Peter Abrahams - Crying Wolf

The smaller big boy spun halfway around from the force of the missed blow. Freedy kicked him good and hard behind the knee; weak spot on most everybody. Freedy heard a cracking sound-that Thanksgiving sound, he felt like a kid again-and the smaller big boy went down.

Bit of a surprise at that point. The bigger big boy turned out to be just as quick as the smaller one, maybe quicker. He actually connected with the tire iron, actually made Freedy feel pain, shoulder temporarily out of service, maybe the arm too. Someone shouted: might have been Freedy. Then the big boy was on him, like a house. Three hundred pounds or more, saliva slobbering down, some growling: disgusting. Three hundred pounds on top, Freedy on the bottom, one arm not in tip-top shape. Oh, yeah: and the tire iron raised up high, cocked back, now coming down at his head. But what was this? Freedy felt something funny under his hand-left hand, but that was the only one working at the moment-almost as though some angel had put it there. His fingers closed around it-the goddamn KFC chicken bone, dropped by Saul, pig that he was, and gnawed on a bit. One end could almost be called sharp. That was the end that Freedy jabbed up with, up and up with his kind of quick, right up the nose of the bigger big boy, way, way up. The bigger big boy stopped whatever he was doing at that moment, whatever he was doing consciously. The tire iron left his hand, flew across the room, crashed into something; the bigger big boy fell on Freedy, lay there still.

The boys didn’t have it, not what it takes inside.

Problem was, while Freedy struggled to get out from under all that weight, he forgot about the one other guy in the room besides him who did have it inside, who was a fuckin’ leg breaker, as he should have kept in mind the whole time. Just because a guy is old and scrawny and has that sickening hair growing on the top of his nose doesn’t mean he hasn’t got it.

Saul Medeiros kicked him real hard in the balls. The look on his face when he did it was the genuine fuckin’ leg-breaker look. All the air left Freedy’s lungs, and there was no hope of getting more anytime soon. Uncle Saul reared back to give him another one. He wore filthy, oil-stained shit-kickers, what you’d expect down at the wreckers.

But at that moment, when things didn’t look so good, Ronnie came through for him. He sat up, squinting, and said, “Can somebody close the goddamn shade?”

Saul glanced at him, an expression on his face that might have amused Freedy at some other time. A glance that lasted for a second or less, but enough time for Freedy to dig down deep, start a sideways turn, lash out with his top leg. Not a hard lashing out, not hard for Freedy, but Saul was old and scrawny. He fell without any resistance Freedy could feel.

Saul started scrambling to get up. Freedy, still needing that breath, a little sore here and there, started getting up too, but slow, like Superman exposed to whatever that stuff was, k — something. Slow for Freedy and scrambling for Saul turned out to be about the same. Saul had a sharp, shiny hooked thing in his hand, something from the yard Freedy didn’t even know the name of. Didn’t matter. That nose with the hair growing on top? Freedy flattened it with one punch, a left hand by necessity, flattened it flush into the rest of Saul’s mean little face.

That left Saul and the bigger big boy motionless on Ronnie’s floor, the smaller big boy crawling on his belly toward the door making moaning sounds, Ronnie sitting up in bed, his room a mess.

“Hold it right there,” Freedy said to the smaller big boy.

“Don’t,” he said, and kept moving.

Freedy went over to him, bent down.

“Don’t,” said the smaller big boy.

“What are you going to do about it?” said Freedy, and he tore that black satin jacket with the gold letters and the gold crest right off the smaller big boy’s back.

Freedy walked over to the bedside, putting on the jacket, not easily because of his right arm. He looked down at Ronnie. Ronnie squinted up at him.

“Freedy?”

“Yeah?”

“Mind getting me a glass of water?”

“Guess not.”

Freedy stepped over the smaller big boy and went down the hall.

“And maybe a couple aspirin,” Ronnie called after him. “In the drawer by the sink.”

Freedy came back with water and two aspirin in his hand. Ronnie took the aspirin off his open palm, gulped them down.

“Ronnie?”

“Yeah?”

“Call it even, right?”

Ronnie nodded, winced, stopped nodding.

Down in Ronnie’s basement, on his way out, Freedy had a moment of… not weakness, more like he was tired for a second, what with missing a night’s sleep and all. He sat down on the bench, the padded bench they used for presses, and swallowed an andro. What was this? Three left? As for the meth, he had enough for about that many hits in the Baggie in his pocket, the main supply stowed under his bed in the “Little Boy” room. The question: was this the time to go back and get it? Saul had said he hadn’t called the cops and Freedy believed him. You could say what you liked about Saul Medeiros, but he was true to his word. That meant it was some pot deal of his mother’s, nothing to do with him. So it was safe to go back and get it, right?

Or wrong. Freedy couldn’t make up his mind, which was weird. Just fatigue, probably, and his right arm dangling like that. Good time for a tweak, in fact. What was he thinking of?

Freedy used up a little of his meth, had an idea immediately. Why not call and find out? Ronnie’s cordless lay right there on the stereo. Freedy dialed the number.

“Hello?” said his mother.

“Hi,” said Freedy.

She lowered her voice. “What happened in California?”

She’d mixed it all up. “Happened? I told you to say I’d gone back there, that’s all.”

She spoke faster. “I did. But they’re saying they’ve got a war-”

In the background a man said, “Who is that?”

The line went dead.

Something happened in California? Not that he was aware of. She’d mixed it all up: no surprise there, her head full of smoke, year after year. Still, probably not a pot thing in this case, so it wasn’t safe to go home yet. When would it be? What about the money she’d promised, the ten grand, plus travel expenses? She ruined everything. He pounded the bench, in his frustration forgetting and using his right hand. Made the shoulder, the arm feel a little better, actually.

What now? He needed to sleep, to rest, to sort things out. Where? Only one place he could think of.

Freedy popped up the vent hood behind the hockey rink. He heard sirens down in the flats. Not unusual. He glanced around; no one in sight, nothing to see but his own footprints, leading right to him across the snowy playing fields. What could he do about that? Nothing.

But maybe he wouldn’t have to. As he watched, the sky, already dark for even a cloudy day, darkened more, and the first flakes started falling. The wind picked up. Snow and wind would take care of the footprints for him, like nature was on his side. Luck, on this lucky day, was still with him. One or two more breaks and he’d be golden.

The aquarium was missing. They were sitting in the twins’ room on the third floor of Lanark, Nat at one of the desks, Izzie on Grace’s bed. Outside, the sky, a morning sky but dark, darkened more, and a few flakes began falling, almost invisible in the weak light.