Ten Thousand Saints (30 page)

Jude looked from Rooster to Hippie and back again. He felt dangerously unhinged without Johnny at his side to hold him back. “You seen Delph and Kram?” he asked Rooster.

Rooster pulled at his bottom lip. It was what Johnny did when he was thinking. “I know some guys. Came up from D.C. You see the guy up front in the Champion sweatshirt?”

“How many?” Jude asked.

“They’re good guys,” said Rooster.

W
hen he returned a minute later, nine guys were panting at his side. Their T-shirts were soaked, their hair spiky with sweat. Delph and Kram, plus the three other guys from Army of One. Two more, with
X
s shaved in the back of their heads, Jude recognized from laser tag in New York. The other two were the guys from D.C.: the guy in the Champion sweatshirt and another, who was missing both front teeth. Alone, they were not formidable—most of them looked too young to drive—but together, they resembled a band photo: hostile and bored. “You guys know Jude?”

Jude whipped off his mask.

“Where is this pussy?” they wanted to know.

Then Jude was leading them across the empty street, their sneakers scuffing the pavement, toward the dark lawn of the high school. They were in the middle of the street when Hippie looked up and saw them. He seemed to be counting. Eleven. Eleven against one. Two if you counted the girl.

Then he recognized Jude. “Whoa,” Hippie said, holding up his hands. A joint was still burning in one of them. “Look who it is. What are you, some kind of skinhead now?”

Jude stepped onto the sidewalk, smiling hugely. He couldn’t help himself—his heart felt like a coil ready to spring. “Hi, Hippie,” he said. Behind the chain-link fence, in front of the grand, stone edifice of the school, two flags—the Stars and Stripes, and the state of Vermont—flapped at the top of the flagpole. Behind Jude, the guys were spilling off the sidewalk and into the street, bouncing from sneaker to sneaker, waiting for his cue.

“You got some balls,” said Rooster, “smokin’ that shit out here.”

“You selling that shit?” someone else wanted to know.

For them, it was all about jumping some small-fry drug dealer. They were just looking for confirmation—then the fun could start. But Jude wanted confirmation of something else. “Who helped you break into my mom’s greenhouse, Hippie?”

Hippie stroked his beard. It was the kind of full, unkempt beard you see on old men, but twisted into two dreads, like a forked tongue. A look of surprise crossed his face, then recognition, then uncertainty. “Nobody helped Hippie do anything,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Hippie didn’t help anyone.”

“Where’s your friend Tory, then?” Delph asked.

“Hippie doesn’t know what you’re talking about, man.” He nodded sternly at the girl, who scurried away. His narrow, greenish eyes were cloudy and cold. “Tory’s not even in town. He’s visiting colleges with his parents.”

The idea of Tory involved in this well-behaved, adult-chaperoned venture—visiting colleges—let some of the air out of Jude’s sails. “Look,” he said, slamming his fist into his palm, “someone smashed up my mom’s greenhouse, and if it wasn’t you, you got your bodyguard to do it.”

Hippie didn’t deny that Tory was his bodyguard. But he seemed troubled by the association, his eyebrows knit under the frames of his glasses. He took an anxious toke. “Why would you think it was Hippie?” he asked. He released a series of smoke rings, like the tail of a thought bubble, and Jude could guess what was coming next. “Is it because you stole half a pound of super fruit from him?”

Jude didn’t answer. They were standing on the sidewalk in the unlit space between two streetlights, and it was difficult to see in the dark. He stood with his arms crossed, returning Hippie’s stare.

“I think you must have your facts wrong,” said Rooster, stepping forward. “This kid’s straight edge. Believes drugs of any kind are for the weak-willed. Doesn’t touch the stuff.” Rooster draped his arm around Jude’s shoulder, and Jude felt the untapped force of all the guys behind him. Why deny it? What was Hippie going to do about it now?

Jude stepped forward, letting Rooster’s arm drop. “No,” he said. “It was me. I stole your shwag. You know what happened to it? My mom flushed it.
Wshhhhh
. Gone. I’d do it again.”

Hippie shook his head in disgust. His dreadlocks shuddered. He walked a few paces away, rested his hands on top of the fence, and bowed his head, his hair hanging over his face. Then he turned around and launched a brown wad of spit on the sidewalk. “I wouldn’t go after your mom,” he said. “I respect her talent, man. I told Tory to leave her out of it.”

Hippie plugged his mouth with his joint, realizing what he’d said. Or maybe he’d let it slip on purpose; maybe he was giving up Tory to save himself. Either way, it was Tory who had broken into the greenhouse, maybe alone, maybe with some of his drunk friends, and demolished his mother’s work.

Jude almost took a step back. They’d given Hippie a little scare. They’d wait for Tory to return to town and save their beating for him. Jude exchanged glances with Delph and Kram. They shrugged, waiting for his call. Across the street, from the rec center, a blast of applause erupted, drunken hoots. The audience wanted an encore.

Then Hippie said something else. “Brother, Hippie’s been nothing but nice to you.” He was shaking his head again, his hands on his hips. “When your little friend died, I gave you a good deal on that weed. Why would you rip me off?”

Jude’s stomach sank to his bowels. It was what Tory had called Teddy, just before he’d pulled out his belt. Little friend. This feeling was followed not by anger or grief but by an excited relief; he’d been waiting for a reason to justify what he wanted to do.

“Call him my little friend again, Hippie.”

Hippie stood there with his jaw clenched, joint burning defiantly between his lips. For a few seconds, no one said anything. No one cared to ask what friend they were talking about. They were there to fight, their
X
’d hands curled into fists, ready to swing.

“Hippie’s heard things about you straight edge guys,” said Hippie, nodding at all of them. “No sex, right? No sex with
girls
—too busy sucking each other’s dicks.”

They lurched and seethed behind Jude; he nudged them back. He wanted to be the one to throw the first punch. Who was this new Hippie? Why was he provoking them?

“Call him my little friend again, Hippie!”

Hippie ducked, pretending to put out his joint on the sidewalk. He was leaning over, looking up, the leather tassels of his jacket swinging.

“Is that what you and your little friend used to do? Suck each other’s dicks?”

How strange and pure this high—wanting to hurt someone, and knowing he could. There Jude was, standing above him. He swung his leg back and thrust his knee forward, clipping Hippie under the chin. Hippie sprawled backward against the chain-link fence.

They went as easy on him as eleven guys could—kicking him gingerly, roughing up his dreads. He kept squealing, “Peace, peace,” and then he was just crying. They let Jude take the lead, clamping down Hippie’s limbs while Jude pounded his shoulders, his stomach, his jaw. “Call him my little friend now, you hippie shit!” Jude’s voice visited from far away. “You worthless hippie fuck!” Hippie didn’t answer, but he was conscious; his glasses had fallen off, and his eyes, exposed, were blinking involuntarily. Straddling him, Jude leaned back and gaped up at the black sky, gulping air.

He shouldn’t have let up. He should have known that Hippie wouldn’t have goaded them if he hadn’t expected backup. Here they came, charging across the street, led by the fat girl with the ring in her nose, the messenger. Not only six or seven hippies, but six or seven jocks, plus a dozen other hungry-faced boys in a number of uniforms. What were the teams? Who was winning? It didn’t seem to matter. Someone opened the gate and the crowd emptied into the schoolyard, plunging headlong into the tall grass. The Phrog-heads, the jocks, the rest of the college stoners in bleached jeans and boat shoes who had nowhere else to go, met the straight edge kids running, and they all went tumbling down the hill. The skinheads found themselves on the straight edge team, and the little kid with the Mohawk—his hands stained the same green as his hair—was pummeling away on a jock. Jude couldn’t account for Hippie—the guys holding him down had become otherwise engaged, and now Jude was the one on the ground. Some dude in a varsity jacket attacked him, and they rolled through the grass, Jude gripping the guy’s jacket in his hands, the guy’s stubble burning Jude’s face. Jude took a punch in the hip, gave one in the chin, took one in the nose. Then, confused, turning, the guy leapt up and tackled a hippie. Jude stood, safe for the moment, his body a frozen column in the middle of the yard. Maybe the guy was just having fun. Roughhousing. Some people were in fact laughing. It looked like a hastily choreographed dance.
Rumble
was the word that came to mind. Like
West Side Story
. Never more so than when Johnny, appearing out of nowhere, pulled a switchblade on Hippie.

Jude saw the metal gleaming white under the single streetlight, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying. Johnny, kneeling, held the knife low at his side. It was all Hippie needed to see. Putting his hands up, beard dark with blood, he backed away, limping swiftly across the lawn. His glasses were gone.

“You guys! Let’s get out of here. These guys are crazy.”

Heads rose; final punches were thrown. The whole thing had lasted no longer than five minutes, and within another five, most of the field was clear. Some members of the straight edge crew remained, catching their breath, hobbling to the swings.

Jude stood in the middle of the lawn, doubled over. He was enjoying the scene. He was watching the black eyeball of the sky, the dim lights of Linton Street. In a minute Johnny would come over and put a hole in his happiness, but now the flags were billowing in the breeze, and Jude knew as he knew the inside of those high school halls, where he and Teddy had been prey, that the Vermont flag was adorned with a shield, two pine boughs forming an
X,
and a crimson banner: “Freedom and Unity.” He only wished that Teddy could be here, to witness with Jude the sweet taste of being on the winning team.

A
n hour later, ten of them were crowded in Jude’s basement, spread out in sleeping bags. Several were wearing an article of Jude’s clothing—sweatpants, a T-shirt, socks—to replace the torn or dirtied or bloodied clothes they’d arrived in. Several were in their underwear. Some held plastic bags of ice to a forehead, or jaw, or ribs; some sat with their chins tipped to the ceiling, toilet paper clogging their nostrils. Jude was one of them. In addition to the steady stream of blood, his nose issued a slimy black fluid, like oil. They assured him he was fine—it was the natural grime of a hardcore show.

Jude had already gotten permission from Harriet to put up Army of One for the night, but after they’d all come to his defense, he’d had no choice but to ask them to stay, too. Harriet liked very little about the idea. She’d come downstairs in her nightgown to find ten teenage boys standing in front of her open refrigerator, looking as if they’d been mauled by a pack of lions. “We were playing football,” Jude explained. “Tackle,” someone added. Jude took her into the living room and told her calmly, reasonably, that these guys were good guys, clean guys—like Johnny—that they just needed a place to sleep. Did she remember when she was young, when she hitchhiked and protested, remember Woodstock, when she lived in a tent with strangers? She was not accustomed to discouraging Jude from making friends—his new popularity, he could tell, relieved her—so after a round of questions and conditions, she let them stay. Everyone agreed, within Harriet’s earshot, what a rad mom she was.

Besides! they said, crashing on some dude’s floor was the whole point of being on the road. They sat Indian-style, lay on their stomachs, on the floor, on the old row of seats from the van, chugging Gatorade, staying awake through the Teen Idles’
Minor Disturbance,
through Minor Threat’s self-titled, 7 Seconds’
United We Stand,
Agnostic Front’s
United Blood
. The room was filled with the faint fumes of deodorant and the mothball aroma of sleeping bags. Tomorrow, they said, they were going to see Bold at the Anthrax in Stamford, Connecticut, then back to school on Monday morning. “Want to come?” they asked, but Delph and Kram had to work, and Jude didn’t have a ride home. They were used to that, weekends in their parents’ crappy cars, driving to shows in Boston, Baltimore, Syracuse. They were all skinny from meals-on-the-go—most of them were vegan; it was hard to find health food in drive-thrus on I-95—and most of them bore the bruises and scars of their nights in the pit. One kid had broken his ankle jumping off a stage at a Verbal Assault show. The kid with the missing teeth had lost them in a fight at the Starlight Ballroom in Philly; the skinhead who’d removed them had given him fifty cents, like the tooth fairy—a quarter for each. They talked about the people they’d met on the road: the SHARPS, Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice—you had to look hard to see the
X
s through their swastikas; the fruitarians, who ate only food that grew on trees; the freegans, vegans who dove through Dumpsters for all their meals. Someone knew someone who tied bells to his shoelaces to warn insects on the ground that he was coming. Those posi guys could take a good thing too far.