“Danny’ll get you. You called his little sister a whore, and he’ll get you.”
Robert leaned on the window sill and listened to the horseflies make that angry zooming sound, little fighter planes on the attack. He stared out the screen through the fire escape grates, down at the wide, ragged lot steaming in the sun, the weed-blades soaked and bent from a thunderous cloudburst that hadn’t cooled the air one degree. Across the lot was a fortress of blunt brick buildings studded with fire escapes exactly like his own. On the second building from the left a cellar door opened and out poured a ragtag platoon, seven in all, one of them toting a boombox that grew louder as they shuffled deeper into the weeds.
“Danny’ll get you. You can’t stay inside all summer. If it isn’t today it’s a week from today. Danny never forgets. For what you said about her, his sister …he’ll make you bleed like a pig.”
Robert squinted into the window screen. One of the Sitka twins was at the head of the pack, a mitt tucked under his arm. On the outside, the bastards were so identical Robert – and everyone else – still had trouble telling them apart. You had to be close enough to see the moles, the blackheads on the noses. Or hear them talk. But Daniel was colder and wilder; in a game he’d slide at you and cut with his big legs – or throw at your head. This Sitka was Daniel and not Darrell, Robert was pretty sure of it. The mitt he carried, that was Daniels’s yellow leather. Darrell’s was saddle color, a russet.
As Robert began to move, he went through the possibilities. Mouth full of blood, punched-out eyes, the kick in the balls that took your breath away. Whore, whore, whore.. He wished he’d zipped his lip. But he kept going – down the stairs, out the cellar door, out into the weeds. He hadn’t even meant anything. It was just a moment, it was just a word, it was the fucking summertime.
“Hey, kid…”
Daniel didn’t even run at him. He just stood there wagging his fat finger. He stood there - like King Kong - right in the center of the part they called “the field,” where they threw and caught, where the weeds were shorter and the ground was studded with rocks. Even at this distance he threw a big shadow, and Robert didn’t break stride, walked right into it.
“I take care of my sister, kid.”
Robert wondered how it would start – with a punch or a kick. Where it would come – high or low. There were six others there in the field, his friends. Shuffling and gloating, smelling blood, he could sense it. His friends.
“I didn’t mean what I said. I just said it. I’m sorry…”
“You will be sorry, kid. You will be…”
“You weren’t there. You only heard…I’m sorry…”
Daniel’s fat hand shot out and locked on his collar. Robert heard cloth rip. He blinked and winced. He braced for the thunderbolt.
“Show me how sorry, kid. Show me.”
Daniel yanked his neck with one hand and pushed with the other. Robert wound up on his knees in the dirt.
“Now you be the whore, kid.”
He unbuttoned down below and stuck the thing right in Robert’s face, and Robert had a split-second where his mind said no, never. But in the next split-second the no, never was gone, and Robert opened his mouth, just opened it.
The moment his mouth tasted skin, Daniel pulled it away from him, reached down and slapped his face. The slap cut like a scythe, went through Robert’s whole body and down to his toes. Even the weeds seemed to shake.
Daniel turned to the shufflers, the friends, and pointed down at Robert.
“The whore, there she is, you saw it.”
A few of them cackled. Robert saw it like a silent movie. He couldn’t even hear the boombox. His ears thundered with the slap.
“Every whore gets paid, kid. So here’s your pay.”
He leaned on Robert’s neck, threw his whole weight into his arm, pushed down until Robert’s face was in the dirt.
“Now eat, kid. Eat your pay.”
Daniel grabbed a clump of the stuff, a handful chocked with grass and rubble and earth slime. He slammed it into Robert’s teeth. “Eat it, chew it. Let me see it go down your throat.”
Daniel never hit him, never hit him once. He knelt there, making Robert eat dirt until he started to puke it back up. Then Daniel stood up, turned, kicked more dirt into his face and moved off – slowly, letting the scene sink in with the herd.
At that moment Robert was one living, breathing being. But his right arm became another. His right arm shot out, swiveled like a reptile, found a fist-size rock and stiffened around it.
None of them had ever let Robert pitch, even for kicks. He was small, he was no thrower.
But the right arm on this day belonged to another Robert, he could feel him, swelling and flexing. This was a Robert who dwelled deep in the earth, far beneath the puddle where his vomit seeped into the soil.
From somewhere outside his head he watched the underground Robert stand, cock the arm and release the rock. It flew at a velocity that was unthinkable – on a straight-line course that was just there in the air, pre-existing, the way a railroad track is just there in the ground. The track ran from the fingers of his throwing hand to the back of Daniel’s skull. There the rock crash-landed – with such force it would soon be noted and named. Exhibit A.
When the police came it was Daniel’s face they pulled out of the dirt.
Robert watched the blue lights and the glinting badges from back at his window, peering through the dark steel rods of the fire escape, watched the mother and the sister too, kneeling and pawing at the dirt-smears, slathering their spit and tears over the face.
The twin Darrell loomed over them, pacing and stalking, like a new Daniel risen from the weeds.