18th Emergency (9 page)

“No, he hasn’t been in. Hey, Steve, where’s Hammerman?”

The man and Mouse waited while Steve’s ball traveled down through the bright maze of the pinball machine. Steve urged the ball into the holes with gentle leaning movements of his body. When it was over he said, “He may be in later.”

“He may be in later,” the man told Mouse.

“Thanks.” Mouse turned and walked out of Stumpy’s. He lifted the cuff of his jacket and checked his watch again. It was 9:36. Slowly he began to walk up the sidewalk. This was the one thing he hadn’t thought of—that he wouldn’t be able to find Hammerman. He walked two more blocks, turned around and came up the other side of the street.

He thought he would not be able to bear the tension if Hammerman did not appear soon. He crossed in front of Stumpy’s and started down the street again, moving a little faster. He thought he had been walking for hours. Where could Hammerman be? He looked at his watch again. It was 9:55.

The sunlight seemed blinding now, and Mouse wanted to dim it so that whatever was going to happen would not be lit up for everyone to see. He walked to the end of the block and squinted down at his watch. It was 9:57. He paused in front of the barber shop to wind his watch and found that it was already wound tightly. He could not remember winding it, but it was that strange kind of day when watches could wind themselves and a minute could become an hour and the sun could shine on one single person like a spotlight.

He started walking. He walked in the same quick way, and he was almost back to the old Rialto theater when he saw Marv Hammerman coming toward him. Hammerman was with the boy in the black sweat shirt, and both of them were walking quickly as if they had heard Mouse was waiting. The boy in the black sweat shirt was smiling a little.

When Mouse saw them, his walking suddenly became harder. His shoes seemed to stick to the sidewalk, and his legs got heavy. He felt as if he were walking under water. He pulled down his jacket, smoothed his hair, hitched up his pants, kept his hands busy in order to keep attention from his slow heavy feet. He pulled at his ear lobe, wiped his nose, zipped his jacket higher. Foolishly he thought of the hundred and eighteen little people of his father’s dreams. He wished they would appear, lift him and carry him away. “So long, Hammerman,” he would cry as they hurried him to safety.

Mouse kept walking, and the three of them met in front of the Rialto by the boarded-up booth where Mouse used to buy tickets to the Saturday science-fiction specials.

Mouse finished working the zipper on his jacket and pulled his cuffs down. He said to Hammerman, “I was sick yesterday and I had to go home, but I’m here now.”

It came out in a rush. Mouse hoped that he hadn’t said it so quickly that Hammerman didn’t hear it. It was important that this one thing be said while he was still able to talk.

“He still looks a little sick to me, don’t he to you?” the boy in the black sweat shirt said, smiling. “Course he looks better than he’s
gonna
look.”

Mouse didn’t say anything. He was trying to steel himself for the battle. The only thing he knew about fighting, he realized now, was that if you put your thumbs inside your fists and hit somebody hard with your hand like that, you could break your thumb. He rearranged his hands which he had instinctively folded with the thumbs inside.

He cleared his throat, wondering if he was supposed to say something else. He had had so little experience in fighting that he did not know how a fight of this kind, an arranged fight, would actually start. He remembered seeing a fist fight in an old silent movie on television one time, and the opponents had lifted their fists at the same moment, in the same position, and had circled each other in a set pattern. Still he couldn’t imagine this fight starting, not in that way or any other. He could only imagine the ending.

The boy in the black sweat shirt jerked his head at Hammerman. He said to Mouse, “He don’t like anybody writing things about him.”

Mouse was so nervous he thought perhaps the boy had been talking to him for hours. He wasn’t certain of anything. He said quickly, “I know.”

The boy in the black sweat shirt nodded at Hammerman again. He said, “He wants you to know real good.”

The sun went behind a cloud, and it was suddenly dim beneath the marquee. Mouse couldn’t see for a minute. He had been looking at the boy in the sweat shirt while he was talking, and now the boy was silent. All Mouse could see was the whiteness of his smile.

Mouse looked back at Hammerman. For a moment he couldn’t see him clearly either. Hammerman’s face was a pale circle in the darkness, like the children’s faces in the hospital ward, lit up by the light from Mouse’s flashlight. Then, abruptly, everything snapped into focus. Hammerman’s face was so clear there seemed to be nothing between Mouse and Hammerman, not even air. They could have been up in that high altitude area where the air thins and even distant points come into focus.

Hammerman hadn’t made a move that Mouse could see. He was still standing with his hands at his sides, his feet apart. But his body had lost its relaxed look and was ready in a way that Mouse’s body would never be.

Mouse raised his fists. His thumbs were carefully outside, pointing upward so that he appeared to be handling invisible controls of some sort. Then he saw Hammerman’s fist coming toward him, the knuckles like pale pecans, and at the same time Mouse saw Hammerman’s eyes, pale also but very bright. Then Hammerman’s fist slammed into his stomach.

Mouse doubled over and staggered backward a few steps. He thought for a moment that he was going to fall to the ground, just sit down like a baby who has lost his balance. He didn’t, and after a second he straightened and came toward Hammerman. He threw out his right hand.

He didn’t see Hammerman’s fist this time, just felt it in the stomach again. It was so hard that Mouse made a strangled noise. If he had eaten breakfast, there would have been Sugar Pops all over the sidewalk from that blow.

Choking, coughing, he staggered all the way back and hit against the side of the theater where pictures of man-made monsters used to be posted. He stayed there a minute, bent over his stomach, waiting for his strength to return. He could almost feel the old favorites—Gorgo, Mothra, Godzilla—waiting behind him. He tried to pull himself forward. He felt for a minute that he had become glued to the theater, plastered there like the pictured monsters. Then he came free and took three heavy steps forward to where Hammerman was waiting. Gorgo had walked like this. Mouse thought of how Gorgo’s feet had crushed whole buildings with these same heavy steps. His own feet could barely lift the weight of a pair of tennis shoes.

Mouse’s hands were up. He threw the invisible controls forward and hit nothing. Then he felt a sharp stinging blow on his breastbone. He hadn’t seen that one coming either. He put out his fists, to ward off blows again rather than to land them, and then Hammerman’s fist was in his face. It landed somehow on his nose and mouth at the same time. Then there was another blow directly on his nose.

Mouse’s nose began to gush blood. The blood seemed to be coming from everywhere, not just the nose, and Mouse wiped his face with one hand. Quickly, anxiously he got his hands back in position. He threw the right control forward.

Suddenly he couldn’t see. He wiped his hand over his eyes, then wiped his nose and got set. He was leaning forward now, pressing his knees together to steady them. The blood from his nose was splattering on the sidewalk.

He waited, wondering how long he could continue to hold this position. Then he heard Hammerman say, “You had enough?”

“No, he hasn’t had enough,” the boy in the black sweat shirt said. “He’s still standing.”

Hammerman said again, “You had enough?”

Hammerman’s voice seemed to be coming from somewhere far away, but the voice wasn’t asking the right question, Mouse thought. It seemed simple suddenly. He saw it now as an old-fashioned matter of honor. He, Mouse, had dishonored Marv Hammerman; and now Hammerman had to be the one to say when his honor was restored. It was one of those things that doesn’t become absolutely clear until the last minute and then becomes so clear it dazzles the mind.

Mouse could hear Dick Fellini’s voice explaining honor and knighthood to the English class. He could hear Ezzie saying, “Ask me anything you want to about honor, Mr. Stein, and I’ll tell you.” It was an odd thing but he, Mouse, who had felt honor, who had been run through with it like a sword, couldn’t say a word about it.

He looked at Hammerman, squinting at him, and said, “If you have.”

“If
he
has!” the boy in the black sweat shirt cried. “Man, he can keep going like this all morning.”

There was a long pause, and Mouse suddenly feared he was going to start crying. He couldn’t understand why he should want to cry now when it was almost over. The worst thing that could happen now was the big final blow, the knock-out punch that would leave him unconscious in the shadow of the Rialto. He could even take that if ‘ only he did not start crying.

Hammerman lifted one hand and opened it a little as if he were releasing something. It was a strange gesture, and it seemed to Mouse the kind of gesture a dancer might try to make, or a painter might try to put in a picture. He imagined a small statue, bronze, on a round pedestal, of Marv Hammerman with his partially raised open hand.

Hammerman said, “Go on.”

“What?”

“Go on.”

Mouse wiped his nose with the back of his hand and said, “Thank you.”

The boy in the black sweat shirt leaned back and hollered, “Whoooo-eeee! You welcome.”

Mouse passed them, holding his hand over his nose. The boy in the sweat shirt laughed again. It was a loud explosive laugh, and the boy spun around to watch Mouse walk away.

“Whooo-eeee!” he said. “You are most certainly welcome. Come around anytime.”

Mouse turned the corner and kept walking. Tears were in his eyes now, and he could not see where he was going. It was, he thought, the gesture that had weakened him. The careless ease of that opened hand—Mouse couldn’t seem to get that out of his mind.

He made his way down the sidewalk with his eyes closed. He thought suddenly that if he could see where he was going it would probably not be down Fourth Street at all. He was probably walking across some dusty foreign field. If he could look up, he would not see the tops of buildings, the flat blue sky with a jet trail drawn across it. He would see gold and scarlet tournament flags snapping in the wind. There would be plumes and trumpets and horses in bright trappings. Honor would be a simple thing again and so vital that people would talk of it wherever they went.

He felt as if a vanished age had risen up like a huge wave and washed over him. Then he smelled a dry starchy smell and knew he was passing the laundry. He stopped and wiped his hand across his eyes to clear them. He stepped against the wall and then opened the door into an apartment building where he didn’t know anybody. He sank down on the steps against the wall.

With a sigh he hung his head and pinched his nose shut. His nose was still bleeding. He saw that now. He noticed the other damage. His upper lip was bleeding and starting to swell. His stomach hurt so bad it might be weeks before it would accept food again. He couldn’t bend over any further without feeling the pain in his breastbone. He looked at his watch. It was 10:13.

Well, he thought wryly, at least I didn’t break my thumbs.

A
LADY FROM THE
lower apartment saw him when she came out to get the mail, leaned over him and asked, “Are you all right?” She was a big woman. Mouse couldn’t see her right then, but he could feel the solidness of her presence.

He nodded. He tried to get up, thinking she wanted him to get out of the hallway. Still holding his hand over his nose, he managed to get to his feet. She said, “You come on in. Come on now.”

She pulled him forward with her strong arms and led him into her kitchen. “What happened to you, huh?” she asked as she was wringing out a cloth at the sink. He just shook his head. “Probably a fight—is that what it was—a fight?” He nodded. “Either that or you got hit by a freight train. You kids.”

As she came over to where he was sitting, he looked up and was surprised to see that she was a small woman, dark and quick moving. She had a gypsy face. She said, “You kids never learn. There’s a better way to settle things than with your fists, you know that? A clever person never has to feel one single blow his whole life. Let me see your hands. I can’t tell what part of you is hurt the worst.”

He held up his hands, bloody but unscarred. They were hands that hadn’t landed a single blow. The woman wiped them clean, finger by finger, the way his mother used to wash his hands when he was little.

“Fighting is not the answer,” she said.

“I know,” he said, able to speak at last. “Only it wasn’t a real fight.”

“Then I’d hate to see you after a real one,” she snapped. She looked at his cleaned hands. She turned them over. “I bet the other kid didn’t get a scratch on him.”

“No.”

“You can’t win.”

“I know.”

“Well, at least you’ve learned that.” Continuing to babble about the dangers of fighting, she stopped his nose from bleeding, gave him a piece of ice to put on his upper lip, washed his face and even, in her concern, wet his hair and combed it. She parted his hair on the wrong side and combed it straight across his forehead. This, plus the swollen lip, made his face look strange reflected in the window over the sink.

“Now, you go right home and lie down, you hear me? Don’t let that bleeding start up again, and if it does, you put wadded paper up under your lip like I showed you.”

“Yes, and thank you.”

“And don’t fight anymore.”

“I won’t.” He tried to smile. “If I can possibly help it.”

“You kids.”

He went outside and for the first time he knew what real relief was. It was a relief so great that the whole world looked different to him, cleaner and sharper. He had not even felt this way when he got out of the hospital after losing his tonsils. It was the kind of light feeling that might come with a lessening of the pull of gravity. He felt that if he wanted to, he could actually float up through the buildings. He imagined himself rising, moving slowly and easily, waving to the startled people in the windows, smiling to them. His body was the lightest, most unburdened thing in the world. Strings would be required in a minute to hold him to the ground.