It

or not. So the bully would wait until the grownup had turned the corner . . . and then go back to business as usual. It was like adults thought that real life only started when a person was five feet tall.
If Henry had gone after some old lady, he had gone above that sight-line. And that more than anything else suggested to Ben that he really was crazy.
Beverly saw the belief ni Ben’s face and felt relief sweep over her. She would not have to tell him about how Mr Ross had simply folded his paper and walked into his house. She didn’t want to tell him about that. It was too scary.
‘Let’s go up to Kansas Street,’ Ben said, and abruptly pushed open the trapdoor. ‘Get ready to run.’
He stood up in the opening and looked around. The clearing was silent. He could hear the chuckling voice of the Kenduskeag close by, birdsong, the thum-thud-thum-thud of a diesel engine snorting it s way into the trainyards. He heard nothing else and that made him uneasy. He would have felt much better if he’d heard Henry, Victor, and Belch cursing their way through the neavy undergrowth down by the stream. But he couldn’t hear them at all.
Come on,’ he said, and helped Beverly up. She also looked around uneasily, brushing her hair back with her hands and grimacing at its greasy feel.
He took her hand and they pushed through a screen of bushes toward Kansas Street. ‘We’d better stay off the path.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘we’ve got to hurry.’
He nodded. ‘All right.’
They got to the path and started toward Kansas Street. Once she stumbled over a rock in the path and
7
The Seminary Grounds / 2:17 A.M.
fell heavily on the moon-silvered sidewalk. A grunt was forced out of him, and a runner of blood came with the grunt, splatting on the cracked concrete. In the moonlight it looked as black as beetle –blood. Henry looked at it for a long dazed moment, then raised his head to look around.
Kansas Street was early-morning silent, the houses shut up and dark except for a scatter of nightlights.
Ah. Here was a sewer-grate.
A balloon with a smiley-smile face was tied to one of its iron bars. It bobbed and dipped in the faint breeze.
Henry got to his feet again, one sticky hand pressed to his belly. The nigger had stuck him pretty good, but Henry had gone him one better. Yessir. As far as the nigger was concerned, Henry felt like he was pretty much okey-dokey.
‘Kid’s a gone goose,’ Henry muttered, and made his shaky staggering way past the floating balloon. Fresh blood glimmered on his hand as it continued to flow from his stomach. ‘Kid’s all done. Greased the sucker. Gonna grease them all. Teach them to throw rocks.’
The world was coming in slow-rolling waves, big combers like the ones they used to show at the beginning of every Hawaii Five– O episode on the ward TV
(book em Danno, ha-ha Jack Fuckin Lord okay. Jack Fuckin Lord was pretty much okey-dokey)
and Henry could Henry could Henry could almost
(hear the sound those Oahu big boys make as they rise curl and shake
(shakeshakeskake
(the reality of the world. ‘Pipeline.’ Chantays. Remember ‘Pipeline’? ‘Pipeline’ was pretty much okey-dokey. ‘Wipe-Out.’ Crazy laugh there at the start. Sounded like Patrick Hockstetter. Fucking queerboy. Got greased himself and as far as I)
he was concerned that was a
(fuck of a lot better than okey-dokey, that was just FINE, that was JUST AS FINE AS PAINT
(okay Pip eline shoot the line don’t back down not my boys catch a wave and
(shoot
(shootshootshoot
(a wave and go sidewalk surfin with me shoot
(the line shoot the world but keep)
an ear inside his head: it kept hearing that k a-spanggg sound; an eye inside his head: it kept seeing Victor’s head rising on the end of that spring, eyelids and cheeks and forehead tattooed with rosettes of blood.
Henry looked blearily