We All Fall Down (3 page)

Who is the monster then? Buddy wondered. Remembering his part in the vandalism and his inability to stop what they had done to the girl, he thought: Maybe it’s me.
But I am not a monster.
Or is that what all the monsters said?

“We shouldn’t have left the girl like that,” Buddy heard himself saying.

“What did you say?” Harry’s voice crackled as he brought the car slowly to a halt under a streetlight, the kind of light that casts a ghastly glow on people’s faces. Harry’s face was stark and purple as he turned to Buddy.

“Listen carefully, Buddy,” he said, all traces of black gone from his voice. “You wanted fun, we had some fun …”

“That wasn’t fun,” Buddy said. “Raping a girl, for crissakes.” How he could use a drink, wishing now he had not abandoned that vodka bottle at the girl’s house.

“You jealous?” Marty piped up from the backseat.

“She wasn’t raped,” Harry said. “We didn’t have time
to rape her. Didn’t even get her nice little white panties off.”

“But you pushed her down the stairs,” Buddy said, hearing Harry’s intake of breath, wondering if he had gone too far.

“Maybe I was trying to grab her and save her from falling,” Harry said, his voice suddenly mild and reasonable. “Maybe it only looked like I pushed her. What do they say, Buddy? Looks are deceiving.”

Although his voice was mild, it contained an undertone Buddy could not pin down. His eyes were dark and piercing as he looked at Buddy. All of which made Buddy shiver inside, realizing that Harry somehow was giving him a message, telling him what to believe.

“Maybe we weren’t even going to rape the poor girl,” Harry continued. “Just having a little fun with her. She shouldn’t have been there in the first place …”

But it was her house,
Buddy wanted to say.
We were the ones who shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
He didn’t say anything, held by Harry’s eyes. Hated himself for not saying anything but still said nothing.

“Accidents happen,” Harry said, leaning toward Buddy, his breath heavy with stale booze. “Understand, Buddy?”

Buddy nodded, eager to end the conversation, eager for Harry to turn away, eager to get away from him.

“Say you understand, Buddy.”

Buddy was conscious of the silence in the backseat, as if Marty and Randy were holding their breaths. Or waiting to take action if Harry gave a signal.

“I understand,” Buddy said, his need for a drink so overwhelming that his hands trembled and he dropped them out of sight of the streetlight.

Harry smiled, turned away, and grabbed the steering
wheel, his foot depressing the accelerator. The tires sprayed gravel behind them. More silence from the backseat. After a while, Harry looked over at Buddy. And smiled. A forgiving smile. He hit Buddy playfully on the shoulder.

“You did good tonight, blood,” he said. Black again.

Christ, Buddy thought, how did I get mixed up in all this?

Although, he knew, of course, the answer to that question.

The problem with being an eleven-year-old Avenger was just that: being eleven years old and an Avenger. It would have been easier if he were older, like fifteen or sixteen, or old enough to have a driver’s license so that he could zoom around easier. He had to depend on his bike, a rickety three-speeder his mother bought him secondhand. He also had to depend on his ingenuity and, of course, his patience. Patience was the watchword, his mother always said, and she should know, she was the most patient person in the world. Washing, scrubbing, dusting. She kept missing her favorite TV shows because there was always something else for her to do around the house. Sewing, cooking, ironing, scrubbing, dusting.

The Avenger had other problems. His shyness, for instance. He was not shy when he was The Avenger, carrying out his acts of revenge. But in the classroom or in the schoolyard, he found it difficult to make friends, to be at ease with the other students. When called upon to recite in class, he blushed furiously, his throat tightening and his voice emerging in a ridiculous squeak. Which made Vaughn Masterson snicker. Vaughn Masterson spent the day snickering. When kids answered questions or went to the blackboard, or received good marks in a test. The
Avenger realized finally that Vaughn snickered because he was jealous. And dumb. D-U-M-B. In capital letters. Cheated when he could. Tried to sneak glances at The Avenger’s test papers because The Avenger always received good marks, A’s most of the time. Vaughn Masterson sat behind him and poked him in the back. That was mild compared to what he did to the other kids. Took their lunch bags and squished the sandwiches in his hands and threw them to the ground. He would have had some respect for Vaughn Masterson if, for instance, he had eaten the stolen lunches instead of destroying them and humiliating the kids he took them from. Like little Danny Davis, whom Vaughn enjoyed tormenting, day after day. Tripping him, pulling his shirt out of his pants, tweaking his cheeks. Especially in front of the girls. Making fun of Danny Davis while everybody giggled and those who didn’t giggle turned away in embarrassment, feeling guilty because they didn’t stand up to him. Why didn’t they stand up to him? Vaughn wasn’t
that
much bigger than anyone else in the fifth grade. But he carried a powerful air with him as he strutted through the schoolyard, a faint smile on his face as if he found the world an amusing place to be.

After observing Vaughn Masterson doing his dirty work for several weeks, The Avenger knew that
something
had to be done. He planned his course of action. He was good at planning. His mother called it daydreaming—you’ll dream your life away, she’d say. In those daydreams, he was brave and daring, reckless and adventurous. He dreamed about what he would do to Vaughn Masterson. And how he would do it. He had to be patient, of course, had to wait for the proper conditions, one of the conditions being that it was necessary to obtain the means. And, after obtaining the means, would have to wait awhile—patience again—to let things cool down.

Finally, all the conditions were right and he carried out his scheme. On that particular day, he followed Vaughn home from school. Did not ride his bike, but walked. Did not really walk but scampered behind Vaughn, hiding behind bushes and trees, thrilling, like the movies. When Vaughn arrived home, The Avenger waited across the street, concealing himself in a gazebo on the front lawn. He had noticed the gazebo on an earlier expedition to Vaughn’s street. He had observed several other things. That Vaughn Masterson was alone in the afternoon, his parents off working somewhere. The house with the gazebo also was unoccupied in the afternoon. Vaughn would stay in his house for a half hour or so, changing his clothes, having a bite to eat in the kitchen. The Avenger had employed his skills at spying to learn Vaughn’s routine.

Finally, Vaughn came out of the house, chewing the last remnants of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He had changed into jeans and a faded yellow shirt, his stomach bulging slightly at his belt. Made his way lazily down the steps to the back of the house where, if he followed his usual routine, he would open the garage door and fool around inside for a while. That’s exactly what he did now.

The Avenger crossed the street, looking this way and that, to see if anyone was watching. Except for a stray dog sniffing at a car down at the corner, the street was deserted.

Standing a few feet in front of the garage, The Avenger called out: “Hey, Vaughn, how’re you doing?”

Vaughn emerged from the garage, squinting into the sun, looking annoyed.

“What do
you
want?” he said, sneering, that
you
snapping with contempt.

“This,” The Avenger said, smiling.

From his book bag he removed the revolver he had
stolen from his grandfather. Kneeling, he held the revolver with both hands and pressed the trigger. The lower half of Vaughn’s face exploded in bone and blood as the bullet struck. The noise of the shot was deafening and the recoil of the gun sent The Avenger sprawling backward. He fell on his behind, on the hard pavement, pain shooting along his spinal column.

As the echo of the shot faded in the afternoon, The Avenger scrambled to his feet. The smell of sulfur filled the air. His breath came in short gasps as he looked around, listening for neighborhood sounds. All was quiet. Nobody in sight. The dog down the street was gone.

Ignoring the blood and the shattered face, and the pain in his spine, The Avenger went about his business as planned, heart hammering dangerously in his chest. He wiped the handle of the revolver with a piece of Kleenex. The hardest part was placing the revolver in Vaughn’s left hand—The Avenger had noticed in school that he was left-handed—and curling Vaughn’s index finger around the trigger. He then let the revolver fall out of Vaughn’s hand and clatter to the pavement. Just as he had seen it done on television.

Squinting, he looked down at the bloody fallen figure. Vaughn Masterson lay there in a ghastly kind of stillness. A thing, suddenly. He would not bully anyone again, and the kids in the fifth grade of Lucy Peary Elementary School could now go about their business in peace.

The Avenger smiled his smile of vengeance as he picked up his book bag, slung it over his shoulder, and went home. He arrived in time to share with his mother their usual afternoon snack of ice-cold milk and molasses cookies.

Pink. Bright, cool like a Popsicle. That was the color this year. The color she and Patti and Leslie had chosen as their motif. They had also decided to be subtle about it, not going wild but using pink in their accessories, alternating between necklaces, bracelets, and earrings. Pink tank tops, a touch of pink in their attire. Also pink thoughts. Which meant not hot. To play it cool with guys. They also used
pink
as a code word. But the word changed to suit the situation. Like with Johnny Taylor. Leslie was
pink
about him. And Patti would giggle, she was a giggler, giggles like bubbles gurgling out of her at the least provocation, which drove some people crazy but not Jane and not Leslie. Best friends put up with such things.

Pink united them in a secret alliance, their use of the word puzzling to others but drawing them together. Leslie, for instance, was the lady of Burnside High, always dressed up like Sunday, fussy with her hair and makeup. Yet, she had this crazy side to her that only Patti and Jane knew about. “Pink him,” Leslie would cry out when angry momentarily with some guy. And they all laughed and giggled, knowing the word that Leslie had used
pink
for as a substitute.

Although blue was Jane’s favorite color, she went along with the pink delirium, glad to do so because she loved Patti and Leslie, would do anything for them, anything at all, and they felt the same about her.

Until the trashing.

She thought of it as “the trashing” but it was more than that, of course. It was also what happened to Karen and the coma that held her in a strange kind of sleep in ICU at the hospital. Jane tried not to think about that. In her mind she placed it all within the context of one word:
trashing.
Which included her house and her home and everything in it. Karen had been trashed, ruined. Tossed
aside, down the cellar stairs, like a rag doll when someone was through playing with it.

The effects of the trashing had spread beyond the house, however, and the ICU. Had changed things. Had changed Arbor Lane and also Patti and Leslie. Oh, they were sympathetic, of course. Stunned at what had happened. They visited the house the day after the trashing, and Jane had led them reluctantly through the rooms, sorry she had invited them to view the damage. Had not actually invited them but had responded to their curiosity as they sat on the back porch. “Is it really as bad as everybody says?” Patti had asked. Who is everybody? Jane wondered. Then, wanting to see the damage through their eyes, Jane ushered them through the house, growing uncomfortable at the sight of the damage and disarray. More than that.
Ashamed
suddenly, wanting to hide somewhere, as if
she
had done something wrong, not the culprits, not the invaders.

Leslie, always the lady, picked her way through the house, nose wrinkled a bit, her arms at awkward angles. What angles? Jane realized that Leslie was trying to avoid touching anything, as if she might somehow become contaminated. Patti, the giggler, did not giggle for once. Which was worse than if she had giggled. Instead, she kept saying: “Wow.” Murmuring
wow
again and again, in a breathless whisper until Jane wanted to scream: Pink you!

Later, they sat on the back porch banister, balancing themselves delicately, legs swinging back and forth.

“Who would want to do such a thing?” Leslie said. “I mean, why pick on your house? Why pick on Karen?”

The choice of words offended Jane.
Pick on.

“The police said Karen was unlucky enough to come home at the wrong moment,” Jane said, her voice flat and
crisp. “It could have been anybody.” She felt as though Karen had been criticized.

“Picking your house was certainly bad luck, all right,” Patti said.