Rumble Fish (8 page)

We went home. The Motorcycle Boy sat on the mattress and read a book. I sat next to him and smoked one cigarette after another. He sat there reading and I sat there waiting. I didn't know what I was waiting for. About three years before, a doped-up member of the Tiber Street Tigers had wandered over onto Packer territory and got beat up and crawled back. I remember waiting around in a funny state of tenseness, like seeing lightning and waiting for thunder. That was the night of the last rumble, when Bill Braden died from a bashed-in head. I'd been sliced up real bad by a Tiger with a kitchen knife, and the Motorcycle Boy had sent at least three guys to the hospital, laughing out loud right in the middle of the whole mess of screaming, swearing, grunting, fighting people.

I'd forgotten about that. Sitting there reminded me. It was much harder to wait than to fight.

“Both home again?” The old man came in the door. He liked to stop in and change his shirt before he went out to the bars for the night. It didn't matter that the one he changed into was usually as dirty as the one he took off. It was just something he liked to do.

“I want to ask you somethin',” I said.

“Yes?”

“Was—is—our mother nuts?”

The old man stopped right where he was and stared at me, amazed. I had never asked him a thing about her.

“No. Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Well, she left, didn't she?”

He smiled slowly. “Our marriage was a classic example of a preacher marrying an atheist, thinking to make a convert, and instead ending up doubting his own faith.”

“Don't give me that,” I said. “You was never a preacher.”

“I was a practitioner of the law.”

“Say yes or no, willya?”

“You don't suppose a woman would have to be nuts to leave me, do you?” He just stood there, smiling at me, looking through me like the Motorcycle Boy did. It was the first time I ever saw any resemblance between them. “I married her, thinking to set a precedent. She married me for fun, and when it stopped being fun she left.”

And honest to God, that was the first time I came anywhere near to understanding my father. It was the first time I saw him as a person, with a past that didn't have anything to do with me. You never think of parents having any kind of a past before you were there.

“Russel-James,” he went on, “every now and then a person comes along who has a different view of the world than does the usual person. Notice I said ‘usual,' not normal.' That does not make him crazy. An acute perception does not make you crazy. However, sometimes it drives you crazy.”

“Talk normal,” I begged him. “You know I don't understand that garbage.”

“Your mother,” he said distinctly, “is not crazy. Neither, contrary to popular belief, is your brother. He is merely miscast in a play. He would have made a perfect knight, in a different century, or a very good pagan prince in a time of heroes. He was born in the wrong era, on the wrong side of the river, with the ability to do anything and finding nothing he wants to do.”

I looked at the Motorcycle Boy to see what he thought. He hadn't heard a word of it.

And even though I didn't have much hope that the old man could tell me something in plain English, I had to ask him something else.

“I think that I'm gonna look just like him when I get older. Whadd'ya think?”

My father looked at me for a long moment, longer than he'd ever looked at me. But still, it was like he was seeing somebody else's kid, not seeing anybody that had anything to do with him.

“You better pray to God not.” His voice was full of pity. “You poor child,” he said. “You poor baby.”

The Motorcycle Boy broke into the pet store that night. I was with him. He didn't ask me along. I just went.

“Look, you need some money? I'll get you some money,” I said desperately. I knew he didn't need any money. I just couldn't think of any other reason for what he was doing.

“Anyway…” I kept on talking, saying anything so I couldn't feel the deadly silence,“…if you want money, liquor stores are the best bet.”

I stood there, zipping my jacket zipper up and down, wiping the sweat off my hands on my jeans, watching him jimmy the lock of the back door, waiting for something terrible to happen.

“Listen,” I said again, “everybody saw you hangin' around here today, like you was casing the place. And a million people musta seen you comin' here. Will you listen to me!” My voice cracked upwards, like it had a year ago when it was changing.

The Motorcycle Boy had the lock on the back door jimmied and he went on in. He turned on the light in the stockroom.

“What are you doin'?” I nearly screamed. “You want the whole neighborhood to know?”

He stood there for a second in the bright glare of the light. He looked calm, his face as still as a statue. He was seeing something I couldn't see. But my father was right, he wasn't crazy.

I watched him let out all the animals. I made one move to stop him but changed my mind, and after that I just leaned against the counter and watched. I had to lean; my knees were shaking so bad I could barely stand up. I was more scared than I had ever been in my life. I was so scared I dropped my head down on the counter and cried for the first time I could remember. Crying hurts like hell.

He let out all the animals and was on his way to the river with the Siamese fighting fish when I heard the siren. I was wiping my eyes and trying to quit shaking. I ran for the door. There seemed to be thousands of red flashing lights in the street. Doors were slamming and people were shouting. I had started for the bridge when I heard the shots.

They tell me there was a warning shot. How did they expect him to hear a warning shot when everybody knew he was deaf half the time? The man who shot him knew it. I was at a dead run at the first shot, and almost to the river by the second. So I was there when they turned him over, and he was smiling, and the little rumble fish were flipping and dying around him, still too far from the river.

I don't remember what happened just after that. The next thing I knew I was thrown up against the police car and frisked. I stared straight ahead at the flashing light. There was something wrong with it. There was something really wrong with it. I was scared to think about what was wrong with it, but I knew, anyway. It was gray. It was supposed to be flashing red and white and it was gray. I looked all around. There wasn't any colors anywhere. Everything was black and white and gray. It was as quiet as a graveyard.

I stared around wildly at the growing crowd, the police cars, wondering why it was all so silent. It didn't look quiet. It looked like
TV
with the sound off.

“Can you hear me?” I shouted at the policeman next to me. He was busy with his report and didn't even look up. I couldn't hear my own voice. I tried screaming and I still couldn't hear it. I was that alone. I was in a glass bubble and everyone else was outside it and I'd be alone like that for the rest of my life.

Then a pain sliced through my head and the colors were back. The noise was deafening and I was shaking because I was still alone.

“Better get this kid to a hospital,” I heard a policeman say. “I think he's in shock or something.”

“Shock, hell,” somebody replied. I recognized the voice—Patterson. “He's probably on dope or something.”

About that time I slammed both fists through the police car window, and slashed my wrists on the glass that was left, so they had to take me to the hospital anyway.

“I never went back,” Steve was saying. “Did you?”

“No,” I said. The sun was shining warm on the sand, and the waves kept coming in, one after another.

“I made up my mind I'd get out of that place and I did,” Steve went on. “I learned that. I learned that if you want to get somewhere, you just make up your mind and work like hell till you get there. If you want to go somewhere in life you just have to work till you make it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It'll be nice when I can think of someplace to go.”

“Come on. Let's go over to the Sugar Shack and I'll buy you a beer.”

“I got dried out in the reformatory. Lost my taste for it.”

“No kidding? Good for you. I used to worry about that, I remember. I was afraid you'd end up like your father.”

“Not me.”

“Well, we'll get together for dinner tonight and really go over the good old days. Sometimes I can't believe I've come so far.”

I looked out at the ocean. I liked that ocean. You always knew there was going to be another wave. It had always been there, and more than likely it always would. I got to listening to the sound of the waves and didn't hear Steve for a second.

“…right about that. I never thought you would, but you do. You don't sound like him, though. Your voice is completely different. It's a good thing you never went back. You'd probably give half the people in the neighborhood a heart attack.”

I looked at Steve again. It was like seeing the ghost of somebody you knew a long time ago. When he started off across the sand, he turned and waved and shouted, “I still can't believe it! See ya!”

I waved back. I wasn't going to see him. I wasn't going to meet him for dinner, or anything else. I figured if I didn't see him, I'd start forgetting again. But it's been taking me longer than I thought it would.