Wikowski smiled. None of the malevolent glint had left his dull eyes. In second grade Danny had jumped him from behind on the way home from school, hitting him hard twice on the left side of the head, leaving him screaming on the ground with a damaged eardrum.

There was something not right about him, too.

A trash-can cover fell over, and someone else appeared. "It's me, Danny. Duff Peters."

Duff, the small, slow grocery boy whom French punched out one day because a friend dared him to take on someone in high school.

"You broke my arm," Duff said mildly. "I didn't work that whole summer."

"What's going on?" French said.

"Roll call," someone new said. A girl this time, with a smooth, high voice, long red hair, an ascetic face with a slim nose.

"Beverly . . ." French gasped.

". . . Saper," she finished for him. "You threatened to beat up my brother Joey last summer if I didn't take off my panties and show you."

"I know," French said. Again, there was something strange . . .

He knew what it was. None of them had changed. Puke Carteret was still six years old, the same as the day Danny had thrashed him in the school yard. Charlie Wikowski, Duff Peters, were unchanged, Beverly Saper was without the breasts she had grown since he'd done what he did to her at the beginning of summer.

"What's happening?" Danny French demanded. Whatever thrill he had felt at seeing his old conquests had evaporated.

"Just this," Duff Peters said. "We came to tell you we know why you did those things."

"I know why you jumped on me," Puke Carteret said. "I know it was because you thought your mother was the only one in the world who loved you, but that when she left and didn't take you with her, she told your father that you were as rotten as he was because you were a man and all men were garbage.”

"We know all that," Beverly Saper said.

"But we don't care," Duff Peters said. "It makes no difference. You did all those things to us, and that's all that matters."

French saw that they had closed ranks, and realized that he was backed up against the fence between the two alleys. He felt around for the hole, then remembered that it could only be used from the other side, since the fence snapped back and couldn't be pulled back open.

"No . . ." he said.

They advanced on him like Frankenstein monsters, step after slow step. Even Charlie Wikowski's dull eyes filled with purpose.

"We know . . ." one of them said maliciously, and then another one of them touched him and he screamed and jammed his eyes closed, but then they didn't touch him anymore, and he heard someone soothing him, going, "Shhhh."

A soft hand fell on him, the fingers caressing him like feathers. He looked, up to see . . .

"Mother."

Her face was young. She was not scared, her eyes not blackened as they were that last night by his father. She wore lipstick, like she used when she went out shopping with him on Saturday, when he was two years old, when she took him by the hand and they walked together up the street, and the sun shone on him because he was with his mother and she loved him. She was his alone, and his father was working somewhere, getting drunk at lunchtime. But here they were, Mom and baby, and all the world knew that they were the only two. They were made for each other. She looked like that now. Her dress was the same, the blue one that looked and smelled like May, with little yellow and light pink flowers on it. Her hair smelled clean, her neck smelled like clean rose soap when she picked him up and held him, her skin smooth as the skin of a peach. Her eyes were blue as the sky. She loved him. She belonged to him.

"Don't cry, baby," she crooned.

"Mommy," he bawled. "Mommy." She rocked him. In the distance, beyond her clean smell, he smelled aging cheese in the alley. That didn't mean anything. They would leave the alley. She would hold his hand and everyone would see that she belonged to him. Out in the sun, as they walked . . .

"I didn't mean to beat them up, Mommy," he cried.

"But you did," she said softly. She held him away from her and looked into his eyes. "You did," she said. Her eyes were blue, but in the center they were black, and the black expanded to fill her eyes.

"You did," her stern voice said.

"Mommy," he bawled. "No, Mommy."

Her eyes were night-black, and then they turned bright copper gold, and she was not Mommy because her form shrank and there was no Mommy anymore in those copper, pitiless eyes.

"You," Danny French said.

"Yes," it answered, and Danny French said nothing more as the infinite sky dropped on him.