December Park(26)

Disembodied, someone’s voice floated out to me. “Mazzone, you *, I’ve been looking all over town for you.”

They moved around the truck, circling me like hyenas. The cab’s dome light came on as the door opened, illuminating the driver.

Nathan Keener.

I sidestepped off the road and halfway into a row of thick shrubs. This new angle removed the glare of the truck’s headlights from my eyes, enabling me to fully view my predators. Nathan Keener and four or five of his lackeys had spilled from the truck and now hovered around me, their white, skeletal faces seeming to float unanchored in the darkness. Cadaverous grins radiated all around me.

Keener paused alongside the front of his pickup and leaned against the hood, his body stiff. He poked a cigarette into his mouth and lit it with a Zippo. The Zippo gleamed in the moonlight. He inhaled, the cigarette’s ember blazing red, his arms folded.

Nathan Keener was eighteen and a recent graduate of Stanton’s vocational school, although just barely, from what I’d heard. He and his assemblage of like-minded cohorts looked wholly out of place in this section of Harting Farms. They haunted the alleys of the boulevards, the run-down brick-fronted establishments that flanked the industrial park, and desiccated bulwark of the fishing piers. They all lived out on the Cape and rarely came to this part of town, which made me suddenly very, very concerned.

“What’s the matter with you, Mazzone?” Keener said. “How come you look so shaken up, man? You surprised to see me? You shouldn’t be.”

“The f*cker’s in blackface,” said one of Keener’s friends, and for a moment I forgot I had shoe polish smeared across my face.

“What do you want?” I tried to sound tough, but I couldn’t muster the right tone.

Two of Keener’s goons approached me from either side. They moved slowly at first, as if they were just shifting their positions. The glare of the truck’s headlights, so strategically placed, made it impossible to see their faces until they were right up on me. Then they jumped at me, grabbing and squeezing my forearms and jerking me backward until I lost my balance and hung like a drying T-shirt on a clothesline between them.

The one on my left was Denny Sallis, his freckle-spattered moon face so close to my own I could smell his rancid breath. His eyes were sloppy, wet, and red-rimmed—the eyes of an ancient hound dog. When I turned away from him, he exhaled in my face, causing me to shudder at the toxic aroma of marijuana, beef jerky, and boiled cabbage.

To my right, clinging to my other forearm with both of his squirrelly claws, Carl Nance grinned like a lunatic, his deep-set eyes like two pits that had been drilled straight through to the back of his skull.

Keener took another drag on his cigarette, then tossed it to the ground. When he stepped toward me, I couldn’t help but think I was about to be killed by a bad cliché. Two more of his lackeys, their hands in the pockets of their dark coats, their heads partially down as if they were ashamed of what they were about to do, approached me as well. I couldn’t make out their faces, but I knew from past experiences they were probably Eric Falconette and Kenneth Ottawa.

I struggled against the two guys holding my arms.

Their grips tightened and Carl Nance muttered, “Cool it, f*ck stick,” into my ear.

I was accosted by a right hook to the jaw. I never saw it coming. Flashbulbs went off beneath my eyelids, and a cold numbness pervaded the left side of my jawbone. A moment after that, a white-hot needling surged across the lower half of my face in concert with a high-pitched ringing in my left ear. It felt like the left side of my jaw had come unhinged. When I opened my eyes, Nathan Keener’s face was mere inches from my own.

“One hundred hours of community service.” Keener narrowed his eyes to slits and clenched his teeth. I swore I could hear him grinding his molars to powder. “You listening, Mazzone, you little faggot? One hundred hours.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I managed through my pained jaw.

“Your f*cking father,” said Keener. He jabbed a finger at my face. “Your f*cking father, you faggot narc.”

And then I remembered. Days ago, I had gone to the Generous Superstore for my grandmother, and as I biked around the back of the store on my way home, I saw Keener and his pals spray-painting the rear of the store. I had put my head down and pedaled faster, though Keener had caught me staring at him. Sometime later, Keener and his buddies were arrested for vandalism. I had nothing to do with his arrest, but I knew now that he believed otherwise.

“Hey, man, if this is about you guys tagging the Superstore, I never said shit.” It was all I could say, since it felt like someone was trying to unhinge the jaw from my face with a screwdriver.

Keener lunged forward and administered an uppercut to my stomach. I buckled forward as far as Denny’s and Carl’s grasps would allow. Gasping for air, I felt my legs go rubbery. After a moment, Keener’s friends hoisted me to my feet where I wavered like a drunkard between them. Someone tittered.

“You think I’m some kind of *?” Keener said, taking a step back from me. He was fuming, his chest heaving, both his fists clenched. I could almost see steam spewing from his nostrils.

“Is this a trick question?” I responded. It was a stupid thing to say, no doubt the result of spending too much time with bigmouthed Michael Sugarland, but I just couldn’t help myself.