25

They tried Bones as an adult. It seemed like they’d been doing that to a lot of teens lately, but I guess that’s because the only cases you hear about are the real bad ones. But Bones was sixteen, almost seventeen, and he’d done the damage, so they tried him as an adult for attempted murder. Some people said it should’ve been assault instead, but I can’t say I disagreed with the charge.

In fact, I’ll never be able to say I disagreed, because I testified against him. I’m on the record. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one of those nature shows on crocodiles, but they do this thing called a death roll. They grab hold of an animal with their teeth and just start spinning. They tear it all to hell. That’s pretty much how I rolled on Bones. It sort of seemed like piling on at the end, but I guess that’s the way people get put away.

Mixer and me had the same lawyer. Mixer’s folks paid for most of him, but my mom chipped in. The guy was real slick. He wanted Mixer to talk, too, but Mixer wouldn’t testify against anyone. He refused to answer almost everything on the grounds that almost everything was “liable to incriminate” him. It’s called taking the fifth, or pleading the fifth maybe, I forget. Either way, Mixer spent most of a morning doing it.

I could’ve done that, too. I mean, I’d never seen myself as the kind of guy who’d squeal. Yeah, Bones was out of control, but it was still Bones. I’d grown up with him. And there wasn’t really anything in it for me. I was a juvenile. I hadn’t swung the club, and no one was saying I had. There was a maximum they were going to be able to do to me, and that was already running up against the minimum people around here were going to accept.

But I went ahead and testified anyway. I put it all down on paper for Throckmorton, and when he asked me if I wanted someone to read it off for me, I said, “Nah, I’ll do it.” And I took the stand and read it all out, while the lady sat there and typed it all on to skinny paper with that little machine.

If you’ve never been in a courtroom, then it’s not what you’re thinking. Or it’s half what you’re thinking, but the other half is like Bingo night at the VFW. It’s a little cut-rate. The chairs for the audience aren’t folding chairs, but they’re just one step up from that. They’re made out of the same hollow metal and have vinyl pads for your back and butt. The floors are just floors, like at school. The jury box and the judge’s desk are made out of wood, but it’s just regular wood, like from a kitchen set.

I wasn’t expecting marble thrones or anything, but it all looks heftier and nicer on TV. And the judge is pretty much always some really distinguished-looking guy on TV, but he was just this normal little dude. I would’ve pegged him for a dentist if it wasn’t for the robe, but even that looked at least half polyester.

Anyway, the dentist was sitting above me and to the right when they swore me in. He seemed kind of bored, to be honest. Bones was sitting at a table out in front. He was staring daggers at me, because you can’t stare clubs. Mixer was looking down at the floor. Tommy was in the back, and he looked like he couldn’t believe any of this. My mom had her chin up, and she almost looked proud. I was thinking, Don’t be, Mom. It’s not like I’m up here collecting an award.

The jury was just this random group of adults off to my left. It was like they’d gone into a Dunkin’ Donuts at three P.M. and rounded up everyone there. It was sort of a stacked deck, too, because it’s supposed to be “a jury of your peers,” right, but the youngest one there was at least twice our age. They were looking at me like I was an exhibit at the zoo, like the North American ring-tailed delinquent or something. They were getting a good look at my eye, because they were on that side.

Everyone else in the room was looking at me, too. I cleared my throat and got to it. My voice was shaking a little at first, and I sort of hated myself for that. I really didn’t want to be up there.

You know why I was, why I testified? I’ll tell you. It was the way Haberman used to call us gentlemen. “Right this way, gentlemen.” It was the way he called me Mr. Benton. I used to think he was making fun of me—I mean, I wasn’t exactly walking around school in a tuxedo—but then, I used to think that pretty much everyone was making fun of me, looking at me, whatever. I was pretty quick on the draw when it came to taking offense. All that stuff seems kind of small now, after seeing a man beaten like that in his own living room.

I guess I just realized that Haberman actually meant it. He was showing me some respect, and I just wasn’t used to seeing any. He wasn’t picking on me in class, he was giving me a chance. I think maybe I knew it as soon as he opened the door for me. And how did I repay him for that? I sat there and watched him bleed on his own floor.

So now I was repaying him this way, because I realized one other thing, too, at just about the same time: Bones was a damn psycho. Haberman’s house, the house in the woods…dude should pretty much be kept on a leash outside. Because friendships ended. Damn right they did, and for a lot less than all this. I appreciated him sticking up for me in like sixth grade, but at some point you’ve got to move on. It just stops being cool to lash out, to hurt people who haven’t hurt you. And it stops being OK to just let that happen.

So yeah, I testified. Bones was like, You’ll be sorry, man. And I was like, Yeah, maybe I will, but not for seven to ten years, bitch.