Takedown (2 page)

Maybe things would be different if he were still around.

I started to walk homeward, because I felt sure I wouldn’t see our bikes again. Wait until Mom and Dad hear about this, I
thought. What punishment would Mom impose on me this time? Because she was usually the one who handed out the punishments,
not Dad.

A car hummed by. A minute later I heard the sound of our bikes’ motors and saw Rundel, Nyles, and McNeer riding down the street
toward us. I stared, surprised and relieved to see our bikes again. The guys pulled up in front of us, shut off the engines,
and got off the bikes, all sober and innocent-looking, as if this was something they did every day.

“Nice wheels,” Max chortled. “Thanks for the ride.”

I didn’t say anything. Neither did Carl. Apparently neither Max nor his cronies had missed the button that was gone from his
shirt.

They turned and headed up the street, Max
in the middle, swaggering like a real kingpin. Suddenly Max turned around, grinned, and waved. The anger I felt about their
taking our bikes for a ride around the block came to a boiling point.

“Grin, Punkhead,” I muttered. “It’s your last time. And the last time you’ll ever take our bikes, too.”

“Oh, yeah?” Carl said. “How are you going to stop them, Peewee? You going to grow a foot in a week and take on all three?”
He laughed.

“No, I’m not going to grow a foot,” I said, watching the guys get smaller in the distance. “But I’m going to grow all right.”

We checked the bikes for damage, but there wasn’t any. Our bikes were twins, except for the color. Carl’s was white with black
trim; mine was red with white trim. They were YZ50s. Dad had given them to us on Carl’s twelfth birthday. He’d gotten a pretty
good deal on them because he was maintenance manager of a bike shop.

We put on our helmets, got on our bikes, and headed for home.

“You wouldn’t have gotten into a fight, you know, if you’d kept your mouth shut,” Carl ranted. “I don’t know what made you
think you could handle those guys. Each one of ’em is twice your size! Don’t you have a brain in your head?”

“They were trying to take our bikes,” I said evenly. “That’s what I was thinking about, not sizes.”

“Sure. And you saw what happened.”

This kind of exchange between Carl and me wasn’t new. He’d been on my back ever since he was eight or nine, when he began
to grow up like a weed, and I was ten or eleven and hardly growing at all. He’d call me Peewee, or Squirt, or Shorty, more
often than by my real name. Why, I didn’t know. Maybe it was because he resented having a stepbrother. Maybe it was because
he was bigger than me and got a kick out of flaunting it. He wasn’t much of a fighter, but when we wrestled on the living
room floor he’d beat me every time.

He grumbled on, but I ignored him and got to thinking about Max and his two friends. They went to Franklin Junior High, not
far from Jefferson Davis Junior High, where Carl and I went. There’d always been a rivalry between their school and ours.
Baseball, football, wrestling — it made no difference. Whenever the two schools got together in any sport it was
war.

We reached home, rode up the concrete driveway to the double garage, and got off our bikes.

“I suppose you’re going to spill the beans to Mom,” I said to Carl as he lifted the left-side door.

He looked at my pants and jersey. “I won’t have to,” he observed. “One look at your clothes and she’ll know you’ve been in
another fight.”

I stared down at my dirt-smudged clothes. “Great,” I said. “I guess I’m in for it again.” Disgusted, I pushed my bike inside
the garage and yanked down the kickstand. What would my punishment be this time? No TV for a week, or maybe two?

As soon as we entered the house, Carl’s prediction came true. “For Pete’s sake, Sean! You’ve been fighting again? Look at
your clothes!” Mom cried.

Carl and I looked at each other, waiting to see who would talk first. I kept mum.

“Well?” she said, glancing back and forth at us. “Which one of you is going to tell me?”

I took a deep breath and sighed. “You’re right, Mom,” I said. “
I
got into a fight.”

“With whom?”

“Max Rundel, the new kid, and two of his buddies,” Carl cut in. “They wanted to borrow our bikes. I wouldn’t have minded it,
but —” He paused and looked at me.

“And what did you say, Sean?”

“I said no, and they forced us off our bikes,” I said. “That’s when it started.”

“There wouldn’t have been a fight if he’d kept his cool and not been a wiseguy,” Carl said disgustedly.

“Why, you chick—!” I started to cry out, then stopped. My hands were balled into fists. I felt like slugging him. At the same
time I tried hard to control my temper. Getting into a fight with Carl was the last thing I needed to do, especially in front
of Mom.

“Okay, okay, cool it!” Mom said sharply. She grabbed me by the shoulder and looked at me hard. “Sean, I don’t know what I’m
going to do with you. I’ve warned you a dozen times about fighting, but I might as well have been talking to the wall.”

“Mom, those guys took our bikes!” I cried,
raising my voice to make sure she’d hear my side. “How’d I know they’d bring them back? I couldn’t just stand there —”

“You didn’t think they’d take a chance on getting caught with two stolen bikes, did you?” she snapped back. “I’m sure they’re
smart enough to realize that they could be arrested. Why, just their taking the bikes for a ride around the block is enough
cause for us to press charges. But we’re not going to do that. I don’t want to make trouble.”

She paused for a few seconds to catch her breath, and I wondered if she was thinking about my father. According to her, he
used to get into fights, too. But maybe, like me, he’d had his reasons.

“Let’s forget it for now and be thankful that neither of you got hurt,” she said, her voice calmer. “Shake hands. Remember,
you’re brothers.”

We did as we were told. Carl’s grip was as limp as a dead fish.

Then Mom pushed us toward the hallway. “Get out of those clothes, and take a shower,”
she ordered. “And forget all this foolishness.”

Carl looked back at her. “You going to tell Dad?”

“In my own way, in my own time,” she answered. “Go. Get changed and showered.”

“You first,” I said to Carl.

A half an hour later I was lying on my bed with only my shorts on, staring at the white ceiling. Crazy thoughts rambled through
my mind. Carl had done it again. He had socked the whole blame for the fight on me. He
was
a coward.

I wondered how I would have turned out if I’d gone to live with my real father instead of with my mother. I’d still be a shorty,
but at least I wouldn’t have a brother like Carl who’d put me down almost every time he spoke to me.

I got to thinking about my real father, imagining what he looked like, what kind of guy he was. Did he have brown hair and
brown eyes like mine? Was he short, tall, or just medium-sized? Did he like the outdoors? Was he a sportsman? Or was he a
couch potato? Mom had told me little about him, and that little wasn’t good. He had a tendency to get drunk
and lose his temper. Once he’d been cut by a beer bottle in a barroom fight.

“That’s the reason for our divorce,” she’d said one day. “And why I have you and he doesn’t.”

Then she’d quickly gotten up and gone into the next room, wiping her eyes. I’d decided then that I wouldn’t ask her questions
about my natural father again.

But I couldn’t help thinking about him every once in a while. Maybe, I thought, if I were with him he wouldn’t drink as much.
Maybe he would have cut it out altogether if a judge had ordered him to. Then again, if he was an alcoholic…

I rolled over onto my stomach and buried my face in the pillow. My throat ached. At least Mom cared about me. That much I
was sure of. Dad was okay, but he wasn’t the hugging kind like Mom. Now and then he’d smile and rub my head when something
pleased or amused him, but that was as much as he ever showed his emotions.

He was friendlier toward Carl. I rationalized that Carl was his natural son, but I often wished
that he’d show more affection toward me, too.

A voice interrupted my thoughts. Mom was calling me.

I rolled off the bed and opened the door. “Yes?”

“You’re wanted on the phone,” she said, looking up at me from the bottom of the stairs. “I think it’s Adam. And you’d better
put on some clothes!”

“Tell him I’ll be right there,” I said.

I pulled on my pants and shirt and ran barefoot down the carpeted stairs.

“Hi, Bull. What’s up?” His name was Adam Cornish, but everybody called him Bull. One look at him and you’d know why.

“I… ah… Look, I don’t want to talk about this over the phone, okay? Can you come over?” He sounded nervous.

I frowned. Seldom had I seen Bull bothered by anything. “Yeah, I’ll come over. Soon as I put on my socks and shoes.”

I biked over to Bull’s house and found him sitting on the front porch, petting Nick, his cocker spaniel. The minute Nick saw
me coming he scrambled down the short flight of steps and started to bark.

“Pipe down, will you?” I grunted as I rode into Bull’s driveway. “Don’t you know me yet, for crying out loud? I’m your old
buddy, Sean.”

He stopped barking, sniffed at my bike and my shoes, then followed me to the steps, his tail wagging like crazy.

“So what’s wrong?” I said to Bull. He was sitting against a post, his stomach in three rolls underneath a red T-shirt. He
had taken up
wrestling two years ago, but seemed to have gained fat instead of muscles.

“Had a fight with the Octopus,” he said.

“What? You, too?”

He looked at me. “You had a fight with him, too?”

“Yes. Less than three hours ago.” I explained what happened.

“Well, he took my skateboard,” Bull said. “That is, he and the monkeys that were with him took it. He wouldn’t have done it
alone.”

I’d seen Bull on his skateboard. You’d think it would bend under his heavy weight, but it doesn’t. Still, taking it out from
under him would not be an easy feat.

“He’s asking for trouble,” I said.

“And gets it without trouble,” Bull replied.

I socked Bull on the arm, and smiled. “Don’t worry. One of these days he’ll meet his match.”

“Yeah? Who?”

I put my forefinger against my chest.

“You?” Bull laughed. “You must be kidding.”

“Just wait and see.”

“I’ll be an old man by then.”

I laughed.

“Maybe we can gang up on him and those two monkeys,” Bull suggested. “We can pick up five or six guys and fight them, can’t
we?”

“Have a gang fight?” I shook my head. “The next thing you know someone will start carrying a knife. Or even a gun. No, there’s
got to be another way.”

Bull shrugged. “I hope you’re right. Want some iced tea?”

“Eenie meenie minie mo. Okay,” I said.

He went into the house and came back out with two glasses of iced tea. He handed me one and I took a couple of swallows. The
tea was unsweetened and tasted rotten. But I didn’t tell him that.

“Did you see who you’re wrestling this Thursday?” Bull asked after he took a swallow of his.

“Yeah. Bud Luckman.”

Bull shook his head. “Wrong. I had to take Dad’s lunch to him, ‘cause he’s working tonight, and I saw the new schedule,” he
explained. Bull’s father was the custodian at our school. “You’re wrestling the Squasher and I’m tangling with Jim Byers.”

“Nyles? The Octopus’s right-hand man?”

“Right.”

I frowned. “Why the change?”

Bull shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe Bud’s got the flu. It’s going around, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.”

I thought back to that afternoon’s incident. Apparently Nyles hadn’t known about the change either, or I’m sure he would have
said something — a complimentary remark like, “Can’t wait to get you on the mat, Shorty.”

I got up. “Don’t worry about Max, Bull,” I said. “We’ll take care of him and his friends when we meet on the mat. See you
Monday.” I petted Nick awhile, then left.

Even though our wrestling teams worked out from 3:30 to 6:30 every day after school, I still exercised at home all the next
week. I was determined to build up my body — all five-feet-two of it — as much as I possibly could.

Dad had bought Carl and me a couple of exercise mats, and two seven-pound barbells each. That way we didn’t have to worry
about conflicts.

“You think all that extra exercise is going to do you any good against the Octopus?” Carl said to me Tuesday when I had finished
working out and was ready to shower. “You’d better figure out a way to grow four or five more inches, pal. That would be your
only chance. Your
only
chance,” he repeated.

“Thanks for the compliment, pal,” I said.
You stinkpot,
I wanted to add.

I’m glad I didn’t. Things were rough enough between us. It would be stupid to make it worse.

I could’ve reminded him that Coach Collins had taken a particular interest in me, too. The head coach, Joe Doran, was devoting
most of his time to the varsity wrestling squad, letting his assistant, Chad Collins, handle the junior varsity.

“You’re wrestling Hunter Nyles this Thursday, you know,” Coach Collins had reminded me that afternoon as he started to show
me a new hold. I was in my wrestling uniform — full-length tights with outside short trunks, wrestling shoes, and headgear.
He was wearing just a sweatshirt with
JEFFERSON DAVIS J. H.
on it. “The Squasher,” he added, grinning. “But
you could change that name if you learn a couple of new holds and pull them on him.”

“Have you seen him?” I said. “He’s almost a foot taller than I am.”

“Yes, I’ve seen him. But, so what? He’s thin, and he only tops you by about three or four pounds. You could beat him. I know
you could. But you’ve got to believe that, too.”

I smiled. “I know. I’ve heard that before.”

He smiled back, and I noticed a deep wrinkle form above his left eyebrow. He was about four or five inches taller than me,
but not as muscular as most wrestling coaches I’ve seen.