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good-sized rock in it. That explained the bonk and the spang.
“Got any oldbucks, grampy? For that matter, you got any newbucks or canned goods?”
“No! If you don’t have the goddam decency to push me out of the hole I’m in, at least go away and
leave me alone!”
But they were wilding, and they weren’t going to do that. They were going to rob him of whatever
small shit he might happen to have, maybe beat him up, tip him over for sure.
Jake and George came together, and both of them saw red.
The attention of the wild boys was fixed on the wheelchair-geezer and they didn’t see me cutting
toward them on a diagonal—just as I’d cut across the sixth floor of the School Book Depository. My
left arm still wasn’t much good, but my right was fine, toned up by three months of physical therapy,
first in Parkland and then at Eden Fallows. And I still had some of the accuracy that had made me a
varsity third baseman in high school. I pegged the first chunk of concrete from thirty feet away and
caught Moon Man in the center of the chest. He screamed with pain and surprise. All the boys—there
were five of them—turned toward me. When they did, I saw that their faces were as disfigured as the
frightened woman’s had been. The one with the slingshot, young Master Fuck Off, was the worst.
There was nothing but a hole where his nose should have been.
I transferred my second chunk of concrete from my left hand to my right, and threw it at the
tallest of the boys, who was wearing a huge pair of loose pants with the waistband drawn up nearly to
his sternum. He raised a blocking arm. The concrete struck it, knocking the joint he was holding into
the street. He took one look at my face, then wheeled and ran. Moon Man followed him. That left
three.
“Walk it to em, son!” the old man in the wheelchair shrilled. “They got it coming, by Christ!”
I was sure they did, but they had me outnumbered and my ammo was gone. When you’re dealing
with teenagers, the only possible way to win in such a situation is to show no fear, only genuine adult
outrage. You just keep coming, and that was what I did. I seized young Master Fuck Off by the front
of his ragged tee-shirt with my right hand and snatched the slingshot away from him with the left.
He stared at me, wide-eyed, and put up no resistance.
“You chickenshit,” I said, getting my face right up into his . . . and never mind the nose that
wasn’t. He smelled sweaty and pot-smoky and deeply dirty. “How chickenshit do you have to be to go
after an old man in a wheelchair?”
“Who are y—”
“Charlie Fucking Chaplin. I went to France just to see the ladies dance. Now get out of here.”
“Give me back my—”
I knew what he wanted and bonked the center of his forehead with it. It started one of his sores
trickling and must have hurt like hell, because his eyes filled with tears. This disgusted me and filled
me with pity, but I tried to show neither. “You get nothing, chickenshit, except a chance to get out of
here before I rip your worthless balls off your no doubt diseased scrote and stuff them into the hole
where your nose used to be. One chance. Take it.” I drew in breath, then screamed it out at his face in
a spray of noise and spit: “Run!”
I watched them go, feeling shame and exultation in roughly equal parts. The old Jake had been
great at quelling rowdy study halls on Friday afternoons before vacations, but that was about as far as
his skills went. The new Jake, however, was part George. And George had been through a lot.
From behind me came a heavy bout of coughing. It made me think of Al Templeton. When it
stopped, the old man said, “Fella, I would have pissed five years’ worth of kidney rocks just to see
those vile dinks take to their heels like that. I don’t know who you are, but I’ve got a little
Glenfiddich left in my pantry—the real stuff—and if you push me out of this goddam hole in the
road and roll me home, I’ll share it with you.”