Susan Hinton - Rumble Fish

“Hey,” I said. “What’s up?”

He didn’t even look at me. I pretended to be interested in the fish. I mean, they were pretty and everything, as far as fish go.

“How come they each have a bowl to themselves?” I asked. “I never seen pet fish kept one to a bowl.”

“Rumble fish,” said the Motorcycle Boy. “They’d kill each other if they could.”

I looked at Mr. Dobson behind the counter. He was a nice old guy, a little nuts to keep trying to run the pet store, since all he had were some scroungy puppies and kittens and a parrot that he couldn’t sell because we’d taught it all the bad words we knew. That parrot could come up with some interesting sentences. Mr. Dobson looked worried. I wondered how long the Motorcycle Boy had been in there, to scare Mr. Dobson that much.

“That’s right, Rusty-James,” he told me. “Siamese fighting fish. They try to kill each other. If you leaned a mirror against the bowl they’d kill themselves fighting their own reflection.”

“That’s really neat,” I said, even though I didn’t think it was really neat.

“Wonder if they’d act that way in the river,” the Motorcycle Boy went on.

“Nice colors,” I said, trying to keep up the conversation. I had never seen the Motorcycle Boy look so hard at anything. I thought Mr. Dobson was going to call the cops if I didn’t get him out of there.

“Yeah?” he said. “That makes me kind of sorry I can’t see colors.”

It was the first time I’d ever heard him say he was sorry about anything.

“Hey,” I said. “Let’s go boppin’ around again tonight. I can get some more wine. We can get some chicks and have a really nice time, huh?”

He went deaf again and didn’t hear me. That pet store gave me the creeps, with all those little animals waiting around to belong to somebody. But I stayed there anyway, fooling around until Mr. Dobson said he was closing up. The next day was Saturday, the closest thing to a busy day he ever had, so he closed up and just left the animals there. The Motorcycle Boy stood outside, watching Mr. Dobson close up, until the shades were pulled down over the windows and the door.

And when he finally left the place, I followed him the best I could, even though he didn’t even see me anymore. It seemed like the only thing I had left to do.

We went home. The Motorcycle Boy sat on the mattress and read a book. I sat next to him and smoked one cigarette after another. He sat there reading and I sat there waiting. I didn’t know what I was waiting for. About three years before, a doped-up member of the Tiber Street Tigers had wandered over onto Packer territory and got beat up and crawled back. I remember waiting around in a funny state of tenseness, like seeing lightning and waiting for thunder. That was the night of the last rumble, when Bill Braden died from a bashed-in head. I’d been sliced up real bad by a Tiger with a kitchen knife, and the Motorcycle Boy had sent at least three guys to the hospital, laughing out loud right in the middle of the whole mess of screaming, swearing, grunting, fighting people.

I’d forgotten about that. Sitting there reminded me. It was much harder to wait than to fight.

“Both home again?” The old man came in the door. He liked to stop in and change his shirt before he went out to the bars for the night. It didn’t matter that the one he changed into was usually as dirty as the one he took off. It was just something he liked to do.

“I want to ask you somethin’,” I said.

“Yes?”

“Was — is — our mother nuts?”

The old man stopped right where he was and stared at me, amazed. I had never asked him a thing about her.

“No. Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Well, she left, didn’t she?”

He smiled slowly. “Our marriage was a classic example of a preacher marrying an atheist, thinking to make a convert, and instead ending up doubting his own faith.”

“Don’t give me that,” I said. “You was never a preacher.”

“I was a practitioner of the law.”

“Say yes or no, willya?”

“You don’t suppose a woman would have to be nuts to leave me, do you?” He just stood there, smiling at me, looking through me like the Motorcycle Boy did. It was the first time I ever saw any resemblance between them. “I married her, thinking to set a precedent. She married me for fun, and when it stopped being fun she left.”

And honest to God, that was the first time I came anywhere near to understanding my father. It was the first time I saw him as a person, with a past that didn’t have anything to do with me. You never think of parents having any kind of a past before you were there.

“Russel-James,” he went on, “every now and then a person comes along who has a different view of the world than does the usual person. Notice I said ‘usual,’ not normal.’ That does not make him crazy. An acute perception does not make you crazy. However, sometimes it drives you crazy.”

“Talk normal,” I begged him. “You know I don’t understand that garbage.”

“Your mother,” he said distinctly, “is not crazy. Neither, contrary to popular belief, is your brother. He is merely miscast in a play. He would have made a perfect knight, in a different century, or a very good pagan prince in a time of heroes. He was born in the wrong era, on the wrong side of the river, with the ability to do anything and finding nothing he wants to do.”

I looked at the Motorcycle Boy to see what he thought. He hadn’t heard a word of it.

And even though I didn’t have much hope that the old man could tell me something in plain English, I had to ask him something else.

“I think that I’m gonna look just like him when I get older. Whadd’ya think?”

My father looked at me for a long moment, longer than he’d ever looked at me. But still, it was like he was seeing somebody else’s kid, not seeing anybody that had anything to do with him.

“You better pray to God not.” His voice was full of pity. “You poor child,” he said. “You poor baby.”

The Motorcycle Boy broke into the pet store that night. I was with him. He didn’t ask me along. I just went.

“Look, you need some money? I’ll get you some money,” I said desperately. I knew he didn’t need any money. I just couldn’t think of any other reason for what he was doing.

“Anyway…” I kept on talking, saying anything so I couldn’t feel the deadly silence,“…if you want money, liquor stores are the best bet.”

I stood there, zipping my jacket zipper up and down, wiping the sweat off my hands on my jeans, watching him jimmy the lock of the back door, waiting for something terrible to happen.

“Listen,” I said again, “everybody saw you hangin’ around here today, like you was casing the place. And a million people musta seen you comin’ here. Will you listen to me!” My voice cracked upwards, like it had a year ago when it was changing.

The Motorcycle Boy had the lock on the back door jimmied and he went on in. He turned on the light in the stockroom.

“What are you doin’?” I nearly screamed. “You want the whole neighborhood to know?”

He stood there for a second in the bright glare of the light. He looked calm, his face as still as a statue. He was seeing something I couldn’t see. But my father was right, he wasn’t crazy.

I watched him let out all the animals. I made one move to stop him but changed my mind, and after that I just leaned against the counter and watched. I had to lean; my knees were shaking so bad I could barely stand up. I was more scared than I had ever been in my life. I was so scared I dropped my head down on the counter and cried for the first time I could remember. Crying hurts like hell.