âSteve went home, and I went home, because I didn't want to keel over in the streets and because I figured the Motorcycle Boy might be there. It was still a little early for the old man.
I ran into Cassandra on the way up the stairs. I mean, really ran into her. Cassandra thought she was the Motorcycle Boy's girl friend. She was a weirdo, if you ask me. I couldn't stand her. See, she'd been a student teacher at the high school the year before, and the Motorcycle Boy was in one of her classes. She flipped out over him. Girls were chasing him all the time anyway. It wasn't just because he was good-looking. He was different-looking. Anyway, he could have any chick he wanted, and what he saw in Cassandra I don't know. He must have been sorry for her.
There she was, college-educated and from a good family and from a nice home on the other side of town, and she moves here into an old apartment and follows the Motorcycle Boy around. She wasn't even pretty. I didn't think so, anyway. Steve said she was, but I didn't think so. She'd walk around barefoot like a hick and didn't wear any makeup. Almost every time I'd see her she'd be carrying a cat. I don't like cats. I didn't go as far as Biff Wilcox did, use them for target practice with a twenty-two pistol, but I didn't like them. And she'd try to talk like the Motorcycle Boy, try to say things that meant something. She didn't fool me.
“Hi,” she said to me. I waited for her to move over so I could go on up the stairs, but she didn't. Hell, it was my stairs, for pete's sake. I just looked at her. I never tried to pretend I liked her. “Well, move it,” I said finally.
“Charming child,” she said.
I said something to her I wouldn't normally say to a chick, but she really got on my nerves. She didn't even flinch.
“He don't like you,” I went on. “Any more than he liked any of the rest of them.”
“He doesn't like me now, period,” she said. She held out her arms. They were covered with tracks. She was shooting up. “See?”
I was surprised for a second, then disgusted. “If he ever caught me doin' dope he'd break my arm.”
“He's done almost that much for me,” she said. She had always seemed stuck-up, like she thought her and the Motorcycle Boy belonged to some superelite club or something. She wasn't so sassy now.
“I'm not hooked,” she said, like I was her best friend. “I just thought it might help. I thought he was gone for good.”
One thing the Motorcycle Boy couldn't stand was people who did dope. He didn't even drink, most of the time. There was a rumor around that he'd killed a junkie once. I never cared to ask him about it. One day out of the clear blue sky he said to me, “I ever catch you doin' dope I'll bust your arm.” And he'd do it, too. Since that was one of the few times he ever paid any attention to me, I took it serious.
I looked away from Cassandra and spit over the railing. There was something about her that really got on my nerves. She took the hint and went on down the stairs. I found the Motorcycle Boy in the apartment, sitting on the mattress against the wall. I asked him if there was anything to eat in the house, but he didn't hear me. I'd gotten used to that, his hearing had been screwed up for years. He was color-blind, too.
I found some crackers and sardines and milk. I ain't picky. I like about anything. I also found a bottle of sneaky pete and finished it off. The old man never kept count.
I took off my shirt and washed out my knife cut again. It hurt real steady, not bad, but steady, like a toothache. I'd really be glad when it quit hurting.
“Hey,” I said to the Motorcycle Boy, “don't go anywhere till the old man gets home, okay?”
He dragged his eyes off the wall, looked at me slowly without changing his expression, and I could tell he was laughing.
“Poor kid,” he says to me, “looks like you're messed up all the time, one way or another.”
“I'm okay,” I said. I was a little surprised he'd worry about me. See, I always thought he was the coolest guy in the world, and he was, but he never paid much attention to me. But that didn't mean anything. As far as I could tell, he never paid any attention to anything except to laugh at it.
My father came in after a while.
“Both of you are home?” he asked. He wasn't as drunk as usual.
“Hey, I need some money,” I told him.
“I haven't seen you for quite some time,” the old man said to the Motorcycle Boy.
“I was home last night.”
“Indeed. I didn't notice.” My father talked funny. He'd been to college. Law school. I never told anybody that because nobody'd believe it. It was hard for me to believe it myself. I didn't think people who went to law school turned into drunks on welfare. But I guess some of them did.
“I need some money,” I repeated.
He looked at me thoughtfully. Me and the Motorcycle Boy didn't look anything like him. He was a middle-sized, middle-aged guy, kind of blond and balding on top, light-blue eyes. He was the kind of person nobody ever noticed. He had a lot of friends, though, mostly bartenders.
“Russel-James,” he said suddenly. “Are you ill?”
“Got cut up in a knife fight,” I told him.
“Really?” He came over to take a look. “What strange lives you two lead.”
“I ain't so strange,” I said.
He gave me a ten-dollar bill.
“And how about you?” he asked the Motorcycle Boy. “Did you have a nice trip?”
“Yeah. Went to California.”
“How was California?”
“It was one laugh after another. Even better than here, as amusing as this place is.” The Motorcycle Boy looked straight through the old man, seeing something I couldn't see.
I was hoping they wouldn't get started in on one of their long talks. Sometimes they'd go for days like they didn't even see each other, and sometimes they'd get started on something and talk all night. That wasn't much fun for me, since I couldn't understand half of what they said.
It was hard for me to decide exactly how I felt about my father. I mean, we got along okay, never had any kind of arguments, except when he thought I'd been swiping his wine. Even then he didn't mind much. We didn't talk any, either. Sometimes he'd ask me a question or something, but I could tell he was just trying to be polite. I'd tell him about a river bottom party or a fight or a dance, and he would just look at me like he didn't understand English. It was hard for me to respect him, since he didn't do anything. He drank all day out in bars, and came home and read and drank at night. That's not doing anything. But we got along okay, so I couldn't hate him or anything. I didn't hate him. I just wished I could like him better.
I think, though, he liked me better than he did the Motorcycle Boy. He reminded the old man of our mother. She left a long time ago, so I didn't remember her. Sometimes he'd just stop and stare at the Motorcycle Boy like he was seeing a ghost.
“You are exactly like your mother,” he'd tell him. And the Motorcycle Boy would just look at him with that blank, expressionless animal face.
The old man never said that to me. I must look like her, too, though.
“Russel-James,” my father said, settling down with a book and a bottle. “Please be more careful in the future.”
The Motorcycle Boy was quiet for so long I finally thought he was upset about Cassandra.
“She said she wasn't hooked,” I told him. Even though I didn't like her, I thought maybe this would cheer him up.
“Who?” he asked me, surprised.
“Cassandra.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, I believe her.”
“You do?”
“Sure. You know what happened to people who didn't believe Cassandra.”
I didn't. My father said, “The Greeks got 'em.”
Now see what I mean? What the hell did Greeks have to do with anything?
“You don't like her anymore, though, huh?” I asked him.
He didn't answer me. He just got up and left. I went to sleep right away. Smokey came by around midnight with his cousin who had a car, so I went to the lake and drank beer with them. There were some girls there and we built a fire and went swimming. When I got home it was early in the morning. The old man woke up and said, “Russel-James, I heard a rumor going around that a policeman was determined to get one of you. Is it you or your brother?”
“Both of us, but mostly him.”
I knew who he meant. The cop was a local who had hated us for years. I wasn't worried about that. I was a little worried that I might have got my side infected from swimming in the lake, but it looked all right.
I was tired again, so I cut school and slept till noon.
That afternoon turned out to be more interesting than I'd bargained for. I got expelled, and Patty broke up with me.
I went to school about one o'clock. I had to check in at the office and let them know I was there. I told them I had been sick that morning but was okay now. They didn't believe me, but I wasn't going to say I'd been to a beer blast till five in the morning.
I had done the same thing lots of times before, so I was surprised when, instead of giving me a pass back to class, I was sent in to see Mr. Harrigan, the guidance counselor.
“Rusty,” he said, shuffling through some papers on his desk to let me know I was taking up his valuable time. “You have been to see me before.”
“Yeah,” I said. I can't stand for people to call me just “Rusty.” It makes me feel like I'm not wearing my pants or something.
“Too many times,” he said.
I was wondering what was coming. I mean, I didn't go in there and waste his time on purpose. All they had to do was quit sending me there.
“We have decided that we can no longer tolerate your kind of behavior.” He went on to list all the things I'd been sent to the office for that year: fighting, swearing, smoking, sassing the teacher, cutting classesâ¦
It was quite a list, but I already knew about it. He acted like he was telling me something I didn't know about. My mind went kind of blank. There was something about Mr. Harrigan that made my mind go kind of blank, even when he was swatting me with a board, like he had two or three times before.
All of a sudden I realized he was kicking me out of school.
“We have arranged for you to be transferred to Cleveland,” he was telling me. Cleveland High was the school where they sent everybody they didn't like. That didn't bother me. But Biff Wilcox and his gang ran Cleveland. Since our fight, Biff and me had left each other alone. He stayed in his neighborhood, I stayed in mine. But if I just walked into his home territory, I was a dead man. It'd be me against half the school. Biff had had his chance to fight me fair. He wasn't going to try that again. Sure, I'd go to Cleveland. All I needed was a submachine gun and eyes in the back of my head.
“I don't want to go,” I said. “Look, I done lots of things worse than cutting school for half a day. Why now?”
“Rusty,” he said, “they are equipped to handle your kind in Cleveland.”
“Yeah? They got bars on the windows and bullet-proof vests?”
He just looked at me. “Don't you think it's time you gave some serious thought to your life?”
Well, I had to worry about money, and whether or not the old man would drink up his check before I got part of it, and whether or not the Motorcycle Boy would pick up and leave for good, and I had a cop itching to blow my brains out. Now I was getting sent to Biff Wilcox's turf. So I didn't have much time for serious thinking about my life.
I gave some serious thought about punching Mr. Harrigan. I mean, they were kicking me out anyway. But I was still a little hung-over, so I decided not to waste the energy.
“You start at Cleveland next Monday, Rusty,” Mr. Harrigan said. “You are suspended until then.”
“I won't go,” I said.
“The alternative is the Youth Detention Center.” He rattled his papers again, to show that my time was up.
The Youth Detention Center. Big deal. Those guys had a lot of paperwork to get straightened out before they came after me. I had weeks to think of something to do, before they showed up.
I left his office with the intention of heading straight for his car and slashing his tires. But I ran into Coach Ryan in the hall.
“Rusty-James, man, I'm sorry,” he said. He really did look kind of sorry. “I told them you were a good kid,” he said. “I told them you never gave me any trouble.”
Which was a lie, since I gave him trouble. He just tried to laugh it off.
“But it didn't do any good. I couldn't talk them out of it.”
“Don't worry about it,” I told him. He looked at me like I had been sentenced to death. He must have really thought I loved that school. I didn't, but my friends were there, and it was easier to go to than someplace where Biff Wilcox's friends were.
“Kid,” he said to me, “don't go getting into trouble, okay?”
I must have looked at him like he was nuts, because he went on: “I mean trouble you can't handle.”
“Sure,” I said, and added “man.”
It made him so happy. I hoped to hell when I was grown I'd have better things to do than hang around some tough punk, hoping his rep would rub off on me.
It really felt weird not being able to stay in school. I had always found something to do in the summer, though, and over Christmas, so I figured I'd get along.
Nobody was in Benny's besides Benny, and even though he was better than nobody, I don't like shooting pool without an audience. I went down the street and over a couple of blocks to Eddie & Joe's Bar. A couple of guys who used to be in the Packers hung out there. But as soon as I went in, Joe (or maybe Eddie) threw me out. Then I tried Weston McCauley's place. He was there, with some other people, but they were all spacey and nervous and dopey, doing horse. Junkies can't stand to be around straight people, so I left, feeling really sad because Weston had been second lieutenant in the Packers. He had been the closest thing to a friend that the Motorcycle Boy had. The Motorcycle Boy didn't have any friends, I realized when I got over being sad about Weston. He had admirers and enemies, but I'd never heard anybody claim to be his friend.
Then it was time for Patty to be getting home from school. She went to an all-girl Catholic school. Her mother didn't want her to be around boys. Patty thought this was really funny. She was the kind of girl who had boy friends when she was nine.
I waited for her at the bus stop, smoking a cigarette and fooling around, smarting off to people passing by. You'd be surprised at how many people are afraid of a fourteen-year-old kid.
Patty hopped off the bus and went swinging on by me like she didn't even see me.
“Hey,” I said, dropping my cigarette and running a couple of steps after her, “what's up?”
She stopped sharply, glared at me, and really told me what I could do.
“What's with you?” I asked her. I was getting mad, myself.
“I heard all about your little party,” she said. I must have looked as blank as I felt. She went on: “Up at the lake. Marsha Kirk was there. She told me all about it.”
“So what? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Do you really think you can treat me like that?” She started off swearing at me again. I wondered where she'd learned to swear so good, then remembered she'd been going with me for five months.
“What does a dumb party have to do with anything?”
“I heard all about you and that girl, that black-haired tramp.” She was so mad she couldn't even speak for a second.
“Just get lost,” she said finally. Her eyes were shooting sparks. “I don't want to ever see your face again.”
“Don't worry, you won't have to,” I told her, and added a few comments of my own. I almost slapped her. Then, when she went stalking on down the street, her hair bouncing on her shoulders, her head up, a tough, sweet little chick, I thought how I wouldn't be going over to her house to watch
TV
anymore. We wouldn't hug close, trying to make out without her little brothers catching us. I wouldn't have her to hold anymore, soft but strong in my arms.
I couldn't see what messing around with a chick at the lake had to do with me and Patty. It didn't have anything to do with me and Patty. Why would she let something stupid like that louse us up?
I felt funny. My throat was tight, and I couldn't breathe real good. I wondered if I was going to cry. I couldn't remember how crying felt, so I couldn't tell. I was all right in a little bit, though.
I just walked around for a while. I couldn't think of anything to do, or anyplace to go. I spotted the Motorcycle Boy in the drugstore reading a magazine, so I went in.
“You got a cigarette?” I asked. He handed me one.
“Let's do somethin' tonight, okay?” I said. “Let's go over to the strip, across the bridge, okay?”
“All right,” he said.
“Maybe I can get Steve to go, too.” I wanted Steve to go in case the Motorcycle Boy forgot I was with him and took off on a cycle, or went in some bar where I couldn't go.
“All right.”
I stood there and looked at the magazines for a little bit.
“Hey,” I said, “what you reading?”
“There's a picture of me in this magazine.” He showed it to me. It was a picture of him, all right. He was leaning back against a beat-up cycle, kind of propped up on his hands. He was wearing blue jeans and blue jean jacket and no shirt. He and the motorcycle were against a bunch of trees and vines and grass. It made him look like a wild animal out of the woods. It was a good picture. A photograph that looked like a painting. He wasn't smiling, but he looked happy.
“Hey,” I said, “what magazine is this?”
I looked at the cover. It was one of those big national magazines, one that went all over the country.
“Is there anything about you in here?” I looked through the magazine again.
“No. The photograph is one of a collection by a famous photographer. She took my picture out in California. I'd forgotten it. Actually, it was one hell of a shock to open a magazine and find my picture in it.”
I looked at the other photographs. They were mostly of people. They all looked like paintings. The magazine said that the person who took them was famous for her photos looking like paintings.
“Wow,” I said. “Wait till I tell everybody.”
“Don't, Rusty-James. I'd rather you didn't tell anybody. God knows it's gonna get around soon enough.”
He had been acting a little weird ever since he got back. He had a funny look on his face now, so I said, “Sure.”
“It's a bit of a burden to be Robin Hood, Jesse James and the Pied Piper. I'd just as soon stay a neighborhood novelty, if it's all the same to you. It's not that I couldn't handle a larger scale, I just plain don't want to.”
“All right,” I said. I knew what he meant about being Jesse James to some people. The Motorcycle Boy was very famous around our part of the city. Even the people who hated him would admit that.
“Hey, I get it,” I said. “The Pied Piper. Man, those guys would have followed you anywhere. Hell, most of them still would.”
“It would be great,” he said, “if I could think of somewhere to go.”
As we were leaving the drugstore, I saw the cop, Patterson, across the street, watching us. I stared back at him. The Motorcycle Boy, as usual, didn't even see him.
“That is really a good picture of you,” I said.
“Yes, it is.” He was smiling, but not happy. He never smiled much. It scared me when he did.