The Crazy Horse Electric Game

by Chris Crutcher

  Willie thinks of the anger and humiliation he sometimes feels when he remembers overhearing his dad virtually wishing Willie had died in the accident. He just doesn’t know where to start; which emotions to express; and he stares at the heading. A bang outside the room brings him up with a start. This time he knows it’s real; farther off in the building somewhere, probably upstairs. He kills the light and again steals out into the larger room, hoping to hear Hawk, or Kato, or someone familiar calling his name. Nothing. He moves quickly to the stairs and feels his way along the railing to the upstairs hall, silently thanking Sammy for teaching him to move undetected. There is whispering at the other end of the hall, but he can’t make it out; doesn’t know if it’s friend or foe. He moves behind a set of lockers and listens, then, feeling exposed, retraces his steps downstairs. If it’s Hawk, he knows where the room is and he’ll find Willie there. If it’s the Jo Boys, the room is the best place to hide; without knowing about it, they’d never find him there.

  Closing the door behind him once again, he sits on the couch in the darkness and waits. Where the hell is Hawk? Those guys should have been here hours ago.

  The noises become bolder and Willie is convinced that if it were Hawk and Kato they’d have come down to let him know they were here. They weren’t coming to play, to scare him; they know this stuff is serious. The distant bumps and whispers turn to bangs and loud voices, and Willie can only hope that Hawk and Kato will get there soon.

  A rap on the door startles his heart straight up into his throat. He holds his breath, frozen.

  “Cane Boy.” The voice is Kam’s. “Come on out, Cane Boy. I know you’re in there. I saw you creeping around the basement. Jo Boys see in the dark.”

  Willie doesn’t move; doesn’t breathe.

  “Time to come on out here, Cane Boy. Jo Boys got business with you.”

  Willie stands silently, steps back from the door and cocks his cane like a baseball bat. If Kam opens the door, he’ll let him step through, then blast his head off the left-field wall.

  The rapping comes again; even, patient. The voice is less patient. “Come out.”

  Willie pictures how he thinks things will look if the door comes open. Some light is coming in through the upper windows of the basement, and he’s been sitting here in the dark long enough that his eyes should be adjusted, though he doesn’t know that for sure, because he can see absolutely nothing in this room. He checks it out by moving the towel away from the crack with his foot. A dim light leaks in. The door will swing away from where he’s standing, so if Kam is in the doorway, Willie should be able to see him. He knows he won’t have much time; if Kam gets a shot at him with his feet, he’s a goner. He positions himself closer to the couch, crouches low, giving what he thinks is his best chance to actually get a silhouette of Kam before Kam sees him.

  He waits.

  Again the rapping. No voice. Then nothing. Willie’s legs begin to cramp in the crouch and he boxes up the pain, corralling it in one place as Sammy taught him; sticks it somewhere in the front of his head a little above the eyes, where he knows he can control it. Several long minutes pass and finally he relaxes just a bit, standing straight to stretch, trying to think what Kam’s next move might be. He’s not the kind of guy who’ll just go away, Willie knows that for sure, and he knows Kam won’t be satisfied until he gets even for what Hawk did to him this afternoon; and then some.

  Now Willie hears voices again, and the sound of spray cans; then crashing and banging as desks are turned over in classrooms, chalkboards ripped off walls. Fear and anger jockey for the priority position inside him, and he feels helpless standing there in the darkness deciding whether to act or hide. Suddenly he wonders if he could make it to the fire alarm; the noise might scare them. It’s down by the stairs and if Kam is still outside the door he wouldn’t have a chance, but Willie hasn’t heard him in several minutes, and thinks, or wants to think, that Kam is upstairs participating in the destruction. Slowly, with greatest care, he turns the knob; the floor creaks ever so slightly. Kam. Shifting his weight to put his foot through my skull the second this door opens. He’ll wait forever. Just from what he’s learned from Sammy, Willie knows patience has to be foremost in Kam’s arsenal of weapons. He lets go of the knob, suddenly wishing he’d waited in the upstairs office where he could have gotten to a phone the second these guys came in. And where the hell is Hawk? Willie can’t imagine what could have kept him from being here.

  In the next instant Willie realizes just how serious this all is; the smell of gasoline burns his nostrils and knots his gut. Those goddam Jo Boys are going to burn the place down.

  Then the rapping. “Smell that? Best you come out of there, Cane Boy. Things are gonna heat up.”

  Willie freezes, unable to think. In a flash he sees his new self, everything he’s put back together in the last year, go up in smoke. There’s no way out of this room except the door. He might be able to wait Kam out, but if he does there’s no guarantee he’ll get through the basement, up the stairs to the hall and out the front door through the flames. Like a caged animal, he drops into his gut, the way Sammy taught him; places every bit of his energy in his center and trusts it to work things out. He sees the entire main floor of the school. If he can’t make it to the front door, there are several classroom windows he can break out. No way in the world Kam can wait out there long enough for fire to block all the escape routes; that would be way too dangerous. He’ll wait until he’s sure Kam’s gone and hope they don’t set the fire too close to his door. He moves to the back of the room, waiting. If they do start the fire close to the room, it should burn through quickly. This room is a flimsy afterthought with plywood walls. If they burn through, he’ll go out swinging; with the cane, he might be as good as Kam. If he gets the chance, Willie thinks, he’ll kill Kam.

  A loud whoosh strains the walls and Willie knows this is it. He snatches the towel from the crack under the door, dunks it quickly in the makeshift janitor’s sink on the far side of the room before wrapping it around his nose and mouth. The fire is bright under the door, and Willie has no idea whether the whole building is burning or just this area.

  The heat quickly becomes nearly intolerable and Willie feels the oxygen being sucked out of the room. He moves to the door, tearing a piece of the towel to cover the knob, turning it very carefully to unlatch it first, then stands back and kicks it open with a crash.

  There stands Kam, silhouetted in the flames; crouched in his stance. He’s startled momentarily by the flaming door tearing away from its hinges, flying back toward him. Willie is swinging and spinning through the door; aiming the brass ball of the cane for Kam’s crotch, then his head. He connects with the former, spins a full 360 degrees on his right leg and brings the cane down on Kam’s collarbone before Kam can hit the ground from the first blow. The others are calling to Kam from upstairs; Willie glances to the stairway to see flickering light, telling him the entire school is on fire. In a flash he’s across the room, yanking down on the fire alarm, knowing the deafening horn can be heard only there in the building; there is no fire department connection. Smoke burns his eyes and lungs and he drops to his knees to get under it and listen for exactly where the voices are coming from. Stairwells run up from each end of the basement, and he wants to go away from the voices. Satisfied they’re coming from the left, he crawls in the other direction. From the stairwell he looks back to see Kam standing, a tight grip on his useless arm, then stumbling; dropping to the floor. His hand reaches out to Willie, and though Willie can’t actually hear him, he knows he’s calling for help. Kam stands again and Willie decides to leave him, moving quickly on his hands and knees up the stairs. The loud crash of Kam’s body again dropping to the floor tells Willie that if he doesn’t help, Kam may well burn to death. The voices are silent, Kam’s buddies have split. With the towel once again wrapped around his mouth and nose, he works his way back to Kam, clutches him firmly by the collar and begins to drag him backward toward the stairs. He
can’t see fire now, only smoke, as he pulls him inch by inch to the stairs. Kam screams with each jerk.

  At the bottom of the stairs he’s exhausted, believing he may suffocate. “Stand up,” he says. “I can’t drag you up these stairs; you’re gonna have to help. If you don’t get up, I’ll leave you.”

  Clutching Willie’s shoulder, Kam somehow stumbles to the top of the stairs, slipping down twice, coughing and sputtering. At the top he collapses, and Willie drags him down the hall by his injured arm, then out the entrance, where he collapses himself. Tremendous nausea sweeps over him and he pulls himself to his knees to vomit as the fire truck roars through the front gate. The blast of water is the last thing he remembers.

  CHAPTER 20

  Willie stands on the grass near the edge of the park, watching parents and teachers shaking hands, hugging, talking about how they never thought this or that kid would make it through, congratulating each other on their own perseverance and tenacity. OMLC: One More Last Chance High School. Boy, no kidding. Willing to take any kid, no matter how damaged and angry and beaten down, and give him one more last chance until he finds the one that works or burns out trying. There’s André, always André sometimes gently, sometimes ferociously—always firmly—forcing the acceptance of responsibility, chasing away the fog so life can be seen as it is. André, who just wouldn’t stop until OMLC was a place to be proud of—on his terms—fixed and painted and painted and fixed, who appeared at five-thirty the morning after the fire—his heart surely broken—to begin again, ripping out burned lumber like a man possessed, declaring a three-week, all-school mini-course in ABR: Advanced Building Restoration. In less than a month OMLC looked better than ever.

  Like the old building, its second overhaul in a year complete, Willie feels resurrected. He was a hero for a brief time after the fire, with coverage in the Tribune; was even interviewed for a short piece on street gangs in Oakland Magazine. Mostly what he said about street gangs was that he would stay away from them if he could. And he did for the rest of the year. The law has Kam cold; sent him to a youth work camp in the Central Valley somewhere, and though very likely other chapters of the Jo Boys continue to wreak havoc around the state, they’ve not been back.

  Lying on the ground outside the burning school, fading in and out of consciousness, Willie had visions of killing Hawk for leaving him there to face the Jo Boys alone, kept thinking he’d never forgive him—never—for leaving him hung out there like that.

  Hawk walked into his room at the hospital that night, his arm wrapped in a cast past the crook of his elbow, and stood, watching, until Willie’s eyes opened. Willie squinted, glaring.

  “Sorry, man,” Hawk said softly. “I was comin’, jus’ walkin’ out the door, an’ my brother show, mean on drugs. He dusted; want money, threaten my momma to crack her head, she don’t give it. Sister be screamin’, I jump between ’em and get throw clean ’cross the kitchen.” Hawk shakes his head. “You don’t know no dudes meaner than my brother, ’specially when he up. I know I got to take him on, he gonna kill somebody. So I do. I get him,” he says, pointing to the cast, “but he get me, too. Somebody gonna take him out someday.” He looks at Willie; looks sad and guilty. “I get there quick as I can. School be burnin’ an’ I call; come back quick.” He hung his head. “Hawk wouldn’t leave you, man…”

  Willie raised his hand and shook his head and all the animosity left; just dropped away like so much water down the drain. He said, “It’s okay, man. You did what you had to. I’d have done the same.”

  Willie continues to work out with Sammy and Lisa and it is now nearly impossible to tell there was ever anything physically wrong with him if you didn’t know him before; hadn’t seen him pitch the Crazy Horse Electric game. Tonight he feels almost good enough and strong enough to do it again; but he knows he couldn’t. Those days are gone.

  Beside him on the court, Hawk and Kato and several other graduates, having shed their tux jackets and spit-shined shoes, play a geared-down version of three-on-three, careful not to work up a sweat, and Willie smiles, admiring Hawk gliding through them in slow motion, dribbling, faking, spinning like a dancer toward the basket, wrapped in his cummerbund and burgundy pants—feet clad in Air Jordans—looking for all the world like Julius Erving opening a line of men’s formal wear. He’s crazy and he’s dangerous, Willie thinks, but he’s sure as hell a class act.

  Willie hears cheers over by the gate and looks up to see Telephone Man stepping out of his parents’ Chevy Nova, head down, sliding around the corner of the gatepost. He wears the same burgundy tux all the boys have, compliments of André, who every year at graduation time works a special deal with Henson’s Formal Wear. Willie moves slowly over to intercept Telephone Man, slapping him easily on the back. Jack looks up and smiles sheepishly.

  “How ’bout we put these in the office?” Willie asks, pointing to the repair equipment strapped to Jack’s hip, giving him an almost eerie Doc Holliday gunslinger look. “Even the most conscientious telephone men take off their gear for high-school graduation.”

  Jack stares at him blankly for a moment, down at the huge buckle, then back at Willie. “No,” he booms, “I don’t think so. I feel naked without it.”

  “Spoken like a true cowboy,” Willie says, and drifts back toward the court. He guesses it wouldn’t be right for Jack to take off his hardware for the most important event in his life.

  The guys finish their makeshift game; Hawk sits on the grass, removing his Air Jordans, as Willie kneels beside him. “You got people coming?” Willie asks.

  Hawk nods. “Out the walls. I got uncles and cousins; my daddy might even show. Not many Hawkins’ walkin’ ’round with a sheepskin. They come out the woodwork to see that.”

  “Well,” Willie says, “just in case things get too crazy afterward, I just wanna say congratulations and I’m real glad I got to know you.”

  Hawk slides his foot into his shoe and stops, looks over at Willie, then nods. “Me too, Chief. Didn’t know ’bout you when you come here, with you cane an’ you funny talk. Thought you might be another Telephone Man. But you my man, Chief. I learn shit watchin’ you, won’t never forget. Jus’ sorry I couldn’t get here sooner, night of the fire.”

  “Hey, man, you got the fire department here.”

  Hawk nods. “Yeah, but ol’ Hawk want a piece of that China boy. You get him, though, Chief, an’ that’s about as good. You my man, Crazy Horse.”

  Willie reaches over to shake his hand, then moves toward the building as André calls everyone inside to the student lounge, which appears transformed for the ceremony, with crepe-paper streamers, a revolving mirrored ball and a huge purple velvet banner reading: CONGRATULATIONS OMLC GRADUATES.

  The ceremony is different from a lot of high-school commencement exercises Willie has seen. Only eighteen students will graduate, and while the valedictorian and salutatorian deliver their traditional addresses, so does anyone else who feels inclined to talk out loud about what the night means. Almost everyone does, most simply repeating the truth: simply that, if not for OMLC—if they hadn’t received this last chance—they would be in the street.

  Willie finds himself wondering what Angel will say; after all, she is in the street, but when her name is read, she takes the diploma, looks out at the audience, then over to the graduates and simply says, “Thanks.” Willie looks out to see Lacey nodding his head and clapping.

  Hawk is introduced as “Doctor Hawk,” referring to Dr. J of the Philadelphia 76ers, and is presented, along with his diploma, with a leather game ball, signed by all the members of the graduating class. “You could go on,” André says, handing Hawk the ball. “It’d be tough, but you can if you want.”

  Hawk thanks everyone—his mother several times—and goes on to say he doesn’t know what he’ll do now, but he’s real glad to have this chance to choose. Then he looks straight out at his dad and says, “I tol’ you I ain’t no worthless shit,” and his dad looks at the ground. Hawk nods and walks proudly b
ack to sit down. Willie can only imagine the history behind that.

  When Jack’s name is called, he stands, staring at the floor, and pulls his tuxedo jacket tight around him, covering the top half of his telephone gear, takes a deep breath and walks toward André at the podium. André hands Jack his diploma, expecting him to take it and slink on back to his seat, but Telephone Man hesitates.

  “Would you like to say something, Jack?”

  Telephone Man starts back, stops, then slowly steps up to the podium. He looks out at the small crowd, again starting to turn away, but André says, “Go ahead, Jack, it’s okay. This is a big night. Take a chance.”

  Telephone Man takes a deep breath, clutching the sides of the podium like they could somehow save his life. “I’m really glad I went here,” he booms; there is no decibel control on Jack’s voice. “It used to be nobody liked me where I went to school, and then I came here and nobody liked me either. But then I got beat up and Hawktor Doctor went and got that Chinese kid and beat him up because he beat me up, and I knew that even though he’s tough and acts mean and scares people sometimes, Hawktor Doctor must really like me.” Tears start to roll out of Telephone Man’s eyes and he looks straight at Hawk. “And that’s the first time anybody really liked me and I’m glad I went here.” Jack doesn’t know exactly how to stop, so he bows to the crowd and walks back to his seat; and Hawk starts the applause. Hawk has long since quit trying to convince Telephone Man that it’s Doctor Hawk—not Hawktor Doctor—because Jack doesn’t know Dr. J. from Alexander Graham Bell; all he knows is that Hawk’s name is supposed to rhyme and that’s as close as he gets.