A deputy came to our house that evening and took an initial statement from me, jotting down the things I said with a little nub of a pencil on a little yellow pad of paper. The deputy said the sheriff would be by in the morning to hear everything himself.
Mom hovered over me hen-like, behavior she normally didn’t indulge in. It was as if she thought maybe I had broken and just hadn’t shown it yet, as a teacup with hairline fractures will crumble with one ill-timed jostle. She made me hot chocolate, sat on the sofa with me, and occasionally pecked me on the cheek or forehead and ruffled my hair. Even Dad walked by a couple times and grasped my shoulder with a firm hand or clapped me on the back and said he was proud of me. I grimaced at these gestures, but didn’t complain too much. I enjoyed sneaking glances at Sarah sitting on the stairs, watching all of this with a frown and a scowl, like she’d won second place in a contest.
I offered her little smiles.
She offered me the bird.
When it was time for bed, however, I went upstairs, climbed under the sheets and closed my eyes, only for the door to open a moment later. My sister stood in her pajamas, outlined in the threshold. She flipped on my desk light and walked in without waiting for an invite.
“Sarah, please, not tonight,” I said, almost pleaded, covering my head with my hands to defend against the coming noogie.
“Oh, stop whining.”
She crossed the room and sat on the edge of my bed. She was silent for a spell but I knew she wanted to say something. From the firm set of her lips and the frown of concentration, it seemed like something important, too. This was strange because all she ever had to say to me were taunts when she was rubbing my head with her knuckles or pulling my underwear so far up my crack I thought it’d come out my mouth.
I said nothing and waited.
“Did you really get a knife pulled on you today?” she asked.
I nodded, letting my hands fall off my head but keeping them at the ready.
“And your friends were there too? That girl I saw with you at the fair?”
Sarah had walked up with her new boyfriend just as the gathering of parents and the exchange of phone numbers on the midway had begun to dissipate. I nodded again.
“You whooped that guy good, like you said?”
I didn’t know if it was right to feel good about beating someone up. Dad said no, you did what you had to do to take care of yourself and your family, but when you started feeling good about violence it meant you were in trouble. Not legal kind of trouble or even trouble with friends or family. It was an inside kind of trouble, he said, in your heart and soul, that warned maybe you were losing a little of what made you different than those people that tried to hurt you. I thought of this, tried to hold on to it, but when I nodded again in response to Sarah’s question, I felt a little surge of pride and had to smile.
Just a little one.
“That’s good,” my sister said. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Thanks.”
“How come you don’t fight back with me?” she asked, and I knew what she meant: the noogies and wedgies and Indian burns.
“Because you’re my sister.”
By the light in the hall outside my room, I saw my sister smile.
She leaned down and gave me a hug. I didn’t know what to do, and I kind of froze for a second. Then, awkwardly, I put my arms around her and gave her a little squeeze.
“I love you, Joey,”
She kind of trembled for a moment or two, like she might cry.
I’d never seen Sarah cry before. The closest was when I drove her near to tears of frustration with my jabs, like I had in the kitchen when she launched her sandals at me. I didn’t know what to do again, so I just held her tighter, and she squeezed me back and then stood up and walked out of my room, closing the door behind her. I was left confused, baffled, still not quite sure what had happened, so I turned over, buried my head in the pillow and tried to sleep.
But the events of the day replayed again and again in my head: the sounds and sights of the fair, the confrontation in the Haunted House (the feel of the cool blade against my throat and the crunch of Dillon’s nose), and the kiss under the moonlight. Alternately terrifying and alluring, such thoughts kept me tossing and turning, and sleep was a long time coming.
If I thought the morning would bring some reprieve from the chaos and exhilaration of the evening at the fair, like the rising of the sun would wash it all away with its golden light, my hopes were dashed right quick. Not five minutes out of the shower, striding downstairs in fresh blue jeans and a flannel shirt, my mom’s sausage and pancakes calling me with their smells and the sizzling of the frying pan bringing water to my mouth, the doorbell rang. Not yet having left for work, Dad went to answer it.
Looking over my shoulder from the breakfast table, I saw a fat man in a tan and brown uniform filling the doorway. Overshadowing my father with his girth, I saw the bronze badge pinned to the breast of the uniform, and remembered about the sheriff. Dad stepped aside, letting the man in.
The sheriff doffed his hat respectfully and wiped his boots on the mat. He had jowls like a turkey wattle, but as he followed my dad into the kitchen and to the table, I had to re-evaluate the sheriff as I was afforded a closer look at him.
Yes, he was fat, but it was the kind of fat with muscle hidden beneath it, so that he seemed formed by barrel kegs stacked atop each other. His hatless head was bald and caught the light from the chandelier over the table, like an oiled bowling ball. He shook hands with everyone, his gaze seeming to hang on Mom and Sarah a bit long, and I wondered if Dad noticed this.
The sheriff’s hand gripped mine a tad too hard when he offered it to me, and I knew that with a little more pressure he could snap my bones like matchsticks. He had a smile on his face that said: Hey, aren’t I a friendly guy? and the smile was fake, plastered on like the frozen expression carved upon a mannequin.
Bandit gave a low growl from under the table at my feet. I shushed him with a gentle hand around his muzzle.
I looked over at Dad, saw his face was set and the tension there was obvious. I thought to myself: What did I miss here? With only Dad and the sheriff standing, the rest of us sitting at the table (Bandit under it), the sheriff spoke like he was on a stage addressing an audience.
“Folks,” he said, gesturing with his hat like a teacher with a meter stick at the blackboard, “I’m Sheriff Glover. I understand there was some sort of mishap at the fair yesterday?”
He looked at me when he said that last part, his eyes concealing something like contempt, as if he was studying a bug he wanted to step on. That smile was still pasted on his face, like he was trying to hide something beneath it, which was his true self.
“Between you, young man, your friends, and some other boys?” he asked.
I nodded.
Dad spoke even as my head was beginning its bob up and down.
“Mishap is one way to put it,” he said, and the flat tone hiding the anger beneath let me know that, yes, Dad had seen the sheriff’s glances at Mom and Sarah. He’d probably seen the jackal beneath the smile, as well. If I’d had the sense of something not quite right with the sheriff, then it was a safe bet my dad had also. “Someone pulled a knife on my son.”
“I was getting to that,” the sheriff said, now facing my father.
“And one of those ‘other boys’ was your son, Sheriff,” Dad continued, and I saw the sheriff’s bowling ball head go a shade of red as quick as a lava lamp. “Dillon Glover, right? Mr. Connolly filled me in on that little fact.”
“Now, there’s no reason to get hostile,” Sheriff Glover said. One hand went to his holster and the gun there, like all he needed was a little prodding and he’d pull the piece out and start with the pistol whipping, or worse. “I was about to touch on my boy’s misdeeds before you interrupted me.”
“Misdeeds?” Mom scooted her chair out and stepped up beside my dad. “Your son cornered Joey in that rundown shack of a Haunted House and threatened to kill him.”
Her tone was fiery yet controlled. A flame eager to be stoked to a blaze. Sheriff Glover gave my mother an icy stare.
“Where I come from,” he said, “women still know their place.”
Sarah’s silverware clattered loudly on her plate.
“Where you come from is Planet Asshole,” she said.
I looked at my sister with shock and awe, and sudden respect. I barked a quick laugh before I could stop it.
The sheriff spun his head towards my sister. His face had gone from lava red to sun fire scarlet. I thought his cranium might blow as the volcano inside him erupted.
“Upstairs,” Dad said, pointing at Sarah.
She looked at him as if stung, but did as she was told, stomping away towards the stairs. The sheriff watched her go, eyes wide and angry, and then he turned them on me. A smile still split my face like a great fissure. I broadened it a little and showed my teeth for the sheriff’s benefit.
“You too,” Dad said, now pointing at me.
I followed Sarah without argument.
I climbed the stairs and saw my sister at the top step, sitting down. She shushed me with a finger to her lips and motioned for me to sit with her. I did, moving slow, so as to not cause any creaks or moans of the floor or walls or banister. We sat and listened, and the shadows of our parents, and the larger, rounder shadow of the sheriff, played on the wall below like a shadow puppet show.
“Mr. Hayworth,” the sheriff said, his voice trembling with embarrassment and anger, “you should really teach your family manners. They ought to respect authority.”
“You’re one to talk,” Dad said. “What have you taught your son, Sheriff? To pull weapons on people? Or just how to take a beating?”
I stifled another laugh, and Sarah and I turned to each other and mimed a high five, beaming at one another.
“Now you watch your mouth, mister,” Sheriff Glover said, and his shadow self raised an arm and pointed a finger at my shadow dad’s face. “I came here to try and make peace.” The shadow sheriff wagged a shadow finger like a wand. “It’s obvious our boys had a little misunderstanding. That’s what happens with kids.”
“Your kid’s almost eighteen, according to what Mr. Connolly tells me,” Dad said. “Not too much longer and he won’t be a minor, and then he won’t have to worry about my son at all. Next time, he ever comes around my family, I’ll wipe the floor with his ass and send you the cleaning bill.”
Mom’s shadow stretched an arm around Dad’s, as if restraining him. I thought that was a good idea. For the sheriff’s sake, not Dad’s.
“You threatening my son, Mr. Hayworth?” the sheriff said. His shadow moved a step closer to my dad’s.
“Yep,” Dad said. “And now I’m threatening you, Pillsbury.”
The laughter building inside of me almost made me stomp my feet in giddiness, and Sarah restrained me by pulling me close to her. Her red face revealed she was having the same struggle.
“Mr. Connolly told us how your son runs amok around this town,” Mom chimed in. “Don’t think our kids will stand by like some of the others around here.”
“That’s the third time I’ve heard that nigger’s name in five minutes,” the sheriff said. “I don’t want to hear it again. Niggers and cunts … they both ought to know their place.”
This time it was Dad’s shadow that stepped forward on the wall movie screen below us. Shadow Dad and Shadow Sheriff were now almost toe to toe.
“Did I hear you right, just now?” Dad said, his tone low and menacing. That tone reminded me of Bandit’s growl. “I think it’s time you left.”
He took another step forward, and the sheriff took a step back. Dad kept moving forward, and the sheriff continued falling back. The shadow show switched to real life as the two men appeared below in the foyer. Like a dog driving cattle, Dad herded the big, round man to the front door.
Mom was there to usher him through the threshold, giving a little curtsy as the sheriff stepped out onto the porch. Sarah and I moved up the top step and behind the banister to stay in view of the action.
“Thanks for the visit, kind sir,” Mom said and started to close the door.
The door stopped short of shutting, a large boot in its way. The sheriff looked through the opening and shared a glance between my mom and dad. Then he cast a sly, furtive glance up and over and past Mom and Dad standing there at the door, and his eyes found mine, peeking through the uprights of the banister. He smiled at me, winked, and then looked back at Mom and Dad. He put his wide-brimmed hat back on and tipped it to them.
“I’ll see you folks around,” he said.
He removed his boot from the doorway and walked away.
For the next couple days I wasn’t allowed to leave the house. I wasn’t too happy about this turn of events, and I let my parents know it by stomping around and slamming doors and giving them evil eyes that would do a gypsy proud. I even performed a little mental curse against my dad involving explosive diarrhea, hopefully in a public place. There was no shrine or sacrifices involved, though, so I doubt the dark gods were impressed.
Dad said it was just for a few days to let things cool over. He didn’t think Sheriff Glover was foolish enough to act on a grudge, at least not openly. Even if he was a major asshole, as Sarah had rightly judged, he was just one man in the department. And there were county and state police to worry about should the good sheriff bring any undue attention his way, Dad elaborated. Local law enforcement were notorious for wanting to maintain autonomy in their little corners of the world.
This was all well and good, but a few days may as well have been a hundred years. This was summer, school a distant and unfathomable notion, with long days of doing whatever I wanted, and there was the fair still going and I hadn’t done the rollercoaster or Ferris wheel yet. There was a certain girl whose lips still lingered on mine with a vague electric feeling every time I thought about it, which was just about every other second.
And those odd seconds? Those were taken up by the memory of the blade against my throat, its cool touch and sharp edge. I wouldn’t admit this to my parents, though. They’d probably insist I see a therapist, where I’d be pressed into admitting how many uncles had touched me (none) and how often I put on women’s panties (never). I’d then be told it was alright for a guy to cry, whereupon my masculinity would be forever lost as quickly as if a surgeon had clipped off my sack.
I tried to occupy myself by reading, trying to lose myself in comics and Bradbury stories. The events of the past few days had been more exciting and yes, frightening, than any fiction, however, and the stories only fleetingly held my interest. Even the terrifying aspects of the experience at the fair only added to the exhilaration of it all.
Fear made the blood pump and rush, letting you know you were alive. Likewise, the smell and kiss of a young girl screamed alive. I wanted to be out there with my friends, and I thought about the car in the woods and what was in it and how, as long as I was in here, I’d never know.
I ran about the yard with Bandit, tackling him and wrestling him down, and though it was fun for awhile as all things with my dog were fun for awhile, it wasn’t as fun as being out there with him and my other friends.
Fat Bobby came over a couple times, and he sported a freshly busted lip, only just scabbing over. He read my comics, and added a few he’d somehow bought on his own to his collection in the box in my closet. He even tried some short stories by Bradbury and Matheson and King, but it seemed he liked the pictures and always went back to the comics and graphic novels. We played catch in the front yard, and he even tried chasing Bandit around a couple times, but Fat Bobby got winded easily and that didn’t last long.
Then, one day, the third of my house arrest or quarantine or whatever my parents thought of it as, we were on the porch, Fat Bobby and I, and that old familiar sad, depressed look came over his face. The sour expression scrunched up his features, like he’d bitten into a Ho Ho full of shit.
“What’s up?” I asked, leaning back on Bandit’s curled form behind me like a backrest.
“I was thinking about the Haunted House.”
“Yeah. Pretty crazy stuff, wasn’t it? But we got through it.”
“No,” Fat Bobby said. He kind of stomped his foot like he was on the verge of a tantrum. “You and Jim … and even Tara … got us through it. I didn’t do anything.”
“You ran down pimple face,” I said.
“You pushed me into him,” Bobby said, giving me a look that said: Don’t throw me any bones.
“The point is he went down,” I said, knowing it sounded lame even as I said it.
“The point is he went down because of you, not me.”
The point he was making was obvious, and the hard fact was that I couldn’t really argue against it. He had done nothing, and if it wasn’t for Tara’s quick thinking when the knife had been pulled away from me, and me and Jim reacting … well, let’s just say that the night could have ended very differently.
So I didn’t throw Bobby anymore bones, but just let the quiet linger between us for a bit. I knew he wasn’t finished. I had an inkling of where this was going, but I felt it was important for him to say it, not me.
“I was wondering …” he said, staring out off the porch at the yard and the butterflies fluttering about over the grass like they were spelling out a secret message just for him. “Your dad showed you how to fight, didn’t he?”
I nodded, said: “Yes.”
“Do you think he’d show me?”
I put an arm around him, clapped him on the back. I told him I’d ask, and we sat there for awhile on the porch, under the sun, with the blue sky like a blanket over it all.
* * *
Day four of my “just a couple days” incarceration and I was starting to lose patience with my parents. I knew arguing with my dad wouldn’t do any good, so when he got home from work in the early afternoon, I asked him about showing Bobby some moves. Dad considered this for a moment, his eyes occasionally drifting to Bobby’s fat lip, and then he nodded. Bobby smiled, and we followed my dad out to the garage.
With my parents’ cars always kept in the driveway, the garage was free for other purposes. From one end to the other, corner to corner, the four walls showcased hammers and spades and drills and saws hung on hooks. The whole center of the garage was taken up by exercise equipment. At the forefront of the garage was a cleared area of the floor covered by blue tumble mats. Beyond that there was one of those Bowflex machines, a stationary bicycle, a treadmill, and free weights resting on a mat. In the middle of all this, like the centerpiece of a shrine, was a man-sized punching bag, supported by a weighted base at the bottom, and tied to rafters at the ceiling for extra support. Dad worked this bag at least an hour a day, and there were duct-taped areas where his punches and kicks had eventually torn holes in the bag’s hide. I worked the bag with him sometimes, when I wasn’t lost in between the covers of comics or other books.
He led Fat Bobby with a hand on the kid’s shoulder over to the mat that surrounded the big bag. My dad took off his work shirt and underneath he was wearing a T-shirt, and his biceps and forearms looked like granite wrapped in flesh.
“Okay,” he told Bobby without preamble. “Show me what you got. Hit the bag.”
Fat Bobby looked at me, then at the bag, and he kind of cocked his head at it like he didn’t know what it was or what it was for. Then he let out this sigh and wound his arm about and swung it at the bag, and it was like watching a fat bear just out of hibernation throwing a lazy paw at a tree. His fist bounced off the bag with a pathetic sound like a sweaty butt cheek peeling off a leather seat. Fat Bobby’s face reddened with shame.
Mine did too.
Dad didn’t miss a beat though.
He moved behind Bobby and squared the kid’s shoulders, showed him how to balance and carry his weight. He turned Fat Bobby’s torso this way and that, back and forth in little semi-turns like a spindle. He told Bobby how to throw the punch with all his weight, to lean into it for momentum. Dad went through the motions with him a couple more times and then stepped away and gave Bobby the go-ahead.
Bobby kept his feet anchored like my dad had shown him, cocked his arm back, and threw a jab while turning his upper body with the punch. This time the bag shook with the impact, and Dad slapped my friend on the back.
Fat Bobby’s face colored again, this time with pride.
They went at it for awhile. Dad showed him how to stick and move, to keep your opponent off balance; how to move in with a blow for maximum impact; how to feign low and come back high. Pretty soon Fat Bobby looked like a greased ham, sweaty and glistening. Dad called for a break and fetched water from the nearby fridge, gave a bottle to Bobby, and leaned back against a wall.
“You want to watch me and Joey go a round?” Dad said to Bobby. Bobby nodded eagerly, and Dad looked over at me, kind of smiling. “You up for a round with the old man?”
“Sure,” I said, and I stepped over to the wall where some gloves and headgear were hanging. I took them down, threw the larger pair to my dad, pulled the padded headgear over my head, and put on the smaller pair of gloves. “One condition.”
My dad was already dancing around the area at the forefront of the garage, where the free mat space was. He threw a couple jabs, a few kicks that cut through the air like bullets, and he smiled at me.
“Name it,” he said.
“I land one hit,” I said, smiling back at him, “even just one, and I get to go out with my friends.”
He was already shaking his head before the words were out of my mouth.
“It’s too soon, son—” he began, and I cut him off.
“Scared I’ll knock you a good one?” I threw a few jabs of my own, then followed with some of my own kicks, which whizzed through the air pretty good if I did say so myself.
He was still shaking his head, even beginning to unlace the gloves he’d just put on. Unperturbed, I went for a cheap shot.
“Don’t want to pull a muscle?” I said, and that stopped him. He gave me a stare across the garage like a gunfighter giving someone the once over in a dusty saloon.
Dad had pulled a muscle in his lower back the year before while working the bag. It wasn’t something he liked brought up. It reminded him he was getting older.
“What counts as a hit?” he asked me, lacing the gloves back up, pulling them on tight and snug with his teeth.
“Head, face, and body,” I said, making my way to the mat and kicking off my shoes. Dad did the same, his bare feet padding on the mat as he shuffled about.
Fat Bobby watched all this from the sidelines, eyes wide and mouth agape.
“You know you’re not fighting some punk kid this time, don’t you?”
Dad smiled down at me, dancing around, circling me.
“Yeah,” I said. “This time I’m fighting a cripple who should be in an old folks home.”
His smile widened and he began to move closer, his circles tightening.
“I’ll try not to spank you too hard,” he said and threw an intentionally slow jab, testing me.
“I’ll try not to knock out your dentures,” I said and moved quickly in with a flurry of jabs, some low kicks, and an uppercut.
My dad dodged these or batted them away like annoying insects buzzing about him. He gave me a little shove that sent me off balance and tumbling to the mat. I rolled into the fall and came back rabbit quick on my feet.
I danced around him, watching his legs and arms, trying to find the weakness in his defense, watching, waiting. I was still watching, waiting, when his right leg darted out and caught me high on the shoulder. Though he checked the kick at the last moment, it sent me sprawling on the mat again.
I rolled again to my feet, this time not so gracefully.
Dad smiled at me, slapped his gloved fists together.
“Let me know when you’ve had enough, little man.”
“Let me know when you’ve crapped your Depends diapers, old man,” I said and darted in for another flurry. He batted them all away again, and gave me a couple rabbit punches to the back and top of my head just for fun.
I snarled and went for some kicks to his thighs and belly. He pushed these away. Stepped close and ruffled my hair in that way I hated and then shoved me away again. I kept my balance this time, but just barely.
He laughed at me and did an impression of me stumbling about that looked like a drunken wino tripping along a street corner. Fat Bobby burped out a small laugh, too, and I turned to him and stared him down and he shut up fast.
“Fine,” Dad said, and relaxed his stance, started for the laces of his gloves with his teeth. His chuckles died down as he freed his hands and, hanging up the gloves, he turned back to me. “Fine, go out with your friends. But you all stay together, and Bandit still goes with you.”
Still wanting to fight, but visibly letting my face settle and relax, I worked at my gloves and went past my dad to hang them up. I turned around and made as if to head back to the house. Dad was already headed that direction. I jogged to catch up to him.
“One thing, Dad,” I said.
“What’s that, son?” he said and started to turn to face me.
“I still want my one hit,” I said and cold cocked him on the chin.
I didn’t hit with all my strength, of course. I wasn’t stupid. I put just enough behind the jab to startle him. But it was like hitting a brick, and probably hurt my hand more than it did his face.
Surprise rolled down his face like a curtain, and then a smile. Like the champion and winner that I was, I ran away fast, laughing and taunting my dad all the way.
Not until later, when I needed him, did I realize I’d left Bandit behind.
Fat Bobby told me how he and Jim had told Tara about the abandoned car in the woods and that they’d been spending a lot of time down there together since the night at the fair. He said there was probably a good chance Jim and Tara were there now, and that got me all nervous and angry inside, thinking of Tara out there alone with another guy.
“What do you guys do there?” I asked as we walked the now familiar dirt road to the hill, where we would then start down and make a beeline for where we now knew the access road and the car to be.
“Just talk really,” Fat Bobby said and shrugged, as if it were no big deal.
But it was a big deal for me: two guys out there alone with my girl. That’s how I thought of her: my girl.
“Sometimes we climb up Lookout Mountain—”
“What?”
“That’s what we call that rocky hill we climbed. Where we saw the car closer up that first time, me, you and Jim?”
He said this with the smallest hint of exasperation, like he was talking to someone hopelessly out of the loop. Which I guess I was in this regard, and it pissed me off.
“Oh,” I said.
We entered the trees and they closed in around us with branches outstretched as if in embrace. There at the edge of the woods, under the branches but not lost in them yet, I heard an engine. Bobby and I turned around to see a cloud of dust rising as a car rolled down the dirt hill. Slowing, it parked maybe a dozen yards away from us. I saw the siren bubbles on top, dead at the moment, and the seal on the hood and doors. I knew I should have run, pulling Bobby with me, but I stayed where I was, under the trees, as if that were protection enough.
The driver’s door swung open, the engine still idling, and Sheriff Glover stepped out. The dirt clouds behind him and drifting away gave the impression of a magician appearing in a puff of smoke.
“Well, howdy boys,” he said, one hand at his belt where his gut hung over in a huge bulge like a monstrous pregnancy. He tipped his hat to us. “You know these woods are dangerous. Not to mention off limits if you’re minors. Need parental supervision.”
He made a show of looking around, and then he scratched his chin as if puzzling over a problem.
“Now,” he said, and a cruel grin came over his face, “I don’t see your parents around, do you?”
Neither of us answered, but I took a step back and pulled Bobby with me.
“Now don’t go nowhere,” the sheriff said, moving across the distance between us. “It wouldn’t be very responsible of me to let you kids go running off by yourselves.”
“Leave us alone,” I said, turning. Thankfully Fat Bobby turned with me, and we quickened our pace. But he was fat and didn’t move so fast, so that it was either run off by myself or stay with my friend.
I stayed with my friend, and then the sheriff was on us, hauling us to a stop with one meaty hand on each of us.
“You need to learn some manners, boy,” he said and shoved me, and I went down hard on my butt. A shock of pain went up my tailbone, throbbing. He still held Fat Bobby by a fistful of shirt, but he was looking down at me. “Your daddy’s got a bit of a mouth, and so does your sister and mama.” He grinned and showed teeth that were large and tobacco stained. “But mouths on women I don’t mind so much, if put to good use.”
I had an idea of what he meant and my face went red. With embarrassment or shame, I don’t know. Probably both.
I got up and ran at him, and he lifted a big boot and I stupidly ran headfirst into it. I went down again, now with a throbbing in my head to match the one on my ass. He shook Bobby, hard, as if punishing him for my crimes.
“You uppity little bastard,” he said, shaking Fat Bobby, but looking at me. My friend started crying, really blubbering, and this time I couldn’t blame him. I was pretty scared too. This wasn’t some teenager with a knife. This was a lawman, he was big, and he had a big gun at his belt. “I told your folks I’d be around.”
His free hand—the one not shaking Bobby like a carpet needing aired out—went to his belt, and I thought he was going for the gun. I thought of looking down that muzzle, black and long like a tunnel, a tunnel to places I could never come back from, and I was close to crying too. It was like having the knife blade at my throat again.
But he didn’t go for the gun.
He went for his nightstick, pulling it out of its loop like a sword from a scabbard.
“I think you need a little correcting,” he said, and now Bobby was tugging at the large hand that held him, scratching at it, pulling back on the fingers. The sheriff turned towards Bobby and brought the nightstick around, slicing through the air like a baseball bat. It thunked Fat Bobby on the temple, and my friend’s eyes rolled up and he went slack. Sheriff Glover let him go and Bobby fell to the ground like a heavy sack.
“Now your turn,” he said, facing me again, taking a step in my direction.
I stared at Fat Bobby, crumpled on the ground like a broken doll, like I imagined Batman with his stuffing guts pouring out looked like on the floor of the Haunted House. I saw the blood trickling from his head and I remembered the blood trickling from his head that day at the stream when the final rock had hit him. I was scared, scared that I was looking at my friend dead on the ground.
The sheriff took another step towards me, and I crab walked backwards on my hands and legs, then pushed myself up and to my feet. The nightstick rose again in the sheriff’s grip and started down in another arc. I turned and ran, and something hard clipped me along the collar. I stumbled, found my balance, kept running.
Fuck! I screamed at myself. Where’s Bandit? And then I remembered I’d left him home after sucker punching my dad and running off, and I screamed at myself again. Fucking moron!
The forest seemed to spring out of the ground around me, trying to box me in. Pines and firs like large blades of grass made me feel like an ant, an ant in a large world, and everything in my way. Everything an obstacle as I ran from the man close behind me, the sheriff, a police officer, someone I was supposed to trust, gone mad. He was swinging a nightstick like a stick at a piñata, and I was the target. The prizes that would burst out of me if one of his swings connected wouldn’t be candy, however, but busted bones and blood and maybe bits of teeth.
Stomping across the stream, splashing, my footfalls landed awkwardly on the silt and soil beneath the water. I slipped. My knees banged against stones. My palms shredded skin on pebbly silt. I rose and kept running.
Close behind and getting closer: larger and louder splashes.
Skidding to a halt at the access road, I saw the rusted sign fallen in the weeds. I turned, remembered the divots and ruts in the old road, danced about them, leaping and jumping. But the sheriff didn’t know about the ruts or was too enraged to mind them, and I heard a tremendous thump and a cry of surprise more than pain.
Risking a glance back, I saw he’d fallen. I was gaining ground on him, but he was already standing again. No ankles twisted or femurs poked out of his thighs, unfortunately, and the nightstick was still in his hand. His big arms and legs pumped, his momentum building like a bull looking to gore. Spittle like rabid foam flew from his mouth as he yelled after me, his face flushed red.
My lungs burned, my chest hurt, but I pushed my body harder, faster. A slight turn in the pitted road and there it was, the car, and there perched on the hood, tossing rocks about, my friends, Jim and Tara. Hearing my footfalls they looked up in surprise, saw me, saw the monstrosity behind me, and in unison they leapt off the hood. Dust rising in little plumes as their feet met the ground, they each stooped, scooping something off the road like laborers picking a field. I was confused for a moment, wondering why the fuck my friends were picking daisies when there was a crazed sheriff behind me keen on murder. Understanding blossomed a moment later however: ammunition!
I slid like a runner diving for home, and the dirt ground scraped my skin like a potato peeler. I came rolling to my feet, and in either hand I held rocks. Big rocks. I stood to take up position by my friends, their arms already cocked and ready.
Sheriff Glover skidded to a stop some yards away from us, the nightstick in his hand held aloft like a conductor’s baton. I think he wanted to play the Smashed Kids Concerto, in C minor. But he saw what was in our hands, and froze in indecision.
Breathing hard, he tried to catch his breath. His chest rose and fell like a great bellows. His gaze fell on the Buick for a couple beats, and he gave this slight lift of his eyebrows, like he’d stumbled on something he’d forgotten about.
Then we were the center of his attention again.
“Big trouble …” he wheezed, “… if you throw those … at a peace officer.”
“What about for chasing a kid with a nightstick?” Jim said.
“I don’t … need no smart mouthed … nigger boy talking back to me,” the sheriff said. He let the nightstick fall to his side, then deftly slid it back into its loop. His hand went to the gun and pulled it free. He pointed it at us, and yes, the tunnel of the muzzle was as black an eye as I’d imagined. “I’m not playing games with you little shits. Put the goddamn rocks down.”
I thought about it. I think we all did.
In the end we stood our ground, holding our rocks like they were talismans.
“You going to shoot us?” Tara said. Her voice trembled, but only just so, and her courage made my young heart yearn for her even more.
Sheriff Glover smiled at this like he was saying: Hey, now you’re getting the idea.
“Sheriff sees gang up to no good,” he began. “Follows them into the woods where they ain’t supposed to be. Sees them vandalizing stuff maybe. There’s this car that maybe was stolen awhile back. So he confronts them, and the kids throw rocks at him, so he has no recourse but to open fire.”
His smile widened. His lips looked like two big pink earthworms, writhing and wriggling in the creases of his face.
“Think you can get all of us?” I said. “If one of us gets back and tells a different story, you think you’ll get out of this scot-free? Shooting three kids dead? Don’t you think that’ll be all over the news?”
His smile faltered, the wriggling earthworms going still.
There was a shuffling sound from behind him. A rustle in the trees as something cut through the air like a bullet. The sheriff stumbled forward. The gun went off, kicking up dirt and grit not two feet in front of me. He turned, a hand to the back of his head and coming back blood-specked.
Fat Bobby stepped out from the trees, stones in either hand—his head likewise bloody.
“No one’s hitting me anymore, shithead!”
His scream was something fierce, like a primitive warrior letting loose the hunting cry. Fat Bobby spun his arm and another rock went flying.
Sheriff Glover raised his gun hand.
Jim, Tara, and I moved as one, arms spinning, rocks sailing.
Pelted like an Old Testament sinner, the sheriff screamed and his gun fell to the ground. We picked up more, the three of us from behind him, Fat Bobby from his front, and we threw them, most of the stones finding their mark.
The sheriff fell to his knees. One hand, bloodied at the knuckles, tried to find his fallen service pistol. Jim darted forward and kicked it away into the bushes. Fat Bobby met Jim halfway and, skirting the sheriff, walked back with him to our side, near the old car.
Each of us reloaded, stones in either hand.
The sheriff, hands outstretched before him like a man praying, scooted on his knees so he was facing us. He seemed to be crying blood, trickles of it running down his face. He was trembling with rage or pain or both, and his eyes, ringed by blood, looked inhuman.
“Go away,” Fat Bobby said.
“Leave us alone,” Tara said.
“And don’t call me nigger,” Jim said.
I thought that about covered it all, so I said nothing. Just stood there in those tense seconds that seemed to drag on forever.
“You … goddamn brats,” he whispered. “Fucking … losers … you think this is … over?”
“It better be,” I said, finally finding my voice. “Or do you want how you hit a kid in the head with your stick, how you pulled a gun on others, in the paper? And don’t forget my dad. Hurt any of us and he’ll shove your gun so far up your ass you’ll be shitting lead.”
“Now get out of here,” Jim added. “And don’t let your son and his friends bother us no more. This here area belongs to us.”
The sheriff looked from each of us, back and forth, and there was death in his eyes. I knew he’d kill us if given the chance. He looked towards where Jim had kicked the gun. We all raised our arms, ready to let loose another volley.
Lastly, he considered the Buick again.
He stood, turned, and walked away from us, giving one last menacing look before disappearing into the green like a phantasm.
We stayed there for awhile, letting the calm of the forest work its magic. When we felt we’d recovered somewhat, gathered our thoughts and bearings, we likewise gathered around the hood of the old rusted Buick, like generals around a battle map.
“A lot of people don’t like us,” Jim said, and there was nervous laughter.
“Yeah,” I said. “I keep getting called a loser. Hurts my feelings.”
“Maybe we should start a club or something,” Fat Bobby said, kind of smiling.
No one laughed at that, and we kind of looked around at one another. Me and Jim longer than the others. He raised an eyebrow at me, and I shrugged at him. What the hell? we were saying to each other. More than that, though. Not just What the hell? but maybe Why not?
“The Losers’ Club,” Tara said and we all looked at her. “Like the Justice League, only not as cool.”
I smiled at her, and she at me, and there went my heart again.
“That has a nice ring to it,” I said. “But it’s already taken.”
I thought of what my dad had said not so long ago, back at the store when I’d brought Bobby in after the confrontation with Dillon and his pals at the stream. You’ve never chosen your friends easily, Joey. Always been a bit of an outsider that way. These three, in their own ways, were as much outsiders as I was. And I’m not so sure I chose them as friends, as we chose each other. Or something else entirely brought us together. Something beyond our control. Something written into the very machinery of the world. There was the sense again, as I stood there with my friends near the old Buick, of things not so much building momentum, but falling into place.
“How about the Outsiders’ Club?” I said, feeling the words as they rolled off my tongue. They sounded somehow right. As if I wasn’t making a suggestion, but merely declaring something we all knew to be true.
Tara and Bobby looked at each other, then back at me, nodding in turn. Jim kind of shrugged, but I could see a gleam in his eyes.
“We’d need special names,” I said.
“Oh, geez,” Jim said and passed a hand over his face. I remembered the look he’d given me at the fair when he’d seen the plush Batman under my arm. “How about yours is Joey the Dork?”
I smiled, said: “Why not.”
“I’m Fat Bobby,” Fat Bobby said, as if he’d read my mind. He said it with a sort of pride that made me smile.
“You got quite an arm,” I said, looking at Tara. “You nailed the sheriff right between the eyes.”
“Yeah,” Fat Bobby said. “You don’t throw like a girl at all. You should be in the major leagues.”
“Tomboy Tara,” I said, and she slugged me on the shoulder.
“Saying I look like a boy?” she said, that crooked smile like a quarter moon playing at her lips. I blushed, feeling the heat in my face, and I think that was answer enough for her.
Last of all we looked at Jim, and he kind of gave us this challenging look, daring us to say something.
“And I guess I’m Nigger Jim?” he said, and he looked at each of us in turn. None of us said anything, and he gave a little chuckle. “Nigger Jim, huh? Bunch of racist honkeys.” But he was smiling now, we were all smiling, and he stuck his hand out over the hood of the car and said: “To the Outsiders’ Club.”
Fat Bobby put his big hand out on top of Jim’s brown one.
“The Outsiders’ Club,” he said.
“The Outsiders’ Club,” Tara said, her hand going out and grasping theirs.
There was a buzz in the air, I thought, and something pleasant tingled down my spine. I put my hand out on top of Tara’s, on top of them all.
“The Outsiders’ Club,” I said. “We always watch out for each other, no matter what.”
“No matter what,” they all said as one.
And that’s how it was for the rest of our days together, until the end.