The scuffed toes of his brogans looked as ragged in the full sun at the top of the hill as he felt. He promised himself to shine them after work the following day, Friday, the last day of the week that he would get to spend his morning with Dominic, who had only talked to give instructions this morning, the only morning Aaron had been sorry to hear the lunch whistle blow. For Dominic had stood closer to the Buzzer than himself for noon count. Closer to the Buzzer.…
“The Buzzer,” he said to himself but aloud.
“Huh?” Barneyway said, stopping, his face blanched. “Where? What’s the matter?”
“We’re real friends, aren’t we, Barneyway?” Aaron said. “Real friends, huh? Aren’t we?”
“Real friends …?” Barneyway asked, and the color came back to his face and the corners of his mouth curled up, like the tips of a long mustache, in a wry, tolerant smile.
“Sure!” he said, flippantly, and began walking again, talking: “And when she gets here, Stanley and you and me, we’ll all three of us.…”
The mud and garbage grime dried like dirty putty on the edges of Aaron’s brogans would have to be cleaned off with a stick before they were polished, in case he got a visit from Judith, whose past visit now seemed full of subtle gestures of affection for him, gestures which were—as in the simple laying of her plump fingers upon his hand—so completely different in attitude from Barneyway’s nonchalance: as if it were easy to give up all your buddies and get played for shine.
He twisted his ankle in the middle of a step for a glance at the dirtiest brogan and realized he was walking alone before he set his foot down. His head swung in one swiveling motion toward Barneyway behind him and back again in the opposite direction toward the Buzzer, who was tapping a roll of comicbooks against his leg, and Rattler, who was closing the library door.
“Come on,” Aaron whispered, but loud enough for Barneyway, who couldn’t see him speak, to hear him, and took two careful steps toward the threatening figures, but he didn’t hear any movement behind him.
“Come on,” he said and waited, without turning, for the swipe of rough pant legs brushing past each other, for a rubber heel against the paving.
No sound.
“Come on,” he said, still whispering.
Nothing.
He turned as Barneyway began to rush away, swinging arms pumping elbows high in a comic motion.
“You gotta stand up to ’um! Don’t let ’em scare you! Barneyway!”
The blue shirt rippled between the shoulder blades and the buttocks gave a quivering jerk with every anxious step that carried Barneyway past the office and over the hill.
“Barneyway!”
“Punk!” the Buzzer said.
“Punk!” said Rattler.
The library’s bay window provided a fluctuating transparent frame for their torsos. And Aaron had an urge to say something nasty to them or go into the library, anyway, to prove to himself and them that he didn’t fear them. And he stalled, trying to make up his mind, then trotted after Barneyway. He didn’t run too fast for they’d think he was scared, but he didn’t run too slow for they’d think he was trying to convince them he wasn’t scared.
“Wait!” he called as he passed the office, and Barneyway, who had already reached the first compound, slowed and waited by the second.
A group of boys stopped playing net-ball in the courtyard and watched Aaron run down the hill. They made him feel so conspicuous that, by the time he reached the compound fence, he was not only panting with exertion and anger at Barneyway for backing down on his first test but also rage over finding himself in such a foolish position.
“Goddamnit! Why didn’t you keep moving?”
Barneyway started walking again.
“Answer me!” Aaron commanded, as much for the boys watching as himself, trying to cover his embarrassment by showing off, by acting bad, by trying to make his superiority to Barneyway obvious to them, and taking advantage of his legitimate anger to be insincere, but so conscious of it that once out of the boys’ view, his tone was softened by guilt and relief.
“Don’t you see that if you act afraid, he’ll try it again?” he said, and asked his question of the white wall, for Barneyway had stepped past him. Then the honest sound of his own voice, mentioning Monday night for the first time between them, gave him the nerve to get tougher: “If you keep acting like a punk, they’ll keep messing with you.”
But Barneyway screamed: “You never had it happen to you!” and shocked all the toughness out of him.
“It hurts. I shit clots of blood the next day. I could hardly touch my butt with toilet paper. It stung. The paper was spotted with blood. I could hardly sit down all day. Do you hear?” Barneyway cried, his eyes filmed with anger; and a shiver seemed to ripple from Aaron over the field of weeds and grass between the compounds, and he thanked God there were no witnesses.
“And who are they? I’m scared, yeah. I’m scared. But who are they?” Barneyway demanded. “The Buzzer ain’t so bad. I saw his mother slap his face and make him kneel down like a cocksucker on the lawn, in front of everybody. Yeah, I saw his mother do that to him. And I was glad, glad! Do you hear?”
Aaron tried to slow down and stay between the compounds, but Barneyway began to hurry, as if the excited anger within him pumped his body into faster motion.
“And Rattler? He ain’t nothin’ but a kiss-ass punk himself. He does everything the Buzzer says. I could whip him if I didn’t have to fight the Buzzer, too. I could whip his skinny Mexican ass. I could whip him if he’d fight fair, by himself,” Barneyway shouted, and only his hysterical screech kept Aaron from admiring him.
For Barneyway had a terrific punch for his size, and Aaron believed he meant what he said, and he liked the superiority he showed by calling Rattler a Mexican, meaning a guy browned by Indian blood and not of pure Spanish descent like themselves.
“And your friend Dominic? He don’t even have anybody come to see him but a fat old woman painted up like an old whore. He don’t even have a girl. Why does he act so tough? so mean all the time? if he’s so sure he’s tough?”
The shrill whistle in Barneyway’s voice caused heads to lift on a porch bench at the far end of the next compound they passed, and Aaron hoped none of the guys could understand the words.
“And how about your friend Jenson? If I had an ugly mother like his, I’d go kill myself. I heard about him, too. He punked a guy in the Frisco DT. I heard about it. Why is he acting so proud? Anybody that’ll pitch’ll catch. That’s right!” he shouted and hurried, elbows pumping, buttocks jerking, past the next compound, toward theirs, where dormitory windows loomed like huge eyes; and Aaron held a finger to his lips.
“You, too!” Barneyway said, throwing his hands in the air. “What do you care what all those guys think? When you were in the DT, you wouldn’t let anybody make you fight. You didn’t have to fight, and you got to be head monitor. You told me not to fight because it would be bad on my record. I saw you cry when that ugly nigger Hubert tried to fight you. And you weren’t afraid of him. You know you weren’t. You didn’t want to get in trouble. You said so and everybody believed you. You’re not a bad actor like them. You like to draw and read and dance and listen to music by yourself like I do. We were in glee club together, remember? Who’s doing wrong by not wanting to fight? Do you want me to fight and get in trouble?”
“No,” Aaron said, stopping by the compound gate, conceding in order to stop the argument before they entered the courtyard, relieved that no one was in it. “No, I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
“I’ll get in trouble if I fight … Aaron,” Barneyway said, and it sounded like such a weak excuse that Aaron was angered and his first impulse was to point out that “not fighting” had got them both in plenty of trouble already, and although he contained that, he couldn’t keep himself from risking another noisy argument.
“Barneyway? Do you want it to happen again?”
The cleft in Barneyway’s chin lift
ed and stretched thinly toward the licking tip of his tongue, dropped into position as the tongue disappeared, and he tried to answer. But he stuttered, gave up, and stalked through the gateway, with Aaron following him, persisting:
“Do you want it to happen again?”
Barneyway stepped off the porch and started across the courtyard.
“Do you want it to happen again?” Aaron said, trying to catch up with him. “Goddamnit! Answer! Do you want it to happen again?”
But Barneyway didn’t answer until he reached the screen door, where he said, curtly: “I don’t have to ask for trouble,” and let it slam behind him.
“I don’t have—” Aaron said, flipping the door open, ready to finish shouting out that he didn’t have to either, but he saw Dominic look up from a book, and he slammed the door so hard the screen buckled, and marched with hard-heeled steps along the porch to the fence, which he hooked his fingers into, shook and, then, leaned his forehead against.
The ridged fence links formed an unbroken wall of metal from his matted pompadour straight down to his brogans, something he could lean on and depend upon. He was beginning to doubt if Barneyway would ever fight back, and, much worse, the strain of trying to support both of them was draining his own strength and made him feel like quitting. If he hadn’t given his word.… He tried to shake the thought out of his head.
“I’d shake it, too, man,” Dominic said, stepping out of the dormitory. “That punk Barneyway will not only drive you batty, he’ll make you weak as him.”
The sun slanted like a sash from his shoulder to his hip as he approached, still talking.
“You gotta get more choosy and pick your friends. Protect yourself. Run with buddies as strong as you. You hear what I’m saying? And you better start now because Big Stoop told me I’m leaving within a couple of weeks. Got my release.”
“What?”
“Got my go-home, within two weeks. Get busy or you’ll get done in when I leave.”
Aaron’s quick smile sagged with the warning.
“I can’t just give him up, man. I gave him my word I’d stick by him.”
“You better break it then. He just let you down, didn’t he? I don’t know what happened, but I’ll bet, risk some goodies that he just folded on you when the cross came down. Didn’t he?”
Dominic waited for an answer.
“I knew it,” he said. “Listen, man. Two weeks isn’t long. If you don’t have any strong buddies like Jenson to help you, the Buzzer and Rattler are gonna do you in. No tellin’ what’ll happen. Got me?”
The insinuation was discouraging, but it only reminded Aaron of what had happened to Barneyway, and he said, “I can’t give him up just because he can’t whip the Buzzer, man.”
“I’m not telling you to do that. It’s because he don’t fight the Buzzer. You know he’d fight if he thought he could win. He’s a quitter and that’s why you better put him down. He’s gonna make you so weak, you’re gonna end up like him. You better listen to what I say. You better give up that Sunday school stuff, that do unto others bullshit, all that fairy-tale shuck.”
Strands of pompadour, flattened over Aaron’s lowered forehead by the fence, veiled his expression of disagreement, and he didn’t argue; but the tattooed rose burst into full bloom as Dominic still insisted:
“See? See this, man? Only broads are weak, man, don’t fight. Only broads believe that Jesus talk. Look what happened to the guy? He went around preaching all that love-shit and ended up with his hands nailed to a cross. You only got two choices in this world. You can be weak like a broad or strong and cold and bad like a man. There ain’t no in-between. You got to take care of yourself, be cold, back away from a guy who gets hurt because he won’t even try and protect himself.
“Hear me?” he asked, and Aaron was weakened by an urge to play it safe and put Barneyway down. For he doubted if Judith would expect his pledge from him under the changing circumstances. And he held tightly to the fence, and used it, with the strength he drew from his belief that Dominic was wrong about Jesus, to help him reply:
“He needs me, man.”
“You mean he uses you,” Dominic countered; and Aaron grabbed the fence with his other hand, needing all the support his hooked fingers could give him, as he tried to remember how good his pledge in the chapel had made him feel.
Staring through the links, he then saw Barneyway’s comic walk, the bruise, the blood-spotted toilet paper, the Buzzer’s dirty boogie, and he could have sworn he heard Barneyway’s voice in the dormitory. He listened, trying to verify it, heard nothing, but let his fingers ripple down the fence, and said, with quiet conviction:
“He’s my friend. Barneyway … is my friend.”
III
Mr. Handy counted aloud the double line of boys in the dairy yard for the third time, a thick lock of brown hair escaping his cap and curtaining the eye he sighted down his finger. But Aaron knew the count was one short, and he knew that Jenson was missing because he had been watching for him, hoping to notice some change in his attitude, some sign that he might help in a battle with the Buzzer after Dominic left.
The blast of the noon whistle was due, and Aaron shifted with an impatient hunger, a hunger made more acute by Dominic’s imminent go-home and his growing concern over Jenson’s whereabouts. He wanted to start marching immediately toward the mess hall, which was situated, with its heat and tantalizing food smells, but unseen, in the inch of space between the white top of the gym and the barred second-story hospital windows on the hill beyond the fields.
“Damn,” Mr. Handy said and brushed irritably at the lock of hair, which might have amused Aaron if he weren’t so worried. For Mr. Handy was as kind as he was soft brown all over, told the guys dirty jokes, teased them about their girls, and threatened, in fun, to throw them in the hole. But Aaron wanted to jam the hair lock under the cap himself now, as badly as he wanted to tell Mr. Handy that it was Jenson who was missing.
“You better get the list, Buzzer,” Mr. Handy said. “Hurry. We’re already late.”
The Buzzer ran into the office and returned at a trot, carrying a clipboard with fluttering pages, and playing such a conscientious part that he annoyed Aaron, who compared it to his bully role during last evening’s lockup, where he had taken the opportunity, because Dominic read and Jenson didn’t appear until the gates were locked, to be obnoxious and loud.
Jenson had been so tight-lipped, tall and sullen when he had fumbled in his locker, took things out, put things in, made little noise, got into bed before lights out, and poked his toes into twin blanket peaks against the foot railing, without even a good night to Dominic, that Aaron had considered replying to one of the Buzzer’s wisecracks, in order to start a fight and force Jenson into taking his side for him. It was a big risk, but it seemed small next to a certain beating and maybe worse, after Dominic left.
“Jenson!” Mr. Handy called out, holding the clipboard up so the boys could see the page, as if they could read the name. “Who knows where Jenson is?”
Nobody answered, but Dominic flattened his hands in his back pockets, hunched his shoulders, and leaned his head far back on the wings of his neck muscles; and Aaron tried to read the expression on his face.
“Mr. Dixon hasn’t been around either …?” Mr. Handy said, asking, searching for an answer with a sweeping glance along the line. “Must be together?” He brushed nervously, futilely, at the lock of hair. “Buzzer, you run up to the loft and see if you can spot the truck. I’ll call the main office.”
He went into the dairy talking to himself as Barneyway’s disembodied head poked out of the wall of blue uniforms and switched its eyes from side to side to share its curiosity with Aaron, who flicked his eyebrows in a flippant answer that belied the concern he felt, for he had no confidence, at all, in Barneyway. Dominic’s good-natured wink was not only surprising but discouraging, too, for he usually cursed when somebody kept him waiting.
“Mr. Dixon hasn’t checked in all morning,” M
r. Handy said, returning, brushing at the lock. “Listen you guys. You better tell me if you know where Jenson is. If I don’t count him, it’s an escape. He’ll hit the hole, get some more time, maybe, might even get Youth Authority. Goddamnit, you guys, you better help me. Jenson’s a good man, works hard.”
The empty hollow of Aaron’s stomach rumbled with hunger and foreboding. If Jenson had escaped …? Then, after Dominic went home …? Aaron tried to read the answer he feared in Dominic’s unconcerned slouch, got his answer with another wink, and lost all doubt when he saw the sun flash on a station wagon windshield, heard the whine of its motor, and knew it was Big Stoop. The blast of the noon whistle then blew away the last of his hopes: Jenson was gone.
The sight of the station wagon spun Mr. Handy in nervous circles: from the line to the station wagon, to the line, to the station wagon. He sent the two boys nearest him to help search the dairy, and when the Buzzer reappeared, he sent the Buzzer and another boy to search the sheds, started to send another boy, also, but called the boy back, and was so obviously afraid of Big Stoop that when the station wagon pulled into the dairy yard with a rasp of rubber tires and soft billows of dust, Aaron’s apprehension had reached a fearful pitch.
“Search the buildings?” Big Stoop asked, throwing the door open and crossing the yard with heavy steps.
“Four still searching,” Mr. Handy added to his eager nod. Apparently satisfied, Big Stoop turned to the count lines, and Aaron watched the big man while standing at perfect attention.
Big Stoop rested his big hands on his big hips, leaned forward from his thick waist, poked his bull’s head down, sighted with the stiff brim of his khaki cap, and moved along the front line at a slow menacing pace, never breaking his step or allowing his gaze to waver, as if he could peer into the brain of each boy he passed with one glance of his glass-hard, lashless, unblinking eyes.
Tattoo the Wicked Cross Page 17
