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  But Dan didn't come out of the back, and the other guys at the bar and at the pool tables looked mildly curious, not helpful. They were hoping for a little blood, and weren't willing to let any of it be theirs. Some of them got out cigarettes and lit them, just in case what Bear was going to do might take a while.

  Bear doubled up his fists and snarled at Willard. "Well, what's it going to be?"

  We held our breath.

  Willard smiled. "All right, Bear. He's all yours."

  2

  Bear showed his ugly teeth and moved forward, said, "Let's see how you bounce, little nigger."

  I was going to move. I swear I was. Bear or no Bear, I was going to try something, even if I got my head torn off for the effort. So was Bob. I could feel him tense beside me, about to move. Kamikaze attack.

  But we never got the chance to get ripped apart and dribbled out the door.

  Willard's pool cue whizzed out and the thin end of it caught Bear across the back of the neck. There was a cracking noise like the report of small-arms fire, then the pool cue splintered, went in all directions.

  Bear turned his head toward Willard and smiled. He had kind of a nice smile.

  "Oh, hell," Willard said softly, and his face went sad and ash-colored.

  "Stepped in it, didn't you, bro?" Bear said.

  But Willard brought the rest of the cue around— the thick end—hit Bear a solid lick on the nose. Bear staggered a little. Nothing to brag about, but a little.

  Willard swung again, and this time it had plenty of hip in it, and when it met the side of Bear's head it was like Reggie Jackson connecting the good wood on a clean fast ball. The blow actually brought Bear up on his toes and leaned him starboard.

  But the bastard didn't go down.

  Willard let what was left of the cue drop from his hands, shot out a left jab, hit Bear on the point of his two-car garage, again and again.

  A tributary of blood flowed out of Bear's nostrils and made thin creeks through his mustache and beard. Bear tried to hit back, but Willard sidestepped a sloppy right, left-hooked one into him, knocked him into the pool table. Bear's big ass worked as a kind of springboard, bounced him back into Willard, and Willard gave him another combination.

  When Bear's minuscule brain realized his face was being made into red grits, he tried to unleash a wild right, but it didn't even come close.

  Willard ducked that baby and the wind from the swing lifted his hair. He went into Bear then with an overhand right that connected on Bear's already destructed nose, and he followed it with a hooking left to the kidneys that made the front of the monster's pants go wet.

  Then came the right again, an uppercut this time, and this one was backed with powder and a fifty-caliber load. It caught Bear on the point of his chin, lifted him onto the pool table.

  Bear's feet came up high, then flopped down over the edge of the table as if his pant legs were stuffed with straw. The echo of Willard's punch reverberated through the pool hall even as Bear's chin and half his jaw turned the color of bad fruit. A thick trickle of blood fled out of his nose, over his beard and onto the greenery of the pool table.

  Willard thrust his fist into his mouth and hopped around a little. "Damn, that hurt."

  Dan had wandered out of the back room about the time Willard threw his first punch, but he hadn't made a move to stop the fight. He'd just stood there frowning with his arms crossed. But now that the fun was over and there was a broken pool stick and a bloodstained table to complain about, he was furious.

  "That was a brand-new pool stick," he said, coming over.

  "Not now it ain't," Willard said.

  "And that big bastard is bleeding all over my goddamn pool table."

  "Fix that." Willard reached out, grabbed Bear by a boot and jerked him onto the floor.

  Bear made a grunting noise when he hit the tile, but that was it.

  "Blood'll mop off the floor easy," Willard said. "I'll pay you for the pool stick."

  "Damn sure will. Twenty dollars."

  Willard took twenty out of his billfold and gave it to Dan. "There."

  "Get out," Dan said. "You hadn't brought them boys in here wouldn't have been no trouble."

  "We came in on our own two legs," Bob said.

  "You shut up, boy," Dan said, and he cast an eye at Randy. "And this ain't no colored hangout. Ain't no good idea to come here, you hear me, son?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Don't 'sir' that line of crap," Willard said. "This is a free country, ain't it?"

  Dan studied Willard. "If you're big enough, you're free to do most anything. Now you've paid for the cue, what about the table?"

  "What about it?"

  "Blood'll stain."

  "Use cold water on it."

  "Go on, you little smart-mouth sonofabitch. Get on out of here and don't come back. Take these jerks with you, and don't none of you darken this door again."

  "No problem," Willard said. "I ain't gonna miss this class joint none."

  "And it ain't gonna miss you," Dan said, and kicked Bear in the ribs a couple of times.

  "You too. Get up from there and get out." Bear didn't move. "Sorry trash."

  We went out with Dan still kicking Bear and Bear still not moving.

  …

  Out on the sidewalk, Bob said, "Sorry we got you thrown out of there, Willard."

  "No sweat. I was tired of it anyway. This whole town, for that matter. It stinks. Don't reckon I'll be staying around much longer. I got laid off at the plant yesterday, and I figure that now is as good a time as any to get out of this one-horse town. In fact, I'm glad I don't have that damn job anymore. It was like working in hell. Always felt like I was making lawn furniture for Satan. I'm free now to go somewhere better and find a good job, something with a future. I got a feeling that me losing that job was just a turning point, and that from here on out, things are going to start looking up."

  We stood there, not knowing what to say. Willard watched some cars go by, got out a cigarette and put fire to it. He took a couple of drags before he spoke again.

  "Before I leave for good, thought maybe I'd take in that drive-in you guys go to. What do you say? Can I go with y'all over there Friday?"

  "Yeah," I said. "Sure. Why not? We leave at five. Where can we pick you up?"

  "Larry's Garage. He lets me keep my bike there."

  "Sounds good," Bob said. "We'll pick you up in my truck." He pointed to it in the lot.

  "I know it," Willard said. "I'll be watching for you guys."

  "Good," Bob said.

  "Willard?" Randy said.

  "Yeah, kid."

  "Thanks for not letting me get killed, or otherwise mutilated in a hideous manner."

  Willard almost laughed. "Sure, kid. Nothing to it. Saw your buddies were about to step into it, and I didn't want them to have all the fun."

  "Generous of you," I said, "considering Bear breathes harder than we hit."

  "Hell with it," Willard said. "Always figured I could take him. Now I know."

  We walked Willard to his bike. He climbed on and flipped his cigarette in the gutter.

  Randy stuck out his hand and Willard shook it for a long time. Then he nodded at us, cranked his machine and rode off.

  Randy stood there with his hand out, as if he were still shaking with Willard.

  Willard didn't look back to see if we were watching him. Hell, he knew he was cool.

  3

  Friday morning I awoke and was attacked by the glare off the garish paperbacks in the little space for books at the head of my bed. The sun was shining through the window and making the red and yellow spines on the astrology and numerology books seem brighter yet. This wasn't the first morning I had awakened to see them there and hated them because they had let me down. I had tried to believe in the little bastards, but life and reality kept coming up against them, and pretty soon I had to decide the planets didn't give a frog jump about me and that numbers were just numbers, and when you got right down
to it, pretty boring.

  It was like I was punishing myself, leaving them there, and it was like my body knew to get twisted to the edge of the bed so I'd wake up with my head turned toward them so I could see their bright spines shining at me, reminding me that I had spent money on them and that some jackass writer was spending the royalties he got off them, partly provided by me, to drink beer and chase women while I read his books and made charts and tried to figure out how to use them to find the right gal and divine the secrets of the universe.

  I figured as long as I was punishing myself, I might as well sit up in bed and get so I could see all the spines and really feel rotten. There were also books on Eastern religions that mainly had to do with holding your thumb next to your forefinger, wrapping a leg around your neck and making with some damn-fool chants. There was even one of those hip modern books that told me I just thought I was a schmuck, but wasn't really. It was everyone else, and I was a pretty neat fella. I liked this one best until I realized that anyone with the price of a paperback was a pretty neat fella. That sort of let the air out of my tires.

  Only book I didn't have up there on my shelf was one on divining the future through chicken guts, and I'd have had it had it been for sale.

  I couldn't figure why I was such a sucker for that stuff. I wasn't unhappy, but the idea of everything just being random didn't suit me, and didn't seem right. And I didn't like the big bang theory. It was kind of disappointing, came across like a lab experiment that had gone wrong and made something. I wanted things to be by design, for there to be some great controlling force with a sense of order. Someone or something up there keeping files and notes.

  I figured I just hadn't found the right book.

  I got out of bed, got a trash sack out of my closet and took all those little dudes off the shelf and put them in the sack. I went downstairs and threw them in the main garbage in the washroom, then went into the kitchen.

  Mom was in there running that crap she has for breakfast through a blender. It smelled like wet dog hair and mildewed newspapers to me.

  "Want some eggs and bacon?" she asked, and smiled.

  She was standing there in her tennis outfit, her long blond hair pulled back and bound with a rubber band. I'm sure some backyard psychiatrist will make an Oedipal thing out of this, but to heck with it. My mom is damn fine-looking.

  She started pouring the smelly mess from the blender into a glass.

  "Well, I don't want that," I said. "And if I were you, I'd see if a nest of roaches, or maybe a rat died in that blender overnight."

  She grimaced. "Does smell bad, doesn't it?"

  "Oh yeah. How's it taste?"

  "Like shit."

  I got some cinnamon rolls out of the fridge. "Let's have these."

  She patted her flat stomach. "Nah. Got to keep my girlish figure. Otherwise, I'll die while I'm out playing tennis. Bad form to die on the court."

  "You couldn't gain a pound if you were wearing galoshes."

  "For that, you may have two bone-building, nutritious cinnamon rolls. And though I wouldn't normally eat that garbage, pollute my body with those foul chemicals and sugars, I will, on this occasion, knowing how you hate to eat alone, make an exception."

  "If you ever finish your speech, that is."

  "Precisely."

  She sat down and ate four rolls and drank three cups of coffee. When she was through she smacked her lips. "God, but I hated every horrible minute of that. Each bite was agony, acid to my lips. The sacrifices mothers make for their children."

  Dad came down. He was wearing an old brown bathrobe that Mom hated. She had tried to throw it away once, but he'd found it in the garbage, rescued it and slinked upstairs with it under his arm. Mom had laughed after him and he had looked down at her, hurt.

  She had also given it to Goodwill, thinking they'd turn it into rags, but they'd washed it, put it on the racks. And Dad, looking for used paperbacks, saw it, bought it and came home mad. He told Mom never to say his robe had come apart in the washing again.

  That robe is an ugly thing, tattered and threadbare. He had at least three good ones in a drawer upstairs, but as far as I knew, he had never so much as tried them on. Wearing that old brown one, his feet in house sandals and his hair thinning on top, he always reminded me of Friar Tuck.

  He wobbled in sleepily, weaved over to the counter and came suddenly awake when he got a whiff of what was in the blender.

  "Goddamn, woman," he said. "There's something dead in that blender."

  "That's what I said, Dad."

  "Funny," Mom said. "It's just that old robe you guys smell."

  "Ah," Dad said. "The melodious voice of the serving wench. Make me some ham and eggs."

  "Poof!" Mom said. "You are some ham and eggs. Any more requests?"

  "None I can think of," Dad said. He got a bowl, spoon, milk and cereal, arranged them at the table and pulled up a chair.

  "What happened to the ham and eggs, Your Majesty?" Mom asked.

  "Too lazy to fix them myself."

  "And I won't feel sorry for you, will I, snookums?"

  "Looks that way," Dad said. He looked at me and grinned. "Up early, aren't you?"

  "Friday," I said.

  "Ah. No school and tonight is the big night. A trip to The Orbit with the boys. You should try going out with girls, son. They're a lot more fun."

  "I go with girls," I said. "It's just that The Orbit is special . , . something I prefer to do with the guys."

  "I always liked drive-ins with girls." He looked at Mom. "A purely puritan adventure, of course."

  "That's not the way I remember you," Mom said. "Aren't you running late this morning, Mr. Big Shot?"

  I own the company, my dear. I can do damn well as I please. Outside of this house anyway."

  "Ha," Mom said. She got up and started for the cabinet. Dad slapped her on the butt. She whirled.

  "Harold . . . could you do that again?"

  I laughed. Dad stood up, grabbed her, bent her back like they do in those old movies.

  "Woman, my little dove: You are the love of my life. Patting your ass is a pleasure unmatched by gold and video . . . And remember, serving wench, no TV dinners.tonight or I sell you to the Arab traders."

  He kissed her.

  "Thank you, Harold. Now will you lift me up. My back hurts."

  "When the going gets rough, when it looks like we're not going to make it, I'll save the last two bullets for us."

  "Harold, you're crazy. Now pull me up, will you? My back hurts."

  He pulled her up. "That's what happens when you get old. Back trouble. And no sense of romance."

  "Go shower and shave . . . and for heaven's sake brush that hair off your teeth," Mom said.

  "My breath is sweet. I go to bed with sugar breath, and I awake with it even sweeter. I—"

  "Go!"

  "Yessuh, Massuh," he said, and shuffled off.

  When he was gone Mom gave me an exasperated look. "He's crazy, you know?"

  "I know," I said.

  A little later on, Mom went to play tennis and Dad went to work and I never saw them again.

  4

  Before we started going to the drive-in, come summer mornings you couldn't get me up if you fired a bazooka under the covers. But now Friday meant The Orbit, and I was usually up early. And there was also The Early Morning Monster Show that I had acquired a taste for. It showed on Channel 6 at eight and Randy came over every Friday to watch. Bob would have, but he worked half a day at his dad's feed store. As I said, none of us had to work, but Bob was more willing, and he liked having plenty of pocket change.

  So Randy came over and the movie was The Crawling Eye, and it wasn't bad until the monsters showed up. The wind kind of went out of its sails after that. It was hard to feel threatened by things that looked like large rubber mops. Still, I enjoyed it, and it gave Randy a chance to make fun of the special effects.

  He got what I thought was a sort of strange, even perverse, pleasure out of
that, considering most of those movies had been made on a rubber-band budget. But I think it was important for him to have something to look down on, considering he felt pretty much low man on life's totem pole. He had brains and he was nice, but there was some invisible thing about him that led others to direct their hatred toward him, the incident with Bear being a case in point. In fact, I sometimes felt that behind that mousy, quiet exterior was a tyrant without courage, someone looking for his edge on humanity.

  He was good in school, but he didn't take any particular pride in that because no one gave a damn. He was knowledgeable about film, makeup and special effects particularly, but again, no competition. Bob and I loved that stuff too, but we weren't wrapped up in it like Randy. So the only thing he could measure his knowledge and skills against were low-budget films, mentally playing out in his mind that he could do better if given a chance.

  But the thing I remember best about that morning was Randy turning to me while all hell was breaking loose in the movie (admittedly the hell in the movie wasn't as intense as it ought to have been), and saying, "Do you think Willard has a steady girl?"

  "Hell, Randy, I don't know. I'm sure he has girls, but I don't think he's the wear-my-ring kind. I think the tattoo on his arm, EAT PUSSY, is sort of a statement on romance, don't you?"

  "Yeah," Randy said. "I suppose so."

  After that he just watched the movie, but I could tell his mind wasn't on it. He had a sort of dreamy look in his eyes, like he was thinking about something that lived way down deep in his brain.

  About noon we ate some ham sandwiches and drove over to Safeway and bought some supplies for the night: Cracker Jacks, chocolate-covered almonds, potato chips, some Cokes and a few bags of cookies. Bob was supposed to get a case of beer; he had connections. Connections that bought it cheap and sold it dear, and didn't give a damn if you were a minor or a warthog. In spite of that, Bob could deal with them better than we could. He dressed the way they did, could talk their line of talk, and the bottom line was he was so damn tight, when he blinked the skin on his dick rolled back. Just the man for hard money dealings.