Chasing the Bear (10 page)

“And you think Petey planned this out before it happened?” Susan said.

“Down to the apple,” I said. “If it was a stone or something that would do damage, they might have been scared to chase him into the lot. But an apple doesn’t scare anybody, just annoys them.”

“And he knew when they got to the lot, they’d split up and start looking up and down the aisles.”

I nodded.

“And how do you know about this?” she said. “Did you attend?”

“No,” I said. “Aurelio told me.”

“Did he attend?”

“Nope, but some of the other Mexican kids told him about it,” I said. “And pretty much it was all over town by the next afternoon . . .” I grinned at the memory. “And Leo was seen around town with a black eye and a fat lip.”

“You seem glad the Mexican boys won.”

“I didn’t care who won,” I said. “I never got that whole business about racial loyalty, or gender loyalty, or age loyalty. I always, even when I was little, tried to take things as they came and like or dislike them on how they were.”

“You still do,” Susan said.

“Yes,” I said. “But even now I still kind of admire how smart Pedro was. Gang for gang, I think he was outnumbered.”

We went into the Four Seasons hotel. Both doormen spoke warmly to Susan. We walked to the lounge in silence and got a seat at the bar. Susan ordered a glass of pinot grigio. I had a beer.

“Was that the end of it?” Susan said.

“Not quite,” I said.

It
was overcast and kind of cold, and there was no one else in the school yard. I was working on my jump shot, with Jeannie retrieving the ball for me. Catch the pass, take a dribble, square up, shoot. Catch the pass, take a dribble, square up, shoot. Jeannie’s passes were not always really good, but it was better than chasing it after every shot. I was good with the dribble. I could pass, and I was tough on defense. But my outside shot was weak and so I tried to do a hundred jumpers every day.

I was on number sixty-seven when Leo and his troop came around the corner of the school. Croy was beside Leo.

Leo shouted at me, “You’re in trouble now, Spenser.”

I sank jumper number sixty-eight before I looked at him. Jeannie retrieved the ball and held it for a moment, then she dropped the basketball and ran away. Leo watched her go and turned and looked at me.

“Smart girl,” he said.

“What’s your problem, Leo?” I said.

“You knew the Mexicans was gonna ambush us, and you didn’t tell us,” Leo shouted.

“Nope,” I said.

“Don’t lie about it,” Leo yelled. “Croy seen you talking to Petey Hernandez right before the fight. You betrayed your own damn kind.”

“You are my kind?” I said. “I don’t think so.”

“You admit you knew it?” Leo said.

“Nothing to admit,” I said. “I didn’t know what they were planning.”

Leo and his gang moved closer. I noticed Croy stuck pretty close to Leo.

“You think you can fight us all?” Leo said.

Besides him and Croy there were about ten other kids. The answer was obviously
no.
But I didn’t care to say so.

“You ready to get it handed to you, backstabber?” Leo said.

“You first?” I said.

“All of us first,” Leo said.

The gang spread out and formed a circle around me. They didn’t seem in any hurry. I think they wanted me to be scared. I was scared. But I did everything I could to keep them from seeing it. I kept facing Leo, the leader. And as the circle formed, I took a step closer to him.

I said, “You and me, Leo? One-on-one?”

“Why should I do that?” Leo said. “There’s twelve of us. Why should I do all the work?”

Everyone was quiet. It felt thick and strained, like it does just before a storm breaks. I was debating whether to hit Leo first. I had just decided to hit him when my father’s gray pickup truck pulled into the school yard and my father and my two uncles got out. I felt all the tightness go out of my stomach. My back loosened. My breathing slowed a little. My father and my uncles pushed through the circle of boys as if they weren’t there, and walked to where I was, and stood in a semicircle behind me.

Nobody said anything.

Finally Leo said to my father, “This is just us kids fooling around, Mr. Spenser.”

“Lot of you,” my father said. “Just thought there should be a few more with him.”

“What are you gonna do?” Leo said.

My father ignored him.

“You think you’re gonna have to fight him?” my father said to me.

“Yes,” I said.

“Now’s a good time, then,” my father said.

“Oh, sure,” Leo said. “And when I kick his butt, you big guys jump me?”

“Nope,” my father said.

“What’ll you do?” Leo said.

“Can’t handle losing,” my father said, “you got no business fighting.”

“You touch me and my father will sue your ass,” Leo said.

My father smiled faintly.

“You two fight,” he said, “we’ll see that it’s fair, and win or lose, when it’s over it’s over and everybody goes home.”

“Okay, Leo?” I said. “You and me?”

He didn’t answer. I slid into the fighting stance they had spent so long teaching me.

“Don’t rush things,” Patrick said to me.

Leo tried to kick me in the groin, but I turned my hip and put a jab on his nose. The nose had recently taken a beating thanks to Petey and his friends. It was tender. He yelped. I followed with a right cross. He backed up. I shuffled after him. He hit me with a big looping right hand, which I half blocked. He followed that with an equally looping left, which I stepped inside of, blocked with both forearms and slammed him on the side of the head with a back fist. He tried to get his arms around me. I drove both my hands, palms up, under his chin and bent his head back and shoved him away. He tried once more and I hit him with a flurry of lefts and rights. He put his hands up to protect his head and I started hooking him in the ribs, left, right, driving off my legs, out of a crouch like they had taught me.

He quit.

He put both hands against the back of his head, and shielded his face with his forearms, and doubled up and dropped to his knees. I thought about kicking him. My heart was pumping, my breath was hard but steady, I could feel the rhythm of the fight in my whole self. I shook my head. Instead I looked around at the circle of boys.

“Anybody else?” I said.

Nobody met my eyes. As I surveyed the circle, I saw Jeannie behind it, near my father’s truck.

“She come get you?” I said to my father.

“She did,” he said.

I looked around the circle again. Then I looked at Leo, still crouched on the ground.

“Over,” I said.

With his hand still clasped to his head, Leo nodded.

“You need a ride home?” my father said to Leo.

Leo shook his head.

“Your old man has anything he wants to discuss with me,” my father said, “or Cash or Patrick, he knows where we live.”

Leo shook his head again. My father stared down at him.

“You’re not going to tell him, are you?” my father asked.

With his head still protected, looking at the ground, Leo said, “No.”

“Why not?” my father said.

“He’d yell at me for losing,” Leo said.

My father reached down and took hold of Leo’s arm and helped him stand.

“He’s wrong to do that,” my father said. “Everybody loses sometime. You ever need to talk, come see me.”

Leo nodded.

My uncle Cash looked at the circle of kids still standing around uneasily.

“Time to go home,” Cash said.

Nobody moved for a moment.

“Now,” Cash said. “Right now.”

The kids sort of came awake and turned and went off in various directions.

Jeannie came over.

“I’ll walk you home,” she said to Leo.

I said, “Thanks, Jeannie.”

She nodded and patted my shoulder. Then she took Leo’s arm and led him toward home.

“She feels sorry for him,” Patrick said.

“I do too,” I said.

“Not bad enough to let him beat you,” Patrick said.

“No,” I said. “Not that bad.”

My
uncle Cash put out a pan of ice water and told me to soak my hands.

“Otherwise they’ll swell up,” he said.

My father sat opposite me at the kitchen table.

“Keep your hands in there, long as you can,” he said. “Then take ’em out, let ’em rest and put ’em back in. Goal is twenty minutes or so.”

I nodded.

“Jeannie came and got you,” I said.

“Yep.”

“What did she say?”

“Told us there was a bunch of kids gonna hurt you,” my father said. “I asked her how many. She said twenty.”

“Twelve,” I said.

“You counted,” my father said.

“Yes.”

My father nodded once like that was a good thing to have done. I took my hands out of the ice water. They were numb with cold.

“Put your hands back in as soon as you can,” my father said.

“Jeannie’s a good kid,” I said.

“She is,” my father said.

“She wants me to be her boyfriend,” I said.

My father nodded.

“You want that?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t. I like her, but I don’t like her that way.”

“Can’t love somebody just because they want you to,” my father said.

“Dad,” I said. “I’m only fifteen.”

“I loved your mother,” my father said. “When I was fifteen. Probably loved her when I was five.”

I nodded.

“I feel bad for her, though,” I said.

“That’s not enough,” Cash said.

“Don’t do her any favors,” Patrick said. “You let her think you love her, and in a while she’ll know you don’t, and you won’t be enough.”

“So I’d be hurting her by trying not to hurt her,” I said.

“If what she feels for you is real,” my father said.

“That’s weird,” I said.

Patrick grinned at me.

“That’s life,” he said.

“Life’s not simple,” I said.

“No,” my father said. “And not every problem has a happy solution. You don’t need to soak your hands anymore.”

I removed my hands, picked up the bucket and dumped the water in the kitchen sink.

“You three guys always seem to know what to do,” I said.

“We’ve lived awhile,” my father said.

“Lot of people have lived awhile,” I said. “How come you guys know all this stuff?”

The three of them looked at each other as if they’d never thought about it.

Finally my father said, “We pay attention.”

“You
were still looking for the one?” Susan said.

“I guess,” I said.

“You ever wonder why you have been so dogged to that commitment?” Susan said.

“Looking for you,” I said.

“Looking for someone,” she said, “like looking for a pattern, and when we met, I fit the pattern nicely.”

“A less romantic explanation,” I said.

“But one rooted at least in possibility.”

“A pox on all your science,” I said.

“So where did the pattern come from?” Susan said.

“That I was looking for, that you fit nicely into?” I said.

“That one.”

“Well, first of all,” I said, “I’m willing to accept the fact that I could have met someone else and loved them. But I stick to my guns on a simple fact.”

I sipped my drink.

“Which is?” Susan said.

“You were the one.”

“The one you imagined,” Susan said.

“Yes.”

“So,” she said, “quite literally the girl of your dreams, as you like to say.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know why you were so committed to the one?” Susan said.

I smiled at her.

“Yes,” I said. “I believe I do.”

Susan looked at me and raised her eyebrows and cocked her head.

“I grew up in an all-male family,” I said. “A good family, but one without a woman in it. I think I was always trying to complete the family.”

“Which I did,” Susan said.

“Yes.”

“So you knew that all along,” Susan said.

“I figured it out after I met you,” I said.

“How did that make you feel?” Susan said.

“Maybe I was looking for a missing mother,” I said. “The fact remains that out of all the women I have known, you were the only one I loved.”

“And I loved you back,” Susan said.

“So even though you’re a Harvard PhD shrink,” I said, “you still believe in love.”

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve overcome my education.”

“Atta girl,” I said.

Looking
back, it was like a Norman Rock-well painting. My father and my two uncles and me at the train station. I had made all state in football my senior year and gotten some scholarship offers. My father had urged me to take the one in Boston because he still thought Boston was the intellectual hub of the universe. He hadn’t made me choose Boston, but he urged as strong as I had ever heard him. So, I went to Boston.

“You get to Denver,” my father said. “You take a cab to Denver Airport and stay in this motel. In the morning you go to the terminal and check in and fly to Boston. It’s all right here on this ticket envelope. Be about four hours or so. You take a cab to the college and do what they tell you. Here’s some money.”

It was a pretty good wad of cash.

“Can you afford this?” I said.

“Three of us working,” Cash said.

“And we don’t need much,” Patrick said.

“Open a bank account, like I told you,” my father said. “Put the money in it. We can wire you more when you need it.”