Christine (23 page)

"Get lost," Mr Casey said briskly to the few remaining spectators. They started to drift away. Moochie Welch decided to try and drift with them. "Not you, Peter," Mr Casey said.

"Aw, Mr Casey, I ain't been doing nothing," Moochie said.

"Me neither," Don said. "How come you always pick on, us?"

Mr Casey came over to where I was still leaning on Arnie" for support. "Are you all right, Dennis?"

I was finally beginning to get over it—I wouldn't have been if one of my thighs hadn't partially blocked Welch's hand. I nodded.

Mr Casey walked back to where Buddy Repperton, Moochie Welch, and Don Vandenberg stood in a shuffling, angry line. Don hadn't been joking; he had been speaking for all of them. They really did feel picked on.

"This is cute, isn't it?" Mr Casey said finally. "Three on two. That the way you like to do things, Buddy? Those odds don't seem stacked enough for you."

Buddy looked up, threw Casey a smoldering, ugly glance, and then dropped his eyes again. "They started it. Those guys."

"That's not true—"Arnie began.

"Shut up, cuntface," Buddy said. He started to add something, but before he could get it out, Mr Casey grabbed him and threw him up against the back wall of the shop. There was a tin sign there which read SMOKING HERE ONLY. Mr Casey began to slam Buddy Repperton against that sign, and every time he did it, the sign jangled, like dramatic punctuation. He handled Repperton the way you or I might have handled a great big ragdoll. I guess he had muscles somewhere, all right.

"You want to shut your big mouth," he said, and slammed Buddy against the sign. "You want to
shut
your mouth or
clean up
your mouth. Because I don't have to listen to that stuff coming from
you
, Buddy."

He let go of Repperton's shirt. It had pulled out of his jeans, showing his white, untanned belly. He looked back at Arnie. "What were you saying?"

"I came past the smoking area on my way out to the bleachers to eat my lunch," Arnie said. "Repperton was smoking with his friends there. He came over and knocked my lunchbag out of my hand and then stepped on it. He squashed it." He seemed about to say something more, struggled with it, and swallowed it again. "That started the fight."

But I wasn't going to leave it at that. I'm no stoolie or tattletale, not under ordinary circumstances, but Repperton had apparently decided that more than a good beating was required to avenge himself for getting kicked out of Darnell's. He could have punched a hole in Arnie's intestines, maybe killed him.

"Mr Casey," I said.

He looked at me. Behind him, Buddy Repperton's green eyes flashed at me balefully—a warning.
Keep your mouth shut, this is between us
. Even a year before, some twisted sense of pride might have forced me to go along with him and play the game, but not now.

"What is it, Dennis?"

"He's had it in for Arnie since the summer. He's got a knife, and he looked like he was planning to stick it in."

Arnie was looking at me, his gray eyes opaque and unreadable. I thought about him calling Repperton a shitter—LeBay's word—and felt a prickle of goosebumps on my back.

"You fucking liar!" Repperton cried dramatically. "I ain't got no knife!"

Casey looked at him without saying anything. Vandenberg and Welch looked extremely uncomfortable now—scared. Their possible punishment for this little scuffle had progressed beyond detention, which they were used to, and suspension, which they had experienced, toward the outer limits of expulsion.

I only had to say one more word. I thought about it. I almost didn't. But it had been Arnie, and Arnie was my friend, and inside where it mattered, I didn't just think he had meant to stick Arnie with that blade; I knew it. I said the word.

"It's a switchblade."

Now Repperton's eyes did not just flash; they blazed, promising hellfire, damnation, and a long period in traction. "That's bullshit, Mr Casey," he said hoarsely. "He's lying. I swear to God."

Mr Casey still said nothing. He looked slowly at Arnie.

"Cunningham," he said. "Did Repperton here pull a knife on you?"

Arnie wouldn't answer at first. Then in a low voice that was little more than a sigh, he said, "Yeah."

Now Repperton's blazing glance was for both of us.

Casey turned to Moochie Welch and Don Vandenberg. All at once I could see that his method of handling this had changed he had begun to move slowly and carefully, as if testing the footing beneath carefully each time he moved a step forward. Mr Casey had already grasped the consequences.

"Was there a knife involved?" he asked them.

Moochie and Vandenberg looked at their feet and would not answer. That was answer enough.

"Turn out your pockets, Buddy," Mr Casey said.

"Fuck I will!" Buddy said. His voice went shrill. "You can't make me!"

"If you mean I don't have the authority, you're wrong," Mr Casey said. "If you mean I can't turn your pockets out for myself if I decide to try it, that's also wrong. But—"

"Yeah, try it," Buddy shouted at him. "I'll knock you through that wall, you little bald fuck!"

My stomach was rolling helplessly. I hated stuff like this, ugly confrontation scenes, and this was the worst one I'd ever been a part of.

But Mr Casey had things under control, and he never deviated from his course.

"But I'm not going to do it," he finished. "You're going to turn out your pockets yourself."

"Fat fucking chance," Buddy said. He was standing against the back wall of the shop so that the bulge in his hip pocket wouldn't show. His shirt-tail hung in two wrinkled flaps over the crotch of his jeans. His eyes darted here and there like the eyes of an animal brought to bay.

Mr Casey glanced at Moochie and Don Vandenberg. You two boys go up to the office and stay there until I come up," he said. "Don't go anywhere else; you've got enough trouble without that."

They walked away slowly, close together, as if for protection. Moochie threw one glance back. In the main building the bell went off. People started to stream back inside: some of them giving us curious glances. We had missed lunch. It didn't matter. I wasn't hungry anymore.

Mr Casey turned his attention back to Buddy.

"You're on school grounds right now," he said. "You should thank God you are, because if you do have a knife, Buddy, and if you pulled it, that's assault with a deadly weapon. They send you to prison for that."

"Prove it, prove it!" Buddy shouted. His cheeks were flaming, his breath coming in quick, nervous little gasps.

"If you don't turn out your pockets right now, I'm going to write a dismissal slip on you. Then I'm going to call the cops and the minute you step outside the main gate, they'll grab you. You see the bind you're in?" He looked grimly at Buddy. "We keep our own house here," he said. "But if I have to write you a dismissal, Buddy, your ass belongs to them. Of course if you have no knife, you're okay. But if you do and they find it…"

There was a moment of silence. The four of us stood in tableau. I didn't think he was going to do it; he would take his dismissal and try to ditch the knife somewhere quickly. Then he must have realized that the cops would hunt for it and probably find it, because he pulled the knife out of his back pocket and threw it down on the tarmac. It landed on the go-button. The blade popped out and winked wickedly in the afternoon sunlight, eight inches of chromed steel.

Arnie looked at it and wiped his mouth with the heel of his hand.

"Go up to the office, Buddy," Mr Casey said quietly. "Wait until I get up there."

"Screw the office!" Buddy cried. His voice was thin and hysterical with anger. Hair had fallen across his forehead again, and he flipped it back. "I'm getting out of this fucking pigsty."

"Yes, all right, fine," Mr Casey said, with no more inflection or excitement in his voice than he would have shown if Buddy had offered him a cup of coffee. I knew then that Buddy was all finished at Libertyville High. No detention or three-day vacation; his parents would be receiving the stiff blue expulsion form in the mail—the form would explain why their son was being expelled and would inform them of their rights and legal options in the matter.

Buddy looked at Arnie and me—and he smiled. "I'll fix you," he said. "I'll get even. You'll wish you were never fucking born." He kicked the knife away, spinning and flashing. It came to rest on the edge of the hottop, and Buddy walked off, the cleats on the heels of his motorcycle boots clicking and scraping.

Mr Casey looked at us; his face was sad and tired. "I'm sorry," he said.

"That's okay," Arnie replied.

"Do you boys want dismissal slips? I'll write them for you if you feet you'd like to go home for the rest of the day." I glanced at Arnie, who was brushing off his shirt. He shook his head.

"No, that's okay," I said.

"All right. Just late slips then.

We went into Mr Casey's room and he wrote us late slips for our next class, which happened to be one we shared together—Advanced Physics. Coming into the physics lab, a lot of people looked at us curiously, and there was some whispering behind hands.

The afternoon absence slip circulated at the end of period six. I checked it and saw the names Repperton, Vandenberg, and Welch, each with a (D) after his name. I thought that Arnie and I would be called to the office at the end of school to tell Ms Lothrop, the discipline officer, what had happened. But we weren't.

I looked for Arnie after school, thinking we'd ride home together and talk it over a little, but I was wrong about that too. He'd already left for Darnell's Garage to work on Christine.

17 CHRISTINE ON THE STREET AGAIN

I got a 1966 cherry-red Mustang Ford

She got a 380 horsepower overload,

You know she's way too powerful

To be crawling on these Interstate roads.

— Chuck Berry

I didn't get a chance to really talk to Arnie until after the football game the following Saturday. And that was also the first time since the day be had bought her that Christine was out on the street.

The team went up to Hidden Hills, about sixteen miles away, on the quietest school-activity bus ride I've ever been on. We might have been going to the guillotine instead of to a football game. Even the fact that their record, 1-2, was only slightly better than ours, didn't cheer anybody up much. Coach Puffer sat in the seat behind the bus driver, pale and silent, as if he might be suffering from a hangover.

Usually a trip to an away game was a combination caravan and circus. A second bus, loaded up with the cheerleaders, the band, and all the LHS kids who had signed up as "rooters" ("rooters", dear God! if we hadn't all been through high school, who the hell would believe it?), trundled along behind the team bus. Behind the two buses would be a line of fifteen or twenty cars, most of them full of teenagers, most with THUMP 'EM TERRIERS bumper stickers—beeping, flashing their lights, all that stuff you probably remember from your own high school days.

But on this trip there was only the cheerleader/band bus (and that wasn't even full—in a winning year if you didn't sign up for the second bus by Tuesday, you were out of luck) and three or four cars behind that. The fair-weather friends had already bailed out. And I was sitting on the team bus next to Lenny Barongg, glumly wondering if I was going to get knocked out of my jock that afternoon, totally unaware that one of the few cars behind the bus today was Christine.

I saw it when we got out of the bus in the Hidden Hills High School parking lot. Their band was already out on the field, and the thud from the big drum came clearly, oddly magnified under the lowering, cloudy sky. It was going to be the first really good Saturday for football, cool, overcast, and fallish.

Seeing Christine parked beside the band bus was surprise enough, but when Arnie got out on one side and Leigh Cabot got out on the other, I was downright stunned—and more than a little jealous. She was wearing a clinging pair of brown woollen slacks and a white cableknit pullover, her blond hair spilling gorgeously over her shoulders.

"Arnie," I said. "Hey, man!"

"Hi, Dennis," he said a little shyly.

I was aware that some of the players getting off the bus were also doing double-takes; here was Pizza-Face Cunningham with the gorgeous transfer from Massachusetts. How in God's name did
that
happen?

"How are you?"

"Good," he said, "Do you know Leigh Cabot?,

"From class," I said. "Hi, Leigh."

"Hi, Dennis. Are you going to win today?"

I lowered my voice to a hoarse whisper. "It's all been fixed. Bet your ass off."

Arnie blushed a little at that, but Leigh cupped her hand to her mouth and giggled.

"We're going to try, but I don't know," I said.

"We'll root you on to victory," Arnie said. "I can see it in tomorrow's paper now—Guilder Becomes Airborne, Breaks Conference TD Record."

"Guilder Taken to Hospital with Fractured Skull, that's more likely," I said. "How many kids came up? Ten? Fifteen?"

"More room on the bleachers for those of us that did," Leigh said. She took Arnie's arm—surprising and pleasing him, I think. Already I liked her. She could have been a bitch or mentally fast asleep—it seems to me that a lot of really beautiful girls are one or the other—but she was neither.

"How's the rolling iron?" I asked, and walked over to the car.

"Not too bad." He followed me over, trying not to grin too widely.

The work had progressed, and now there was enough done on the Fury so that it didn't look quite so crazy and helter-skelter. The other half of the old, rusted front grille had been replaced, and the nest of cracks in the windscreen was tot ally gone.

"You replaced the windscreen," I said.

Arnie nodded.

"And the bonnet."

The bonnet was clean; brand-spanking new, in sharp contrast to the rust-flecked sides. It was a deep fire-engine red. Sharp-looking. Arnie touched it possessively, and the touch turned into a caress.