Susan Hinton - Rumble Fish

He let out all the animals and was on his way to the river with the Siamese fighting fish when I heard the siren. I was wiping my eyes and trying to quit shaking. I ran for the door. There seemed to be thousands of red flashing lights in the street. Doors were slamming and people were shouting. I had started for the bridge when I heard the shots.

They tell me there was a warning shot. How did they expect him to hear a warning shot when everybody knew he was deaf half the time? The man who shot him knew it. I was at a dead run at the first shot, and almost to the river by the second. So I was there when they turned him over, and he was smiling, and the little rumble fish were flipping and dying around him, still too far from the river.

I don’t remember what happened just after that. The next thing I knew I was thrown up against the police car and frisked. I stared straight ahead at the flashing light. There was something wrong with it. There was something really wrong with it. I was scared to think about what was wrong with it, but I knew, anyway. It was gray. It was supposed to be flashing red and white and it was gray. I looked all around. There wasn’t any colors anywhere. Everything was black and white and gray. It was as quiet as a graveyard.

I stared around wildly at the growing crowd, the police cars, wondering why it was all so silent. It didn’t look quiet. It looked like TV with the sound off.

“Can you hear me?” I shouted at the policeman next to me. He was busy with his report and didn’t even look up. I couldn’t hear my own voice. I tried screaming and I still couldn’t hear it. I was that alone. I was in a glass bubble and everyone else was outside it and I’d be alone like that for the rest of my life.

Then a pain sliced through my head and the colors were back. The noise was deafening and I was shaking because I was still alone.

“Better get this kid to a hospital,” I heard a policeman say. “I think he’s in shock or something.”

“Shock, hell,” somebody replied. I recognized the voice — Patterson. “He’s probably on dope or something.”

About that time I slammed both fists through the police car window, and slashed my wrists on the glass that was left, so they had to take me to the hospital anyway.

“I never went back,” Steve was saying. “Did you?”

“No,” I said. The sun was shining warm on the sand, and the waves kept coming in, one after another.

“I made up my mind I’d get out of that place and I did,” Steve went on. “I learned that. I learned that if you want to get somewhere, you just make up your mind and work like hell till you get there. If you want to go somewhere in life you just have to work till you make it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’ll be nice when I can think of someplace to go.”

“Come on. Let’s go over to the Sugar Shack and I’ll buy you a beer.”

“I got dried out in the reformatory. Lost my taste for it.”

“No kidding? Good for you. I used to worry about that, I remember. I was afraid you’d end up like your father.”

“Not me.”

“Well, we’ll get together for dinner tonight and really go over the good old days. Sometimes I can’t believe I’ve come so far.”

I looked out at the ocean. I liked that ocean. You always knew there was going to be another wave. It had always been there, and more than likely it always would. I got to listening to the sound of the waves and didn’t hear Steve for a second.

“…right about that. I never thought you would, but you do. You don’t sound like him, though. Your voice is completely different. It’s a good thing you never went back. You’d probably give half the people in the neighborhood a heart attack.”

I looked at Steve again. It was like seeing the ghost of somebody you knew a long time ago. When he started off across the sand, he turned and waved and shouted, “I still can’t believe it! See ya!”

I waved back. I wasn’t going to see him. I wasn’t going to meet him for dinner, or anything else. I figured if I didn’t see him, I’d start forgetting again. But it’s been taking me longer than I thought it would.