LaRose(56)

The boys nodded and ate, tears dripping into the stew.

They climbed up onto the piling that night and slept. Maybe the stew, the blue eyes, or the arm caused Landreaux to thrash and howl so hard he woke Romeo in the middle of the night. Landreaux was still asleep when he started rolling off the top of the piling. Romeo grabbed his arms and Landreaux suddenly woke up. There was a moon out, and they stared into each other’s eyes the way they had beneath the bus.

I got you, said Romeo.

Landreaux made a desperate noise.

Never fear, said Romeo as he skidded toward the edge.

He felt calm, loving, and powerful. That moment would endure in his memory. It was the last time in his life that he did a heroic thing. Romeo tried to stab his feet into the concrete and willed his arms to stop quivering. But Landreaux was heavier than Romeo. Every time Landreaux swung his leg to find a desperate foothold, Romeo was drawn closer to the edge. At last, with a wild jerk, Landreaux gained his balance. In doing so, he flipped Romeo over his head into space. Landreaux tried to cling but fell backward. They could have hit the water and waded to shore, or maybe drowned, or hit the base of the piling and died, but instead they hit the weedy earth. Romeo broke Landreaux’s fall, and Romeo started screaming. Landreaux went instantly to sleep. When he came to in the morning, with a headache, Landreaux crawled out of a piece of canvas to look for his friend. Romeo was wrapped in a bag by the cold fire and he looked dead. The shaggy woman came out of the grass and poured some whiskey into Romeo, plus she crushed up a pill and mashed it into a bit of stew. Stuffed it clumsily down his throat. Romeo fell quiet and looked dead again.

What’s wrong with him? asked Landreaux, touching the trussed bag gently.

We foun him like this.

The woman was extremely drunk. She tried to pat Romeo’s hair but kept missing his head.

We didn’t know what to do so we tied im in the bag. He says his arm and leg. Landreaux pulled the bag cautiously down Romeo’s leg. There was no blood, but the leg looked sickeningly wrong, even in his pants. And his arm was also crooked. His shoes were gone.

Let’s bring him to the doctor, said Landreaux, unnerved.

But Romeo’s head lurched up and he shrieked. No, no, no, no! Landreaux crab-scrabbled backward.

You were right. She’s here!

Romeo ground his teeth, eyes mystically flashing.

She come after us. Now I seen her.

Who?

Bowl Head, man, hissed Romeo.

See? The shaggy woman had also stepped back, impressed. What ya gonna do? She joggled the whiskey bottle.

Sonny knows where to get some more. We jus keep him here, loaded for the pain, eh? Until he’s better. We don want cops poke aroun here.

Landreaux crawled close to Romeo, touched his gray face. Romeo’s skin was cold, wet, and hard as rock. Landreaux waited, watched until he took a breath, then another. Landreaux’s eyes burned—he knew very well that Romeo had tried to save him. The sudden shame of having caused his friend’s injuries was unbearable.

I’m gonna find a way to haul you to the hospital. Wait here, he said, and ran off, his friend’s pain swelling his heart.

Landreaux bolted up the embankment. He stopped where they had fallen, and snatched Romeo’s shoes from weeds. Then he sprinted across the bridge in a panic. He slowed down, took the money from the inner soles of Romeo’s shoes, put the bills in his own shoes. He began to wander the neighborhoods they knew. He walked for hours, searching for a cop. He became so weary that he didn’t see the police car pull ahead of his path, or the officer who emerged, until he was close enough to be grabbed by a man who knew how to grab. Landreaux could feel that. It was reassuring that he could not get away, and Landreaux relaxed. He began to talk. He told the officer all about Romeo and the bums’ camp and how he needed help, how his friend looked dead.

The policeman put Landreaux carefully into the backseat of the car, which was hard plastic with a heavy mesh barrier. Someday there would be Plexiglas and Landreaux would know that too. There was a radio with a handheld microphone. The police used it, asked questions, relayed the information. Then they drove back across the river. An ambulance pulled up, and then another police car. Landreaux sat in the squad car while the others beat their way down the embankment. After some time passed the police came back.

They bugged out, said one officer.

Landreaux scrambled out of the car and sprinted into the brush, wormed through the loose links of a fence, dodged down an alley, across a street, and was caught trying to cross a parking lot. The officer tried to calm him.

You got to find him!

Landreaux yelled, blubbered, moaned, and finally fell silent. They drove him to the precinct headquarters and stuck him in a chair with a glass of water and a sandwich. He sat there for a day, then another half day. But even though he was tired of waiting, he scrambled up when the original Bowl Head walked into the station. His hair prickled up the back of his neck and his stomach tried to puke up the sandwich. He knew he had been right. Bowl Head was more than she appeared to be, even supernatural.

Much later on, when Landreaux first got high behind the water tower, he saw again that he was right, that she was the spirit of the boarding schools. She meant well and her intentions were to help him be a good boy, but a white boy.

When Landreaux begged the police for pity, she said that all the runaways acted like this. She signed some papers. A policeman walked him to the car, and he saw that Pits was riding in the passenger’s seat. The policeman put Landreaux in the backseat of the car and told him that he’d be all right now. Landreaux sat petrified, couldn’t even eat the lunch that Bowl Head bought him at a restaurant, though she urged him to and said he looked thin.