One of them talked.
One of them trained.
One of them hung on for dear life.
Even the dog was giving her all.
For this training method, they had a key, they’d paid a friend; it guaranteed entry to the building. Ten dollars for a stuffed lump of concrete. Not bad. They ran.
“You miserable piece-a shit,” said Henry (the moneymaker, the friendly one) at Clay’s side. As he struggled, he loped and laughed. His smile swerved off his face; he caught it in his palm. At times like these, he communicated with Clay through tried and tested insults. “You’re nothing,” he said, “you’re soft.” He was hurting but had to talk on. “You’re soft as a two-minute egg, boy. Makes me sick to watch you run like this.”
It also wasn’t long before another tradition was observed.
Tommy, the youngest, the pet collector, lost one of his shoes.
“Shit, Tommy, I thought I told you to tie ’em up better. Come on, Clay, you’re weak, you’re ridiculous. How ’bout havin’ a bloody go?”
They reached the sixth floor and Clay dumped Tommy sideways and tackled the mouth on his right. They landed on the musty tiles, Clay half smiled, the other two laughed, and they all shrugged off the sweat. In the struggle, Clay got Henry in a headlock. He picked him up and ran him round.
“You really need a shower, mate.” Typical Henry. We always said that to do Henry in we’d have to kill his mouth twice. “That’s shockin’, that is.” He could feel the wire in Clay’s arm as it wrung his smart-mouth neck.
To interrupt, Tommy, thoroughly thirteen, took a running jump and brought all three of them down, arms and legs, boys and floor. Around them, Rosy leapt and landed; her tail was up, her body forward. Black legs. White paws. She barked but they fought on.
When it was over, they lay on their backs; there was a window on this, the top floor of the stairwell, and grubby light, and rising-falling chests. The air was heavy. Tons of it, heaping from their lungs. Henry gulped it good and hard, but his mouth showed true heart.
“Tommy, you little bastard.” He looked over and grinned. “I think you just saved my life, kid.”
“Thanks.”
“No, thank you,” and he motioned now to Clay, who was already up on an elbow. His other hand down in his pocket. “I don’t get why we put up with this lunatic.”
“Me neither.”
But they did.
For starters, he was a Dunbar boy, and with Clay you wanted to know.
* * *
—
What was it, though?
What was there to know when it came to Clayton, our brother?
&
nbsp; Questions had followed him for years now, like why did he smile but never laugh?
Why did he fight but never to win?
Why did he like it so much on our roof?
Why did he run not for a satisfaction, but a discomfort—some sort of gateway to pain and suffering, and always putting up with it?
Not one of those inquiries, however, was his favorite.
They were warm-up questions.