Authors: Harlan Ellison
“Listen, teacher’s pet. That bit this mornin’ was just a start. Last night was a sample. We had us a talk in the Cougars, after I was elected Prez, after you ran out on us like a…”
Rusty cut in abruptly. “What’s it all about, Big Mouth? What’s your beef? You weren’t nothin’ in the gang till I left, now you think you’re god or somethin’…”
This time it was a double-fisted crack, once! twice!, and blood erupted from Rusty’s mouth. His lip puffed, and his teeth felt slippery wet.
“I’ll hand all that back to you real soon, Big Deal.” But Rusty was held tightly.
“Nobody checks out on the gang, y’unnerstand?” He nodded to one of the boys holding Rusty’s left hand, and the boy drew back. Candle’s fist came out like a striking snake, and the fingers opened, and they grasped Rusty’s hand tightly. Rusty flexed his hand, trying to break the grip, but Candle was there for keeps, and the knife was still at his ear. He let the other boy squeeze… and squeeze… and squeeze… and…
Rusty suddenly lunged sidewise, cracking his shoulder into the boy with the knife. The force of his movement drew Candle partially from the booth, and he released his grip.
Then Rusty moved swiftly, and his hand, flat and fingers tight together, slashed out, caught the boy with the knife across the Adam’s apple. The boy gagged and dropped the blade. In an instant it was in Rusty’s hand, and he was around the booth, had the tip of the switchblade just behind Candle’s ear.
“Now,” he panted, trying to hold the knife steady, having difficulty with nervous jerks of his hand, “you’re all gonna listen to me.
“I left the Cougars ’cause I’m through. That’s all, and it doesn’t gotta make sense to any of you. I’m out, and I want out to stay, and the first guy that tries to give me trouble, I’ll cut him, so help me god!”
The other Cougars moved forward, as if to step in, but Candle’s face had whitened out, and his jaw worked loosely. “No, for Christ’s sake, stay away from him!”
Rusty went on, “Listen, how long you figure I gotta run with this crowd? How long you figure I gotta keep gettin’ myself in bad with the school, with my old lady, with the cops? You guys wanna do it, that’s your deal, but leave me alone. I don’t talk to nobody about what goes on in the Cougars, and I don’t bother you. Just don’t you bother me.”
Fish—tall, and slim, with long eyelashes that made him think he was a ladies’ man—spoke up. “You been fed too much of that good jazz by that Pancoast cat, Rusty. You believe that stuff, man?”
Rusty edged the knife closer, the tip indenting the soft skin behind Candle’s ear, as the seated Prez tried to move. “He dealt me right all along. He says I got a chance to become an industrial designer if I work hard at it. I like the idea. That’s the reason, and that’s it.
“Now whaddaya say? Lemme alone, and I let your big deal Prez alone.”
At that instant, it all summed up for Rusty. That was it; that was why he was different from these others. He wanted a future. He wanted to be something. Not to wind up in a gutter with his belly split, not to spend the rest of his life in the army, not to end up as a useless bum on the street—because that was where
most
of these guys were going to close out their stories.
He wanted a life that had some purpose. And even as he felt the vitality of the thoughts course through him, he saw the Cougars were ready to accept it. He had been with them for three years. They had all rumbled together, all gotten records together, all screwed around and had fun together. But now, somehow, he was older than them.
And he wanted free.
Fish spoke for all of them. Softly, and with the first sincerity Rusty had ever heard from the boy. “I guess it sits okay with us, Rusty. Whatever you say goes. I’m off you.” He turned to the others, and his face was abruptly back in its former mold. He was the child of the gutters; hard and looking for opposition.
“That go for the rest of you?”
Each of them nodded. Some of them smiled. The Beast waggled his head like some lowing animal, and there was only one dissenter, as Rusty broke the knife, tossed it to its owner.
Candle was out of the booth, and his own weapon was out. He walked forward, and backed Rusty into the wall with it. His face was flushed, and what Rusty had known was in the boy—the sadism, the urge to fight, the animal hunger that was there and could never really be covered by a black leather jacket or chino slacks—was there on top, boiling up like a pool of lava, waiting to engulf both of them.
“I don’t buy it, man. I think as long as you’re around, the Cougars won’t wanna take orders from their new Prez. So there’s gotta be a final on this. I challenge.”
Rusty felt a sliver of cold as sharp as the sliver of steel held by Candle slither down into his gut. He had to stand with Candle. It was the only way. As long as you lived in a neighborhood where the fist was the law, there could be no doubt. Either you were chickie or you weren’t. If an unanswered challenge hung around his neck like an albatross, his days on the street were numbered.
Slowly, hesitantly, he nodded agreement. Knowing he was slipping back. Knowing all the work Pancoast had done might be wasted. Knowing that the future might wind up in the gutter with him.
“When?” he asked.
“Tomorrow. In the morning, we’ll send someone after ya. At the dumps. Come heeled, man, ’cause I’m gonna split you to your groin.”
He broke his knife, shoved it into his sleeve, and walked away, angrily shoving aside the Cougars. He was gone, then, and the ice-cream shop was silent for a moment.
Then Fish shrugged, said lamely, “Gee, I’m, well, hell, Rusty … there ain’t…”
Rusty cut him off, running a hand through his own hair. “I know, man. on’t bother. Ain’t nothin’ you can do. I gotta stand with Candle. Gonna be rough bananas, though.”
Why was his past always calling? Always making grabs on him? The blood was flowing so thick, so red, and it smothered him. He felt as though he was drowning.
Wouldn’t he ever be free?
The apartment was cool and dark as Rusty threw his books on the sofa. The persistent ticking of the beat-up cuckoo clock kept the feeling of everything together, like a glue of sound. He sometimes felt if it weren’t for that damned clock always going, the household would fall apart. He didn’t know why he felt that way, but he had the queer feeling the clock was the magnet in the joint.
He heard a clattering sound from the kitchen and knew his mother was in there, moaning and working. Preparing chow for Dolores and himself—and for Pops, if he came home tonight. Which was pretty slim chancey.
“Russell?”
His mother’s voice came echoing out of the kitchen. He nodded his head tiredly and knew she would call again. He got some sort of strange pleasure from making her call twice. “Russell, that you?”
“Yeah, Ma. Me.”
“Where you been? School let out two hours ago. You been runnin’ the streets again with them kids?” Her voice was like an ancient steam radiator puff-puffing, never stopping, till late in the night when it went cold with sleep.
“I stayed after school, worked in the shop,” he lied.
“You tellin’ me the truth?” She knew when he was cutting the corners of truth. He didn’t know why he always did it, because telling her the truth would have been just as easy, but some perverse inclination always substituted another alibi.
“Yes, yes, yes, fer Chrissakes, I’m tellin’ the truth!”
She came out of the kitchen, wiping her red hands on a dish towel. “Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain in this house!”
Oh no, Rusty thought tiredly. She’s on the Savior kick today.
She must of stumbled across Pop’s Bible.
This’ll be a good night, I can tell. “Yes, ma’am,” he said aloud.
“Now,” she was relentless, “where was you? You didn’t come home last night.”
“I told ya, Ma! I was around last night, just out, like, and I stayed after school today, inna wood shop. Don’t ya believe me?”
Her face drew tight about the eyes. “You lyin’ to me again? What about last night?”
He knew there was no point in continuing. He changed the subject. “Dolo get home yet?”
As though it were understood that he had lied, but that the discussion was closed, Rusty’s mother shook her head slowly, drawing a deep fatigue-breath. “No, she’s just like you. Got all your habits in her. You hadda go and get her into that gang. Now she’s never home, like a good girl, always runnin’ with them other girls, an’ swearin’.”
She knew it cut Rusty. He had gotten Dolores into the Cougars’ girls’ auxiliary at his sister’s constant insistence, and he had regretted it immediately. It wasn’t good for a fifteen-year-old girl to run with them. They were worse than the boys sometimes. It worried Rusty how she was always with them, never at home helping Ma. But then, neither was he…
“How’d your lip get split, Russell?”
She was back on that kick again. “My name ain’t Russell. Everybody else calls me Rusty, why can’t you? You all the time gotta be different?”
His mother stepped forward, raised the dish towel as though to strike him, and in defense he put a hand before his face. “Don’t you raise your voice to your own mother. Oh god! What have I done to deserve this? A rotten son, a wayward daughter and a husband…”
Rusty cut in. “Dolo’s okay! You don’t say nothin’ against her, Ma. She’s okay, she just—just wants a little fun, that’s all.”
His mother shook her head sadly, slumped into one of the cheap, overstuffed armchairs in the room. “Oh, yes, yes, yes, just fun. That’s all you kids want is fun. Fun, fun, and nothin’ else ever. Is this what I brought you up to be? A street hoodlum?”
“Oh, Ma, for Chrissakes!”
“I thought I told you not to—”
“Okay, okay. Sorry, sorry. I’m sorry I said it, just a slip of the tongue; you know.”
She stared down at her red hands. “I know. I know.”
Rusty suddenly felt an overwhelming wave of compassion for this woman. Was it his mother or just some stranger who had a strong claim on him for some unknown reason? He wasn’t certain. He didn’t know. But there was a tearing in him, and he said, “Anything I can help you with?”
Her face looked up at him, and he was surprised to note that he could never recall having seen that face before. But it was his Ma, he knew that.
“Do for me? What’s there to do… when I’ve done it all, already. No, nothing to do.”
He turned, and saw her face was marked by the zig-zag path of a tear down one cheek. The tearing came again and an actual physical pain deep in his stomach. He wanted so much to go to her and kneel down and put his head in her lap, and cry with her. But that was outside the code. That was being weak and he would never do it, though it would mean so much to both of them, he knew.
“Why don’cha call me Rusty, Ma?”
“Because your name is Russell!”
“But the kids all call me…”
“I don’t care! I don’t care what the kids call you. Have you no heart, no feeling for your own mother, for what she wants? Is it always the kids?”
What could he say. Rusty was his name, more than Russell could ever be. “Oh, forget it, Ma. Just forget it.”
He turned and walked away.
She sat very still till he was down the hall, and she heard the slamming of the bedroom door. Then she twisted the towel so tightly about her hands, the skin wrinkled, and reddened terribly.
The sound of the record player from the bedroom struck her with force.
Then, and only then, did the tears come full.
Dolores did not show for dinner, and Rusty ate with his mother, a screen of silence between them broken occasionally by “Please pass the butter,” or “Good bean soup tonight.”
After dinner Rusty helped his mother do the dishes, she washing and he drying. He stacked them carefully, noticing each crack and chip on the old chinaware. If his father wasn’t so stiff on Sneaky Pete all the time there might be more dough in the house. But that was just idle wishing. He couldn’t figure why Ma stayed with a lush like his old man. It was a high dream to think of Pops being a steady nine-to-fiver. He was a mean man, that one. Rusty’s mind shied away from thoughts of the old man. That was bad stuff, and he wished his old man was down under sometimes. He knew it was bad, thinking that way, fourth commandment and like that, but there was no heat you could generate about a rotten apple like his old man.
“What’re ya gonna do tonight?” his mother was asking.
Rusty took a practiced swipe at the dish in his hand, and shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, what are ya gonna do?”
“How should I know? Maybe take in a movie. Maybe go down and sit around Tom-Tom’s joint. I dunno, I’ll see.”
She pursed her thin gray lips, stared at him hard, wishing feverishly she could get through.
“Why’nt ya stay home tonight. Maybe somethin’ good’s on TV.”
He thought of the set. The coin slot for quarters and the guy who came and emptied the receptacle once a week. Crummy, like everything else they’d ever bought. On time. A quarter in the slot and a million years to pay off. All the yuks ya want for one thin two-bit piece. Shit!
Rusty shook his head. “I don’t feature that stuff, Ma. You know that. All that crap with Gleason or some other guy that ain’t funny. I’d rather go out, check in some air.”
She said incongruously, “Can’t you talk natural? You all the time gotta use those crazy words?”
He was honestly confused. “Whaddaya mean?”
“Oh, you talkin’ like them kids in the street all the time. You never talk natural, or cultured, like the people on television.”
It was too much. Just too goddamned much! He threw the dish towel onto the scrubbed wooden table, and stormed to the door. “Goddamnit! I talk natural as everybody else! Can’cha stop beatin’ on my ears for once? Just for once?”
He stumped through the apartment, dragged a half-empty package of cigarettes off the top of the television set, then slammed a fist against the blank-faced machine. He shrugged into his leather jacket halfway through the door, yelled, “Damn it!” as loud as he could, and slammed the door. The sound of his feet descending the stairs was a sharp tattoo in the dim halls.