Web of the City (7 page)

The heap pulled around a bend and Rusty saw a dozen or so cars all drawn into a circle, their noses pointed into the center. The place was crawling with kids and a great cheer went up as they saw him through the window.

Rusty’s belly constricted. He didn’t want to fight Candle. He didn’t want to fight anybody. He wanted to go home and lie down and put on some records and lie very, very still. His belly ached.

Fish took off at top speed around the ring of cars, spraying dirt in a wide wedge as he rounded the circle on two wheels. It was all Rusty needed to finish the nerve-job on him. He leaned against the right side of the car and puked so hard he thought the tendons in his neck would split. Fish was spinning the wheel as Rusty came up with it, and his eyes bugged. “Hey! Man! What the hell ya doin’?”

He slammed his foot onto the brake pedal and the Plymouth ground to a skittering halt, the tires biting deep into the dirt of the dump grounds and spinning wildly.

The car stalled and Fish was out, around the other side, and opening the door in an instant. He grabbed Rusty by the jacket collar and hauled him bodily from the car.

The kids were running over from the circle, violence light on their faces. What was happening there? This was a real kick!

Fish pulled Rusty down and he fell to his knees in the dirt, Fish still clinging to his jacket. He began dry-vomiting, hacking in choking spasms.

Finally, he slapped Fish’s hand away and laid his palms flat on the ground, tried to push himself up. It took three cockeyed pushes till he was standing unsteadily. Everything was fuzzy around the edges and he could only vaguely hear—

“Man, what a punk
he
turned into!”

“Chicken all the way. No guts!”

“Candle’s gonna slice him up good, you see!”

Every face was one face; every body was a gigantic many-legged body. He was swaying and he felt a hand shoved into his back and, “Stand up, fer Chrissakes!”

His throat chugged and he thought for an instant he was going to bring up what little of his lunch was left lying uneasily in his stomach. But it passed as he gulped deeply and he began to get a clear picture of what was around him.

He saw all the faces. Poop and Boy-O, Margie, Connie, Cherry, Fish beside him looking angry and worried at the same time, Shamey, the Beast, Greek, Candle, with his eyes bright and daring, and—he stopped thinking for a moment when he saw her.

Weezee. She was here, too. Who had brought her?

He started forward in her direction, but Candle moved in and stopped him. “She came with me. I brought her. Any complaints?”

Before he could answer, Weezee started to say something. “I couldn’t help it, Rusty, he saw me—”

“Shaddup!” Candle snapped over his shoulder. He turned back to Rusty. “You got any beefs, you can settle ’em the knife way.”

The sickness and the fear had passed abruptly. Rusty was quite cold and detached now. If it was a stand Candle wanted, all the rest of these sluggy bastards wanted, then that was what they’d get. Right now.

“Who’s got the hankie?” he yelled.

Magically, a handkerchief fluttered down onto the ground between the two boys. Neither touched it. Candle’s arm moved idly in his sleeve and the switchblade dropped into his hand. Even as he pressed the stud and the bright blade flicked up, Rusty was bending sharply and he came erect with his own weapon in his fist, already open.

They faced each other across the white handkerchief, and then Candle watched stonily as Rusty bent down and picked it up. From the crowd cries of, “Get him! Sling him!” and once in a while, “Go, go, go, Chickie-man!” rang out.

Rusty shook out the hankie and put one corner in his mouth, wadding it slightly behind his clenched teeth. He extended the opposite corner to Candle delicately and when Candle took it, his eyes were sharp on Rusty’s own.

Caution: when you knife-fight… don’t bother watching the knife as much as the other guy’s eyes.
They
tell when he’s gonna strike.

Candle knew it and took the hankie in his mouth with care. He maneuvered his tongue and teeth a bit till the cloth was settled properly. They were separated across a two foot restraining line of taut cloth, their backs arched, their bodies curved to put them as far away at swinging level as possible. The arm-swinging range was just two feet—with the other man’s knife in the way. The first man who dropped the hankie lost and was at the mercy of the other.

Poop was going to be the starter and Rusty motioned him with an offhand gesture to hold up for a second. Rusty saw the heavy black leather jacket Candle wore and realized his own jacket was thinner, more easily ripped. The dangerous area—the lower arms—was mostly unprotected. He held his knife tightly and reached back, took his own handkerchief from his hip pocket and wrapped it tightly about his free hand. That helped a little.

Poop stared at them anxiously. He lit a cigarette and puffed it violently as Rusty banded himself with the hankie. Then the boy threw down the cigarette, stamped it into the dirt of the dumps, and said, “Ya ready to go now?”

Rusty felt a wry laugh bubble up from his belly. Poop was getting anxious. Maybe they wouldn’t kill each other; then he wouldn’t get his kicks.

Both boys nodded.

Poop raised both hands above his head, as a drag-race starter would. Then he brought them slashingly down, screaming,
“Go! Go! Go! Go
!”

Candle jerked back heavily and the hankie started to slip from Rusty’s teeth. The cloth gave an ominous tearing sound and Rusty swung the knife in flat arcs, moving forward and teeth-winding the hankie so he had more of it firmly tight in his grip. He stopped as he saw Candle’s knife-arm edging closer. Then they were equal, with the hankie tight, and their knives ready to draw blood.

They circled, stepping, stepping, stepping carefully, measuring each movement. Footwork had to be close, because the slightest fouling of feet, and down a man could go. And that meant not only down. It meant out.

The ground was worn into a rough circle as they went tail-around-head past each other. The gang fanned out and watched, making certain an idle sweep of the blades could not touch them. The two boys bent forward from the shoulders, putting their bellies as far back as possible, for that was the direction in which trouble lay.

Feet widely spread, they stopped every few seconds, swinging, making certain they did not throw themselves off-balance.

Grunts and explosions of sweat marked their circular passage and soon Rusty felt his arms getting weak. He stooped slightly and it was a soft sight to Candle that the effect of the retching, the movement, the swinging, the tension, had taken hold. He moved in for the kill. But he was premature. Rusty caught the other’s arm as it came up, caught it on his other wrist, the hankie wound tightly, and Rusty let a squeal of pain loose as the blow ricocheted off. Candle’s hand had struck his wrist with impact and the shake threw Rusty off-balance. Candle was on him, then, with the knife coming back for a full overhead swing, and Rusty tossed himself sidewise. Candle went past, and the hankie snapped tight, dragging Candle almost off his feet.

Rusty moved back away, dragging Candle with him, and in a second, before the advantage could be gained, they were circling each other, both steady, both wary. The air was filled with the flash and flick of steel as each tried to slip one past. Rusty countered and parried each thrust from the deadly Candle and the stout boy did the same.

Rusty’s hair loosened from its rigid wave and flopped over his eyes. He could not waste a hand to swipe it away however. He could not blow it up with his lips, so he tossed his head quickly, right at the height of a full-arm swing.

It fell back and he resigned himself to the handicap. Candle’s hair was sandy, crew-cut, and gave him no trouble. But what he had considered an advantage—the heavy black leather jacket—was not. The jacket bunched against the inside of his elbows, made swinging difficult and cut short Candle’s reach at times.

Candle kicked out with a faking movement and Rusty leaped back, jerking his neck at the end of the hankie. The stout boy had been steadied for that. Then Candle was in close and the knife was around back of Rusty somewhere, his own arm pinned at his side. He fought in close to Candle, and they shoved at one another with their shoulders, edging one another a few inches, then back again.

Finally, Rusty shoved off and got his feet steadied for the swing he knew was coming. But it came from an entirely new direction. Candle’s knife hand stayed in sight, and his free hand caught Rusty in the kidneys.

Rusty’s face went pasty and he staggered back. Candle hit him again, this time with the handle of the knife, wrapped in his fist, in the side of the head, and Rusty started to fall. He grabbed out, and Candle came across with the knife once more. Rusty felt the razor-keen blade slice flesh between thumb and forefinger. He wanted to scream, but could not without dropping the hankie, so he wadded it more behind his teeth, and sank to his knees. Blood poured across his hand.

Candle stepped back for the death-swing and it came up like a jet from around the stout boy’s knees. Rusty jerked sidewise, throwing out one leg. Candle went down in a heap and the hankie popped from his mouth with a snap.

Rusty was on his feet in an instant and Candle lay there staring up at him, the hankie hanging ludicrously from Rusty’s thin lips.

The gang went insane. “Kill him! Jab him! Knife! Knife! Knife!” they screamed, and one hand shot out of the crowd to snatch away Candle’s blade from where it lay in the dirt. Another hand caught Rusty’s arm and shoved him forward. He stumbled and stopped.

“Get him, he was gonna put you down!”

Rusty stared down at Candle, lying on his elbows, at his feet. There was a queer mixture of fear and surliness on the boy’s heavy features. He had lost, but he was going to be angry about dying. It made no sense, but that was the way he looked. Rusty stood silently as the storm of directions grew behind him.

As he stood there, Candle’s cool, green eyes met his own and he saw right to the center of the boy. He saw all the garbage that Candle had substituted for guts, for integrity, for honesty; and Rusty was frightened again. Not so much frightened at how close, but scared because this was the way
he
had been, before Pancoast had showed him there were other ways than the ways of the gutter.

He knew he had slipped back and knew the gang would now expect him to resume his position at the head of the Cougars. He didn’t want that! He wasn’t going back to all that. Inside him, two warring natures fought for the mind of Rusty Santoro.

The hand holding the knife moved itself, of its own volition, and the blade reversed itself—overhand, so that one downward stroke would slash the throat of the terrified Candle. The stout boy sat looking up at Rusty, knowing his life hung by a thread, hung on that thread of decency—that he called cowardice—he knew was in the boy.

Rusty moved an inch forward and the gang went crazy.

“Kill him! Kill him! Knife ’im!”

Rusty tried to stop his feet, tried to say to himself, this is no good, but the days of the gang were back with him, smothering him like a blanket and he knew the only way he would be safe from an enemy was to kill the enemy. His arm came back and the blade poised there in nothingness for an instant, then started the downward arc that would slice deeply. The hand moved, and then it stopped.

All the hatred passed away. Everything was clear again. Clear and smooth.

“Clear and smooth,” Rusty said, to no one at all.

No one understood.

But they understood what he did next.

He put the blade under his boot and with all his strength bent upward. The blade did not give and he pulled up his foot, brought it down with a crack on the blade. The knife snapped in two, at the base of the steel, and Rusty let it lay there.

“I’m through,” he said.

No one argued with him.

This time no one demanded a stand, for he had proved his strength in the only way they could understand. Now that he had proved it, he was free. Free of them forever and the days would not be filled with wandering and hating.

“Anybody going back to town?” he asked.

There was a tacit agreement that the affair was concluded, an agreement that no one would help Candle to his feet. They walked away, back to their cars and Fish gave the finger-circle to Rusty, to show him the outcome had been right by him.

“I got room in mine,” Fish said, and nodded his head in the direction of the battered Plymouth.

“Ain’t you afraid I’ll whocko on your floor again?”

Fish laughed, then, and they walked to the car together. Only then, when she called from behind, did Rusty remember Weezee.

“Rusty?”

He turned and looked at her and there was nothing really wrong. She was what she was and for the time being she was all the woman he needed; weak and watery and scared and only doing her best by living the rules as they’d been put to her; building a sin once in a bit, and trying to make it from day to day—that was the best anyone could do, till a passage opened up.

He walked back and stood before her, not saying anything. He still had his pride. He still had to let her make the first move.

“I’m—I’m glad ya won, Rusty…”

He let the slow smile build off the corner of his mouth and he fumbled with his jacket to show it had been nothing really. Then he said, “Wanna go back to Tom-Tom’s with us and have a soda?”

She nodded brightly, the past wiped away like clouds from the sky and he decided to let it settle that way.

What was the use of carrying the hurt? It didn’t matter. There were worse hurts than this little one. He took her with him in the way the rules decreed. Not by the hand, gently, as he wanted to for that would have left her confused—but with the hand at the back of her neck. Commanding, leading, directing, roughly, the way a mean stud did it to his broad.

She came up close to him as they walked back and her body said she was his girl again, to whatever extent he wanted her.

Strangely, though, Rusty felt no heat for her, felt no desire to be the big man. She was his girl and he would treat her as he was expected to treat her, but the distantness of their relationship was too profound, too unexplainable, for him to try to love her.