Authors: Harlan Ellison
He took the knife out and slid the drawer shut with his knee. He stood up, holding the plastic length of it closed in his hand. It felt wrong there, not like it had felt so often in the past.
Then, it had been right. But now he felt more at home with a compass and T-square. Was he actually outgrowing this thing, through the help of the teacher, or was it all an illusion?
He still knew what he had to do.
He bent over and stuck the knife into the top of his desert boot. The gang all wore these shoes, with high, soft tops, in case they had to pack a blade. But he knew Candle carried his knife in his sleeve. So when Candle rose high to let the knife slide out, Rusty would scoop low, and come up with the knife open—gutting.
A full-body swing, straight up from the groin. Slicing heavy and cutting from crotch to navel in one movement...
He stopped himself with a mental wrenching.
Wrong, wrong, wrong! All wrong. He had to stop this. He couldn’t let himself get involved again. It was more than just disappointing Pancoast. It was more than keeping Weezee out of trouble. He suddenly realized he owed a debt to himself. If he threw himself away, he was a waste to everything. He could not get it any clearer in his mind—he knew it was all wrong to be nothing, to get nowhere—but he sensed deeply that he must try to get this stand canceled. He would even back down. Let Candle think he was a punk. It didn’t matter, just as long as he didn’t have to fight, didn’t have to kill.
For he knew in his heart that if he fought today, only one boy would come out of the rumble alive. He was determined to be that one,
if
they fought—but he wasn’t going to fight.
He had to see Candle. Had to stop the argument now, cold, dead, final. Now!
But the knife felt reassuring in his shoe-top.
Dolores was at the table when he came in. Ma was in front of the stove, stirring a battered pot full of cocoa. “Where were ya so late?” Rusty asked his sister.
She was a pert, slim girl, with shiny black hair pulled into a ponytail like her friends. Her eyes were very wide and very black and her lashes quite long. Yet there was an insolence about her, an invisible smirk that seemed about to show itself on her full lips.
Her body was held proudly, and she rose an inch at his question. “You didn’t show till three o’clock. Whaddaya coppin’ low at me for?”
Rusty felt anger rising in him. Since his father had taken to sleeping out—god only knew where he was vomiting and crashing tonight—he felt more and more responsible for the girl. He had gotten her in with the Cougie Cats, and he had to watch out for her. These were bad streets.
“I ast ya something. Where were ya?”
Her face grew more defiant, and she spat, “I was out with the kids.”
“What kids? Where?”
“Oh, fer Chrissakes, gawdamighty! Can’t a person lead a private life without a bunch of snoopin’—”
Rusty’s voice cut through, then was itself cut off as the tired woman at the stove smothered them both with, “Eat. It’s mornin’. Let’s not have it today. Just eat. As long as you’re both home, it don’t matter. Eat.” Her voice was colored with weariness. She hadn’t slept much, Rusty knew, waiting for him to come home. Yet she had not helped him undress.
How far apart they had grown. Again, he felt the tearing in his belly. He remembered the Spanish coin.
“It does matter,” he started again, covering his own feelings. “I don’t want ya runnin’ with that gang no more, Dolo! They’re bad medicine…”
Dolores leaped to her feet, and the chair went over with a snapping bang. “You should talk! You should talk to me. I’m so humiliated ’cause of you. I can’t live it down. They all call me the chickie’s sister. How’d you like it? I can’t get away from it. You got me so humiliated!” Her voice had risen to a shriek. “I hate you! You’re just a coward, is all! I hope Candle creams you today!”
So the word had spread in the neighborhood already.
Rusty heard the spoon his mother had been using drop to the floor with a thunk! and he turned to see her staring at him.
Her voice came out shaded with fright. “What—what’s she mean? You fightin’ today? Answer me, you gonna fight again?” Her hands were wrapped tightly in her apron and her face was the color of the sky outside—pale-sick white.
Rusty started to deny it, but Dolores yelled a vicious word, and then she was gone, flouncing out of the kitchen. A moment later he heard the front door slam and her progress bang-banging down the stairs.
What could he say to his mother?
“Answer me,” she whispered.
“Nothing, Ma. Just nothing. Don’t worry. I ain’t gonna fight.” Then he, too, was free of her. He left the dingy apartment.
But he knew he would fight. It was being called chicken. That bit deep. He had lived in the streets too long to let something like that slide away. If Candle would not see reason—the stand would come off just as planned.
He tried not to think about it.
Because the air stank with death.
The day went like a souped-up heap. The kids stayed away from Rusty like he was down with the blue botts. He tried to find things to do, but the scene was cold and dead.
Rusty saw Candle only once, and that was in the cafeteria. The hard-faced Prez of the Cougars was sitting at a table with Joy, feeling her up, and laughing loudly with his side-boys. They ate together. Rusty cut wide around them, for a while, and got a tray for himself. The food was the usual steam-table garbage and he only took a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a piece of apple pie and a pint of milk. He wasn’t hungry, not at all.
Finally, when he had polished off the food, he got up, leaving the tray, and turned around.
Everyone was watching him. He realized suddenly that they had been watching him all through lunch. But he had been thinking as he ate and had not noticed. Now they stared at him, and from the middle of the room he heard the derisive voice of a punk.
“Here chick-chick-chick-chick-chick! Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck… chick-chick-chick…” It went on and on, leaving the first boy, swinging to another, then pretty soon the entire room was carrying it, like a banner. The sound was a wave that washed against the shores of Rusty’s mind. It was the worst. It was a chop low like no other he’d ever heard.
He had been top man of the Cougars for so long, to have this kind of indignity pushed on him, was something frightful. He clenched his fists, and stood where he was. Customers got up quickly, most of them abandoning their trays of uneaten food, and left.
Rusty knew he had to talk to Candle now. Now was the time, because if he spent the day with that chick-chick festering in his brain, he’d fight sure as hell!
Somebody yelled, “Oooooh,
Russsell!
Oh, Russell, baby, do your hen imitation fer us! Go, man, go, Russell!”
He hated that name. It was the first time they’d called him that since it had been abbreviated to Rusty.
The boy stepped slowly away from the table, and walked over to Candle’s place. The Cougars’ Prez had been talking to his broad, not even looking at Rusty while the call had been going up. Now, as Rusty approached, he paid even more attention to Joy, but the three side-boys stood up slowly, their hands going into the tight pockets of their jeans. There were shanks in there, waiting to cut if Rusty made a snipe move.
Rusty stopped. “Candle.”
The boy with the almost-Mongoloid features did not look up. He had his hand clutched to the girl’s knee, and he seemed totally oblivious to what was happening behind him. But Joy’s blue eyes were up and frightened. She stared straight at Rusty and the wild excitement in her face made him sick; they all wanted kicks. They didn’t care who got nailed, so long as sparks flew and they could bathe in them. Then Candle turned carefully around. He looked up.
“Well, read this,” he said arrogantly, more to his side-boys than Rusty. “Check who just dropped in for a chat. Welcome, spick.”
Rusty felt the blood surging in him and he wanted to drive a fist straight into the bastard’s mouth. But that was what Candle wanted. That would be the clincher. They’d slice him up like fresh bacon, right there, and everyone would dummy up. No one wanted the Cougars pissed off at them.
“Candle. I wanna talk to you,” Rusty said softly.
The other grinned hugely, and he swung one foot up onto the chair, just touching the edge of Rusty’s pants, putting a bit of dirt there.
“What you got to say to me you can say out at the dumps, spick.”
“Look, don’t make it rougher than now,” Rusty cautioned him. “I wanna knock this off. I don’t feature the idea of a stand. I got enough trouble with the cops already. No sense my getting picked up and tossed in the farm.”
Candle reared back and laughed. Loud. His voice cut off all the chickie-chickie around the room, and everyone waited to find out what would happen. They knew Rusty was no chicken, they knew he had been rough as Prez of the Cougars and did not understand what had changed him. But they also knew Candle was a rough stud, and it would be top kicks to see these two go at each other.
“You don’t wanna stand, man? You don’t wanna come out and show all these kids you ain’t yellow?” His grin grew wider as he grabbed a cardboard pint carton of milk, ripped open across the top. “That sits fine with me, but I still got a beef with you.
“So,” he said, lifting the carton, “if you wanna bow out, that’s ace with me, and I’ll settle my beef like
this!”
He threw the milk at Rusty.
They laughed. The crowd burst into sound and Rusty stood there with the milk running down over his face, soaking quickly through his shirt and running through to his pants.
Before he could restrain himself he had lunged and had his hands around Candle’s throat. The Prez of the Cougars gave a violent gasp and brought his own hands up in an inward swinging movement, breaking Rusty’s grip. Then he choked out, “Grab—grab him!” and the side-boys had Rusty’s arms pinned.
Candle swung out of the chair and stood up. His face was a violent blued mask of hate. “Now you read this, man. I’m not gonna work you over like I should now. Mostly ’cause I want to have more time at you, without nobody holding you back, yellow-belly. So you be out at the dump and we’ll settle this down once and for all.”
Then he shoved Rusty in the stomach, not hard enough to knock him out, but hard enough to suck the energy from him. Then they walked away quickly, several of them sweeping full trays off the tables. Garbage lay everywhere in their path.
Rusty stood there for a few minutes, listening to the cackles and catcalls ringing around him.
He could not move.
There was no way free. He would fight and he would win. He would carve that sluggy sonofabitch from gut to kisser and leave him for the dump rats to chew on.
It was gonna be tough as banana peels.
Pancoast got to him just before four o’clock. He caught him on the street.
“Rusty, I heard what happened yesterday. You going out there?”
Rusty shifted from foot to foot. What could he say? He knew Pancoast was pulling for him, and he knew if he went out there and fought he was throwing it all away. He couldn’t yank loose now if he wanted to and yet he knew it was the worst thing he could do.
“I—I
gotta,
Mr. Pancoast. I got inta this and if I don’t finish it once and for all, they won’t never let me alone. One way or the other, I got to put a tail to this thing.”
Pancoast shook his head, grabbed the boy by the biceps. “Listen to me, Rusty. Listen to me now. You’ve been doing real well. You’ve been growing with every day. You go out there and come down to their level and you’ll be right back where you started two months ago when I fished you out of jail. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Rusty said, not looking at him, “but it’s gotta be this way. Final.”
Pancoast dropped his grip. His voice got steely hard. “I’ll call the police, Rusty. I’ll come out there with them and stop it.”
“You come out there or you call the fuzz and I’ll cut you off even, myself.”
Pancoast had been around the kids long enough. He knew that “cutting off even” was tantamount to a threat of revenge. He said nothing, but his eyes were filled with hurt. His hands moved aimlessly at his sides. Then he turned and walked away.
Rusty was alone.
So damned, finally, horribly, all alone.
He walked down the street. After a while, he knew two Cougars followed him. He moved down the street and when Fish pulled alongside in his heap Rusty was not surprised.
“Hey, man. They give me the word to bring you out. You know, like they told me.” He was always alibiing, Rusty thought ruefully.
“Yeah. Yeah, I know. Just a job like.”
“So, like get in, huh, man?”
Rusty got into the car and Fish waited while Tiger and the Greek got in the back seat. No one said a word. The car pulled away from the curb, swung out into traffic heading uptown toward the dumps.
Rusty was scared and his mouth was dry.
But at least the knife in his shoe felt reassuring.
But not much.
As they passed the burning piles of garbage and refuse, the sky darkened appreciably. It was still early, not quite four-thirty yet, but the day seemed blacker than any Rusty could remember.
Fish tooled the beat-up Plymouth along the bumpy road, avoiding chuck holes and pits in the packed dirt. “One of these days, damn it, I’m gonna crack a parts shop and get me enough cams and crap to juice up this buggy.”
Rusty didn’t answer. He had more important things to worry about.
If he chickened here, he would not only have to ward off the antagonism of the neighborhood for the rest of his days; that was minor compared to what else would happen. Dolo would have to live him down, and that could mean any number of things in the streets. She might have to get more deeply involved with the Cougie Cats and their illegal activities. And then his ma. She would be bugged in the street. His old man…
That crumbum wouldn’t have to worry, but if he was here maybe he could have done something, maybe he could have helped. Rusty set those bitter thoughts aside. Pa Santoro was a wine-gut and there wasn’t no help coming from that angle.