The Crazy Horse Electric Game (17 page)

In the office, Willie almost splits a gut telling André. “You can't tell anyone, though,” he says. “I promised.”

“Are you sure he's okay? Physically, I mean?”

“I think so,” Willie says. “There couldn't be any left in him. You'll know what I mean when you see it.” He gets a sweatshirt and a pair of pants from Lost and Found as he hears the buzzer for second period.

“Tell him I'll give him a ride home,” André says. “He doesn't live very far.”

“Actually, I think I'll point him toward the bus,” Willie says. “He really needs to think no one else knows.”

“Whatever you think. Just be sure he's okay.”

Telephone Man is okay. By the time Willie's back,
he's out of his crouched position and staring into the toilet where he stuffed his clothes. Willie knocks quietly, whispering, “It's me,” through the door before unlocking the lock. “Here, put these on,” he says. “You can run home and change and be back before noon. I'll keep it locked up until I can hose it out.” He looks over Telephone Man's shoulder into the toilet. “How come you put them there?”

“Thought I could flush 'em down,” Telephone Man booms. “Got shit all over 'em. Chickenshit rip-off, if you ask me.”

Willie marvels at how fast he's bounced back. “Looks like a chickenshit rip-off to me,” Willie says. Then, “You sure you're feeling okay, now? Be able to go home and come back? I mean, you're not still sick, are you?”

“I'm okay. You just don't tell, okay? Promise you won't tell.”

“I already promised, Jack. I won't tell.”

Telephone Man looks him straight in the eye for a moment, seems satisfied, and nods his big nod. Willie sticks his head out the door into the hall, looks both ways to be sure it's empty and gently nudges Telephone Man out. “Hustle back,” he says. “No one will even know you were gone if you hurry.”

Telephone Man slides along the wall to the door
and is gone. Willie locks the door to the rest room and heads for Government class.

 

“They've got Telephone Man! They're beating him up! Down by the stairs! Somebody better come quick! They're hurting him bad!”

Hawk is out of his desk in a second, leaps over two more and flies into the hall past Yolanda Duke, the freshman girl delivering the message. Kato is close behind, and the room empties. Hawk shoots out the front gate and down the sidewalk toward the stairs before most of the rest clear the building. Willie turns the corner in time to see Hawk jump over Telephone Man lying on the ground next to the concrete bench and sprint down the stairs two and three at a time. At the bottom he is on Kam before Kam has time to turn and fight, slamming him down face first, grabbing a handful of hair; driving his face into the gravel next to the street.

“Done messed up this time, China boy,” Hawk hisses into his ear, then pushes harder.

Kam struggles and Hawk pulls his head back hard. Kam struggles again and Hawk's knee rams into the back of his leg; Kam stifles a scream. “That how you China boys do you stuff?” Hawk asks. “Beatin' on dummies? You better hope he ain' hurt bad, or I gonna grind you face right off you head.”

“Hey, man,” Kam says. “We didn't know who he was. We were just roughin' him up a little for some bread, man. He's not hurt.”

“You
hope
he ain't, you mean.”

Hawk twists around to look back up the stairs and as he does Kam scrambles to get away. Hawk's knee slams hard into the middle of Kam's back as André runs down the stairs toward them.

Hawk puts his mouth close to Kam's ear before André can get to them and says, “Tha's my school. You stay away from my school. You don' be puttin' you shitty little China-boy writin' all over it and you don' be even
lookin'
at nobody goes to school there. Understand? Are you compre-
hend
-ing what I sayin'?”

“Yeah,” Kam says through gritted teeth, “I understand.”

“I'm gettin' up now,” Hawk says, loosening his hold slowly. “You try any that fancy foot shit, I'll embarrass you, front of you friends. Then I'll beat you up
bad
.” Hawk lets go of Kam's hair and slowly removes his knee from the middle of his back.

André is there, but sees Hawk letting the kid up and stands back. At the top of the stairs, Willie and most of the rest of the class are checking out Telephone Man, who has a bloody lip and swollen eye but, other than that, is just dazed and scared. He isn't talking, not even
crying; just breathing very short and staring; shuddering. They pick him up and help him back to school.

 

At lunchtime, on the patio, Hawk approaches Willie. “China boys gonna be back,” he says.

Willie winces. “How do you know?”

“They think they a gang,” Hawk says. “That boy be embarrassed. They be back.”

Willie's not sure why Hawk's telling him this. “So what do we do? Why you telling me?”

“You got the keys to this place. We come up here tonight and wait for them. We sit in the dark and jus' wait. They got to learn. We don' teach 'em, they don' learn. Can't tell André. You can give me the keys or come up with us.”

The idea of spending the night in the school building isn't appealing, but Willie immediately recognizes he's in a pinch. If he tells André, he's on Hawk's list. If he gives up his keys and André finds out, he couldn't face him.

“Didn't you say them China boys done you bad at the bus stop?” Hawk asks, reading Willie's mind.

Willie nods. “Yeah.”

“Well, what go 'round come 'round. This you chance to be a cowboy.”

Willie's resigned. “What time?”

Willie looks at his watch and moves uncomfortably on the old couch they brought down to the basement room from the student lounge. Hawk and Kato are more than an hour late. That makes no sense because Hawk was so pumped up Willie didn't think he'd go home for dinner.

A bare sixty-watt bulb lights the room; Willie's small transistor radio plays low on the floor in the corner, low enough not to be heard anywhere outside the room. His gym towel is stuffed in the crack between the bottom of the door and the floor; absolutely no light escapes. On his lap sits an open notebook: “Dear Mom and Dad.” So far, that's it.

He doesn't know if he can't write the letter because he's nervous about being here—waiting without backup
to have his head kicked in by an infant Chinese gang—or because he just can't think of what to say to his parents. Many times over this past year he's tried to write them, but each time he gets about this far and jams up. He doesn't know whether to talk about his own guilt for leaving without a trace or about how awful his life became with them after the accident. He wants to be honest but not unnecessarily hurtful. Above all, he wants to repair things. Sometimes he thinks it would be easier to write Johnny first because Johnny would understand better than anyone; but his parents would feel betrayed if he contacted anyone but them.

A
bump
out in the large basement room startles him and he silently lays the notebook on the floor, flips off the radio and jerks the chain on the light bulb to leave the room pitch black. He lies quietly, listening, not sure; maybe it was just the old building settling. He hears it again—still not clearly an unnatural sound, but he reaches down beside the couch and grips his cane, silently turning to put his feet on the floor, then rising to make his way to the door through the darkness. He touches the knob, holding his breath, straining to hear; mentally forcing his heart back down where it belongs. Nothing. He twists the knob, pulling the door open just a crack, then farther, with only the whisper of the towel
scooting along the floor to break the dead silence of the building. Dim light shines in through the windows running along the top of the far wall, but the basement walls are dark and seem to swallow it up. Willie can see nothing; he feels watched. Moving along the wall toward the stairway, ears ringing from the fevered pitch of anticipation, he holds the cane lightly in his right hand, fingering the tip like a security blanket; ready in a second to blast some bad guy's head over the center-field bleachers.

He hears the sound again, over by the far wall, still too soft to make out.

“Hawk?” he whispers.

No answer.

“That you, Hawk?”

Still nothing.

He squats quietly on the bottom step, still straining to hear, but only the pounding of his heart comes through. For what seems like an hour he crouches in silence, hearing only dead air from the other side of the room. Finally he stands, waits, and moves carefully back across the floor to the door of the smaller room, sliding inside. He closes it carefully, without a sound, and crouches to replace the towel in the crack. With his ear against the door, he stands a full two minutes in
darkness, listening. Finally convinced the monster in the darkness is only a figment of his imagination, he pulls the chain on the light.

Choosing to leave the radio off so he can hear, Willie returns to the notebook; the letter home. He'd almost rather face Kam. Even with all that happened—the night in the racquetball court, the overheard conversation in his parents' bedroom—part of him feels as if
he
betrayed
them
. He wants to apologize;
beg
them to give him another chance; but remembers André's words when he initially brought up the idea of making contact.
Don't go back with your tail between your legs. Like it or not, parents have a contract to stick with their kids through bad times as well as good; your dad didn't do that. That's his responsibility, not yours
.

Willie thinks of the anger and humiliation he sometimes feels when he remembers overhearing his dad virtually wishing Willie had died in the accident. He just doesn't know where to start; which emotions to express; and he stares at the heading. A bang outside the room brings him up with a start. This time he
knows
it's real; farther off in the building somewhere, probably upstairs. He kills the light and again steals out into the larger room, hoping to hear Hawk, or Kato, or
someone
familiar calling his name. Nothing. He moves
quickly to the stairs and feels his way along the railing to the upstairs hall, silently thanking Sammy for teaching him to move undetected. There is whispering at the other end of the hall, but he can't make it out; doesn't know if it's friend or foe. He moves behind a set of lockers and listens, then, feeling exposed, retraces his steps downstairs. If it's Hawk, he knows where the room is and he'll find Willie there. If it's the Jo Boys, the room is the best place to hide; without knowing about it, they'd never find him there.

Closing the door behind him once again, he sits on the couch in the darkness and waits.
Where the hell is Hawk? Those guys should have been here hours ago
.

The noises become bolder and Willie is convinced that if it were Hawk and Kato they'd have come down to let him know they were here. They weren't coming to play, to scare him; they know this stuff is serious. The distant bumps and whispers turn to bangs and loud voices, and Willie can only hope that Hawk and Kato will get there soon.

A rap on the door startles his heart straight up into his throat. He holds his breath, frozen.

“Cane Boy.” The voice is Kam's. “Come on out, Cane Boy. I know you're in there. I saw you creeping around the basement. Jo Boys see in the dark.”

Willie doesn't move; doesn't breathe.

“Time to come on out here, Cane Boy. Jo Boys got business with you.”

Willie stands silently, steps back from the door and cocks his cane like a baseball bat. If Kam opens the door, he'll let him step through, then blast his head off the left-field wall.

The rapping comes again; even, patient. The voice is less patient. “Come out.”

Willie pictures how he thinks things will look if the door comes open.
Some
light is coming in through the upper windows of the basement, and he's been sitting here in the dark long enough that his eyes should be adjusted, though he doesn't know that for sure, because he can see absolutely nothing in this room. He checks it out by moving the towel away from the crack with his foot. A dim light leaks in. The door will swing away from where he's standing, so if Kam is in the doorway, Willie should be able to see him. He knows he won't have much time; if Kam gets a shot at him with his feet, he's a goner. He positions himself closer to the couch, crouches low, giving what he thinks is his best chance to actually get a silhouette of Kam before Kam sees him.

He waits.

Again the rapping. No voice. Then nothing. Willie's
legs begin to cramp in the crouch and he boxes up the pain, corralling it in one place as Sammy taught him; sticks it somewhere in the front of his head a little above the eyes, where he knows he can control it. Several long minutes pass and finally he relaxes just a bit, standing straight to stretch, trying to think what Kam's next move might be. He's not the kind of guy who'll just go away, Willie knows that for sure, and he knows Kam won't be satisfied until he gets even for what Hawk did to him this afternoon; and then some.

Now Willie hears voices again, and the sound of spray cans; then crashing and banging as desks are turned over in classrooms, chalkboards ripped off walls. Fear and anger jockey for the priority position inside him, and he feels helpless standing there in the darkness deciding whether to act or hide. Suddenly he wonders if he could make it to the fire alarm; the noise might scare them. It's down by the stairs and if Kam is still outside the door he wouldn't have a chance, but Willie hasn't heard him in several minutes, and thinks, or wants to think, that Kam is upstairs participating in the destruction. Slowly, with greatest care, he turns the knob; the floor creaks ever so slightly.
Kam. Shifting his weight to put his foot through my skull the second this door opens. He'll wait forever
. Just from what he's
learned from Sammy, Willie knows patience has to be foremost in Kam's arsenal of weapons. He lets go of the knob, suddenly wishing he'd waited in the upstairs office where he could have gotten to a phone the second these guys came in. And where the
hell
is Hawk? Willie can't imagine what could have kept him from being here.

In the next instant Willie realizes just how serious this all is; the smell of gasoline burns his nostrils and knots his gut.
Those goddam Jo Boys are going to burn the place down
.

Then the rapping. “Smell that? Best you come out of there, Cane Boy. Things are gonna heat up.”

Willie freezes, unable to think. In a flash he sees his new self, everything he's put back together in the last year, go up in smoke. There's no way out of this room except the door. He might be able to wait Kam out, but if he does there's no guarantee he'll get through the basement, up the stairs to the hall and out the front door through the flames. Like a caged animal, he drops into his gut, the way Sammy taught him; places every bit of his energy in his center and trusts it to work things out. He sees the entire main floor of the school. If he can't make it to the front door, there are several classroom windows he can break out. No way in the world
Kam can wait out there long enough for fire to block all the escape routes; that would be way too dangerous. He'll wait until he's sure Kam's gone and hope they don't set the fire too close to his door. He moves to the back of the room, waiting. If they do start the fire close to the room, it should burn through quickly. This room is a flimsy afterthought with plywood walls. If they burn through, he'll go out swinging; with the cane, he
might
be as good as Kam. If he gets the chance, Willie thinks, he'll kill Kam.

A loud
whoosh
strains the walls and Willie knows this is it. He snatches the towel from the crack under the door, dunks it quickly in the makeshift janitor's sink on the far side of the room before wrapping it around his nose and mouth. The fire is bright under the door, and Willie has no idea whether the whole building is burning or just this area.

The heat quickly becomes nearly intolerable and Willie feels the oxygen being sucked out of the room. He moves to the door, tearing a piece of the towel to cover the knob, turning it very carefully to unlatch it first, then stands back and kicks it open with a crash.

There stands Kam, silhouetted in the flames; crouched in his stance. He's startled momentarily by the flaming door tearing away from its hinges, flying back
toward him. Willie is swinging and spinning through the door; aiming the brass ball of the cane for Kam's crotch, then his head. He connects with the former, spins a full 360 degrees on his right leg and brings the cane down on Kam's collarbone before Kam can hit the ground from the first blow. The others are calling to Kam from upstairs; Willie glances to the stairway to see flickering light, telling him the entire school is on fire. In a flash he's across the room, yanking down on the fire alarm, knowing the deafening horn can be heard only there in the building; there is no fire department connection. Smoke burns his eyes and lungs and he drops to his knees to get under it and listen for exactly where the voices are coming from. Stairwells run up from each end of the basement, and he wants to go away from the voices. Satisfied they're coming from the left, he crawls in the other direction. From the stairwell he looks back to see Kam standing, a tight grip on his useless arm, then stumbling; dropping to the floor. His hand reaches out to Willie, and though Willie can't actually hear him, he knows he's calling for help. Kam stands again and Willie decides to leave him, moving quickly on his hands and knees up the stairs. The loud crash of Kam's body again dropping to the floor tells Willie that if he doesn't help, Kam may well burn to
death. The voices are silent, Kam's buddies have split. With the towel once again wrapped around his mouth and nose, he works his way back to Kam, clutches him firmly by the collar and begins to drag him backward toward the stairs. He can't see fire now, only smoke, as he pulls him inch by inch to the stairs. Kam screams with each jerk.

At the bottom of the stairs he's exhausted, believing he may suffocate. “Stand up,” he says. “I can't drag you up these stairs; you're gonna have to help. If you don't get up, I'll leave you.”

Clutching Willie's shoulder, Kam somehow stumbles to the top of the stairs, slipping down twice, coughing and sputtering. At the top he collapses, and Willie drags him down the hall by his injured arm, then out the entrance, where he collapses himself. Tremendous nausea sweeps over him and he pulls himself to his knees to vomit as the fire truck roars through the front gate. The blast of water is the last thing he remembers.