years old. Then he passed bein’ chief to his son, Wise Fox.” I glanced toward
the entrance; kids were starting to go into the school. “But Five Thunders was
the chief they remembered best, because he kept peace between his tribe and
the other tribes, and when he died they took his best arrowheads and scattered
them around the woods for people to find a hundred years later. Then they
carved his name in a rock and they buried his body in the secret Indian burial
ground.”
“Oh, yeah?” Davy Ray grinned. “Where’s that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s a secret.”
They groaned. The bell rang, summoning the kids in. I returned the
arrowhead of Five Thunders to Johnny, who wrapped it in cotton and returned it
to the tackle box. We stood up and started walking across the playground,
puffs of dust rising behind our heels. “Maybe there really was somebody like
Chief Five Thunders,” Johnny said as we neared the door.
“Sure there was!” Ben spoke up. “Cory said so, didn’t he?”
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 classroom
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 shoebox 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 pussies, 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 shit!” Gotha told his brother, and Gordo laughed at a picture of the
sleek female robot from Metropolis. “I can see her fuckin’ titties!” 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 breasts—and it went down
crumpled and dirty in his jeans pocket. Gordo squalled, “You shithole, 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 cocked a fist back and stood over him like
Godzilla 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, dickhead!” 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, niggernuts?”
“They’re my arrowheads. I… I want ’em back.”
“He wants ’em back!” Gordo crowed.
“You little pussies 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 fuckin’ 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 pussy.” Gordo made smacking noises. “Little pussy 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.
“Pussy, pussy, pussy!” 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 passing vision. He reared his arm back, his fingers opened,
and the arrowhead took flight. It spun up and up and fell into the grass 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 passed 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, niggernuts!”
“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. “Shit!” 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. “Bastard 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 hellhound, and I
dreaded what might happen if that chain jumped its sprocket. We passed a man
out raking leaves from his driveway. We passed 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
