The First Stone (24 page)

Reef leaned down so his mouth was inches from Alex's ear. “What makes you think I gotta
face
anything?” he shouted. “I'm fine! You hear me?
Better
than fine. I'm fuckin'
fantastic!”

“Honey,” Alex said, pushing up his sleeves and holding out his wrists, palms turned upward, “that's exactly what I said the night I gave myself these.” Thick, worm-like scars extended from his wrists up the insides of both arms.

Reef gaped at the angry red furrows that stretched nearly to his elbows. Along both sides of each were indentations where surgical thread had pierced the flesh, stitching the edges together. One furrow was raised and darker in color near the center, as though whatever had carved it had met resistance before plunging on.

Reef stared at the scars for what seemed a long time, then slumped onto a chair at the foot of the bed.

Alex waited, gave Reef time to find the words.

When he'd finally found the first one, the second, and then the third, the others just seemed to find the way on their own.

The doctor wasn't much more help than the nurse had been the night before. “He's still stable,” he said. “That's something.”

“But is he gonna get better?” Bigger asked.

Reef knew Bigger was being as polite and respectful as he could—no way were they gonna throw him out like yesterday—but there was no hiding the impatience in his voice. His face folded into something like a smile, probably to show everyone he wasn't mad, but it was too quick, too phony, more like a grimace than a grin.

Reef knew how he felt. He hated the way everyone pussyfooted around, never giving a straight answer. And the doctor's face was unreadable, his expression almost detached. He was clearly a man with many things on his mind, and Jink was only one of them. He sighed. “Like I said before, he's got a lot going for him. He's strong—”

“Like an ox,” Bigger interjected. Too loudly.

The doctor blinked. “Yes,” he said. “And he's young, which is an important factor in any case that involves injuries as extensive as his.”

Reef recalled one of his conversations with Leeza, remembered her saying that her doctor had told her the same thing. He thought of all the times he'd wished he were older so he could be out on his own, in charge of his own life with no one to answer to. Funny how something like your age could be a disadvantage one day and a bonus the next.

“When will you know for sure?” Marlene Eisner asked. She had let Reef, Bigger and Scar remain in the ICU waiting room when the doctor came to see her. But she'd made Bigger promise to be on his best behavior.

“The first forty-eight hours are crucial,” the doctor replied. “We're monitoring him closely. Besides the obvious threat of brain damage—”

“Christ!”
Bigger breathed. Scar shot him a look and he immediately apologized.

“—our greatest concerns,” the doctor continued, “are his kidneys and liver. He experienced severe trauma to his back and midsection.”

“Bastards!” Bigger said, then realized his mistake. “Look, I'm just gonna wait outside till you're done, okay?” Everyone in the room nodded, and he stepped outside the door.

“So you won't know anything for sure until tomorrow,” Scar said.

“And maybe not even then,” said the doctor. “So much depends on Stanley. Once he regains consciousness we'll know more,
If
he regains consciousness.”
“Fuck!”
came Bigger's voice from the hallway.

“I tol' him and tol' him,” Marlene Eisner said, absently stirring her coffee as they sat in the hospital cafeteria. “I sez to him, ‘Stanley,' I sez, ‘you gonna get the shit kicked outta you if you keep spendin' time with the likes ‘a Rowdy Brewster.' ‘But Ma,' he sez, ‘I kin take care ‘a myself,' he sez.” She took a sip of the black liquid, grimaced, then went on, “But when did that boy ever listen t' me?”

Reef and Scar sat across the table from her, having left Bigger upstairs in ICU. Bigger had said he wasn't hungry, which should have been cause for Reef to phone the Channel 9 news team, but they all knew he was worried sick about Jink. He'd have slept last night in the waiting room if Security hadn't made him leave.

Reef looked at Jink's mother and resisted the urge to shake her. It wasn't enough that Jink was lying upstairs looking like meat gone bad. She had to make it all about
her
. If only Jink had listened to
her
, done what
she'd
told him, been the good boy
she
knew he could be. Right. Like she'd actually
had
all those heart-to-hearts with Jink. Like she'd been
home
every night instead of over at the waterfront casino feeding her welfare check into the slot machines for hours at a time. Up five dollars and down ten. Up twenty and down a hundred. She couldn't even walk by a Lotto 6/49 booth without buying an Insta Pik. “Sooner or later, I
gotta
win,” she'd say, as though the only difference between her and Bill

Gates was a run of good luck. Marlene Eisner: Mother of the Fucking Year.

But Scar pretended she was speaking gospel. Let her go and on, kept giving her the nod and the smile and the shake of the head that she needed. That was one way of helping out, Reef supposed, but it wasn't his way.

He pushed his chair away from the table.

“You going back up already?” Scar asked.

“No,” he said, standing up.

“Then where?”

“Somethin' I gotta do,” he said.

“You sure about this?” Bigger asked. The bus was nearly full, and he'd had to squeeze himself into the last seat, his legs triangled up against the one in front of him.

Reef looked at him, turned away in disgust.

“Shit, man,” Bigger said, “of
course
I wanna give Rowdy some payback. But I'm not talkin' ‘bout
me
. What if that judge finds out? She could screw you big time.”

“Fuck her,” Reef snarled.

“I'm just sayin'—”

“Fuck you, too!”

A middle-aged man sitting in the seat ahead turned around. “Hey, you guys wanna clean it up back there?”

“Fuck off, asshole!” hissed Reef.

The man gave him a hard stare, opened his mouth to say something, then seemed to notice Bigger for the first time. He faced front.

“Man, you know
me,”
Bigger said. “After what they did to Jink, there's nothin' I wanna do more than make sidewalk salami outta Rowdy Brewster ‘n' his boys. But we're goin' off half-cocked. We ain't got a plan or nothin'. You think Rowdy's just gonna let us waltz in and kick the shit outta him?”

Reef said nothing. He didn't want to think. He wanted to
do
. Something. Anything. He crossed his arms, unfolded them, crossed them again. He looked across the aisle and noticed a woman sitting with two kids. Boys, no more than four and five, and both were staring at him with open mouths. The mother saw Reef looking, leaned down and whispered something to both of them, and the younger one turned away. The older one, though, continued to stare at Reef, his eyes like spoons.

Reef looked at the back of the guy's head in front of him. His neck was bright red, and he guessed the guy's face was probably the same color. The man hadn't been looking to bother anybody, just asked them to quit the cursing. There were kids there. Little kids. Reef looked across the aisle again. The older kid grinned at Reef and silently formed a word with his mouth. Reef didn't need to hear it to know what it was.

He thought about words. Thought about which ones got said and which ones didn't. Like the words hewished he'd said to his grandfather. All those times he'd bitten them back. He'd told Alex some of those words the night before. He hadn't planned to. They'd just come. And Alex had told him some of his own words. Words like
faggot
and
fudgepacker, fruit
and
queer
, words his own father had used against him. Words that had piled up, gathered strength and volume until finally, one night when he was alone, he'd lashed out against those words, trashed the home where he'd heard them shouted. But the lashing out hadn't muted the words in his head, words that dug a well inside him that couldn't be filled up, words that ripped and tore, echoed and echoed until it seemed the only way to silence them was to find the bottom of that well. He'd looked for it with a razor. Had almost found it.

Reef thought about other words. The ones his grandmother used. And the ones he wished he'd said to her. He'd tried to say them at Proule's, standing over the casket. But even then they wouldn't come. The only ones his mouth would form were his grandfather's words. Like the one the kid across the aisle had just learned.

The bus pulled over and Reef stood up.

“This ain't the stop,” Bigger said.

Reef had no more words. He moved toward the front. Bigger looked at him, baffled, then hauled himself to his feet and followed.

 

Colville's truck pulled up to the curb and the two teenagers climbed in, Reef sandwiched between the two larger bodies. Colville looked at him and smiled. “I'm glad you called,” he said. Then he put his left signal light on and waited for a break in traffic. “I'm proud of you, Reef.”

Reef didn't say anything. Couldn't. Those were his grandmother's words. The last ones the cancer had let her say.

“Hey!” Carly said when the elevator doors opened and Reef stepped out. “Look who's here!”

Reef didn't know what to say. Despite the nurse's continued warmth, he still hadn't got used to being welcomed when he walked into a room. It felt good. Weird, but good.

“Funny?” she asked.

“What?”

“The joke you just heard. I haven't seen you smile like that.”

“No joke,” he said to his feet. What was it about this place? Six seconds inside and his face was as red as salsa. As hot, too.

“We've missed you this past week,” she said. “Been having a good time?”

Yeah. If you could call spending your days in another hospital a good time. But things were definitely looking up. Jink had regained consciousness shortly after Reef and Bigger's bus ride to nowhere, and the results of his preliminary tests were “promising”—the doctor's word, not his. Since then, however.

Jink had astonished both the doctor and his friends, improving faster than anyone would have thought possible. Much of this the doctor attributed to his patient's considerable physical strength, but Bigger had another explanation: “He's havin' a ball hasslin' all those nurses.” Which, Reef had to admit, was painfully obvious. He'd laughed more than once at the lengths Jink had gone to to get a rise out of the hospital staff. Like getting Bigger to bring in those cans of apple juice that he poured into his bedpan, confounding the nurses keeping track of his fluid input and output. Reef didn't need to hear the doctor's prognosis to know Jink was on the mend. The constant fuming at the nurses' station on Jink's floor was enough.

And then, of course, there'd been the call he'd received that morning. Bigger had phoned to tell him two cops had arrived at the hospital with news about Jink's assault: Rowdy Brewster and two other men had been formally charged as a result of a witness who'd come forward with an account of the attack. Bigger'd been so wound up he was practically hollering into the receiver, but he'd settled down long enough to tell Reef that the men were being held without bail, and the case against all three looked solid.

Reef shrugged. “Just some good things been happenin' lately,” he said.

The nurse smiled. “Glad to hear it. We've had a few good things happen around here, too,” she said.

“Like what?”

“I'll let Leeza tell you.”

“She got her catheter out!”

Reef turned and just had time to leap out of the way of Brett's oncoming wheelchair. “Darn,” she muttered. “Teenagers are worth ten points. From now on, no more advance warning.”

Reef grinned. “That's good news about the catheter. I know how much she hated that thing.”

“That's not the best part, though,” said Brett.

“Maybe we should let Leeza tell him,” Carly repeated. Turning to Reef, she continued, “She's been wondering when you were coming back.”

“I been tied up,” said Reef. “A buddy ‘a mine was in the hospital.”

“We know,” Brett said. “Shelly told us.”

“He's doin' okay now.”

“So's Leeza,” said Brett, almost bubbling. “In fact,
better
than okay. She's improved so much that she's getting her fixators off tomorrow.”

Carly sighed. “I thought we were going to let Leeza tell him.”

“So sue me.”

“That's great!” said Reef. “But I thought they weren't supposed to come off for a couple more weeks.”