"Can't handle losing," my father said, "you got no business fighting."
"You touch me and my father will sue your ass," Leo said.
My father smiled faintly.
"You two fight," he said, "we'll see that it's fair, and win or lose, when it's over it's over and everybody goes home."
"Okay, Leo?" I said. "You and me?"
He didn't answer. I slid into the fighting stance they had spent so long teaching me.
"Don't rush things," Patrick said to me.
Leo tried to kick me in the groin, but I turned my hip and put a jab on his nose. The nose had recently taken a beating thanks to Petey and his friends. It was tender. He yelped. I followed with a right cross. He backed up. I shuffled after him. He hit me with a big looping right hand, which I half blocked. He followed that with an equally looping left, which I stepped inside of, blocked with both forearms and slammed him on the side of the head with a back fist. He tried to get his arms around me. I drove both my hands, palms up, under his chin and bent his head back and shoved him away. He tried once more and I hit him with a flurry of lefts and rights. He put his hands up to protect his head and I started hooking him in the ribs, left, right, driving off my legs, out of a crouch like they had taught me.
He quit.
He put both hands against the back of his head, and shielded his face with his forearms, and doubled up and dropped to his knees. I thought about kicking him. My heart was pumping, my breath was hard but steady, I could feel the rhythm of the fight in my whole self. I shook my head. Instead I looked around at the circle of boys.
"Anybody else?" I said.
Nobody met my eyes. As I surveyed the circle, I saw Jeannie behind it, near my father's truck.
"She come get you?" I said to my father.
"She did," he said.
I looked around the circle again. Then I looked at Leo, still crouched on the ground.
"Over," I said.
With his hand still clasped to his head, Leo nodded.
"You need a ride home?" my father said to Leo.
Leo shook his head.
"Your old man has anything he wants to discuss with me," my father said, "or Cash or Patrick, he knows where we live."
Leo shook his head again. My father stared down at him.
"You're not going to tell him, are you?" my father asked.
With his head still protected, looking at the ground, Leo said, "No."
"Why not?" my father said.
"He'd yell at me for losing," Leo said.
My father reached down and took hold of Leo's arm and helped him stand.
"He's wrong to do that," my father said. "Everybody loses sometime. You ever need to talk, come see me."
Leo nodded.
My uncle Cash looked at the circle of kids still standing around uneasily.
"Time to go home," Cash said.
Nobody moved for a moment.
"Now," Cash said. "Right now."
The kids sort of came awake and turned and went off in various directions.
Jeannie came over.
"I'll walk you home," she said to Leo.
I said, "Thanks, Jeannie."
She nodded and patted my shoulder. Then she took Leo's arm and led him toward home.
"She feels sorry for him," Patrick said.
"I do too," I said.
"Not bad enough to let him beat you," Patrick said.
"No," I said. "Not that bad."
Chapter 44
My uncle Cash put out a pan of ice water and told me to soak my hands.
"Otherwise they'll swell up," he said.
My father sat opposite me at the kitchen table.
"Keep your hands in there, long as you can," he said. "Then take 'em out, let 'em rest and put 'em back in. Goal is twenty minutes or so."
I nodded.
"Jeannie came and got you," I said.
"Yep."
"What did she say?"
"Told us there was a bunch of kids gonna hurt you," my father said. "I asked her how many. She said twenty."
"Twelve," I said.
"You counted," my father said.
"Yes."
My father nodded once like that was a good thing to have done. I took my hands out of the ice water. They were numb with cold.
"Put your hands back in as soon as you can," my father said.
"Jeannie's a good kid," I said.
"She is," my father said.
"She wants me to be her boyfriend," I said.
My father nodded.
"You want that?"
"No," I said. "I don't. I like her, but I don't like her that way."
"Can't love somebody just because they want you to," my father said.
"Dad," I said. "I'm only fifteen."
"I loved your mother," my father said. "When I was fifteen. Probably loved her when I was five."
I nodded.
"I feel bad for her, though," I said.
"That's not enough," Cash said.
"Don't do her any favors," Patrick said. "You let her think you love her, and in a while she'll know you don't, and you won't be enough."
"So I'd be hurting her by trying not to hurt her," I said.
"If what she feels for you is real," my father said.
"That's weird," I said.
Patrick grinned at me.
"That's life," he said.
"Life's not simple," I said.
"No," my father said. "And not every problem has a happy solution. You don't need to soak your hands anymore."
I removed my hands, picked up the bucket and dumped the water in the kitchen sink.
"You three guys always seem to know what to do," I said.
"We've lived awhile," my father said.
"Lot of people have lived awhile," I said. "How come you guys know all this stuff?"
The three of them looked at each other as if they'd never thought about it.
Finally my father said, "We pay attention."
Chapter 45
"You were still looking for the one?" Susan said.
"I guess," I said.
"You ever wonder why you have been so dogged to that commitment?" Susan said.
"Looking for you," I said.
"Looking for someone," she said, "like looking for a pattern, and when we met, I fit the pattern nicely."
"A less romantic explanation," I said.
"But one rooted at least in possibility."
"A pox on all your science," I said.
"So where did the pattern come from?" Susan said.
"That I was looking for, that you fit nicely into?" I said.
"That one."
"Well, first of all," I said, "I'm willing to accept the fact that I could have met someone else and loved them. But I stick to my guns on a simple fact."
I sipped my drink.
"Which is?" Susan said.
"You were the one."
"The one you imagined," Susan said.
"Yes."
"So," she said, "quite literally the girl of your dreams, as you like to say."
"Yes."
"Do you know why you were so committed to the one?" Susan said.
I smiled at her.
"Yes," I said. "I believe I do."
Susan looked at me and raised her eyebrows and cocked her head.
"I grew up in an all-male family," I said. "A good family, but one without a woman in it. I think I was always trying to complete the family."
"Which I did," Susan said.
"Yes."
"So you knew that all along," Susan said.
"I figured it out after I met you," I said.
"How did that make you feel?" Susan said.
"Maybe I was looking for a missing mother," I said. "The fact remains that out of all the women I have known, you were the only one I loved."
"And I loved you back," Susan said.
"So even though you're a Harvard PhD shrink," I said, "you still believe in love."
"Yes," she said. "I've
overcome my education."
"Atta girl," I said.
Chapter 46
Looking back, it was like a Norman Rock-well painting. My father and my two uncles and me at the train station. I had made all state in football my senior year and gotten some scholarship offers. My father had urged me to take the one in Boston because he still thought Boston was the intellectual hub of the universe. He hadn't made me choose Boston, but he urged as strong as I had ever heard him. So, I went to Boston.
"You get to Denver," my father said. "You take a cab to Denver Airport and stay in this motel. In the morning you go to the terminal and check in and fly to Boston. It's all right here on this ticket envelope. Be about four hours or so. You take a cab to the college and do what they tell you. Here's some money."
It was a pretty good wad of cash.
"Can you afford this?" I said.
"Three of us working," Cash said.
"And we don't need much," Patrick said.
"Open a bank account, like I told you," my father said. "Put the money in it. We can wire you more when you need it."
The train to Denver started to board.
"Okay," I said.
I hugged each of them. I could feel my eyes begin to tear.
"Okay," I said again.
I picked up my suitcase and stood for a moment looking at them. My God! They were tearing up too.
"Take care of yourself," Cash said.
Patrick nodded without speaking.
"We're here," my father said.
I nodded and made a small hand wave at them and stepped up into the train. I found an empty seat by the window and looked out it and cried as the train pulled out of the station.
Chapter 47
"I wished they could come with me," I said.
"You were never away before," Susan said.
"Except for my trip down the river with Jeannie," I said.
"Of course you were homesick. How did college go?"
"I played strong safety," I said. "And returned punts. At the start of my junior year, I tore up my knee and couldn't play anymore."
"And you didn't stay in college?"
"No," I said. "Without a scholarship we couldn't afford it. So I quit and boxed for a while."
"You were good?"
"I was good, and I got a lot of fights. The Great White Hope and a former college kid to boot."
"But you didn't like it," she said.
"I fought a couple guys who became contenders, one became champ for a while. And I realized the difference. I was good. They were great. And the only way I was going to get to the top was to play the White College Boy thing."
"Which you didn't want to do," Susan said.
"Correct," I said. "So I moved on and took the exam and got on the state cops and you know how that all went."
"And you weren't tempted to go back to West Flub-a-dub?" Susan said.
"My father and I talked about that," I said. "He was certain that Boston was where I should be and I was too. So I stayed and missed them every day."
"They were here," Susan said.
I looked at her for a moment.
"They are here now," she said. "With us. Wherever you are, they will be. You contain them."
I felt my throat tighten for a moment. I nodded slowly.
"Yes," I said. "With us."
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Chasing the Bear s-37 Page 8
