Davy Ray made a noise like the breaking of wind, but I knew he didn't mean it. He had a part to play in our group-the part of scoffer and agitator-and this he played very well. I knew what Davy Ray was inside; after all, it was he who had brought Five Thunders to life.

I heard Ladd Devine hollering, "Get away from me with those squirrel heads!" Some girl screamed and somebody shouted, "Oh, gross!" The Demon was in her element.

As I had predicted, the sight of cinematic monsters in her cla.s.sroom enraged Leatherlungs. She threw a tantrum that made one of Five Thunders' outbreaks seem more like Half-a-Pipsqueak. Leatherlungs demanded to know if my parents knew what kind of garbage I was stuffing my mind with. Then she went into a tirade about how all decency and thoughtfulness in this world was going to ruin, just going to ruin, and why wasn't I interested in good reading instead of this monster trash? I just sat there and took it on the chin, like I was supposed to. Then the Demon opened up the s...o...b..x she'd brought and stuck it in Leatherlungs' face and the sight of those four squirrel heads crawling with ants and their eyes poked out with a toothpick made Leatherlungs beat a hasty retreat to the teachers' lounge.

At last the three o'clock bell rang, and school was behind us for another day. We left Leatherlungs reduced to a raspy whisper. Out on the playground under the hot afternoon sun, clouds of dust stormed through the air as kids ran for freedom. As usual, Davy Ray was ragging Ben about something or other. Johnny put his tackle box on the ground as he unlocked his bike chain, and I knelt down to work the combination lock that secured Rocket.

It happened very fast. Such things always do.

They came out of the dust. I felt them before I saw them. The skin at the back of my neck drew tight.

"Four little p.u.s.s.ies, all in a row," came the first taunt.

My head whipped around, because I knew that voice. Davy Ray and Ben ceased their wrangling. Johnny looked up, his eyes darkening with dread.

"There they are," Gotha Branlin said, with Gordo at his side. They wore their grins like open razors, their black bikes crouched behind them. "Ain't they sweet, Gordo?"

"Yeah, ain't they?"

"What's this?" With one quick movement, Gotha tore from my hand the magazine I'd brought for show-and-tell. It ripped along the staples, and on the cover Christopher Lee's Count Dracula hissed with impotent rage. "Look at this s.h.i.t!" Gotha told his brother, and Gordo laughed at a picture of the sleek female robot from Metropolis. "I can see her f.u.c.kin' t.i.tties!" Gordo said. "Gimme it!" He grabbed the page, Gotha grabbed for it, and between their hands the picture dissolved as if consumed by acid. Gotha got most of it, though-the part showing a glimpse of metallic b.r.e.a.s.t.s-and it went down crumpled and dirty in his jeans pocket. Gordo squalled, "You s.h.i.thole, give it here!" and he wrenched at the rest of the magazine while Gotha pulled at it, too. In another second the rest of the staples surrendered and pages of dark and glittering dreams, heroes and villains and fantastic visions, fluttered through the dust like bats in daylight. "You ruined it!" Gotha shrieked, and he shoved his brother so hard Gordo slammed to the ground on his back and a geyser of saliva shot from his mouth. Gordo sat up, his face swollen with rage and his eyes unspeakable, but Gotha c.o.c.ked a fist back and stood over him like G.o.dzilla over Ghidrah. "Come on and try it!" Gotha said. "Just come on!"

Gordo stayed where he was. His elbow was crushing a picture of King Kong fighting a wet-fleshed giant serpent. Even monsters had their collisions and death battles. Gordo's face was hard and bitter. Any other kid who'd taken so hard a blow would've sobbed at least once. I imagine a tear in the Branlin household was as rare as a dragon's tooth, and all those unshed tears and simmering rages had twisted Gotha and Gordo into what they were: two animals who could not escape their cages, no matter how hard they fought or how far away they roamed on those vulture bikes.

I might have felt sorry for them if they'd given you room to. But then Gotha said, "What's in here?" and he scooped the tackle box off the ground before Johnny could think to grab for it. Johnny made a choking sound as Gotha flipped the latch up and lifted the lid. The big rude hand went in and started plucking the wads of cotton open. "Hey, man!" he said to Gordo. "Look what squawboy's got! Arrowheads!"

"Why don't you leave us alone?" Davy Ray asked. "We're not botherin'-"

"Shut your hole, d.i.c.khead!" Gotha shouted at him, and Gordo got up grinning, their brotherly hate forgotten for the moment. Both of them started going through the collection of arrowheads, their fingers grasping and gripping; I would've hated to see what dinnertime at the Branlin household was like.

"Those are mine," Johnny said.

Words had never stopped the Branlins before, and they didn't now. "They belong to me," Johnny said, sweat glistening on his cheeks.

This time, something in Johnny's voice made Gotha look up. "What'd you say, n.i.g.g.e.rnuts?"

"They're my arrowheads. I... I want 'em back."

"He wants 'em back!" Gordo crowed.

"You little p.u.s.s.ies tried to get us in trouble, didn't you?" Gotha's right hand was full of arrowheads. "Went cryin' to the sheriff and tried to get our dad mad at us, too. Didn't you?"

This tactic did not sway Johnny's attention. "Give 'em to me," he said.

"Hey, Gotha! I think squawboy wants his f.u.c.kin' arrowheads!"

"Why don't you guys-" I began, but just that quick Gordo was in my face and he grabbed a handful of my shirtfront and pressed me up against the fence.

"Little p.u.s.s.y." Gordo made smacking noises. "Little p.u.s.s.y queer."

I saw Rocket's golden eye in the headlamp, there for just an instant, taking in the situation, then gone.

"Here're your arrowheads, squawboy," Gotha said, and he threw the ones he held across the dusty playground. Johnny trembled, as if he'd been hit by a crosscurrent of winds. He watched Gotha's hand winnow into the box, come up again, and throw arrowheads away as if they were worthless chips of stone.

"p.u.s.s.y, p.u.s.s.y, p.u.s.s.y!" Gordo chanted, and he laid his wiry forearm across my neck. His nose was running, and he smelled like engine oil and burnt barbecue.

"Quit it," I gasped. His breath was no perfume from France, either.

"Woo-woo, woo-woo!" Gotha started giving Indian whoops as he tossed Johnny's collection away. "Woo-woo, woo-woo!"

"Cut it out!" Davy Ray shouted.

And then Gotha's fingers came up gripping an arrowhead that was smooth and black and almost perfectly formed. Even Gotha could tell that this one was special, because he paused in his pride of meanness and looked closely at it.

"Don't," Johnny said with a note of pleading.

Whatever Gotha might be seeing in the black arrowhead of Chief Five Thunders, it was a pa.s.sing vision. He reared his arm back, his fingers opened, and the arrowhead took flight. It spun up and up and fell into the gra.s.s and weeds near the trash dumpster, and I heard Johnny grunt as if he'd been punched.

"What do you think about that, squaw-" Gotha began; he didn't finish it, because in the next second Johnny had made one limp and a leap between them and Johnny's fist came up in a blur and smacked dead solid into Gotha Branlin's chin.

Gotha staggered, blinked, and a wave of pain pa.s.sed over his face. Then his tongue flicked out, and there was blood on it. He threw aside the tackle box and said, "You're dead, n.i.g.g.e.rnuts!"

"Get him, Gotha!" Gordo shouted.

Johnny shouldn't be fighting. I knew this, and I knew he did, too. The Branlin fists had put him in the hospital once. He still suffered an occasional dizzy spell, and he wasn't nearly equal to Gotha Branlin's size. "Run, Johnny!" I shouted.

Johnny was through running.

Gotha came at him swinging. A fist caught Johnny's shoulder and knocked him back, and Johnny dodged a fist to his face and slammed his own punch into Gotha's ribs.

"Fight! Fight!" somebody among the few kids who were left on the field started hollering.

I shoved Gordo back with all my strength. Gordo put out a hand to steady himself, and his fingers gripped Rocket's handlebars. "s.h.i.t!" he screamed suddenly, and he wrung his hand and stared at his fingers. Blood was showing on the pad of flesh between his thumb and index digit. " b.a.s.t.a.r.d bit me!" I imagine he had been cut by a screw, or an edge of metal, though I would later search Rocket and find no protruding screw or metal edge. Gordo twisted around and kicked Rocket, and that's when Five Thunders spoke to me.

He said, as he'd said to Johnny: Enough.

I was no puncher. If Gordo wanted to kick, that was fine with me. I stepped forward, my blood bubbling, and I gave him a kick in the shin that made him holler and dance a one-legged jig. Johnny and Gotha were grappling on the ground, the dust swirling around them. Fists rose and fell, and Davy Ray and Ben were ready to jump in if it looked as if Gotha was going to get on top of Johnny and start pummeling him. Johnny, though, was holding his own. He scrambled and twisted and fought, his sweating face paled with dust. Gotha's hand gripped Johnny's hair, but Johnny shook loose. A fist hit Johnny's chin, but Johnny showed no pain. Then Johnny was flailing away at Gotha like a boy with nothing to lose but his dignity, and when those blows connected, they made Gotha grunt with pain and try to curl up like a writhing worm. "Fight! Fight!" the merry call went up, and a knot of onlookers closed around Johnny and Gotha as they battled on the ground.

But Gordo was coming after me with a stick in his right hand.

I didn't care to get my brains knocked out, or have Rocket beaten into submission. I jumped on Rocket, knocked the kickstand up, and wheeled away, trying to put some distance between us. I thought Gordo would turn away from me and then I could try to dart in and knock that stick out of his hand. I was wrong. Gordo got on his black bike and started speeding after me, leaving Gotha to fight his own hateful little war.

I had no time to shout for Ben and Davy Ray. I doubted if they could hear me anyway, over the hollering of the blood-mad crowd. I turned Rocket away from Gordo and pedaled frantically across the playground, going out through the gate in the fence and onto the sidewalk. When I looked back, Gordo was gaining, his head slung forward over the handlebars and his legs pumping. I started to swerve Rocket toward the playground again, to get support from my buddies.

But Rocket wouldn't let me.

Rocket stiffened up. The handlebars wouldn't turn. I had no choice but to keep going along the warped sidewalk, and here a strange thing happened.

The pedals started turning faster, so fast I could hardly keep my feet on them. In fact, my sneakers slid off the grips more than once; the pedals, though, kept going. Rocket's chain rattled through the gears and built up to a high, powerful singing sound.

Rocket raced on, with me doing nothing more than clinging to its back as if on a wild horse. Our speed increased, the wind whipping through my hair. I looked over my shoulder; like doom and the end of time, Gordo was still at my heels.

He wanted my skin, and he wasn't going to stop until he had it.

Back at the playground, Gotha struggled to his feet. Before he could aim a punch, Johnny tackled him at the kneecaps and they went down again as the onlookers shouted their delight. Davy Ray and Ben started looking for me, and they saw Rocket gone and Gordo and one of the black bikes missing.

"Uh-oh!" Ben said.

Gordo's bike was fast. It might've beaten any other bike in Zephyr, but Rocket wasn't like any other bike. Rocket was going like a h.e.l.lhound, and I dreaded what might happen if that chain jumped its sprocket. We pa.s.sed a man out raking leaves from his driveway. We pa.s.sed two women talking in a front yard. I wanted to stop, but whenever I tried to put on the brake there was a high, angry hissing and Rocket would have none of it. I tried to turn right at the next intersection, to try to get home. Rocket wanted to go left, and I yelped as the bike's handlebars took the corner and the rear wheel skidded on the edge of disaster. But Rocket held tight to the pavement, and we were off again with the wind in my teeth. "What're you doin'?" I shouted. "Where're you goin?" There was only one answer to these questions: Rocket had gone insane.

Another backward glance showed me that Gordo was still right on my tail, though he was puffing and his face was mottled with crimson. "Better stop!" he hollered. "I'm gonna get you anyway!"

Not if Rocket could help it. But every time I tried to urge Rocket toward my house, Rocket refused to be guided. The bike had its own destination, and I had no choice but to be swept along with it.

Through the swirling dust, the battlers at the school yard fought to their feet. Gotha, not used to having anybody fight back, was showing his weakness; he was throwing wild punches, and he was so tired he was stumbling like a drunkard. Johnny danced in and out, making Gotha strike air again and again. When Gotha roared with rage and rushed in, the smaller boy dodged aside and Gotha tripped over his own feet and fell headlong, sc.r.a.ping his bruised chin raw over the pebbly ground. He got up again, his arms heavy. Again he attacked, and once more Johnny eluded him, using his clubfoot as Pan might twist and turn on a hoof. "Stand still!" Gotha gasped. "Stand still, you n.i.g.g.e.rblood!" His chest was heaving, his face as red as a beef chunk.

"All right," Johnny said, his nose bleeding and a gash across his cheekbone. "Come on, then."

Gotha charged him. Johnny feinted to the left. Davy Ray would say later that it was like watching Ca.s.sius Clay in action. When Gotha shifted to meet the feint, Johnny put everything he had into a haymaker that caught Gotha's jaw and snapped his head around. Ben said that was when he'd seen Gotha's eyes roll up and go white. But Johnny had one more thunder in him; he stepped forward and hit Gotha in the mouth so hard everybody heard two of Johnny's knuckles pop like gunshots.

Gotha made no noise. Not even a whimper.

He just fell like a big dumb tree.

He lay there, drooling blood. A front tooth slid from his lips, and then Gotha started shaking and he began to cry in hard, angry silence.

n.o.body offered to help him. Somebody laughed. Somebody else sneered, "Gonna go cryin' home to his momma!"

Ben clapped Johnny on the back. Davy Ray grabbed his shoulder and said, "You showed him who's tough, didn't you?"

Johnny pulled loose. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, which Dr. Parrish would be splinting soon for the two broken knuckles. Johnny's parents would give him h.e.l.l. They would finally understand why he'd spent so much time in his room alone, over the long hot summer, reading a book that had cost three dollars and fifty cents from a mail-order publisher and had the t.i.tle Fundamentals of the Fight by Sugar Ray Robinson.

"I'm not so tough," Johnny replied, and he leaned down beside Gotha and said, "You want some help?"

I, however, did not have the benefit of Sugar Ray's experience. I only had Rocket beneath me and Gordo a relentless pursuer, and when Rocket suddenly turned with a whip of the handlebars and started onto a trail into the woods, I feared I was fast approaching the last roundup.

Rocket refused the brake, refused my frantic tugging on the handgrips. If my bike had gone crazy, I had to get off. I tensed to jump for the underbrush.

But then Rocket burst out through the trees and there was a big ditch right in front of us full of weeds and garbage and with a burst of speed that made the hair stand up on my scalp Rocket took flight.

I think I screamed. I know I wet my pants, and that I hung on so tightly my hands ached for days afterward.

Rocket leaped the ditch and came down on the other side with an impact that cracked my teeth together and made my spine feel like a bowstring that had just been snapped. The jump was too much for even Rocket; the frame thrummed, the tires skidded on a ma.s.s of leaves and pine needles, and we went down all tangled up together. I saw Gordo tear along the path toward me, and his face contorted with terror when he saw the ditch yawning for him. He hit the brake, but he was going too fast to stop in time. His black bike slid on its side, and carried Gordo with it as it toppled over into the weeds and trash.

The ditch wasn't all that deep. It wasn't full of thorns, or sharp rocks. Gordo really had a soft landing amid thick green three-leafed vines and a hodgepodge of things: pillows with the stuffing spilling out, garbage can lids, empty tin cans, a few aluminum pie pans, socks and torn-up shirts, rags, and the like. Gordo thrashed around in the green vines for a minute, getting himself loose from the black bike. He was none the worse for wear. He said, "You wait right there, you little s.h.i.thole. You just wait right-"

He screamed suddenly.

Because something was in the ditch with him.

He had landed right on top of it, as it had been eating the last of a coconut cream pie stolen from the sill of an open kitchen window less than ten minutes before.

And now Lucifer, who did not care to share his den of trash-can treasures, was very, very angry.

The monkey squirted up out of the vines and jumped Gordo, its teeth bared and its rear end spraying forth a nasty business.

Gordo fought for his life. The vicious monkey took plugs of flesh from his arms, his cheek, his ear, and almost gnawed off a finger before Gordo, screaming to high heaven and stinking like h.e.l.l, was able to scramble out of the ditch and take off running. Lucifer raced after him, chattering, spitting, and s.h.i.tting, and the last I saw of them Lucifer had leaped onto Gordo's head and had handfuls of peroxided blond hair, riding Gordo like an emperor on an elephant.

I pulled Rocket up and got on. Rocket was docile now, all the willful fight drained away. Before I pedaled off to find a path around the ditch, I thought of how Gordo would be feeling in a few days, his face and arms swollen with bites, when he'd realized all those green three-leafed vines down in Lucifer's domain were poison ivy pregnant with silent evil. He would be a walking fester. If he could walk, that is.

"You've got a mean streak," I said to Rocket.

The defeated black bike lay down at the bottom of the ditch. Whoever went in after it had better be stocked up on calamine lotion.

I rode back to school. The fight was over, but three guys were searching the playground. One of them had a tackle box under his arm.

We found most of the arrowheads. Not all. A dozen or so had been swallowed up by the earth. An offering, as it were. Among the lost was the smooth black arrowhead of Chief Five Thunders.

Johnny didn't seem to mind that much. He said he'd look again for it. He said if he didn't find it, somebody else might, in ten years, or twenty years, or who knew how long. It hadn't been his to own anyway, he said. He'd just been keeping it for a while, until the chief needed it on the Happy Hunting Grounds.

I had always wondered what Reverend Lovoy meant when he talked about "grace." I understood it now. It was being able to give up something that it broke your heart to lose, and be happy about it.

By that definition, Johnny's grace was awesome.

I didn't know it yet, but I stood on the verge of my own test of grace.

XXI Case #3432

AFTER THAT DAY ON THE PLAYGROUND, THE BRANLINS DIDN'T bother us anymore. Gotha returned to school with a false front tooth and a dose of humility, and when Gordo was released from the hospital he skulked away whenever I was near. The capper came when Gotha actually approached Johnny and asked to be shown-in slow motion, of course-the haymaker punch that he hadn't even seen coming. That's not to say Gotha and Gordo became saints overnight. But Gotha's beating and Gordo's itchy agony had been good for them. They'd been given a drink from the cup of respect, and it was a start.

As October moved along, the hillsides lit up with gold and orange. The smell of burning autumn hazed the air. Alabama and Auburn were both winning, Leatherlungs had eased off her tirades, the Demon was in love with somebody other than me, and everything would have been right with the world.

Except.

I often found myself thinking about Dad, scribbling questions he could not answer, in the small hours of the morning. He was getting downright skinny now, his appet.i.te gone. When he forced a smile, his teeth looked too big and his eyes shone with a false glint. Mom started biting her fingernails, and she was really nagging Dad now but he refused to go to either Dr. Parrish or the Lady. They had a couple of arguments that made Dad stalk out of the house, get in the pickup, and drive away. Afterward, Mom cried in their room. I heard her on the phone more than once, begging Grandmomma Sarah to talk some sense into him. "... Eatin' him up inside," I heard Mom say, and then I went out to play with Rebel because it hurt me to hear how much pain my mother was suffering. Dad, as I well knew, was already locked in his own cell of torment.

And the dream. Always the dream: two nights straight, skip a night, there it is again, skip three nights, then seven nights in a row.

Cory? Cory Mackenson? they whispered, standing in their white dresses beneath the scorched and leafless tree. Their voices were as soft as the sound of doves in flight, but there was an urgency about them that struck a spark of fear in me. And as the dream went on, little details began to be revealed as if through misted gla.s.s: behind the four black girls was a wall of dark stones, and in that wall the splintered window frame held only a few ragged teeth of gla.s.s. Cory Mackenson? There was a distant ticking noise. Cory? It was getting louder, and the unknown fear welled up in me. Cor- On this seventh night, the lights came on. I looked at my parents, my eyes and brain still drugged with sleep. "What was that noise?" Dad asked. Mom said, "Look at this, Tom." On the wall opposite my bed there was a big sc.r.a.ped mark. Gla.s.s and gears lay on the floor, the clock face read two-nineteen. "I know time flies," Mom said to me, "but alarm clocks cost money."

They chalked it up to the Mexican enchilada ca.s.serole Mom had made for dinner.

For some time now, an event had been taking shape that was one of those destinies of place and circ.u.mstance. I was unaware of it. So were my folks. So, too, was the man in Birmingham who got into his truck at the soft-drink bottling company every morning and drove out to make his deliveries to a prearranged list of gas stations and grocery stores. Would it have made a difference, if that man had decided to spend an extra two minutes in the shower that morning? If he'd eaten bacon instead of sausage with his eggs for breakfast? If I had tossed the stick for Rebel to retrieve just one more time before I'd gone off to school, might that have changed the fabric of what was to be?

Being a male, Rebel was wont to roam when the mood was right. Dr. Lezander had told my folks it would be best if Rebel and his equipment were removed from each other, to cure the wandering itch, but Dad winced every time he thought of it and I wasn't too keen on it, either. So it just didn't get done. Mom didn't like to keep Rebel in his pen all day long, considering the facts that he stayed on the porch most of the day anyhow and our street never got much traffic.