Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [31]
Then it was done. They were on the porch breathing hard, looking down at us. Cleary was just getting to his feet, blood dripping from one eye and between his teeth.
Ricky J. lit up a cigarette and flicked the match over our heads. “No more fucking moochers. Now screw.”
Before we were even to the street Cleary started laughing. He turned and yelled, “Fuckin’ losers!,” and we ran up the hill and across Main Street and down the alley to his house and mother.
There were the Murphy brothers, four of them. They’d drive up to house parties where they didn’t know anyone. Walk in, drink what they wanted, smoke what they wanted, eat what they wanted, grab the butt or breasts of any girl or woman nearby, and if anybody ever said anything to them about it or even looked at them wrong, they’d jump him right there, four of them on one.
Dennis was the youngest. He was tall and had dirty blond curly hair and a cracked front tooth. It was a warm afternoon in April or May, and Jeb and Cleary and I were walking back from Round Pond, a reservoir where there were woods and you could find kids smoking dope there in the trees, or passing Tall Boys around in front of a fire till somebody called the cops or the fire department and you’d run and not look back. That afternoon Cleary taught us how to get high just by breathing deep and fast for a full minute, then have someone put you in a bear hug and squeeze till you felt your brain float up and fizz out the top of your head. I was afraid to do it, it seemed dangerous to me. Bad for your heart. But I watched Jeb squeeze Cleary and dump him in the pine needles where he lay a long time, his eyes closed, his mouth open. When he came to he was pale, but he smiled and said, “That was boss. That was so friggin’ boss.”
We were on the sidewalk close to Monument Square. There was a sub shop there between a drugstore and convenience store. Sometimes the owners tossed out a pizza or a sub nobody ever picked up for takeout, and we’d find them in the dumpster out back, still warm and in the box or wrapped tightly in white deli paper.
“Hey, faggots!” It was Dennis Murphy. He ran across the street, then fell in step with us as if we knew him, as if we were friends. “How’s it hangin’? Suckin’ any hog?”
We never stopped walking and he walked with us. He had a light pine branch in his hand a foot and a half long, and he was slapping it against his palm as he walked. My heart was beating fast, and my mouth had gone gummy. We were getting close to the square, the gas stations and shops, cars driving around the statue of the Union soldier in the middle of the asphalt. An old woman was walking in our direction on the sidewalk ahead of us. She was short and small. Her hair was white. Even though the air was warm she wore a thin coat buttoned to the top, and she carried two full grocery bags, one in each arm. I started to move to the side. I remember hoping Murphy wouldn’t say anything about sucking hog as we passed her. Her eyes had been on the concrete, on where it was cracked and where it was heaved and buckled, but now she looked up at us and she seemed to pull her groceries in tighter. None of us moved to the side and she had to nearly step in the street as we passed and that’s when Murphy flicked his branch out and slapped her face, her eyes blinking and tearing up, and he kept walking. We all kept walking. Cleary laughed like he thought it was funny when I knew he didn’t. I don’t remember what Jeb said or did, but I did nothing. The old woman was yelling something at us. I could hear the shock in her voice, the outrage. She said something about the police and her dead husband. She yelled, “I hope you’re proud of yourselves,” her voice tremulous. And to walk beside Dennis Murphy for even another heartbeat felt like poison to my own blood, but I kept walking.
In my visits with Pop once a month, I could have told him that story, or the others, but why would I?
4
ONE WEDNESDAY