11/22/63

He grinned. It was an unsettling expression on that pale, sweaty, stubbly face. “Ole Chazzy ran like hell, but they caught up with him. There was a ravine about twenty yards past the goalposts at the south end of the field, and they pushed him down into it. Would you be s’prized to know that Frankie Dunning was one of em?”

I shook my head.

“They got him down in there, and they pantsed him. Then they started pushin him around and takin smacks at him. I yelled for em to quit it, and one of em looks up at me and yells, ‘Come on down and make us, fuckface. We’ll give you double what we’re givin him.’ So I ran for the locker room and told some of the football players that a bunch of yeggs were bullyin up on a kid and maybe they wanted to put a stop to it. Well, they didn’t give a shit about who was gettin bullied and who wasn’t, but those guys were always up for a fight. They run on out, some of em not wearin nothin but their underwear. And you want to know somethin really funny, Amberson?”

“Sure.” I took another quick glance at my watch. Almost quarter of seven now. In the Dunning house, Doris would be doing the dishes and maybe listening to Huntley-Brinkley on the television.

“You late for somethin?” Turcotte asked. “Got a fuckin train to catch?”

“You were going to tell me something funny.”

“Oh. Yeah. They was singin the school song! How do you like that?”

In my mind’s eye I could see eight or ten beefy half-dressed boys churning across the field, eager to do a little post-practice hitting, and singing Hail Derry Tigers, we hold your banner high. It was sort of funny.

Turcotte saw my grin and answered with one of his own. It was strained but genuine. “The footballies baffed a couple of those guys around pretty good. Not Frankie Dunning, though; that yellabelly saw they was gonna be outnumbered and run into the woods. Chazzy was layin on the ground, holdin his arm. It was broke. Could have been a lot worse, though. They woulda put him in the hospital. One of the footballies looks at him layin there and kinda toes at him — the way you might toe a cow patty you almost stepped in — and he says, ‘We ran all the way out here to save a jewboy’s bacon?’ And a bunch of em laughed, because it was kind of a joke, you see. Jewboy? Bacon?” He peered at me through clumps of his Brylcreem-shiny hair.

“I get it,” I said.

“‘Aw, who gives a fuck,’ another of em says. ‘I got to kick some ass and that’s good enough for me.’ They went on back, and I helped ole Chaz up the ravine. I even walked home with im, because I thought he might faint or somethin. I was scared Frankie and his friends might come back — he was, too — but I stuck with him. Fuck if I know just why. You should have seen the house he lived in — a fuckin palace. That hockshop business must really pay. When we got there, he thanked me. Meant it, too. He was just about bawlin. I says, ‘Don’t mention it, I just didn’t like seeing six-on-one.’ Which was true. But you know what they say about Jews: they never forget a debt or a favor.”

“Which you called in to find out what I was doing.”

“I had a pretty good idea what you were doin, chum. I just wanted to make sure. Chaz told me to leave it alone — he said he thought you were a nice guy — but when it comes to Frankie Dunning, I don’t leave it alone. Nobody messes with Frankie Dunning but me. He’s mine.”

He winced and went back to rubbing his chest. And this time the penny dropped.

“Turcotte—is it your stomach?”

“Naw, chest. Feels all tight.”

That didn’t sound good, and the thought that went through my mind was now he’s in the nylon stocking, too.

“Sit down before you fall down.” I started toward him. He pulled the gun. The skin between my nipples — where the bullet would go — began to itch madly. I could have disarmed him, I thought. I really could have. But no, I had to hear the story. I had to know.

“You sit down, brother. Unlax, as they say in the funnypages.”

“If you’re having a heart attack—”

“I ain’t havin no fuckin heart attack. Now sit down.”

I sat and looked up at him as he leaned against the garage. His lips had gone a bluish shade I did not associate with good health.

“What do you want with him?” Turcotte asked. “That’s what I want to know. That’s what I got to know, before I can decide what to do with you.”

I thought carefully about how to answer this. As if my life depended on it. Maybe it did. I didn’t think Turcotte had outright murder in him, no matter what he thought, or Frank Dunning would have been planted next to his parents a long time ago. But Turcotte had my gun, and he was a sick man. He might pull the trigger by accident. Whatever force there was that wanted things to stay the same might even help him do it.