Эд Макбейн - Barking at Butterflies and other stories

“Man, what rain!” the boy said. “You could drown out there.”

“I have to get home,” the girl said. “It’s late, Freddie. I have to get home.”

“We got time,” Freddie said. “Your people won’t raise a fuss if you’re a little late. Not with this kind of weather.”

“It’s dark,” the girl said, and she giggled.

“Yeah,” the boy answered, his voice very low.

“Freddie...?”

“Um?”

“You’re... you’re standing very close to me.”

“Um.”

There was a long silence. Then the girl said, “Oh,” only that single word, and Andy knew she’d been kissed, and he suddenly hungered for Laura’s mouth. It was then that he wondered if he would ever kiss Laura again. It was then that he wondered if he was dying.

No, he thought, I can’t be dying, not from a little street rumble, not from just getting cut. Guys get cut all the time in rumbles. I can’t be dying. No, that’s stupid. That don’t make any sense at all.

“You shouldn’t,” the girl said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you like it?”

“Yes.”

“So?”

“I don’t know.”

“I love you, Angela,” the boy said.

“I love you, too, Freddie,” the girl said, and Andy listened and thought, I love you, Laura. Laura, I think maybe I’m dying. Laura, this is stupid but I think maybe I’m dying. Laura, I think I’m dying! He tried to speak. He tried to move.

He tried to crawl toward the doorway where he could see the two figures in embrace. He tried to make a noise, a sound, and a grunt came from his lips, and then he tried again, and another grunt came, a low animal grunt of pain.

“What was that?” the girl said, suddenly alarmed, breaking away from the boy.

“I don’t know,” he answered.

“Go look, Freddie.”

“No. Wait.”

Andy moved his lips again. Again the sound came from him.

“Freddie!”

“What?”

“I’m scared.”

“I’ll go see,” the boy said.

He stepped into the alley. He walked over to where Andy lay on the ground. He stood over him, watching him.

“You all right?” he asked.

“What is it?” Angela said from the doorway.

“Somebody’s hurt,” Freddie said.

“Let’s get out of here,” Angela said.

“No. Wait a minute.” He knelt down beside Andy. “You cut?” he asked.

Andy nodded. The boy kept looking at him. He saw the lettering on the jacket then, THE ROYALS. He turned to Angela.

“He’s a Royal,” he said.

“Let’s... what... what do you want to do, Freddie?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to get mixed up in this. He’s a Royal. We help him, and the Guardians’ll be down on our necks. I don’t want to get mixed up in this, Angela.”

“Is he... is he hurt bad?”

“Yeah, it looks that way.”

“What shall we do?”

“I don’t know.”

“We can’t leave him here in the rain.” Angela hesitated. “Can we?”

“If we get a cop, the Guardians’ll find out who,” Freddie said. “I don’t know, Angela. I don’t know.”

Angela hesitated a long time before answering. Then she said, “I have to get home, Freddie. My people will begin to worry.”

“Yeah,” Freddie said. He looked at Andy again.

“You all right?” he asked. Andy lifted his face from the sidewalk, and his eyes said, Please, please help me, and maybe Freddie read what his eyes were saying, and maybe he didn’t.

Behind him, Angela said, “Freddie, let’s get out of here! Please!” There was urgency in her voice, urgency bordering on the edge of panic. Freddie stood up. He looked at Andy again, and then mumbled, “I’m sorry,” and then he took Angela’s arm and together they ran toward the neon splash at the other end of the alley.

Why, they’re afraid of the Guardians, Andy thought in amazement. But why should they be? I wasn’t afraid of the Guardians. I never turkeyed out of a rumble with the Guardians. I got heart. But I’m bleeding.

The rain was soothing somehow. It was a cold rain, but his body was hot all over, and the rain helped to cool him. He had always liked rain. He could remember sitting in Laura’s house one time, the rain running down the windows, and just looking out over the street, watching the people running from the rain. That was when he’d first joined the Royals. He could remember how happy he was the Royals had taken him. The Royals and the Guardians, two of the biggest. He was a Royal. There had been meaning to the title.

Now, in the alley, with the cold rain washing his hot body, he wondered about the meaning. If he died, he was Andy. He was not a Royal. He was simply Andy, and he was dead. And he wondered suddenly if the Guardians who had ambushed him and knifed him had ever once realized he was Andy. Had they known that he was Andy, or had they simply known that he was a Royal wearing a purple silk jacket? Had they stabbed him, Andy, or had they only stabbed the jacket and the title, and what good was the title if you were dying?

I’m Andy, he screamed wordlessly. For Christ’s sake, I’m Andy!

An old lady stopped at the other end of the alley. The garbage cans were stacked there, beating noisily in the rain. The old lady carried an umbrella with broken ribs, carried it with all the dignity of a queen. She stepped into the mouth of the alley, a shopping bag over one arm. She lifted the lids of the garbage cans delicately, and she did not hear Andy grunt because she was a little deaf and because the rain was beating a steady relentless tattoo on the cans. She had been searching and foraging for the better part of the night. She collected her string and her newspapers, and an old hat with a feather on it from one of the garbage cans, and a broken footstool from another of the cans. And then she delicately replaced the lids and lifted her umbrella high and walked out of the alley mouth with queenly dignity. She had worked swiftly and soundlessly, and now she was gone.

The alley looked very long now. He could see people passing at the other end of it, and he wondered who the people were, and he wondered if he would ever get to know them, wondered who it was on the Guardians who had stabbed him, who had plunged the knife into his body.

“That’s for you, Royal!” the voice had said, and then the footsteps, his arms being released by the others, the fall to the pavement. “That’s for you, Royal!” Even in his pain, even as he collapsed, there had been some sort of pride in knowing he was a Royal. Now there was no pride at all. With the rain beginning to chill him, with the blood pouring steadily between his fingers, he knew only a sort of dizziness, and within the giddy dizziness, he could only think, I want to be Andy.

It was not very much to ask of the world.

He watched the world passing at the other end of the alley. The world didn’t know he was Andy. The world didn’t know he was alive. He wanted to say, “Hey, I’m alive! Hey, look at me! I’m alive! Don’t you know I’m alive? Don’t you know I exist?”

He felt weak and very tired. He felt alone and wet and feverish and chilled, and he knew he was going to die now, and the knowledge made him suddenly sad. He was not frightened. For some reason, he was not frightened. He was only filled with an overwhelming sadness that his life would be over at sixteen. He felt all at once as if he had never done anything, never seen anything, never been anywhere. There were so many things to do, and he wondered why he’d never thought of them before, wondered why the rumbles and the jumps and the purple jacket had always seemed so important to him before, and now they seemed like such small things in a world he was missing, a world that was rushing past at the other end of the alley.