Rumble Fish

"Don't worry, you won't have to," I told her, and added a few comments of my own. I almost slapped her. Then, when she went stalking on down the street, her hair bouncing on her shoulders, her head up, a tough, sweet little chick, I thought how I wouldn't be going over to her house to watch TV anymore. We wouldn't hug close, trying to make out without her little brothers catching us. I wouldn't have her to hold anymore, soft but strong in my arms.

I couldn't see what messing around with a chick at the lake had to do with me and Patty. It didn't have anything to do with me and Patty. Why would she let something stupid like that louse us up?

I felt funny. My throat was tight, and I couldn't breathe real good. I wondered if I was going to cry. I couldn't remember how crying felt, so I couldn't tell. I was all right in a little bit, though.

I just walked around for a while. I couldn't think of anything to do, or anyplace to go. I spotted the Motorcycle Boy in the drugstore reading a magazine, so I went in.

"You got a cigarette?" I asked. He handed me one.

"Let's do somethin' tonight, okay?" I said. "Let's go over to the strip, across the bridge, okay?"

"All right," he said.

"Maybe I can get Steve to go, too." I wanted Steve to go in case the Motorcycle Boy forgot I was with him and took off on a cycle, or went in some bar where I couldn't go.

"All right."

I stood there and looked at the magazines for a little bit.

"Hey," I said, "what you reading?"

"There's a picture of me in this magazine." He showed it to me. It was a picture of him, all right. He was leaning back against a beat-up cycle, kind of propped up on his hands. He was wearing blue jeans and blue jean jacket and no shirt. He and the motorcycle were against a bunch of trees and vines and grass. It made him look like a wild animal out of the woods. It was a good picture. A photograph that looked like a painting. He wasn't smiling, but he looked happy.

"Hey," I said, "what magazine is this?"

I looked at the cover. It was one of those big national magazines, one that went all over the country.

"Is there anything about you in here?" I looked through the magazine again.

"No. The photograph is one of a collection by a famous photographer. She took my picture out in California. I'd forgotten it. Actually, it was one hell of a shock to open a magazine and find my picture in it."

I looked at the other photographs. They were mostly of people. They all looked like paintings. The magazine said that the person who took them was famous for her photos looking like paintings.

"Wow," I said. "Wait till I tell everybody."

"Don't, Rusty-James. I'd rather you didn't tell anybody. God knows it's gonna get around soon enough."

He had been acting a little weird ever since he got back. He had a funny look on his face now, so I said, "Sure."

"It's a bit of a burden to be Robin Hood, Jesse James and the Pied Piper. I'd just as soon stay a neighborhood novelty, if it's all the same to you. It's not that I couldn't handle a larger scale, I just plain don't want to."

"All right," I said. I knew what he meant about being Jesse James to some people. The Motorcycle Boy was very famous around our part of the city. Even the people who hated him would admit that.

"Hey, I get it," I said. "The Pied Piper. Man, those guys would have followed you anywhere. Hell, most of them still would."

"It would be great," he said, "if I could think of somewhere to go."

As we were leaving the drugstore, I saw the cop, Patterson, across the street, watching us. I stared back at him. The Motorcycle Boy, as usual, didn't even see him.

"That is really a good picture of you," I said.

"Yes, it is." He was smiling, but not happy. He never smiled much. It scared me when he did.

7

We went downtown that night, across the bridge, to where the lights were. It wasn't as hard to talk Steve into going along as I'd thought it'd be. Usually I had to hound him and stop just short of threatening him to get him to do anything his parents wouldn't like. This time, though, he just said, "Okay, I'll tell my father I'm going to the movies." Which was the easiest time I ever had talking him into something. Steve had been acting peculiar lately. Ever since his mother went into the hospital he'd had a funny kind of empty recklessness to him. He looked like a sincere rabbit about to take on a pack of wolves.

He met us at our place. I never went to his house. His parents didn't even know he knew me. I poured half a bottle of cherry vodka into a bottle of sneaky pete to take with us.

"Here, take a swig of this," I said to Steve as we went across the bridge. There wasn't much space for walking. You were supposed to drive across. We stopped in the middle so the Motorcycle Boy could look at the river awhile. He'd been doing that ever since I could remember. He really liked that old river.

I handed Steve the bottle, and to my surprise he took a drink. He never drank. I'd been trying to get him to for years, and had just about given up on it. He gagged, looked at me for a second, then swallowed it. He wiped his eyes.

"That stuff tastes awful," he told me.

"Don't worry about the taste," I said. "It'll get you there."

"Remind me to chew gum before I go home, okay?"

"Sure," I said. The Motorcycle Boy was ready to move on again and we trotted along behind him. He covered a lot of ground with one stride.

It was going to be a good night. I could tell. The Motorcycle Boy was basically a night person. He'd come home in the morning and sleep past one or two, and really just be getting awake good around four. He was hearing pretty good, too, and didn't seem to mind us going with him. He didn't use to like me following him around. Now it seemed like he barely noticed we were there.

"Why do you drink so much?" Steve asked me. Something was bugging him. He always was kind of nervous and bothered, but I couldn't believe he'd ever try to pick a fight with me.

"You can't stand your father drinking all the time," he went on doggedly. "So why do you? Do you want to end up like that?"

"Aw, I don't drink that much," I said. I was over into the city, on the strip, where there were lots of people and noise and lights and you could feel energy coming off things, even buildings. I was damned if Steve was going to mess it up for me.

"Man, this is gonna be a good night," I said, to change the subject. "I love it over here. I wish we lived over here."

I swung myself around a light pole and almost knocked Steve into the street.

"Calm down," he muttered. He took another swallow from the bottle. I figured that would cheer him up some.

"Hey," he said to the Motorcycle Boy, "you want a drink?"

"You know he don't drink," I said. "Just sometimes."

"That makes a hell of a lot of sense. Why don't you?" Steve asked.

The Motorcycle Boy said, "I like control."

Steve never talked to the Motorcycle Boy. That wine had really made him brave.

"Everything over here is so cool," I went on. "The lights, I mean. I hate it on our block. There ain't any colors. Hey," I said to the Motorcycle Boy, "you can't see the colors, can ya? What's it look like to you?"

He looked at me with an effort, like he was trying to remember who I was. "Black-and-white TV, I guess," he said finally. "That's it."

I remembered the glare the TV gave off, at Patty's house. Then I tried to get rid of the thought of Patty.

"That's too bad."

"I thought color-blind people just couldn't see red or green. I read somewhere where they couldn't see red or green or brown or something," Steve said. "I read that."

"

So did I," the Motorcycle Boy answered. "But we can't be everything we read."

"It don't bother him none," I told Steve. "'Cept when he's cycle-ridin' he tends to go through red lights."

"Sometimes," said the Motorcycle Boy, surprising me since he didn't usually start conversations, "it seems to me like I can remember colors, 'way back when I was a little kid. That was a long time ago. I stopped bein' a little kid when I was five."

"Yeah?" I thought this was interesting. "I wonder when I'm gonna stop being a little kid."

He looked at me with that look he gave to almost everybody else. "Not ever."

I really thought that was funny, and I laughed, but Steve glared at him--a rabbit scowling at a panther. "What's that supposed to be, a prophecy or a curse?"

The Motorcycle Boy didn't hear him, and I was glad. I didn't want Steve to get his teeth knocked out.

"Hey," I said. "Let's go to a movie."

There were some good ones right there on the strip. We were passing the advertising posters.

"That sounds like a great idea," Steve said. "Let me have the bottle."

I handed it to him. He was getting happier every time he took a drink.

"Too bad," he said. "You have to be eighteen to get into this movie. That is too bad, since it really looks interesting." He was studying some of the scenes they had on the advertising posters.

The Motorcycle Boy went to the ticket seller and bought three tickets, came back and handed us each one. Steve stared at him, openmouthed.

"Well," said the Motorcycle Boy. "Let's go."

We walked right in.

"Was that guy blind or something?" Steve said loudly. In the movie-house dark I could hear people turn around to look at us.

"Shut up," I told him. I had to wait so my eyes could get used to the dark. It didn't take long. The Motorcycle Boy had already found us seats right in the middle.

"I got in here before," I told Steve, "and the place was raided. That was a blast. You shoulda seen the movie they were playing that night. It was somethin' else."

I was going on to tell him about the movie, but he interrupted me with "Raided? Police raid?" He was quiet for a little while, then said, "Rusty-James, if you're arrested or something, can you refuse bail? I mean, can't you stay in jail if you'd rather do that than go home?"