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He smiled and closed his eyes.
14
I went into the bathroom, grabbed a towel, soaked it in the basin, and scrubbed my bloody face. I
tossed the towel in the tub, grabbed two more, and stepped out into the kitchen.
The boy who had brought me here was standing on the faded linoleum by the stove and watching
me. Although it had probably been six years since he’d sucked his thumb, he was sucking it now. His
eyes were wide and solemn, swimming with tears. Freckles of blood spattered his cheeks and brow.
Here was a boy who had just experienced something that would no doubt traumatize him, but he was
also a boy who would never grow up to become Hoptoad Harry. Or to write a theme that would make
me cry.
“Who are you, mister?” he asked.
“Nobody.” I walked past him to the door. He deserved more than that, though. The sirens were
closer now, but I turned back. “Your good angel,” I said. Then I slipped out the back door and into
Halloween night of 1958.
15
I walked up Wyemore to Witcham, saw flashing blue lights heading for Kossuth Street, and kept on
walking. Two blocks further into the residential district, I turned right on Gerard Avenue. People
were standing out on the sidewalks, turned toward the sound of the sirens.
“Mister, do you know what happened?” a man asked me. He was holding the hand of a sneakerwearing
Snow White.
“I heard kids setting off cherry bombs,” I said. “Maybe they started a fire.” I kept walking and
made sure to keep the left side of my face away from him, because there was a streetlight nearby and
my scalp was still oozing blood.
Four blocks down, I turned back toward Witcham. This far south of Kossuth, Witcham Street was
dark and quiet. All the available police cars were probably now at the scene. Good. I had almost
reached the corner of Grove and Witcham when my knees turned to rubber. I looked around, saw no
trick-or-treaters, and sat down on the curb. I couldn’t afford to stop, but I had to. I’d thrown up
everything in my stomach, I hadn’t had anything to eat all day except for one lousy candybar (and
couldn’t remember if I’d even managed to get all of that down before Turcotte jumped me), and I’d
just been through a violent interlude in which I had been wounded—how badly I still didn’t know. It
was either stop now and let my body regroup or pass out on the sidewalk.
I put my head between my knees and drew a series of deep slow breaths, as I’d learned in the Red
Cross course I’d taken to get a lifeguard certification back in college. At first I kept seeing Tugga
Dunning’s head as it exploded under the smashing downward force of the hammer, and that made the
faintness worse. Then I thought of Harry, who had been splashed with his brother’s blood but was
otherwise unhurt. And Ellen, who wasn’t deep in a coma from which she would never emerge. And
Troy. And Doris. Her badly broken arm might hurt her for the rest of her life, but at least she was
going to have a life.
“I did it, Al,” I whispered.
But what had I done in 2011? What had I done to 2011? Those were questions that still had to be