Strays (29 page)

“Believe it,” said Kyle.  “Tell him, Molly.”

Brandon cocked his head sideways, stealing a second look at Molly but keeping the other eye on Kyle.  Marty and DC tried to mimic this motion, taking in the lovely girl who lounged next to the Impala.

“He’s telling the truth,” she said. 

“Him?” Bran the Man growled.  “What’s a babe like you doing with a freak show like Winthrop?”

Molly’s smile just hung there, taunting the three before she spoke.  “You’d be amazed by what he can do.”

Bran the Man tried to laugh again, but this time it sounded as forced and cadenced as Marty’s had been.  “Betcha I could do better.”

“Doubt it,” Molly said.  “I really do.”

Bran’s lips puckered, his front teeth poking over the lower lip, and he began to exhale in tight breaths.  The effect made him look a bit like a rat, and Kyle felt himself smile before he could stop it.

“Girl’s got a smart mouth,” Bran the Man said.  “Maybe I ought to shut it.”

“I wouldn’t advise it,” Kyle said.

Bran the Man turned completely toward Kyle.  He took another step, and this managed to empower DC, who stepped in line.  Marty, pursing his lips and steeling himself for the fight, took a step as well to fall in with his mates.

“
You
wouldn’t
advise
it?” Bran the Man barked.  “What d’you think
you’re
gonna do to stop me?”

Kyle looked off past them, refusing to make eye contact, and thought of his father.

… never lost a fight … always found a way to stay out of them …

“I haven’t made up my mind yet,” Kyle said.

Bran the Man’s eyes went round as quarters.  His eyebrows slanted away from the center of his head as if his face were melting on both sides.  Kyle detected a quiver in his shoulders, an amazing subtlety that gave away Bran the Man’s own fears.  DC seemed to read this shift in energy, and his shoulders shrunk back half an inch, as if dodging a rock being thrown at his head. 

The moment passed.  Bran the Man’s lip quaked, and the muscles in his high cheekbones twitched.  His head thrust forward, and the eyes pinched and narrowed. 

Kyle fought back the urge to smile.

He’s trying to get into my head,
he thought. 
There’s only one reason for that—

I think he’s afraid.
  His father’s voice, some new observation Kyle did not remember hearing from the man before.

“Yes,” Kyle said.  “That’s exactly it.”

“Who the hell you talking to?” Bran the Man, spraying spittle from his lips as he spoke.

Kyle grinned.  “My Dad.”

“What?  You … you crazy, man.”

“Crazy all right,” Kyle said.  “But you’re not.” 

Bran the Man looked genuinely perplexed by this.  “You …”

“I’ve seen that act,” Kyle interrupted.  “Bulging eyes, slobbering on yourself.  In about a dozen bad movies, a dozen bad actors doing a dozen different bad versions of crazy.  None of them convince me and none of them scare me.”

Bran the Man’s eyes widened again, and the twitch in his cheek bones was like a maggot wriggling under the skin.  He took another step toward Kyle, but Marty and DC did not follow.  Kyle glanced at each one to assess the threat.  Both were holding ground, but if anything they seemed to rear back a bit, as if anticipating retreat. 

“You don’t scare me either,” Kyle said, and he realized that it was true.

“I
better
scare you,” Bran the Man shouted.  “I better damn well scare you.  There’s three of us, you faggot.  What you going to do against three of us?”

“What are you three going to do against me?” Kyle said, grinning.  He was not sure if it was a bluff, but it did not feel like one. 

“Big talk for a faggot,” Bran the Man said.  “Right DC?”

Kyle glanced over at DC.  He looked as nervous as he had six years earlier when Kyle had name-dropped Reggie Adler. 

“Why are you doing this, Dusty?” Kyle asked.

DC expelled a burst of air from his mouth in an explosive
pahhhh
sound, as if the use of his given name had punched him in the stomach.  “Who’s asking?”

“You know who’s asking,” Kyle said, struggling to keep his voice gentle.  “I’m right here, wanting to know.  Why are you doing this?”

Bran the Man snapped his head DC’s direction and snarled.  “Don’t listen to him, man.  Don’t let him talk his way out of
this
one.”

“What do you gain?” Kyle asked.  “We’re not in high school anymore, are we Marty?”

He glanced over at Marty Segerstrom, and Marty did not meet his eyes.  Kyle knew he had already won that third of the battle, so he turned back to DC.

“You do this,” Kyle said, “and no one will see you.  No one who matters anyway.  Oh, sure, Molly will see, but I have a feeling she won’t be too impressed.”

“Doesn’t matter,” DC said.  “We get her.”

“Get?”

“Soon as this is done, we’re supposed to get her, isn’t that right Brandon?”

“Geez, DC, will you shut your mouth?”  Bran the Man spun on his friend with hands out in an exaggerated shrug.  “You don’t have to tell the faggot everything.”

“I don’t like that word,” Kyle said. 

Brandon hunched his shoulders and twisted his head back around to look at his intended victim.  “How’s that?”

“I said I don’t like that word.  I’d prefer if you didn’t use it.”

“Oh, you’d prefer?”  Bran the Man turned his whole body toward Kyle and took a step.   “Maybe you don’t like me saying faggot because that’s what you are.”

“Whether I am or I’m not,” Kyle replied, “It’s a stupid word.  My father doesn’t like it, and neither do I.”

Bran the Man’s right hand shot out and snatched Kyle by the shirt.  He jerked Kyle forward until their noses were an inch apart, and his left hand joined the right, clutching a handful of t-shirt and jerking hard.  Kyle heard a light zipper sound as the threads of the shirt tore somewhere on his right shoulder.  Bran the Man’s eyes were wide enough to explode, and his fist trembled against Kyle’s chest as he bunched the fabric of Kyle’s t-shirt in his fingers.  “Maybe we stop using words,” Bran the Man growled.  “Maybe we start using something else.”

Here it is,
Kyle thought.  Indeed, it was three against one.  He had predicted that should it come to this point, where Brandon finally followed through on his threats of violence, there would be little he could do to defend himself.  He would fight, of course, and do as much damage as he could, but in the end they would take him and they would hurt him.  For some strange reason, he was not bothered by this. 

He stared into the abyss of Bran the Man’s eyes, widened black pupils like tiny monitors into another world.  There was nothing in there, nothing to fear or respect, for Bran the Man did not even respect himself.  Whatever horrors Brandon felt the need to inflict, Kyle realized just then that he himself could take them.  He was, in fact, bigger than this.

He was his father’s son.

But then there was Molly to think about. 

“Molly?” he said, his voice crisp in the night air.

“Right here.”

“It’s about to go down,” he said. 

“I can see that.”

“I want you to get away.”

She was silent.  Kyle waited, half expecting the tear-filled exclamation of
I will never leave you!
that occurred in those countless bad movies, movies he now realized offered very poor blueprints for life.  But Molly was anything but a two-bit heroine.

“You sure about that?” she said. 

“This is my war,” Kyle said.  He could still feel Bran the Man’s fist vibrating against his chest.  “I’ve got to fight it.”

“Suit yourself,” she said.  “The moment it goes down, I’m out of here.”

“Thank you,” he said. 

He looked deeper into Bran the Man’s eyes, and something took over his body, the chilling, awful rage that had possessed years earlier. 

“Hear that, Brandon?” he said.  “She’s out of here.  No matter what you do to me, you’ll never get her.  Do you understand?”

With one swift motion, Kyle took a step back, and his hands shot up before he knew how to control them.  His palms flattened.  The hands came together as if in prayer, a thin blade of fingers and bones.  He drove them hard against Bran the Man’s right forearm, breaking Bran the Man’s grip on his t-shirt.  The ripping sound at his shoulder returned, louder, spreading its crevice in the fabric all the way down the t-shirt’s short sleeve. 

Kyle’s arms made a sweep out and up, came back down, and pushed Bran the Man hard in the chest.  At the same moment, he took another step back, dropping his hands by his side, cocking one foot back, posturing for the beating that would soon commence. 

Bran the Man staggered backward, flailing his arms, and caught himself upright before he fell on his backside.  He flapped every limb to stay upright, and when he at last succeeded, he shook his wavy Sundance bangs out of his eyes (out of style these days, Kyle thought) and stretched his grimacing mouth back from gritted teeth. 

“That was stupid,” Brandon said.  “That was real stupid.”

Brandon’s legs bent, and one foot went back in a coiled crouch.  He brought his fists in front of his face and sprang, coming hard, floating in the air as he swept his right fist down, a swiping blow at Kyle’s head.

Here it is,
Kyle thought in that last instant before impact, and he was calm.

The fist hung there in space, falling in extra slo-mo, driven like a piston as Brandon’s wide-mouthed coyote jaws spread in a primal scream.  Kyle could see flecks of foam in the corners of Brandon’s lips, more rabid and monstrous than ever. 

Kyle closed his eyes and waited for the blow …

It never came.

A solid, body-sized thump, and a smack as something hit the pavement.  A groan and scream, and the sounds of a scuffle.  Kyle opened his eyes.  Brandon was on his back next to the gas pump, and Marty was atop him, holding him fast.

“Get off me!” Brandon screamed.  “Get the hell off me!”

“For God’s sake, keep it down!” DC said.  He was crouched next to the other two but looking back and forth over each shoulder.  “You’re going to wake up those truckers and then we’ll really be in it.”

“Let me up!” Brandon roared.  “I’ll kill that little faggot, I swear!”

Marty reared up with all his weight and sat on Brandon’s stomach.  Brandon thrashed with his fists, but Marty caught them easily in the air, like an outfielder snagging fly balls.  He slammed both wrists against the pavement.  He arched his back and bent his face down until he was inches from Brandon, pinning him to the concrete.  Brandon glared up into Marty’s face, and his mouth hung open, silent.

“We’re going to get in that car,” Marty said.  “We’re going to turn around and drive back home.  Do you understand?”

Brandon’s chest heaved, and his lips fluttered with each exhalation.  “What about … shooting the rapids?”

“I don’t want to shoot the rapids,” Marty said.  “I only came along because …”  He paused, turned his head to the right, and gazed up at Kyle.  “Never mind.  I want to go home.”

He released Brandon’s hands and then pushed himself up until he was standing.  He extended a hand, offering it to his former teammate, but Brandon lay on the concrete, staring at him.

“Just like that?” he said.  “You’re going to walk out on me?”

“I guess I am,” said Marty.

“What about that faggot?  You’re going to let him get away with what he said?”

“Holy crap, Brandon.”  It was DC talking now.  “He didn’t say anything.  Do you really want to do this?  I mean, look at the guy.  He’s crazy.”

Brandon did indeed look, and so did Marty, and Kyle realized in that instant that he no longer felt anything.  No fear, no triumph, no hatred or love, no concern nor apathy … just a sense that this was the moment, and maybe for the first time he was getting a sense of what it was truly like to be his father’s son.  It was nothing he could put into words, and no one would have understood anyway, but it was there, it was a part of him, and without feeling elation or regret, he still knew that it was good.

“He’s not crazy,” said Marty.  “He’s not anything.  He’s not doing anything, man.”  He glanced up at DC.  “I don’t want any part of this.  I know you don’t either, huh, DC?”

“No,” said DC.  “I’m out.”

“That leaves you,” Marty said, turning his head back down to look at Brandon.  “If you want to finish this, give me the keys to your car and we’ll leave you here.  But we’re going home, DC and me.  We’ve got better things to do than this.”

Brandon did not move, did not rise from his position prone on his back on the pavement.  But he watched Kyle, studied him, took him in, and he did this for what seemed like a very long time.  Kyle held Brandon’s scrutiny, but from the corner of his eye, beyond Marty and DC, he could see Molly, still standing there against the car with arms crossed and her sexy half-smile, and he realized that no matter what happened, she had no intention of going anywhere.

“Fine,” Brandon said, and his voice croaked as he tried to give the word as much force as he could.  “Let’s go home then.  This little faggot’s not worth my time, and come to think of it, neither are you.”

Arrival

Molly kissed him, just once, before they got on the road.  He had been coming around the back of the car, and she had stepped in front of him, throwing her arms around his neck, pushing herself up on her tiptoes, and pressing her mouth against his.  It was long and it was sweet, and her lips and tongue darted and played.  Wyoming melted away, and they were on that beach of Kyle’s dreams, and the embrace was all the sweeter because for the first time in his life he felt that he was worthy of it.

When it ended, Kyle went to the passenger-side door for Molly and held it open, and once she was inside and secure, he went to the other side and crawled in behind the wheel.  He started the car, and let it idle, closing his eyes to hear the engine.  Whatever strength he had felt in his moment of truth, it was ebbing now, and in an instant he witnessed a different ending to the movie.  He saw—felt—Brandon’s fist connecting, and he was on the pavement as three bullies towered over him, driving their shoes repeatedly into his face, groin, and torso.  In the midst of the agony, he peered out between the flying legs of his attackers, and Molly’s legs were gone.  The Impala was revving, and its rear tires chirped as it peeled out of the filling station, and Kyle smiled, knowing at least that she was safe.