Harlan Ellison - Web of the City

He took the knife out and slid the drawer shut with his knee. He stood up, holding the plastic length of it closed in his hand. It felt wrong there, not like it had felt so often in the past.

Then, it had been right. But now he felt more at home with a compass and T-square. Was he actually outgrowing this thing, through the help of the teacher, or was it all an illusion?

He still knew what he had to do.

He bent over and stuck the knife into the top of his desert boot. The gang all wore these shoes, with high, soft tops, in case they had to pack a blade. But he knew Candle carried his knife in his sleeve. So when Candle rose high to let the knife slide out, Rusty would scoop low, and come up with the knife open—gutting.

A full-body swing, straight up from the groin. Slicing heavy and cutting from crotch to navel in one movement...

He stopped himself with a mental wrenching.

Wrong, wrong, wrong! All wrong. He had to stop this. He couldn’t let himself get involved again. It was more than just disappointing Pancoast. It was more than keeping Weezee out of trouble. He suddenly realized he owed a debt to himself. If he threw himself away, he was a waste to everything. He could not get it any clearer in his mind—he knew it was all wrong to be nothing, to get nowhere—but he sensed deeply that he must try to get this stand canceled. He would even back down. Let Candle think he was a punk. It didn’t matter, just as long as he didn’t have to fight, didn’t have to kill.

For he knew in his heart that if he fought today, only one boy would come out of the rumble alive. He was determined to be that one, if they fought—but he wasn’t going to fight.

He had to see Candle. Had to stop the argument now, cold, dead, final. Now!

But the knife felt reassuring in his shoe-top.

Dolores was at the table when he came in. Ma was in front of the stove, stirring a battered pot full of cocoa. “Where were ya so late?” Rusty asked his sister.

She was a pert, slim girl, with shiny black hair pulled into a ponytail like her friends. Her eyes were very wide and very black and her lashes quite long. Yet there was an insolence about her, an invisible smirk that seemed about to show itself on her full lips.

Her body was held proudly, and she rose an inch at his question. “You didn’t show till three o’clock. Whaddaya coppin’ low at me for?”

Rusty felt anger rising in him. Since his father had taken to sleeping out—god only knew where he was vomiting and crashing tonight—he felt more and more responsible for the girl. He had gotten her in with the Cougie Cats, and he had to watch out for her. These were bad streets.

“I ast ya something. Where were ya?”

Her face grew more defiant, and she spat, “I was out with the kids.”

“What kids? Where?”

“Oh, fer Chrissakes, gawdamighty! Can’t a person lead a private life without a bunch of snoopin’—”

Rusty’s voice cut through, then was itself cut off as the tired woman at the stove smothered them both with, “Eat. It’s mornin’. Let’s not have it today. Just eat. As long as you’re both home, it don’t matter. Eat.” Her voice was colored with weariness. She hadn’t slept much, Rusty knew, waiting for him to come home. Yet she had not helped him undress.

How far apart they had grown. Again, he felt the tearing in his belly. He remembered the Spanish coin.

“It does matter,” he started again, covering his own feelings. “I don’t want ya runnin’ with that gang no more, Dolo! They’re bad medicine…”

Dolores leaped to her feet, and the chair went over with a snapping bang. “You should talk! You should talk to me. I’m so humiliated ’cause of you. I can’t live it down. They all call me the chickie’s sister. How’d you like it? I can’t get away from it. You got me so humiliated!” Her voice had risen to a shriek. “I hate you! You’re just a coward, is all! I hope Candle creams you today!”

So the word had spread in the neighborhood already.

Rusty heard the spoon his mother had been using drop to the floor with a thunk! and he turned to see her staring at him.

Her voice came out shaded with fright. “What—what’s she mean? You fightin’ today? Answer me, you gonna fight again?” Her hands were wrapped tightly in her apron and her face was the color of the sky outside—pale-sick white.

Rusty started to deny it, but Dolores yelled a vicious word, and then she was gone, flouncing out of the kitchen. A moment later he heard the front door slam and her progress bang-banging down the stairs.

What could he say to his mother?

“Answer me,” she whispered.

“Nothing, Ma. Just nothing. Don’t worry. I ain’t gonna fight.” Then he, too, was free of her. He left the dingy apartment.

But he knew he would fight. It was being called chicken. That bit deep. He had lived in the streets too long to let something like that slide away. If Candle would not see reason—the stand would come off just as planned.

He tried not to think about it.

Because the air stank with death.

rusty santoro

candle

The day went like a souped-up heap. The kids stayed away from Rusty like he was down with the blue botts. He tried to find things to do, but the scene was cold and dead.

Rusty saw Candle only once, and that was in the cafeteria. The hard-faced Prez of the Cougars was sitting at a table with Joy, feeling her up, and laughing loudly with his side-boys. They ate together. Rusty cut wide around them, for a while, and got a tray for himself. The food was the usual steam-table garbage and he only took a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a piece of apple pie and a pint of milk. He wasn’t hungry, not at all.

Finally, when he had polished off the food, he got up, leaving the tray, and turned around.

Everyone was watching him. He realized suddenly that they had been watching him all through lunch. But he had been thinking as he ate and had not noticed. Now they stared at him, and from the middle of the room he heard the derisive voice of a punk.

“Here chick-chick-chick-chick-chick! Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck… chick-chick-chick…” It went on and on, leaving the first boy, swinging to another, then pretty soon the entire room was carrying it, like a banner. The sound was a wave that washed against the shores of Rusty’s mind. It was the worst. It was a chop low like no other he’d ever heard.

He had been top man of the Cougars for so long, to have this kind of indignity pushed on him, was something frightful. He clenched his fists, and stood where he was. Customers got up quickly, most of them abandoning their trays of uneaten food, and left.

Rusty knew he had to talk to Candle now. Now was the time, because if he spent the day with that chick-chick festering in his brain, he’d fight sure as hell!

Somebody yelled, “Oooooh, Russsell! Oh, Russell, baby, do your hen imitation fer us! Go, man, go, Russell!”

He hated that name. It was the first time they’d called him that since it had been abbreviated to Rusty.

The boy stepped slowly away from the table, and walked over to Candle’s place. The Cougars’ Prez had been talking to his broad, not even looking at Rusty while the call had been going up. Now, as Rusty approached, he paid even more attention to Joy, but the three side-boys stood up slowly, their hands going into the tight pockets of their jeans. There were shanks in there, waiting to cut if Rusty made a snipe move.

Rusty stopped. “Candle.”

The boy with the almost-Mongoloid features did not look up. He had his hand clutched to the girl’s knee, and he seemed totally oblivious to what was happening behind him. But Joy’s blue eyes were up and frightened. She stared straight at Rusty and the wild excitement in her face made him sick; they all wanted kicks. They didn’t care who got nailed, so long as sparks flew and they could bathe in them. Then Candle turned carefully around. He looked up.