Part 19 (2/2)

”Hey, wait, just wait,” Jimmy said.

If Dex had been there, hed have knocked every one of those suckers heads off-including the skinny chicks. But Jimmy was alone and didnt fight back, didnt yell; he just kept slowly backing away. He was soaked and he felt tiny. His weakness only spurred them on. Finally one of the jocks cut down to size. They caught him. Hands and feet, too many to count, pushed him, kicked him, punched him. Jimmy blocked what blows he could out of instinct, but failed to swing back. Finally he squirreled away. Ran a few yards and turned around, heaving. The Goth group fanned out. Surrounded him. They were closing in for round two.

A real dread was knotting in his chest. All the strands of his circ.u.mstance tangling bigger and bigger inside of him, taking up the s.p.a.ce usually reserved for the work of vital organs. He was still standing, still alive, but he wouldnt have guessed his heart or lungs had anything to do with it. He felt a cold trembling as even his body betrayed him. No more full breaths, but tiny sips of air instead that did nothing. He could see in their collective, pot-clouded eyes the real damage and hurt coming. He regretted not running before.

”Hey, David,” he muttered. ”Come on.”

”Jimmy, youre an a.s.shole,” David Berg shouted. He picked up a big rock, weighed it in his palm. His aim had always been good when it involved Jimmys head. Jimmy didnt turn away. Too bogged down in soreness, in sorrow. It hit him over his right eyebrow. A slow bleed. He let out a soft, high-pitched whine.

”The f.u.c.k was that?” someone said.

Mr. Berg had been clearing out the winter scrum from the baseball clubhouse when he heard the yelling. Through the back window of the dugout, he looked up and saw the group of Goths, his son among them, surrounding Jimmy. Made Mr. Berg sick to see. Then he saw his own David throw a huge rock. Looked like it landed straight on Jimmys eye.

He dropped the rake. ”DAVIE!” he bellowed. He came running around the edge of the dugout, full speed up the little hill where the Goths liked to gather and fly their freak flag. They turned and saw him barreling toward them. They scattered into the woods, yelling, ”f.u.c.k you, old man,” confident that their number would hide whod actually shouted the words.

Jimmy also took off running when he saw Mr. Berg-up the street while the Goths ran the opposite way, melting into the trees. Berg stood on the hill, looking between Jimmy disappearing one way, David the other. David stopped at the tree line, bit his lip as he stared at his father, held out his hands, like what. Then he turned, disappeared, howling like a madman.

Berg coughed something up, spit it out, and then ran after Jimmy. He was never going to find his son in those woods anyway, and even if he did there wouldnt be four clean words out of his mouth. Respect for your elders, yet another thing he hadnt done a good job of imparting.

In the backseat of McMahans tinted-window car-because they hadnt been able to wait until the condo-Genny Mori surprised herself by coming faster than normal. She s.h.i.+vered with the force of it and bit his fingertip, a feeling of expanding on making her insides as big as the whole world.

”Ouch,” he said in shock. He pulled his finger from her mouth, shook it in the air. She had drawn blood. They both laughed.

”Dont get blood on me,” Genny Mori said, shying from his hand. ”He sees blood on me, h.e.l.l know.”

”It doesnt really matter, darling, he must already know.”

Genny Mori pushed McMahan back. This was a big deal, a real marriage, and his casualness belittled it, piqued her dread of an eventual come-clean, knockdown, breakup, to her and Todds twenty years together. Calling her ”darling.” That whole scene in the parking lot with Todd, that shouting, all those people making their own guesses, it hadnt meant anything to McMahan.

He didnt know what it was like to live with a man drunk and drowning at the same time. And Todd did already know about them, Genny was sure, somewhere deep down within himself. He just didnt want to face it. What a painful sight. Suddenly he was a guy who watched daytime TV, tallboy on the knee, enraptured by decorating schemes. Then a whip around the house, some desperate mission to get rid of every expired can of food present-sure of the deadly poison each one held. A man who both she and the Flying Finn began to avoid as deftly as they avoided each other.

And then there was the simple fact of her pride: that she didnt want to be seen as a s.l.u.t, but now there it was, the whole town thought it. And still, it was a joke to McMahan. His wife was clueless, they were going on vacation to Mexico in a month, and here she was simmering in the looks being poured on her wherever she went. What they were doing, the wrongness of it, was on both of them, so how come she was the only one to carry water for it? She didnt think of herself as stupid, and yet, how come she hadnt seen this coming? ”Get off,” she said.

”What the-?”

She hit him on the chest, tried for his face but he barred her arm. Those beautiful eyes of his awash in a terror like hed just got in too deep. She loved his fear of her hinted-at craziness. She played it up, huffing little whelps, scratching his forearm. He couldnt skate over this so easy, she needed to implicate him.

”Genny, Genny, what is this?” he asked.

She stormed from the car, all disheveled and nowhere near decent. s.h.i.+rt half undone, hair all sticking out, reaching forth, itching, daring, to tell whoever saw her of what shed been doing in the back of the car.

He rolled down the window, stuck his head out, and pleaded with her. ”Come on, wherere you going? Come back.”

And maybe she would, eventually. Shed stick his bleeding finger in her mouth, taste the metallic shades of him, and theyd ramp up for round two. For now though she was stamping across the deserted parking lot, kicking through puddles, not caring about her shoes.

At the same time, back in the Kirkus house, Dex doodled on his homework. He drew pictures of what it would be like when he got to high school. Hed be seven feet tall by then, he was sure, and hed clog up the middle so tight his bro could create a different kind of atmosphere out there past the three-point line. Dropping in antigravity shots, hoop as big as the ocean.

Splish, splash.

Jimmyd be happy then. Dex was sure of it.

Dex squeezed his pencil too hard and it broke. It drove a piece of splintered pencil wood into his thumb. He squeezed his thumb so that it bled more freely. It dripped onto the drawing. It covered up the head of the seven-foot version of himself. He started to weep.

Then he heard his pops come into the room. ”Whats the matter, for G.o.ds sake?”

The Flying Finn glided his bike around and around the high school track. His friend Ralphi was yelling at him. He went faster and faster until his lungs felt like they were going to burst. On the back stretch of the track he could see the river, coursing as always, about fifty feet away from eating Columbia City High whole.

He decided to do one more loop and pumped his legs harder. Best shape of his life and he was pus.h.i.+ng sixty. He was a neon spandex blur. Faster and faster. On the back turn, just before he was going to see the river again, something in the steering column caught. He couldnt turn. He ran off the track and crashed his bike into the woods. The same woods that Jimmy would later wander. The Flying Finn was buried in bushes, yelling every cuss he knew. ”G.o.d-darned ghosts and b.i.t.c.hes!”

”You idiot Finn!” Ralphi shouted.

”You b.a.s.t.a.r.d Swede!” the Flying Finn called back.

Coach Kelly leaned back in the fake leather bus seats and sighed. He was full to bursting with pizza and cola. Jimmy had skipped out on the pizza party, and that relaxed him. First time since that game against Seaside he felt totally at ease with his team. That kid just didnt want basketball bad enough when it counted. In practice, running lines or working on his form, he was all effort. Anything resembling a game though, and the kid froze up. In baseball they called it the yips. In basketball they may as well call it the jimmies. Hed always known there was something off in the kid. A little too quiet for his liking. Good riddance.

Coach Kelly joined in on a verse of the team song. ”Send the seniors out for beer and dont let the sober FRESHMAN near!”

Todd ”Freight Train” Kirkus sat on a stump in his backyard. Hed just walked in on his youngest son crying like a girl and bleeding on his homework. What the h.e.l.l? The whole universe was inside his belly, wanting to be filled. Or drowned. He was drinking beer. Drinking the beer killed the hangover. They used to call it hair of the dog back in the day when he was still tipping it up.

He threw the empty can out across the lawn, some small amount of unaccounted for beer spewing out of it. His life was all these loose ends and what could be done to tie them all together, where could he start? The relations.h.i.+p with the woman he partially blamed for his flameout was a disaster. Even if Genny Mori hadnt admitted to cheating on him with the Doc, he knew something was up. He knew he hadnt acted right, but when he had worked toward an apology, shed turned it on him. My dad used to like to yell at me too? d.a.m.n. Gum on the shoe. Low-down and getting lower.

She had been nicer to him these last couple months. Nicer, but chaste. A pat on the shoulder, his laundry folded, a dinner packed for his night s.h.i.+ft. Nice in a way meant to convey distance. Duty done, obligation fulfilled, suspicion squashed. And him along with it.

Jimmy showed up at Pedros house with blood leaking down from the cut above his eye, heaving and out of breath.

”The f.u.c.k happen to you?” Pedro asked.

”Nothing . . .” Jimmy huffed.

”Someone get you?”

”Just nothing, OK?”

”You got that pizza party?”

He studied Pedros greasy face. He didnt want to tell him about the run-in with the Goths. Pedro had started b.u.mming cigarettes from them at lunch. Was making in-roads. Jimmy couldnt be sure how hed respond. ”f.u.c.k basketball.”

<script>