Thief of Dreams (16 page)

“Say you're whipped, fester fuck, and I'll let you off,” Earl said.

But Lester didn't say anything at all. He just pawed the air, all at once launching a terrific roundhouse swing that whistled a good six inches from Earl's face, as though all those childish, pawing blows would have set Earl up, somehow, for a knockout; except that it was Lester, not Earl, who fell merely from the violence of his own effort. While he was trying to get up, Earl rushed in and shoved him backwards, and he fell again. “Say you're whipped,” Earl demanded.

But Lester wasn't talking. He got on his feet again, his face showing no emotion, as if he weren't at all bloody, and his lips weren't swollen wrong side out, and his left eye wasn't puffing shut. As if he didn't even know that his silly style of fighting wasn't working. He came at Earl as though he were doing just fine.

Tears breaking in his throat and trembling head to foot, James forced himself inside the circle only to have Tim Lanich grab him by the collar and yank so that he stumbled back and down, his head knocking against Tim's knees just before the whole body of onlookers moved forward, and Tim and someone else fell over him and scrambled up and went on because the fight had started up again and moved a little away, drawing everyone with it.

And then people were coming from everywhere, until Lester and Earl had collected almost everyone on the playground, even some of the high school students from across the way, and James found himself cut off and shut out. He wanted no part of it, but it was monstrous and shameful that the fight wasn't his anymore when he'd started it. He wanted to run as far away as possible, only he found himself pawing and fumbling at the crowd in order to get through, his ears ringing as if a shotgun had been fired just over his head.

But people shook him off. The crowd changed shape and seemed to thicken in front of him just when he was making progress, and for minutes he couldn't even catch a glimpse of what was happening. He couldn't believe that Earl hadn't been allowed to strut off in victory long ago. Even when things were equal, fights lasted only a minute or two. Maybe five if there was a lot of circling and name calling, but this one had gone on for twenty minutes or longer, when Earl had every advantage and every right to win, and it was unnatural that Lester couldn't be made to acknowledge it. It was so unnatural and outrageous that it had put something strange in Earl's eyes when James got close enough to see them. There weren't any new marks on him, but he'd gotten dirty and sweaty and tired, and he'd begun to back away from Lester's childish blows.

“Say you're whipped,” he would croak from time to time, but that only seemed to make Lester launch one of his outrageous, whistling swings. Maybe he would fall with it and maybe not, but he was always up again, looking absolutely certain that, sooner or later, he was going to hit Earl with one of them and knock him to Kingdom Come. Maybe Earl had begun to worry about that too.

But it didn't happen. All at once coach Chic Dailey from the high school was there and had shouldered himself through the crowd and caught Lester against his chest.

“Whoa, son,” he said, because Lester was still trying to fumble toward Earl. “Whoa now, take her easy.”

“He smart-mouthed me!” Earl said to the coach's back. “And he tore my shirt that ain't even a week old!”

For a moment more Coach Dailey held Lester against his chest, which had already gotten nearly as bloody as Lester's own, and then he held him at arm's length to look at him. His eyes narrowed, the muscles at his jaw rippled, and he started to say something but seemed to catch himself. “One of you young'ns run and get Hagerman for me and Miss Ivey,” he said, and although he spoke to no one in particular, four people sprinted toward the school.

“The stupid shit jumped me, that's all,” Earl said. “Ain't nobody pushes me around.”

Chic Dailey turned enough to face him. He had one hand on the nape of Lester's neck, holding Lester's head in close as though to protect the damage that had been done, but the other hand was pointing at Earl, the forefinger extended like the barrel of a gun. “You're missing a good chance to keep your mouth shut, boy,” the coach said. “I've known about you for a long time, and I already been told what went on here.”

For minutes then, as though they were at the site of an automobile accident, everyone stood around as if they didn't quite want to be there, but somehow couldn't walk away either. It was as though they had to wait for Miss Ivey, who taught home economics and doubled as the school nurse, or Mr. Hagerman, who was the principal, to arrive and bring matters to a close, make pronouncements, make sense. At least that was what James was hoping for.

But when Miss Ivey arrived, she only raised Lester's face and looked at it, shook her head, and said, “My, oh my.” She was a big woman, Miss Ivey, bigger than most men, and maybe she couldn't ever be pretty, but she seemed all the more gentle because of it.

“You'll want to look at that young'n too,” Dailey told her and nodded toward James, somehow knowing miraculously exactly who and where he was.

And Miss Ivey came and looked at him, touching his face with soft, practiced fingers. “Mercy,” she said, “mercy, mercy. You boys come along with me this instant.”

But before they could move, Hagerman arrived, his gray, vested suit the color of iron and looking just as stiff except around his thighs where it was an accordion of wrinkles. The students automatically gave him space, and any mutterings and whisperings going on among them ceased while he looked first at Lester and then at Earl and finally at James. He was a short man with a proud paunch and a face that was never seen to smile. From Virginia and Clara, James had learned that he had a big wooden paddle in his office with holes drilled in it which left bright red rings on the buttocks, and he paddled the smaller children with it; but as the boys among them reached a certain size or age when they might have offered resistance—and he seemed to know without fail when this was—he no longer whipped them. He sent them home.

“I can't have this kind of shenanigan at my school, and I won't have it,” he told them. “When Miss Ivey gets finished with the three of you, I want you off school grounds, and I don't want you here the rest of this week or next.” He gave each of them another long look. “Monday a week, you can come to my office, and we'll have a talk.”

“Two's enough for Miss Ivey to clean up. I'll take this one to the high school first-aid room,” Chic Dailey said and grasped Earl's elbow, only Earl pulled free.

“I ain't hurt,” he said.

“Well, you two young'ns come on with me then,” Miss Ivey said to James and Lester.

“If you're not hurt, young man, I want you off school grounds right now,” the principal told Earl.

“I got to catch the bus home!” Earl said.

“I'll tell the driver to pick you up on the highway,” Hagerman said and pointed out the spot. Turning to the others then as though they were also somehow mysteriously at fault, he said, “And it's time the rest of you went on about your business.”

But it was all so beside the point, James felt the whole world was out of focus, and when he followed Lester and Miss Ivey toward the school, he jarred himself when he walked, as if he no longer even quite knew where the ground was, and the feeling wouldn't leave him.

“Oh, you boys,” Miss Ivey sighed as she tended them in her little first-aid room, cleaning and dabbing and applying antiseptic. “Mercy, mercy, you boys,” she'd say and shake her head as if she knew exactly who and what they were, as if they had acted just as she'd known all along they would. But none of it made any sense to James, and it was a long time later, while he and Lester were walking down the railroad bed, that something seemed to wake him, and the world he knew, the true and legitimate world he recognized, came rushing back from wherever it had gone.

Perhaps they were struck too dumb to speak, but they had been walking together, just as always, as if an ordinary school day had passed with its ordinary woe, and there was nothing to be said about it, when whatever it was—the warm, earnest sun on his back, maybe, or the insistent and cumulative effect of birdsong—woke him, and he stopped in his tracks and looked about. “I don't believe it!” he said all at once.

Had he really shoved Earl Carpenter and tried to fight him? And Lester, who was perfectly innocent and didn't know the first thing about fighting, how did he get sucked in to rescue him so that he had to struggle on and on as though he couldn't quit, as though Earl were another impossibly painful school assignment to be endured? And how could that seem so ordinary and expected to Miss Ivey? And what sort of blind formula for justice was Hagerman following? It seemed impossible that any of it could have happened. But sure enough his left eye had begun to ache in a dull, far-off sort of way, and he could glimpse his own cheek under it. Also his upper lip was as tight and sore as if he'd been stung by a bee. And Lester—who had stopped walking too—James could hardly stand to look at Lester. Yet with his broken lips and his left eye swelled shut and weeping pink tears, Lester seemed to ponder the mystery too and find it more believable.

“I'm sorry,” James said. “It was my fault.”

After a moment Lester said, “Nawh. Don't talk crazy.” With his shirtsleeve he wiped away the pink serum leaking from the slit of his eye. “Earl Carpenter's been ridin' you since you got here,” he said. “'Tweren't nary fault of yours.”

“You shouldn't have got beat up though,” James said.

Lester made a soft sound, almost like laughing. “Couldn't seem to help it,” he said.

“But, God, why didn't you quit?” James said. “Why didn't you just quit?”

Lester looked at the ground and shook his head slightly; and after a minute, he shook it again. “I reckon I didn't like the way he asked me.”

“I'm going home with you to tell your folks what happened,” James said.

“You don't need to do that,” Lester said.

“I'm going to,” James said.

Lester nodded, but then, for all the bruised color in his face, he looked suddenly gray, and he took a few feeble steps to the cut bank along the railroad and sat down. “I don't feel so good,” he whispered.

James went over and sat beside him, and neither of them spoke for a long time. Lester let his head drop back against the dirt bank and closed his eyes, breathing through his open mouth almost as if he were winded, although his breaths were shaky and not very deep. He was sweating too, but after a few minutes he opened his eyes again, and at last he sat up, although his color was still strange.

“Are you all right?” James asked.

As though puzzled, Lester shook his head. “Feel puny,” he said. He stayed where he was for a while, letting his breath whistle out. “Better now,” he said.

He got up then, but slowly, and James got up with him, and they went on, although Lester had to stop to rest once more before they got to his house.

Effie was taking clothes in from the line when they came into the backyard, but the moment she got a look at Lester, her eyes went wide. “Child! What in the world …!” she said, and then her eyes took in James too.

“I was gettin beat up, and he took my part,” James blurted. “It was all my fault.”

“Now Momma,” Lester said, “hit ain't nuthin.” He tried his best to give her an easy smile, only the new contours of his face turned the effort into something without a name. “It's nuthin broke,” he told her. “I just ain't real handy at fightin.”

“Awwwh, honey,” she said, her back beginning to bow over the clothes she held as though they were an enormous weight, and her eyes still wide, but with pity now, more than surprise.

“I'm a little tired,” Lester said, “but if you'd let me lie down, I'll be as good as gold by supper.”

“Awwwwh, baby,” Effie said.

“Hey boys!” Roy shouted, appearing suddenly from the barn, but no one answered him.

Lester had already stepped up on the dogtrot and was letting himself into his room, so by the time Roy came up, he already knew something was wrong; and the moment he saw James, he not only knew what it was, but seemed to make some sort of peace with it. “Had you a fight, I see,” he remarked as though he were neither amused nor angry, but merely stating a fact, just as he might have said: “I see you got yourself a haircut.”

“We didn't fight each other, Mr. Buck,” James told him.

Something about Roy Buck's countenance changed then, as though he nodded without moving his head or smiled without moving his lips. “Well that's good,” he said.

“Lester's awful hurt,” Effie put in. “I ort to look—”

But Roy Buck patted the air softly to hush her, as though to say that Lester should be allowed his privacy just then. “You don't look just brand new, yourself,” he said to James, which somehow made him see how very little he was hurt compared to Lester. Almost instantly his eyes filled because Lester had taken the beating meant for him and taken ten times more of it than James ever would have, if only because Lester meant to turn it into a victory. And so he told them everything—how the fight had started and Lester had rescued him and wouldn't give up, how Hagerman had forbidden all three of them to go to school, and how Lester had had to rest on the way home—while Effie put her arm around him and squeezed him against her breast and against the stiff clothes that smelled of lye soap and sunlight, and Roy nodded and nodded.

EDWARD TALLY

He pulled the Packard up to the curb, turned off the ignition, and stared through the windshield down the street of row houses. But he didn't know he was staring until sometime later when he caught himself at it. After he had forbidden himself to think of Madeline and James, his mind often seemed to go altogether blank, and he would discover himself gazing dry-eyed and numb into space. Not even glancing up to Paris's third-floor windows, he got out of the car and opened the trunk where he'd hidden the enormous pink elephant from Womb Broom and Ironfield since he wouldn't have been able to tolerate the slightest teasing about it. Paris had two days off before she went on the night shift and was fixing his supper for the first time ever, but he knew he'd bought the elephant for strange and possibly perverse reasons he himself didn't understand. It was a ridiculous-looking thing, google-eyed, cotton-candy pink, and as big as a hog, so she was sure to like it. He tucked it under his arm, gathered up a fifth of Canadian whiskey, and slammed the trunk lid with his elbow. Across the sidewalk he went and, after some difficulty getting through the door, up the narrow, creaking stairs, the elephant pressing against the wall, pushing him off balance, and making him stumble as though it were another person trying to jostle past him. Madness. If he wasn't thinking about Madeline, how come he could feel her with him every single moment? Nitwit, he told himself, asshole, don't think of anything that ever happened to you. Think of the future. No. Not good. No good at all. Paris, he told himself, think of Paris, and he struggled toward the third-floor landing, he and the elephant like two fat men trying to get through a narrow doorway at exactly the same time.