Christine, Page 9

  His gray eyes gleamed for the first time that day. "A great big Pepsi," he echoed. "Think of that. You're mean, Dennis. Really."

  "Two, if you want," I said. It was mean, all right--like offering Hershey bars to the circus fat lady.

  "Two," he said, clutching my shoulder. "Two Pepsis, Dennis!" He began to flop around in the seat, clawing at his throat and screaming, "Two! Quick! Two! Quick!"

  I was laughing so hard I almost drove into the cinderblock wall, and as we got out of the car, I thought, Why shouldn't he have a couple of sodas? He sure must have been steering clear of them lately. The slight improvement in his complexion I'd noticed on that overcast Sunday two weeks ago was definite now. He still had plenty of bumps and craters, but not so many of them were--pardon me, but I must say it--oozing. He looked better in other ways too. A summer of road-ganging had left him deeply tanned and in better shape than he'd ever been in his life. So I thought he deserved his Pepsi. To the victor goes the spoils.

  Gino's is run by a wonderful Italian fellow named Pat Donahue. He has a sticker on his cash register which reads IRISH MAFIA, he serves green beer on St. Patrick's Day (on March 17 you can't even get near Gino's, and one of the cuts on the jukebox is Rosemary Clooney singing "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling"), and affects a black derby hat, which he usually wears tipped far back on his head.

  The juke is an old Wurlitzer bubbler, a holdover from the late forties, and all the records--not just Rosemary Clooney--are on the Prehistoric label. It may be the last jukebox in America where you get three plays for a quarter. On the infrequent occasions when I smoke a little dope, it's Gino's I fantasize about--just walking in there and ordering three loaded pizzas, a quart of Pepsi, and six or seven of Pat Donahue's home-made fudge brownies. Then I imagine just sitting down and scarfing everything up while a steady stream of Beach Boys and Rolling Stones hits pours out of that juke.

  We went in, ordered up, and sat there watching the three pizza cooks fling the dough into the air and catch it. They were trading such pungent Italian witticisms as, "I seenya at the Shriners' dance last night, Howie, who was that skag your brother was wit?"

  "Oh, her? That was your sister."

  I mean, like, how Old World can you get?

  People came in and went out, a lot of them kids from school. Before long I'd be seeing them in the halls again, and I felt a recurrence of that fierce nostalgia-in-advance and that sense of fright. In my head I could hear the home-room bell going off, but somehow its long bray sounded like an alarm: Here we go again, Dennis, last time, after this year you got to learn how to be a grown-up. I could hear locker doors crashing closed, could hear the steady ka-chonk, ka-chonk, ka-chonk of linemen hitting the tackling dummies, could hear Marty Bellerman yelling exuberantly, "My ass and your face, Pedersen! Remember that! My ass and your face! It's easier to tell the fuckin Bobbsey Twins apart!" The dry smell of chalk dust in the classrooms in the Math Wing. The sound of the typewriters from the big secretarial classrooms on the second floor. Mr. Meecham, the principal, giving the announcements at the end of the day in his dry, fussy voice. Lunch outdoors on the bleachers in good weather. A new crop of freshmen looking dorky and lost. And at the end of it all, you march down the aisle in this big purple bathrobe, and that's it. High school's over. You are released on an unsuspecting world.

  "Dennis, do you know Buddy Repperton?" Arnie asked, pulling me out of my reverie. Our pizza had come.

  "Buddy who?"

  "Repperton."

  The name was familiar. I worked on my side of the pizza and tried to put a face with it. After a while, it came. I had had a run-in with him when I was one of the dorky little freshmen. It happened at a mixer dance. The band was taking a break and I was waiting in the cold-drink line to get a soda. Repperton gave me a shove and told me freshmen had to wait until all the upperclassmen got drinks. He had been a sophomore then, a big, hulking, mean sophomore. He had a lantern jaw, a thick clot of greasy black hair, and little eyes set too close together. But those eyes were not entirely stupid; an unpleasant intelligence lurked in them. He was one of those guys who spend their high school time majoring in Smoking Area.

  I had advanced the heretical opinion that class seniority didn't mean anything in the refreshment line. Repperton invited me to come outside with him. By then the cold-drink line had broken up and rearranged itself into one of those cautious but eager little circles that so often presage a scuffle. One of the chaperones came along and broke it up. Repperton promised he would get me, but he never did. And that had been my only contact with him, except for seeing his name every now and then on the detention list that circulated to the home rooms at the end of the day. It seemed to me that he'd been dismissed from school a couple of times, too, and when that happened it was usually a pretty good sign that the guy wasn't in the Young Christian League.

  I told Arnie about my one experience with Repperton, and he nodded wearily. He touched the shiner, which was now turning a gruesome lemon color. "He was the one."

  "Repperton messed up your face?"

  "Yeah."

  Arnie told me he knew Repperton from the auto-shop courses. One of the ironies of Arnie's rather hunted and certainly unhappy school life was that his interests and abilities took him into direct contact with the sort of people who feel it is their appointed duty to kick the stuffing out of the Arnie Cunninghams of this world.

  When Arnie was a sophomore and taking a course called Engine Fundamentals (which used to be plain old Auto Shop I before the school got a whole bunch of vocational training money from the Federal government), a kid named Roger Gilman beat the living shit out of him. That's pretty fucking vulgar, I know, but there's just no fancy, elegant way to put it. Gilman just beat the living shit out of Arnie. The beating was bad enough to keep Arnie out of school for a couple of days, and Gilman got a one-week vacation, courtesy of the management. Gilman was now in prison on a hijacking charge. Buddy Repperton had been part of Roger Gilman's circle of friends and had more or less inherited leadership of Gilman's group.

  For Arnie, going to class in the shop area was like visiting a demilitarized zone. Then, if he got back alive after period seven, he'd run all the way to the other end of the school with his chessboard and men under his arm for a chess club meeting or a game.

  I remember going to a city chess tourney in Squirrel Hill one day the year before and seeing something which, to me, symbolized my friend's schizo school life. There he was, hunched gravely over his board in the thick, carved silence which is mostly what you hear at such affairs. After a long, thoughtful pause, he moved a rook with a hand into which grease and motor-oil had been so deeply grimed that not even Boraxo would take it all out.

  Of course not all the shoppies were out to get him; there were plenty of good kids down that way, but a lot of them were either into their own tight circles of friends or permanently stoned. The ones in the tight little cliques were usually from the poorer section of Libertyville (and don't ever let anyone tell you high school students aren't tracked according to what part of town they come from; they are), very serious and so quiet you might make the mistake of dismissing them as stupid. Most of them looked like leftovers from 1968 with their long hair tied back in ponytails and their jeans and their tie-dyed T-shirts, but in 1978 none of these guys wanted to overthrow the government; they wanted to grow up to be Mr. Goodwrench.

  And shop is still the final stopping place for the misfits and hardasses who aren't so much attending school as they are being incarcerated there. And now that Arnie brought up Repperton's name, I could think of several guys who circled him like a planetary system. Most of them were twenty and still struggling to get out of school. Don Vandenberg, Sandy Galton, Moochie Welch. Moochie's real name was Peter, but the kids all called him Moochie because you always saw him outside of the rock concerts in Pittsburgh, spare-changing.

  Buddy Repperton had come by a two-year-old blue Camaro that had been rolled over a couple of times out on Route 46 near Squantic Hills State Pa
rk--he picked it up from one of Darnell's poker buddies, Arnie said. The engine was okay, but the body had really taken chong from the tong in the rollover. Repperton brought it into Darnell's about a week after Arnie brought Christine in, although Buddy had been hanging around even before then.

  For the first couple of days, Repperton hadn't appeared to notice Arnie at all, and Arnie, of course, was just as happy not to be noticed. Repperton was on good terms with Darnell, though. He seemed to have no trouble obtaining high-demand tools that were usually only available on a reserve basis.

  Then Repperton had started getting on Arnie's case. He'd walk by on his way back from the Coke machine or the bathroom and knock a boxful of balljoint wrench attachments that Arnie was using all over the floor in Arnie's stall. Or if Arnie had a coffee on his shelf, Repperton would manage to hit it with his elbow and spill it. Then he'd bugle "Well ex-cuuuuuse . . . ME!" like Steve Martin, with this big shit-eating grin on his face. Darnell would holler over for Arnie to pick up those attachments before one of them went down through a drain in the floor or something.

  Soon Repperton was swerving out of his way to give Arnie a whistling clap on the back, accompanied by a bellowed "How ya doin, Cuntface?"

  Arnie bore these opening salvos with the stoicism of a guy who has seen it all before, been through it all before. He was probably hoping for one of two things--either that the harassment would reach a constant level of annoyance and stop there, or that Buddy Repperton would find some other victim and move on. There was a third possibility as well, one almost too good to hope for--it was always possible that Buddy would get righteously busted for something and just disappear from the scene, like his old buddy Roger Gilman.

  It had come to blows on the Saturday afternoon just past. Arnie was doing a grease-job on his car, mostly because he hadn't yet accumulated sufficient funds to do any of the hundred other things the car cried out for. Repperton came by, whistling cheerfully, a Coke and a bag of peanuts in one hand, a jackhandle in the other. And as he passed stall twenty, he whipped the jackhandle out sidearm and broke one of Christine's headlights.

  "Smashed it to shit," Arnie told me over our pizza.

  "Oh, jeez, lookit what I did!" Buddy Repperton had said, an exaggerated expression of tragedy on his face. "Well ex-cuuuuuu--"

  But that was all he got out. The attack on Christine managed what the attacks on Arnie himself hadn't been able to do--it provoked him into retaliation. He came around the side of the Plymouth, hands balled into fists, and struck out blindly. In a book or a movie, he probably would have socked Repperton right on the old knockout button and put him on the floor for a ten-count.

  Things rarely work out that way in real life. Arnie didn't get anywhere near Repperton's chin. Instead he hit Repperton's hand, knocked the bag of peanuts on the floor, and spilled Coca-Cola all over Repperton's face and shirt.

  "All right, you fucking little prick!" Repperton cried. He looked almost comically stunned. "There goes your ass!" He came for Arnie with the jackhandle.

  Several of the other men ran over then, and one of them told Repperton to drop the jackhandle and fight fair. Repperton threw it away and waded in.

  "Darnell never tried to put a stop to it?" I asked Arnie.

  "He wasn't there, Dennis. He disappeared fifteen minutes or half an hour before it started. It's like he knew it was going to happen." Arnie said that Repperton had done most of the damage right away. The black eye was first; the scrape on his face (made by the class ring Repperton had purchased during one of his many sophomore years) came directly afterward. "Plus assorted other bruises," he said.

  "What other bruises?"

  We were sitting in one of the back booths. Arnie glanced around to make sure no one was looking at us and then raised his T-shirt. I hissed in my breath at what I saw. A terrific sunset of bruises--yellow, red, purple, brown--covered Arnie's chest and stomach. They were just starting to fade. How he had been able to come to work after getting mashed around like that I couldn't begin to understand.

  "Man, are you sure he didn't spring any of your ribs?" I asked. I was really horrified. The shiner and the scrape looked tame next to this shit. I had seen high school scuffles, of course, had even been in a few, but I was looking at the results of a serious beating for the first time in my life.

  "Pretty sure," he said levelly. "I was lucky."

  "I guess you were."

  Arnie didn't say a lot more, but a kid I knew named Randy Turner was there, and he filled me in on what had happened in more detail after school had started again. He said that Arnie might have gotten hurt a lot worse, but he came back at Buddy a lot harder and a lot madder than Buddy had expected.

  In fact, Randy said, Arnie went after Buddy Repperton as if the devil had blown a charge of red pepper up his ass. His arms were wind-milling, his fists were everywhere. He was yelling, cursing, spraying spittle. I tried to picture it and couldn't--the picture I kept coming up with instead was Arnie slamming his fists down on my dashboard hard enough to make dents, screaming that he would make them eat it.

  He drove Repperton halfway across the garage, bloodied his nose (more by good luck than good aim), and got one to Repperton's throat that made him start to cough and gag and generally lose interest in busting Arnie Cunningham's ass.

  Buddy turned away, holding his throat and trying to puke, and Arnie drove one of his steel-toed workboots into Repperton's jeans-clad butt, knocking him flat on his belly and forearms. Repperton was still gagging and holding his throat with one hand, his nose was bleeding like mad, and (again, according to Randy Turner) Arnie was apparently gearing up to kick the son of a bitch to death when Will Darnell magically reappeared, hollering in his wheezy voice to cut the shit over there, cut the shit, cut the shit.

  "Arnie thought that fight was going to happen," I told Randy. "He thought it was a put-up job."

  Randy shrugged. "Maybe. Could be. It sure was funny, the way Darnell showed up when Repperton really started to lose."

  About seven guys grabbed Arnie and dragged him away. At first he fought them like a wildman, screaming for them to let him go, screaming that if Repperton didn't pay for the broken headlight he'd kill him. Then he subsided, bewildered and hardly aware how it had happened that Repperton was down and he was still on his feet.

  Repperton finally got up, his white T-shirt smeared with dirt and grease, his nose still bubbling blood. He made a lunge for Arnie. Randy said it looked like a pretty half-hearted lunge, mostly for form's sake. Some of the other guys got hold of him and led him away. Darnell came over to Arnie and told him to hand in his toolbox key and get out

  "Jesus, Arnie! Why didn't you call me Saturday afternoon?"

  He sighed. "I was too depressed."

  We finished our pizza, and I bought Arnie a third Pepsi. That stuff's murder on your complexion, but it's great for depression.

  "I don't know if he meant get out just for Saturday or from then on," Arnie said to me on our way home. "What do you think, Dennis? You think he kicked me out for good?"

  "He asked for your toolbox key, you said."

  "Yeah. Yeah, he did. I never got kicked out of anyplace before." He looked like he was going to cry.

  "That place bites the root anyway. Will Darnell's an asshole."

  "I guess it would be stupid to try and keep it there anymore anyway," he said. "Even if Darnell lets me come back, Repperton's there. I'd fight him again--"

  I started to hum the theme from Rocky.

  "Yeah, fuck you and the cayuse you rode in on, Range Rider," he said, smiling a little. "I really would fight him. But Repperton might take after her with that jackhandle again when I wasn't there. I don't think Darnell would stop him if he did."

  I didn't answer, and maybe Arnie thought that meant I agreed with him, but I didn't. I didn't think his old rustbucket Plymouth Fury was the main target. And if Repperton felt that he couldn't accomplish the demolition of the main target by himself, he would simply get by with a little help from h
is friends--Don Vandenberg, Moochie Welch, et al.

  Get on your motorhuckle boots, boys, we got plenty good stompin tonight.

  It occurred to me that they could kill him. Not just kill him but really, honest-to-Christ kill him. Guys like that sometimes did. Things just went a little too far and some kid wound up dead. You read about it in the paper sometimes.

  "--keep her?"

  "Huh?" I hadn't followed that. Up ahead, Arnie's house was in view.

  "I asked if you had any ideas about where I could keep her."

  The car, the car, the car, that's all he could talk about. He was starting to sound like a broken record. And, worse, it was always her, her, her. He was bright enough to see his growing obsession with her--it, damn it, it--but he wasn't picking it up. He wasn't picking it up at all.

  "Arnie," I said. "My man. You've got more important things to worry about than where to keep the car. I want to know where you're going to keep you."

  "Huh? What are you talking about?"

  "I'm asking you what you're going to do if Buddy and Buddy's buddies decide they want to put you in traction."

  His face suddenly grew wise--it grew wise so suddenly that it was frightening to watch. It was wise and helpless and enduring. It was a face I recognized from the news when I was only eight or nine or so, the face of all those soldiers in black pajamas who had kicked the living shit out of the best-equipped and best-supported army in the world.

  "Dennis," he said, "I'll do what I can."

  10 / LeBay Passes

  I got no car and it's breakin my heart,

  But I got a driver, and that's a start. . .

  --Lennon and McCartney

  The movie version of Grease had just opened, and I took the cheerleader out to see it that night. I thought it was dumb. The cheerleader loved it. I sat there, watching these totally unreal teenagers dance and sing (if I want realistic teenagers--well, more or less--I'll catch The Blackboard Jungle sometime on a revival), and my mind just drifted away. And suddenly I had a brainstorm, the way you sometimes will when you're not thinking about anything in particular.

  I excused myself and went into the lobby to use the pay-phone. I called Arnie's house, dialling quick and sure. I'd had his number memorized since I was eight or so. It could have waited until the movie was over, but it just seemed like such a damned good idea.