Dreamcatcher(48)

'Hey Rich, maybe we ought to - ' Duncan begins.

'Kill em,' the galoot rumbles. 'Fuck em the f**k up.'

This one takes a step forward and for a moment it almost goes down. Henry knows that if the galoot had been allowed to take even one more step he would have been out of Richie Grenadeau's control, like a mean old pitbull that breaks its leash and just goes flying at its prey, a meat arrow.

But Richie doesn't let him get that next step, the one which will turn into a clumsy charge. He grabs the galoot's forearm, which is thicker than Henry's bicep and bristling with reddish-gold hair. 'No, Scotty,' he says, 'wait a minute.'

'Yeah, wait,' Duncan says, sounding almost panicky. He shoots Henry a look which Henry finds, even at the age of fourteen, grotesque. It is a reproachful look. As if Henry and his friends were the ones doing something wrong.

'What do you want?' Richie asks Henry. 'You want us to get out of here, that it?'

Henry nods.

'If we go, what are you gonna do? Who are you going to tell?'

Henry discovers an amazing thing: he is as close to coming unglued as Scotty, the galoot. Part of him wants to actually pro?voke a fight, to scream EVERYBODY! FUCKING EVERYBODY! Knowing that his friends would back him up, would never say a word even if they got trashed and sent to the hospital.

But the kid. That poor little crying retarded kid. Once the big boys finished with Henry, Beaver, and Jonesy (with Pete as well, if they could catch him), they would finish with the retarded kid, too, and it would likely go a lot further than making him eat a piece of dried dog-turd.

'No one,' he says. 'We won't tell anyone.'

'Fuckin liar,' Scotty says. 'He's a f**kin liar, Richie, lookit him.'

Scotty starts forward again, but Richie tightens his grip on the big galoot's forearm.

'If no one gets hurt,' Jonesy says in a blessedly reasonable tone of voice, 'no one's got a story to tell '

'Grenadeau glances at him, then back at Henry. 'Swear to God?'

'Swear to God,' Henry agrees.

'All of you swear to God?' Grenadeau asks.

Jonesy, Beav, and Pete all dutifully swear to God.

Grenadeau thinks about it for a moment that seems very long, and then he nods. 'Okay, f**k this. We're going.'

'If they come, run around the building the other way,' Henry says to Pete, speaking very rapidly because the big boys are already in motion. But Grenadeau still has his hand clamped firmly on Scotty's forearm, and Henry thinks this is a good sign.

'I wouldn't waste my time,' Richie Grenadeau says in a lofty tone of voice that makes Henry feel like laughing . . . but with an effort he manages to keep a straight face. Laughing at this point would be a bad idea. Things are almost fixed up. There's a part of him that hates that, but the rest of him nearly trembles with relief.

'What's up with you, anyway?' Richie Grenadeau asks him. 'What's the big deal?'

Henry wants to ask his own question  -  wants to ask Richie Grenadeau how he could do it, and it's no rhetorical question, either. That crying! My God! But he keeps silent, knowing anything he says might just provoke the ass**le, get him going all over again.

There is a kind of dance going on here; it looks almost like the ones you learn in first and second grade. As Richie, Duncan, and Scott walk toward the driveway (sauntering, attempting to show they are going of their own free will and haven't been frightened off by a bunch of homo junior-high kids), Henry and his friends first move to face them and then step backward in a line toward the weeping kid kneeling there in his underpants, blocking him from them.

At the corner of the building Richie pauses and gives them a final look. 'Gonna see you fellas again,' he says. 'One by one or all together.'

'Yeah,' Duncan agrees.

'You're gonna be lookin at the world through a oxygen tent!' Scott adds, and Henry comes perilously close to laughing again. He prays that none of his friends will say anything  -  let done be done ? -  and none of them do. It's almost a miracle.

One final menacing look from Richie and they are gone around the comer. Henry, Jonesy, Beaver, and Pete are left alone with the kid, who is rocking back and forth on his dirty knees, his dirty bloody tearstreaked uncomprehending face cocked to the white sky like the face of a broken clock, all of them wondering what to do next. Talk to him? Tell him it's okay, that the bad boys are gone and the danger has passed? He will never understand. And oh that crying is so freaky. How could those kids, mean and stupid as they were, go on in the face of that crying? Henry will understand later  -  sort of  -  but at that moment it's a complete mystery to him.

'I'm gonna try something,' Beaver says abruptly.

'Yeah, sure, anything,' Jonesy says. His voice is shaky.

The Beav starts forward, then looks at his friends. It is an odd look, part shame, part defiance, and  -  yes, Henry would swear it ? -  part hope.

'If you tell anybody I did this,' he says, 'I'll never chum with you guys again.'

'Never mind that crap,' Pete says, and he also sounds shaky. 'If you can shut him up, do it!'

Beaver stands for a moment where Richie was standing while he tried to get the kid to eat the dog-turd, then drops to his knees. Henry sees the kid's underwear shorts are in fact Underoos, and that they feature the Scooby-Doo characters, plus Shaggy's Mystery Machine, just like the kid's lunchbox.