Стивен Кинг - If It Bleeds

Margie called Dad and told him to come pick us up. He said something. Margie listened, then said, “Well, there was a little trouble.” Listened some more. “Um… well…”

Billy took the phone. “He got beat up, but he’s okay.” Listened and held out the phone. “He wants to talk to you.”

Of course he did, and after asking if I was all right, he wanted to know who had done it. I said I didn’t know, but thought it was a high school kid who might’ve been trying to crash the dance. “I’m all right, Dad. Let’s not make a big deal of this, okay?”

He said it was a big deal. I said it wasn’t. He said it was. We went around like that, then he sighed and said he’d be there as fast as he could. I ended the call.

Ms. Hargensen said, “I’m not supposed to dispense anything for pain, only the school nurse can do that, and only then with parental permission, but she’s not here, so…” She grabbed her purse, which was hanging on a hook with her coat, and peered inside. “Are any of you kids going to tell on me, and maybe cause me to lose my job?”

My three friends shook their heads. So did I, but gingerly. Kenny had caught me with a pretty good roundhouse to the left temple. I hoped the bullying bastard had hurt his hand.

Ms. Hargensen brought out a little bottle of Aleve. “My private stock. Billy, get him some water.”

Billy brought me a Dixie cup. I swallowed the pill and felt better immediately. Such is the power of suggestion, especially when the one doing the suggesting is a gorgeous young woman.

“You three, make like bees and buzz,” Ms. Hargensen said. “Billy, go in the gym and tell Mr. Taylor I’ll be back in ten minutes. Girls, go outside and wait for Craig’s father. Wave him over to the staff door.”

They went. Ms. Hargensen leaned over me, close enough so I could smell her perfume, which was wonderful. I fell in love with her. I knew it was sappy but couldn’t help it. She held up two fingers. “Please tell me you don’t see three or four.”

“No, just two.”

“Okay.” She straightened up. “Was it Yanko? It was, wasn’t it?”

“No.”

“Do I look stupid? Tell me the truth.”

How she looked was beautiful, but I could hardly say that. “No, you don’t look stupid, but it wasn’t Kenny. Which is good. Because, see, if it was him, I bet he’d get arrested, because he’s already expelled. Then there’d be a trial and I’d have to go in court and tell how he beat me up. Everyone would know. Think how embarrassing that would be.”

“And if he beats somebody else up?”

I thought of Mr. Harrigan then—channeled him, you could even say. “That’s their problem. All I care is that he’s done with me.”

She tried to scowl. Her lips curved in a big smile instead, and I fell more in love with her than ever. “That’s cold.”

“I just want to get along,” I said. Which was the God’s honest truth.

“You know what, Craig? I think you will.”

When my dad got there, he looked me over and complimented Ms. Hargensen on her work.

“I was a prizefight cut-man in my last life,” she said. That made him laugh. Neither of them suggested a trip to the emergency room, which was a relief.

Dad took the four of us home, so we missed the second half of the dance, but none of us minded. Billy, Margie, and Regina had had an experience more interesting than waving their hands in the air to Beyoncé and Jay-Z. As for me, I kept reliving the satisfying shock that had gone up my arm when my fist connected with Kenny Yanko’s eye. It was going to leave a splendid shiner, and I wondered how he’d explain it. Duh, I ran into a door. Duh, I ran into a wall. Duh, I was jerking off and my hand slipped .

When we were back at the house, Dad asked me again if I knew who had done it. I said I didn’t.

“Not sure I believe that, son.”

I said nothing.

“You just want to let this go? Is that what I’m hearing?”

I nodded.

“All right.” He sighed. “I guess I get it. I was young once myself. That’s a thing parents always tell their kids sooner or later, but I doubt if any of them believe it.”

“I believe it,” I said, and I did, although it was amusing to visualize my father as a five-foot-five shrimpsqueak back in the age of landlines.

“Tell me one thing, at least. Your mother would be mad at me for even asking, but since she’s not here… did you hit him back?”

“Yes. Only once, but it was a good one.”

That made him grin. “Okay. But you need to understand that if he comes after you again, it’s going to be a police matter. Are we clear?”

I said we were.

“Your teacher—I like her—said I should keep you up at least an hour and make sure you don’t go all woozy. Want a piece of pie?”

“Sure.”

“Cup of tea to go with it?”

“Absolutely.”

So we had pie and big mugs of tea and Dad told me stories that weren’t about party telephone lines, or going to a one-room school where there was just a woodstove for heat, or TVs that only got the three stations (and none at all if the wind blew down the roof antenna). He told me about how he and Roy DeWitt found some fireworks in Roy’s cellar and when they shot them off one went into Frank Driscoll’s kindling box and set it on fire and Frank Driscoll said if they didn’t cut him a cord of wood, he’d tell their parents. He told me about how his mother overheard him call old Philly Loubird from Shiloh Church Big Chief Wampum and washed his mouth out with soap, ignoring his promises to never say anything like that again. He told me about fights at the Auburn Rollodrome—rumbles, he called them—where the kids from Lisbon High and those from Edward Little, Dad’s school, got into it just about every Friday night. He told me about getting his bathing suit pulled off by a couple of big kids at White’s Beach (“I walked home with my towel wrapped around me”), and the time some kid chased him down Carbine Street in Castle Rock with a baseball bat (“He said I put a hickey on his sister, which I never did”).

He really had been young once.

I went upstairs to my room feeling good, but the Aleve Ms. Hargensen had given me was wearing off, and by the time I got undressed, the good feeling was wearing off with it. I was pretty sure Kenny Yanko wouldn’t come back on me, but not positive. What if his friends started getting on his case about the shiner? Teasing him about it? Laughing about it, even? What if he got pissed and decided Round 2 was in order? If that happened, I would most likely not even get in one good blow; the shot to his eye had been kind of a sucker punch, after all. He could put me in the hospital, or worse.

I washed my face (very gently), brushed my teeth, got into bed, turned off the light, and then just lay there, reliving what had happened. The shock of being grabbed from behind and shoved down the hallway. Being punched in the chest. Being punched in the mouth. Telling my legs to hold me up and my legs saying maybe later .

Once I was in the dark, it seemed more and more likely that Kenny wasn’t done with me. Logical, even, the way things lots crazier than that can seem logical when it’s dark and you’re alone.

So I turned on the light again and called Mr. Harrigan.

I never expected to hear his voice, I only wanted to pretend I was talking to him. What I expected was silence, or a recorded message telling me the number I’d called was no longer in service. I’d slipped his phone into the pocket of his burial suit three months previous, and those first iPhones had a battery life of only 250 hours, even in standby mode. Which meant that phone had to be as dead as he was.