We All Fall Down Read online

  “Me next,” Marty said, grinning at Buddy. He was small and wiry and did not weigh much over one hundred pounds but had this big foghorn voice. “Wait your turn, Buddy.”

  The girl looked directly at him now, her eyes agonized, pleading, and Buddy drew back into the shadows. He wasn’t sick anymore. Wasn’t anything. As if he had stumbled out of his own life into another, a new existence altogether. He blinked, hugging the bottle as he would a newborn baby.

  “Jesus,” he said again, his voice a whisper.

  Suddenly, Randy howled with pain, and the girl was loose. One moment pinned to the wall, the next moment, free. Not really free but pulling away from her captors while Randy danced around, holding his hand to his mouth, sucking at it. “She bit me,” he cried in disbelief.

  “You bitch,” Harry yelled as he fell backward, tripping over his pants and shorts, which were now down around his ankles. “Get her,” he ordered in a tight, deadly voice.

  Nobody moved, not even the girl, as if they were caught in the flash of a camera’s naked bulb like a picture on the front page of a newspaper. Then: movement, swift, like fast-forward on a VCR, Randy sucking at his hand, Harry now doing his own dance as he pulled up his pants, Marty grabbing at the girl. The girl tore herself away from Marty’s grasp, gathering her torn blouse around her breasts. But she had nowhere to go, really, and ran blindly into the wall while Harry, pants pulled up at last, threw himself toward her, yelling, “Bitch.”

  Buddy saw that the girl had not run into a wall but against a door. She tried to open the door as Harry grappled toward her. Crazy: she was trying to escape into a closet. When she pulled the door open, he saw that it was not a closet but the doorway to the cellar. As the door swung open, Harry leaped toward her, grabbing at her body, his fingers raking her back. She swiveled to avoid his grasp and the movement gave Harry enough time to fling himself forward. But he did not grab her. Instead, he pushed. With both hands. Pushed at her shoulders, once, twice. The girl screamed as she fell forward down the stairs.

  Buddy closed his eyes against the sound of her falling. A long time ago, when he was a little kid, he had been in his father’s car when it struck an old man crossing the street. He had never forgotten that sound. Like no other sound in the world. Not like a bat hitting a ball or a hammer hitting a nail or a firecracker exploding or a door slamming. The sound had a hollowness in it and in this hollow place was the smaller sound that had haunted his dreams for weeks. That small sound was the sound of something human being struck. And that was the sound Buddy heard as the girl tumbled down the stairs, a series of terrible bouncings, while Harry managed to pull up his trousers and zipped his fly as if he had just finished peeing in the bathroom.

  “Let’s go, bloods,” he said.

  Harry was talking black this week.

  Later, in the car, driving from Burnside to Wickburg, Marty and Randy discussed the merits of ketchup and mustard on hamburgers and hot dogs. Marty insisted that ketchup should never be used on hot dogs while Randy said that ketchup could be used on anything because it had an American taste.

  “What do you mean—American taste?” Marty asked, disgusted, voice deep, like an old-time radio announcer’s.

  “I mean ketchup is American. Like the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving. Can you imagine a Frenchman or Italian in Europe using ketchup?”

  “How do you know? Have you ever been to Europe?”

  The argument went on and on as Buddy stared out the window at nothing in particular. He found it hard to believe that Marty and Randy were engaged in a conversation about ketchup and hamburgers and hot dogs so soon after what had happened back in that house while Harry hummed softly as he drove the car, carefully, slowly. Harry always drove slowly, loved to frustrate drivers behind him, holding his speed down to ridiculous levels, until they tried to pass and then he’d speed up gradually, until the other driver realized he was being baited.

  “All right, how about mustard?” Randy said. “Mustard works better on hot dogs. I hate it at McDonald’s when I find mustard in the hamburger.”

  “McDonald’s doesn’t put mustard in its hamburgers,” Marty said. “They put a slice of pickle in the hamburger and ketchup but no mustard.”

  “Of course they put in mustard,” Marty boomed. “Next time you’re at McDonald’s, look at the hamburger. Lift up the bun and take a look. You’ll see the hamburger and the pickle and the ketchup but look real close and you’ll see the mustard.”

  Buddy touched the Band-Aid on his cheek. The cut didn’t hurt and was not bleeding anymore. He concentrated on the street, letting the stupid argument in the backseat flow around him. At least it kept him from thinking. Thinking of that house, how he had stood there, doing nothing, while Harry raped a girl. A kid, for crying out loud.

  Silence came from the backseat now: argument over, the debate of mustard versus ketchup concluded.

  “We relax now, bloods,” Harry said suddenly, quietly. “We out of their jurisdiction now. We safe and sound.”

  Buddy pressed his lips together to keep himself from yelling: stop calling us bloods, for crissakes. Harry’s black talk was ridiculous because it was not black at all but Harry’s version of black. He liked to pretend he was a street kid, from some mythical inner city instead of the son of a prominent architect. Harry was probably the whitest kid Buddy knew. Blond, wore white painter’s pants, white socks, white Nikes.

  “You did good, real fine, bloods,” Harry said. “Followed orders nice.” The only order Harry had given: Don’t break any windows. “Nice, nice.” Still talking his version of black. Last week, he had affected a British accent after seeing an old movie on cable about British soldiers in India. He had pronounced it “Injia.”

  No one had mentioned the house and the rape since they fled the place. When they stopped at Jedson Park where they cleaned up at the fountain, Buddy had studied the faces of the others, glancing at them cautiously. Their actions were calm and deliberate as they splashed their faces with water. Marty brushed an invisible spot of dirt from his suede flight jacket. The jacket looked old but was new, three hundred dollars’ worth of new. Buddy knew how much the jacket cost because Marty put price tags on everything. Randy’s jeans also looked old but were new. We pay a lot of money to make things look old, Buddy thought. Harry Flowers was meticulous as usual. Spotlessly clean. Blond hair so neat that it seemed like a wig. Handsome face unblemished, serene as he washed his hands.

  Back in the car, Marty and Randy had begun their ridiculous conversation about hamburgers and hot dogs and then fallen into silence. Nobody in the car seemed to mind the silence except Buddy.

  Finally he asked: “Why’d you pick that particular house, Harry?” He had other, more important questions to ask but had to begin somewhere.

  “Dumb luck, blood.”

  Blood again.

  “Not dumb, smart,” Randy called from the backseat.

  Randy Pierce followed Harry around school like a big overgrown pet, an invisible tail wagging every time Harry paid him the least attention. Marty Sanders was a smaller version of Harry Flowers, thin and wiry, trying always to be cool but betrayed by a sharp tongue, the tendency to come up with a wisecrack to fit any situation. The first time he saw Randy and Marty together, Buddy flashed back to an old movie on television: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Marty was clearly Abbott, the sharp guy, the agitator, while Randy was Costello, the buffoon, overweight, often looking bewildered. Glancing at Harry now as he turned onto North Boulevard, he decided that Harry was Frankenstein, the doctor who created the monster.

  Who is the monster then? Buddy wondered. Remembering his part in the vandalism and his inability to stop what they had done to the girl, he thought: Maybe it’s me. But I am not a monster. Or is that what all the monsters said?

  “We shouldn’t have left the girl like that,” Buddy heard himself saying.

  “What did you say?” Harry’s voice crackled as he brought the car slowly to a halt under a streetlight, the kind of l
ight that casts a ghastly glow on people’s faces. Harry’s face was stark and purple as he turned to Buddy.

  “Listen carefully, Buddy,” he said, all traces of black gone from his voice. “You wanted fun, we had some fun …”

  “That wasn’t fun,” Buddy said. “Raping a girl, for crissakes.” How he could use a drink, wishing now he had not abandoned that vodka bottle at the girl’s house.

  “You jealous?” Marty piped up from the backseat.

  “She wasn’t raped,” Harry said. “We didn’t have time to rape her. Didn’t even get her nice little white panties off.”

  “But you pushed her down the stairs,” Buddy said, hearing Harry’s intake of breath, wondering if he had gone too far.

  “Maybe I was trying to grab her and save her from falling,” Harry said, his voice suddenly mild and reasonable. “Maybe it only looked like I pushed her. What do they say, Buddy? Looks are deceiving.”

  Although his voice was mild, it contained an undertone Buddy could not pin down. His eyes were dark and piercing as he looked at Buddy. All of which made Buddy shiver inside, realizing that Harry somehow was giving him a message, telling him what to believe.

  “Maybe we weren’t even going to rape the poor girl,” Harry continued. “Just having a little fun with her. She shouldn’t have been there in the first place …”

  But it was her house, Buddy wanted to say. We were the ones who shouldn’t have been there in the first place. He didn’t say anything, held by Harry’s eyes. Hated himself for not saying anything but still said nothing.

  “Accidents happen,” Harry said, leaning toward Buddy, his breath heavy with stale booze. “Understand, Buddy?”

  Buddy nodded, eager to end the conversation, eager for Harry to turn away, eager to get away from him.

  “Say you understand, Buddy.”

  Buddy was conscious of the silence in the backseat, as if Marty and Randy were holding their breaths. Or waiting to take action if Harry gave a signal.

  “I understand,” Buddy said, his need for a drink so overwhelming that his hands trembled and he dropped them out of sight of the streetlight.

  Harry smiled, turned away, and grabbed the steering wheel, his foot depressing the accelerator. The tires sprayed gravel behind them. More silence from the backseat. After a while, Harry looked over at Buddy. And smiled. A forgiving smile. He hit Buddy playfully on the shoulder.

  “You did good tonight, blood,” he said. Black again.

  Christ, Buddy thought, how did I get mixed up in all this?

  Although, he knew, of course, the answer to that question.

  The problem with being an eleven-year-old Avenger was just that: being eleven years old and an Avenger. It would have been easier if he were older, like fifteen or sixteen, or old enough to have a driver’s license so that he could zoom around easier. He had to depend on his bike, a rickety three-speeder his mother bought him secondhand. He also had to depend on his ingenuity and, of course, his patience. Patience was the watchword, his mother always said, and she should know, she was the most patient person in the world. Washing, scrubbing, dusting. She kept missing her favorite TV shows because there was always something else for her to do around the house. Sewing, cooking, ironing, scrubbing, dusting.

  The Avenger had other problems. His shyness, for instance. He was not shy when he was The Avenger, carrying out his acts of revenge. But in the classroom or in the schoolyard, he found it difficult to make friends, to be at ease with the other students. When called upon to recite in class, he blushed furiously, his throat tightening and his voice emerging in a ridiculous squeak. Which made Vaughn Masterson snicker. Vaughn Masterson spent the day snickering. When kids answered questions or went to the blackboard, or received good marks in a test. The Avenger realized finally that Vaughn snickered because he was jealous. And dumb. D-U-M-B. In capital letters. Cheated when he could. Tried to sneak glances at The Avenger’s test papers because The Avenger always received good marks, A’s most of the time. Vaughn Masterson sat behind him and poked him in the back. That was mild compared to what he did to the other kids. Took their lunch bags and squished the sandwiches in his hands and threw them to the ground. He would have had some respect for Vaughn Masterson if, for instance, he had eaten the stolen lunches instead of destroying them and humiliating the kids he took them from. Like little Danny Davis, whom Vaughn enjoyed tormenting, day after day. Tripping him, pulling his shirt out of his pants, tweaking his cheeks. Especially in front of the girls. Making fun of Danny Davis while everybody giggled and those who didn’t giggle turned away in embarrassment, feeling guilty because they didn’t stand up to him. Why didn’t they stand up to him? Vaughn wasn’t that much bigger than anyone else in the fifth grade. But he carried a powerful air with him as he strutted through the schoolyard, a faint smile on his face as if he found the world an amusing place to be.

  After observing Vaughn Masterson doing his dirty work for several weeks, The Avenger knew that something had to be done. He planned his course of action. He was good at planning. His mother called it daydreaming—you’ll dream your life away, she’d say. In those daydreams, he was brave and daring, reckless and adventurous. He dreamed about what he would do to Vaughn Masterson. And how he would do it. He had to be patient, of course, had to wait for the proper conditions, one of the conditions being that it was necessary to obtain the means. And, after obtaining the means, would have to wait awhile—patience again—to let things cool down.

  Finally, all the conditions were right and he carried out his scheme. On that particular day, he followed Vaughn home from school. Did not ride his bike, but walked. Did not really walk but scampered behind Vaughn, hiding behind bushes and trees, thrilling, like the movies. When Vaughn arrived home, The Avenger waited across the street, concealing himself in a gazebo on the front lawn. He had noticed the gazebo on an earlier expedition to Vaughn’s street. He had observed several other things. That Vaughn Masterson was alone in the afternoon, his parents off working somewhere. The house with the gazebo also was unoccupied in the afternoon. Vaughn would stay in his house for a half hour or so, changing his clothes, having a bite to eat in the kitchen. The Avenger had employed his skills at spying to learn Vaughn’s routine.

  Finally, Vaughn came out of the house, chewing the last remnants of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He had changed into jeans and a faded yellow shirt, his stomach bulging slightly at his belt. Made his way lazily down the steps to the back of the house where, if he followed his usual routine, he would open the garage door and fool around inside for a while. That’s exactly what he did now.

  The Avenger crossed the street, looking this way and that, to see if anyone was watching. Except for a stray dog sniffing at a car down at the corner, the street was deserted.

  Standing a few feet in front of the garage, The Avenger called out: “Hey, Vaughn, how’re you doing?”

  Vaughn emerged from the garage, squinting into the sun, looking annoyed.

  “What do you want?” he said, sneering, that you snapping with contempt.

  “This,” The Avenger said, smiling.

  From his book bag he removed the revolver he had stolen from his grandfather. Kneeling, he held the revolver with both hands and pressed the trigger. The lower half of Vaughn’s face exploded in bone and blood as the bullet struck. The noise of the shot was deafening and the recoil of the gun sent The Avenger sprawling backward. He fell on his behind, on the hard pavement, pain shooting along his spinal column.

  As the echo of the shot faded in the afternoon, The Avenger scrambled to his feet. The smell of sulfur filled the air. His breath came in short gasps as he looked around, listening for neighborhood sounds. All was quiet. Nobody in sight. The dog down the street was gone.

  Ignoring the blood and the shattered face, and the pain in his spine, The Avenger went about his business as planned, heart hammering dangerously in his chest. He wiped the handle of the revolver with a piece of Kleenex. The hardest part was placing the revolver i
n Vaughn’s left hand—The Avenger had noticed in school that he was left-handed—and curling Vaughn’s index finger around the trigger. He then let the revolver fall out of Vaughn’s hand and clatter to the pavement. Just as he had seen it done on television.

  Squinting, he looked down at the bloody fallen figure. Vaughn Masterson lay there in a ghastly kind of stillness. A thing, suddenly. He would not bully anyone again, and the kids in the fifth grade of Lucy Peary Elementary School could now go about their business in peace.

  The Avenger smiled his smile of vengeance as he picked up his book bag, slung it over his shoulder, and went home. He arrived in time to share with his mother their usual afternoon snack of ice-cold milk and molasses cookies.

  Pink. Bright, cool like a Popsicle. That was the color this year. The color she and Patti and Leslie had chosen as their motif. They had also decided to be subtle about it, not going wild but using pink in their accessories, alternating between necklaces, bracelets, and earrings. Pink tank tops, a touch of pink in their attire. Also pink thoughts. Which meant not hot. To play it cool with guys. They also used pink as a code word. But the word changed to suit the situation. Like with Johnny Taylor. Leslie was pink about him. And Patti would giggle, she was a giggler, giggles like bubbles gurgling out of her at the least provocation, which drove some people crazy but not Jane and not Leslie. Best friends put up with such things.

  Pink united them in a secret alliance, their use of the word puzzling to others but drawing them together. Leslie, for instance, was the lady of Burnside High, always dressed up like Sunday, fussy with her hair and makeup. Yet, she had this crazy side to her that only Patti and Jane knew about. “Pink him,” Leslie would cry out when angry momentarily with some guy. And they all laughed and giggled, knowing the word that Leslie had used pink for as a substitute.

  Although blue was Jane’s favorite color, she went along with the pink delirium, glad to do so because she loved Patti and Leslie, would do anything for them, anything at all, and they felt the same about her.