Their last stop before heading home was the edge of Peter Pan Square, where they sat and watched the windshield, and the statue out in the middle. Through the sheath of rain, Clay could just make out the cobblestones, and the horse the square was named for. On the mounting block it said this:
PETER PAN
A VERY GALLANT HORSE
TWICE WINNER OF THE RACE
THAT STOPS THE NATION
1932, 1934
It felt like he was watching them, too, his head turned sideways, but Clay knew—the horse was after attention, or a bite of one of his rivals. Especially Rogilla. Peter Pan hated Rogilla.
Up top, Darby Munro, the jockey, seemed to be watching the car as well, and Henry turned the key. When the engine ran, the wipers clocked over maybe every four seconds, and horse and rider, they cleared and obscured, cleared and obscured, till Henry finally spoke.
“Hey, Clay,” he said, and shook his head, and smiled just slight and slightedly. “Tell me what he’s like these days.”
In later years, it was understandable.
People got it wrong.
They thought it was Penny’s death and our father leaving that made us what we were—and sure, it definitely made us rowdier and harder and hardier, and gave us a sense of fight—but it isn’t what made us tough. No, in the beginning it was something more.
It was the wooden, the upright.
The piano.
* * *
—
As it was, it started with me, in sixth grade, and now, as I type, I’m guilty; I apologize. This, after all, is Clay’s story, and now I write for myself—but it somehow feels important. It leads us somewhere else.
At school till then it was easy. Class was fine, I was in on every football game. I’d barely had an argument, till someone cared to notice: I was ribbed for learning the piano.
Never mind that we were forced to, or that the piano, as an instrument, had a long history of rebellion—Ray Charles was coolness personified; Jerry Lee Lewis set the thing on fire. As a kid growing up in the racing quarter, only one type of boy played the piano; it didn’t matter how much the world had advanced. It didn’t matter if you were the school football captain or a juvenile amateur boxer—the piano made you one thing, and that thing, of course, was this:
You were clearly a homosexual.
* * *
—
It had actually been known for years that we’d learned, even if we weren’t much good. None of that really mattered,
though, given that childhoods latch on to things at different times. You can be left alone for a decade, only to be hung out to dry in your teens. You could collect stamps and have it labeled interesting in first grade, and have it haunt you in ninth.
For me, as I said, it was sixth grade.
All it took was a kid a few inches shorter, but a lot more powerful, who actually was a juvenile boxer—a kid named Jimmy Hartnell. His father, Jimmy Hartnell Sr., owned the Tri-Colors Boxing Gym, over on Poseidon Road.
And Jimmy, what a kid.
He was built like a very small supermarket:
Compact; expensive if you crossed him.
His hair was a ginger fringe.