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  Finally Carol clapped her hands and said we were all going outside and play follow the leader, the game which asks the burning question: Are you ready for tomorrow's society?

  Everybody spilled outside. I could hear them running around and having a good time, or whatever passes for a good time when you're part of a mass puberty cramp. I lingered behind for a minute, half-thinking Carol would stop for a second, but she hurried right by. I went out and stood on the porch watching. Joe was there too, sitting with one leg hooked over the porch railing, and we both watched. Somehow Joe always seems to be where I end up, with one leg hooked over something, watching.

  "She's stuck up," he said finally.

  "Nah. She's just busy. Lot of people. You know.'

  "Shit," Joe said.

  We were quiet for a minute. Someone yelled, "Hey, Joe!"

  "You'll get crap all over that thing if you play, " Joe said. "Your mother'll have a kitten."

  "She'll have two," I said.

  "Come on, Joe!" This time it was Carol. She had changed into denims, probably designed by Edith Head, and she looked flushed and pretty. Joe looked at me. He wanted to look out for me, and suddenly I felt more terrified than at any time since I woke up on that hunting trip up north. After a while, being somebody's responsibility makes them hate you, and I was scared that Joe might hate me someday. I didn't know all that then, not at twelve, but I sensed some of it.

  "Go on," I said.

  "You sure you don't want to-?"

  "Yeah. Yeah. I got to get home anyway."

  I watched him go, hurt a little that he hadn't offered to come with me, but relieved in a way. Then I started across the lawn toward the street.

  Dicky noticed me. "You on your way, pretty boy?"

  I should have said something clever like: Yeah. Give my regards to Broadway. Instead I told him to shut up.

  He jackrabbited in front of me as if he had been expecting it, that big lawnmower grin covering the entire lower half of his face. He smelled green and tough, like vines in the jungle. "What was that, pretty boy?"

  All of it lumped together, and I felt ugly. Really ugly. I could have spit at Hitler, that's how ugly I felt. "I said shut up. Get out of my way."

  [In the classroom, Carol Granger put her hands over her eyes . . . but she didn't tell me to stop. I respected her for that.]

  Everyone was staring, but no one was saying anything. Mrs. Granger was in the house, singing "Swanee" at the top of her voice.

  "Maybe you think you can shut me up." He ran a hand through his oiled hair.

  I shoved him aside. It was like being outside myself. It was the first time I ever felt that way. Someone else, some other me, was in the driver's seat. I was along for the ride, and that was all.

  He swung at me; his fist looped down and hit me on the shoulder. It just about paralyzed the big muscle in my arm. Jesus, did that hurt. It was like getting hit with an iceball.

  I grabbed him, because I never could box, and shoved him backward across the lawn, that big grin steaming and fuming at me. He dug his heels in and curled an arm around my neck, as if about to kiss me. His other fist started hammering at my back, but it was like someone knocking on a door long ago and far away. We tripped over a pink lawn flamingo and whumped to the ground.

  He was strong, but I was desperate. All of a sudden, beating up Dicky Cable was my mission in life. It was what I had been put on earth for. I remembered the Bible story about Jacob wrestling with the angel, and I giggled crazily into Dicky's face. I was on top, and fighting to stay there.

  But all at once he slid away from me-he was awful slippery-and he smashed me across the neck with one arm.

  I let out a little cry and went over on my belly. He was astride my back in no time. I tried to turn, but I couldn't.

  I couldn't. He was going to beat me because I couldn't. It was all senseless and horrible. I wondered where Carol was. Watching, probably. They were all watching. I felt my corduroy coat ripping out under the arms, the buttons with the heralds embossed on them ripping off one by one on the tough loam. But I couldn't turn over.

  He was laughing. He grabbed my head and slammed it into the ground like a whiffle ball. "Hey, pretty boy!" Slam. Interior stars and the taste of grass in my mouth. Now I was the lawnmower. "Hey, pretty boy, don't you look nice?" He picked my head up by the hair and slammed it down again. I started to cry.

  "Don't you just look dan-dan-dandy!" Dicky Cable cried merrily, and hammered my head into the ground again- fore! "Don't you just look woooonderfur„

  Then he was off me, because Joe had dragged him off. "That's enough, goddammit!" he was shouting. "Don't you know that's enough?"

  I got up, still crying. There was dirt in my hair. My head didn't hurt enough for me to still be crying, but there it was. I couldn't stop. They were all staring at me with that funny hangdog look kids get when they've gone too far, and I could see they didn't want to look at me and see me crying. They looked at their feet to make sure they were still there. They glanced around at the chain-link fence to make sure no one was stealing it. A few of them glanced over at the swimming pool in the yard next door, just in case someone might be drowning and in need of a quick rescue.

  Carol was standing there, and she started to take a step forward. Then she looked around to see if anyone else was stepping forward, and no one else was. Dicky Cable was combing his hair. There was no dirt in it. Carol shuffled her feet. The wind made ripples on her blouse.

  Mrs. Granger had stopped singing "Swanee. " She was on the porch, her mouth wide open.

  Joe came up and put a hand on my shoulder. "Hey, Charlie," he said. "What do you say we go now, huh?"

  I tried to shove him away and only made myself fall down. "Leave me alone!" I shouted at him. My voice was hoarse and raw. I was sobbing more than yelling. There was only one button left on the corduroy jacket, and it was hanging by a string. The pants were all juiced up with grass stains. I started to crawl around on the matted earth, still crying, picking up buttons. My face was hot.

  Dicky was humming some spry ditty and looking as if he might like to comb his hair again. Looking back, I have to admire him for it. At least he didn't put on a crocodile face about the whole thing.

  Mrs. Granger came waddling toward me. "Charlie . . . Charlie, dear-"

  "Shut up, fat old bag!" I screamed. I couldn't see anything. It was all blurred in my eyes, and all the faces seemed to be crowding in on me. All the hands seemed to have claws. I couldn't see to pick up any more buttons. "Fat old bag!"

  Then I ran away.

  I stopped behind an empty house down on Willow Street and just sat there until all the tears dried up. There was dried snot underneath my nose. I spat on my handkerchief and wiped it off. I blew my nose. An alley cat came by, and I tried to pet it. The cat shied from my hand. I knew exactly how he felt.

  The suit was pretty well shot, but I didn't care about that. I didn't even care about my mother, although she would probably call Dicky Cable's mother and complain in her cultured voice. But my father. I could see him sitting, looking, carefully poker-faced, saying: How does the other guy look?

  And my lie.

  I sat down for the best part of an hour, planning to go down to the highway and stick out my thumb, hook a ride out of town, and never come back.

  But in the end I went home.

  Chapter 23

  Outside, a regular cop convention was shaping up. Blue trooper cars, white cruisers from the Lewiston P.D., a black-and-white from Brunswick, two more from Auburn. The police responsible for this automotive cornucopia ran hither and yon, ducked over low. More newsmen showed up. They poked cameras equipped with cobra-like telephoto lenses over the hoods of their vehicles. Sawhorses had been set up on the road above and below the school, along with double rows of those sooty little kerosene pots-to me those things always look like the bombs of some cartoon anarchist. The DPW people had put up a DETOUR sign. I guess they didn't have anything more appropriate in stock-slow! MADMAN A
T WORK, for instance. Don Grace and good old Tom were hobnobbing with a huge, blocky man in a state police uniform. Don seemed almost angry. The big blocky man was listening, but shaking his head. I took him to be Captain Frank Philbrick of the Maine State Police. I wondered if he knew I had a clear shot at him.

  Carol Granger spoke up in a trembling voice. The shame on her face was alarming. I hadn't told that story to shame her. "I was just a kid, Charlie." "I know that," I said, and smiled. "You were awful pretty that day. You sure didn't look like a kid."

  "I had kind of a crush on Dicky Cable, too. "

  "After the patty and all?"

  She looked even more ashamed. "Worse than ever. I went with him to the eighth-grade picnic. He seemed . . . oh, daring, I guess. Wild. At the picnic he . . . you know, he got fresh, and I let him, a little. But that was the only time I went anyplace with him. I don't even know where he is now."

  "Placerville Cemetery," Dick Keene said flatly.

  It gave me a nasty start. It was as if I had just seen the ghost of Mrs. Underwood. I could still have pointed to the places where Dicky had pounded on me. The idea that he was dead made for a strange, almost dreamy terror in my mind-and I saw a reflection of what I was feeling on Carol's face. He got fresh, and I let him, a little, she had said. What, exactly, did that mean to a bright college-bound girl like Carol? Maybe he had kissed her. Maybe he had even gotten her out into the puckerbrush and mapped the virgin territory of her burgeoning chest. At the eighth grade picnic, God save us all. He had been daring and wild.

  "What happened to him?" Don Lordi asked.

  Dick spoke slowly. "He got hit by a car. That was really funny. Not ha-ha, you know, but peculiar. He got his driver's license just last October, and he used to drive like a fool. Like a crazy man. I guess he wanted everybody to know he had, you know, balls. It got so that no one would ride with him, hardly. He had this 1966 Pontiac, did all the body work himself. Painted her bottle green, with the ace of spades on the passenger side."

  "Sure, I used to see that around," Melvin said. "Over by the Harlow Rec."

  "Put in a Hearst four-shifter all by himself," Dick said. "Four-barrel carb, overhead cam, fuel injection. She purred. Ninety in second gear. I was with him one night when he went up the Stackpole Road in Harlow at ninety-five. We go around Brissett's Bend and we start to slide. I hit the floor. You're right, Charlie. He looked weird when he was smiling. I dunno if he looked exactly like a lawnmower, but he sure looked weird. He just kept grinning and grinning all the time we were sliding. And he goes . . . like, to himself he goes, 'I can hold 'er, I can hold 'er,' over and over again. And he did, I made him stop, and I walked home. My legs were all rubber. A couple of months later he got hit by a delivery truck up in Lewiston while he was crossing Lisbon Street. Randy Milliken was with him, and Randy said he wasn't even drunk or stoned. It was the truck driver's fault entirely. He went to jail for ninety days. But Dicky was dead. Funny."

  Carol looked sick and white. I was afraid she might faint, and so, to take her mind somewhere else, I said, "Was your mother mad at me, Carol?"

  "Huh?" She looked around in that funny, startled way she had.

  "I called her a bag. A fat old bag, I think. "

  "Oh." She wrinkled her nose and then smiled, gratefully, I think, picking up on the gambit. "She was. She sure was. She thought that fight was all your fault. "

  "Your mother and my mother used to both be in that club, didn't they?"

  "Books and Bridge? Yeah." Her legs were still uncrossed, and now her knees were apart a little. She laughed. "I'll tell you the truth, Charlie. I never really cared for your mother, even though I only saw her a couple of times to say hi to. My mother was always talking about how dreadfully intelligent Mrs. Decker was, what a very fine grasp she had on the novels of Henry James, stuff like that. And what a fine little gentleman you were."

  "Slicker than owl shit," I agreed gravely. "You know, I used to get the same stuff about you. "

  "You did?"

  "Sure." An idea suddenly rose up and smacked me on the nose. How could I have possibly missed it so long, an old surmiser like me? I laughed with sudden sour delight. "And I bet I know why she was so deternuned I was going to wear my suit. It's called 'Matchmaking,' or 'Wouldn't They Make a Lovely Couple?' or, 'Think of the Intelligent Offspring.' Played by all the best families, Carol. Will you marry me?"

  Carol looked at me with her mouth open. "They were . . ." She couldn't seem to finish it.

  "That's what I think."

  She smiled; a little giggle escaped her. Then she laughed right out loud. It seemed a little disrespectful of the dead, but I let it pass. Although, to tell you the truth, Mrs. Underwood was never far from my mind. After all, I was almost standing on her.

  "That big guy's coming," Billy Sawyer said.

  Sure enough, Frank Philbrick was striding toward the school, looking neither right nor left. I hoped the news photographers were getting his good side; who knew, he might want to use some of the pix on this year's Xmas cards. He walked through the main door. Down the hall, as if in another world, I could hear his vague steps pause and then go up to the office. It occurred to me in a strange sort of way that he seemed real only inside. Everything beyond the windows was television. They were the show, not me. My classmates felt the same way. It was on their faces.

  Silence.

  Chink. The intercom.

  "Decker?"

  "Yes, sir?" I said.

  He was a heavy breather. You could hear him puffing and blowing into the mike up there like some large and sweaty animal. I don't like that, never have. My father is like that on the telephone. A lot of heavy breathing in your ear, so you can almost smell the scotch and Pall Malls on his breath. It always seems unsanitary and somehow homosexual.

  "This is a very funny situation you've put us all in, Decker."

  "I guess it is, sir."

  "We don't particularly like the idea of shooting you."

  "No, sir, neither do I. I wouldn't advise you to try."

  Heavy breathing. "Okay, let's get it out of the henhouse and see what we got in the sack. What's your price?"

  "Price?" I said. "Price?" For one loony moment I had the impression he had taken me for an interesting piece of talking furniture-a Morns chair, maybe, equipped to huckster the prospective buyer with all sorts of pertinent info. At first the idea struck me funny. Then it made me mad.

  "For letting them go. What do you want? Air time? You got it. Some sort of statement to the papers? You got that." Snort-snort-snore. Likewise, puff-puff-puff. "But let's do it and get it done before this thing turns into a hairball. But you got to tell us what you want. "

  "You," I said.

  The breath stopped. Then it started again, puffing and blowing. It was starting to really get on my nerves. "You'll have to explain that," he said.

  "Certainly, sir," I said. "We can make a deal. Would you like to make a deal? Is that what you were saying?"

  No answer. Puff, snort. Philbrick was on the six-o'clock news every Memorial Day and Labor Day, reading a please-drive-safely message off the teleprompter with a certain lumbering ineptitude that was fascinating and almost endearing. I had felt there was something familiar about him, something intimate that smacked of deja vu. Now I could place it. The breathing. Even on TV he sounded like a bull getting ready to mount Farmer Brown's cow in the back forty.

  "What's your deal?"

  "Tell me something first," I said. "Is there anybody out there who thinks I might just decide to see how many people I can plug down here? Like Don Grace, for instance?"

  "That piece of shit," Sylvia said, then clapped a hand over her mouth.

  "Who said that?" Philbrick barked.

  Sylvia went white.

  "Me," I said. "I have certain transsexual tendencies too, sir." I didn't figure he would know what that meant and would be too wary to ask. "Could you answer my question?"

  "Some people think you might go the rest of the way out of your gou
rd, yes," he answered weightily. Somebody at the back of the room tittered. I don't think the intercom picked it up.

  "Okay, then," I said. "The deal is this. You be the hero. Come down here. Unarmed. Come inside with your hands on your head. I'll let everybody go. Then I'll blow your fucking head off. Sir. How's that for a deal? You buy it?"

  Puff, snort, blow. "You got a dirty mouth, fella. There are girls down there. Young girls. "

  Irma Bates looked around, startled, as if someone had just called her.

  "The deal," I said. "The deal."

  "No," Philbrick said. "You'd shoot me and hold on to the hostages." Puff, snort. "But I'll come down. Maybe we can figure something out."

  "Fella," I said patiently, "if you sign off and I don't see you going out the same door you came in within fifteen seconds, someone in here is just going to swirl down the spout. "

  Nobody looked particularly worried at the thought of just swirling down the spout.

  Puff, puff. "Your chances of getting out of this alive are getting slimmer."

  "Frank, my man, none of us get out of it alive. Even my old man knows that. "

  "Will you come out?"

  "No. "

  "If that's how you feel." He didn't seem upset. "There's a boy named Jones down there. I want to speak with him."

  It seemed okay. "You're on, Ted," I told him. "Your big chance, boy. Don't blow it. Folks, this kid is going to dance his balls off before your very eyes."