Hearts in Atlantis(51)

They looked around. Biking slowly up the hill toward them were three St Gabe's boys in orange shirts. Piled in their bike-baskets was an assortment of baseball gear. One of the boys, a pimply galoot with a silver cross dangling from his neck on a chain, had a baseball bat in a homemade sling on his back. Thinks he's Robin Hood, Bobby thought, but he was scared. They were big boys, high-school boys, parochial school boys, and if they decided they wanted to put him in the hospital, then to the hospital he would go. Low boys in orange shirts, he thought.

'Hi, Willie,' Carol said to one of them - not the galoot with the bat slung on his back. She sounded calm, even cheery, but Bobby could hear fright fluttering underneath like a bird's wing. 'I watched you play. You made a good catch.'

CHAPTER 10

The one she spoke to had an ugly, half-formed face below a mass of combed-back auburn hair and above a man's body. The Huffy bike beneath him was ridiculously small. Bobby thought he looked like a troll in a fairy-tale. 'What's it to you, Gerber Baby?' he asked.

The three St Gabe's boys pulled up even with them. Then two of them - the one with the dangling cross and the one Carol had called Willie - came a little farther, standing around the forks of their bikes now, walking them. With mounting dismay Bobby realized he and Carol had been surrounded. He could smell a mixture of sweat and Vitalis coming from the boys in the orange shirts.

'Who are you, Maltex Baby?' the third St Gabe's boy asked Bobby. He leaned over the handlebars of his bike for a better look. 'Are you Garfield? You are, ain'tcha? Billy Donahue's still lookin for you from that time last winter. He wants to knock your teeth out. Maybe I ought to knock one or two of em out right here, give im a head start.'

Bobby felt a wretched crawling sensation begin in his stomach - something like snakes in a basket. I won't cry again, he told himself. Whatever happens I won't cry again even if they send me to the hospital. And I'll try to protect her.

Protect her from big kids like this? It was a joke.

'Why are you being so mean, Willie?' Carol asked. She spoke solely to the boy with the auburn hair. 'You're not mean when you're by yourself. Why do you have to be mean now?'

Willie flushed. That, coupled with his dark red hair - much darker than Bobby's - made him look on fire from the neck up. Bobby guessed he didn't like his friends knowing he could act like a human being when they weren't around.

'Shut up, Gerber Baby!' he snarled. 'Why don't you just shut up and kiss your boyfriend while he's still got all his teeth?'

The third boy was wearing a motorcycle belt cinched on the side and ancient Snap-Jack shoes covered with dirt from the baseball field. He was behind Carol. Now he moved in closer, still walking his bike, and grabbed her ponytail with both hands. He pulled it.

'0w!' Carol almost screamed. She sounded surprised as well as hurt. She pulled away so hard that she almost fell down. Bobby caught her and Willie - who could be nice when he wasn't with his pals, according to Carol - laughed.

'Why'd you do that?' Bobby yelled at the boy in the motorcycle belt, and as the words came out of his mouth it was as if he had heard them a thousand times before. All of this was like a ritual, the stuff that got said before the real yanks and pushes began and the fists began to fly. He thought of Lord of the Flies again - Ralph running from Jack and the others. At least on Golding's island there had been jungle. He and Carol had nowhere to run.

He says 'Because I felt like it.' That's what comes next.

But before the boy with the side-cinched belt could say it, Robin Hood with the homemade bat-sling on his back said it for him. 'Because he felt like it. Whatcha gonna do about it, Maltex Baby?' He suddenly flicked out one hand, snake-quick, and slapped Bobby across the face. Willie laughed again.

Carol started toward him. 'Willie, please don't - '

Robin Hood reached out, grabbed the front of Carol's shirt, and squeezed. 'Got any titties yet? Nah, not much. You ain't nothing but a Gerber Baby.' He pushed her. Bobby, his head still ringing from the slap, caught her and for the second time kept her from falling down.

'Let's beat this queer up,' the kid in the motorcycle belt said. 'I hate his face.'

They moved in, the wheels of their bikes squeaking solemnly. Then Willie let his drop on its side like a dead pony and reached for Bobby. Bobby raised his fists in a feeble imitation of Floyd Patterson.

'Say, boys, what's going on?' someone asked from behind them.

Willie had drawn one of his own fists back. Still holding it cocked, he looked over his shoulder. So did Robin Hood and the boy with the motorcycle belt. Parked at the curb was an old blue Studebaker with rusty rocker panels and a magnetic Jesus on the dashboard. Standing in front of it, looking extremely busty in the chest and extremely wide in the hip, was Anita Gerber's friend Rionda. Summer clothes were never going to be her friends (even at eleven Bobby understood this), but at that moment she looked like a goddess in pedal pushers.

'Rionda!' Carol yelled - not crying, but almost. She pushed past Willie and the boy in the motorcycle belt. Neither made any effort to stop her. All three of the St Gabe's boys were staring at Rionda. Bobby found himself looking at Willie's cocked fist. Sometimes Bobby woke up in the morning with his peter just as hard as a rock, standing straight up like a moon rocket or something. As he went into the bathroom to pee, it would soften and wilt. Willie's cocked arm was wilting like that now, the fist at the end of it relaxing back into fingers, and the comparison made Bobby want to smile. He resisted the urge. If they saw him smiling now, they could do nothing. Later, however . . . on another day . . .