Boy's Life Part 42

"...sixty miles an hour," Princey said. "Sixty-four, it feels to me. I'm a good judge of the wind."

I sat down, keeping my distance from all three of them.

"So." He slid his hands into the pockets of his coat. "Favor us with your destination, Cory."

"I guess I... wait a minute. Did I tell you my name?"

"You must have, I'm sure."

"I don't remember,"

Franklin laughed. It sounded like a backed-up drain being Roto-Rootered. "Haw! Haw! Haw! Dere he goes again! Princey's got da best sense'a yuma!"

"I don't think I told you my name," I said.

"Well, don't be stubborn," Princey answered. "Everybody has a name. What's yours?"

"Co-" I stopped. Were these three insane, or was I? "Cory Mackenson. I'm from Zephyr."

"Going to...?" he prompted.

"Where does the train go?" I asked.

"From here?" He smiled slightly. "To everywhere."

I glanced over at Ahmet. He was squatting on his haunches, watching me intently over the flickering candles. He wore sandals on his shriveled feet, his toenails two inches long. "Kinda cold to be wearin' sandals, isn't it?"

"Ahmet doesn't mind," Princey said. "That's his footwear of choice. He's Egyptian."

"Egyptian? How'd he get all the way here?"

"It was a long, dusty trail," he a.s.sured me.

"Who are you people? You look kinda-"

"Familiar if you're a devotee of the sweet science. Boxing, that is," Princey said, shoveling words in my mouth. "Ever heard of Franklin Fitzgerald? Otherwise known as Big Philly Frank?"

"No sir."

"Then why did you say you had?"

"I... did I?"

"Meet Franklin Fitzgerald." He motioned to the monster in the corner.

"h.e.l.lo," I said.

"Pleased ta meet ya," Franklin replied.

"I'm Princey Von Kulic. That's Ahmet Too-Hard-to-p.r.o.nounce."

"Hee hee hee," Franklin giggled behind a ma.s.sive hand with scarred knuckles.

"You're not American, are you?" I asked Princey.

"Citizen of the world, at your service."

"Where're you from, then?"

"I am from a nation that is neither here nor there. It is an unnation, if you will." He smiled again. "Unnation. I like that. My country has been ransacked by foreign invaders so many times, we give green stamps for raping and pillaging. It's easier to make a buck here, what can I say?"

"So you're a boxer, too?"

"Me?" He grimaced as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. "Oh, no! I'm the brains behind Franklin's brawn. I'm his manager. Ahmet's his trainer. We all get along famously, except when we're trying to kill each other."

"Haw haw!" Franklin rumbled.

"We are currently between opponents," Princey said with a slight shrug. "Bound from the last place we were to the next place we will be. And such, I fear, is our existence."

I had decided that no matter how fearsome this trio appeared, they really meant me no harm. "Does Mr. Fitzgerald do a lot of fightin'?" I asked.

"Franklin will take on anyone, anywhere, at any time. Unfortunately, though his size is quite formidable, his speed is quite deplorable."

"Princey means I'm slow," Franklin said.

"Yes. And what else, Franklin?"

The huge man's overhanging brow threatened to collapse as he pondered this question. "I don't have da killer instink," he said at last.

"But we're working on that, aren't we, Silent Sam?" Princey asked the Egyptian. Ahmet showed his hooked yellow teeth and nodded vigorously. I thought he'd better be careful, in case his head flew off.

I began staring at Franklin's neck. "Mr. Princey, why does he have those screws in there?"

"Franklin is a man of many parts," Princey said, and Franklin giggled again. "Most of them of the rusted variety. His meetings with other individuals in the squared circle have not always been pleasant. In short, he's had so many broken bones that the doctor's had to wire some of him together. The screws are connected to a metal rod that strengthens his spine. It's painful, I'm sure, but necessary."

"Aw," Franklin said, "it ain't so bad."

"He has the heart of a lion," Princey explained. "Unfortunately, he also has the mind of a mouse."

"Hee hee nee! Dat Princey's a laff riot!"

"I'm thirsty," Princey said, and he stood up. He was tall, too, maybe six four, and slender though not nearly the beanpole Ahmet was.

"Here ya go." Franklin offered him the canteen.

"No, I don't want that!" Princey's pale hand brushed it aside. "I want... I don't know what I want." He looked at me. "Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever wanted something but you can't figure out what it is for the life of you?"

"Yes sir," I said. "Like sometimes when I think I want a Co'Cola but I really want root beer."

"Exactly. My throat's as dusty as Ahmet's pillow!" He walked past me and peered out at the pa.s.sing forest. There were no lights out there, under the firmament. "So!" he said. "You know us now. What about you? I presume you're running away from home?"

"No sir. I mean... I'm just gettin' away for a little while, I guess."

"Trouble with your parents? With school?"

"Both of those," I said.

He nodded, leaning against the boxcar's opening. "The universal tribulations of a boy. I, too, had such troubles. I, too, set out to get away for a little while. Do you really think this will help your problems?"

"I don't know. It was all I could think of."

"The world," Princey said, "is not like Zephyr, Cory. The world has no affection for a boy. It can be a wonderful place, but it can also be savage and vile. We should know."

"Why is that?" I asked.

"Because we have traveled all over. We've seen this world, and we know the people who live in it. Sometimes it scares me to death, thinking about what's out there: cruelty, callousness, utter disregard and disrespect for fellow human beings. And it's not getting better, Cory; it's getting worse." He gazed up at the moon, which kept our pace. "'O world,'" he said. "'But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee, life would not yield to age.'"

"Ain't dat preddy?" Franklin asked.

"It's Shakespeare," Princey replied. "Talking about the universal tribulations of men." He turned from the moon and stared at me, his pupils scarlet. "Would you like some advice from an older soul, Cory?"

I didn't really want it, but I said, "Yes sir" to be polite.

He wore a bemused expression, as if he knew my thoughts. "I'll give it to you anyway. Don't be in a hurry to grow up. Hold on to being a boy as long as you can, because once you lose that magic, you're always begging to find it again."

That sounded vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn't remember where I'd heard it before.

"Do you want to see something of the world, Cory?" he asked me.

I nodded, transfixed by his bloodred pupils.

"You're in luck, then. I see a city's lights."

I stood up and looked out. And there in the distance, over the dragon's spine of twisted hills, the stars were washed out by earthly phosph.o.r.escence.

Princey explained to me that we would come to a part of that city where the freight slowed as it entered the yards. It was then that we could abandon our boxcar without breaking our legs. Gradually the city grew around us, from wooden houses to brick houses to buildings of stone. Even at this late hour, the city was alive. Neon signs blinked and buzzed. Cars sped along the streets, and figures trudged the sidewalks. Then the freight train clattered over the crisscrossed railyard tracks where other trains lay sleeping and began to slow. When it was going the speed of a walking man, Franklin's huge shoes touched the ground. Then Ahmet went out, dust whuffing from his body as he hit. "Go on, if you want to go," Princey told me, standing at my back. I scrambled out and landed all right, and then Princey made his exit. We had arrived in the city, and I was a long way from home.

We walked across the railyard, the sounds of whistles and chugging engines drifting around us. The air smelled burnt, though it was a cold fire. Princey said we'd better find some shelter for the night. We kept going, deeper along the gray streets that stood beneath the tall gray buildings, though several times we had to stop and wait for Franklin, who indeed was a slow mover.

We came to a place where alleys cut the walls, and neon reflected off standing pools of water on the cracked concrete. As we were pa.s.sing an alley, I heard a grunting noise followed by the smacking of flesh. I stopped to look. One man was holding another with his arms behind him, while a third methodically beat the second man in the face with his fist. The second man was bleeding from the nose and mouth, his eyes dazed and wet with fear. The man who was doing the beating did this as if it were a common labor, like the hacking down of a wayward tree. "Where's the money, you motherf.u.c.ker?" the first man said in a voice of quiet evil. "You're gonna give us the money." The beating continued, the third man's knuckles red with blood. The victim made a groaning, whimpering noise, and as the fist kept rising and falling, his bruised face began to change shape.

A pale hand gripped my shoulder. "Let's move along, shall we?"

Up ahead, a police car had pulled to the curb. Two policemen stood on either side of a man with long hair and dressed in dirty clothes. They were stocky and their guns gleamed in their black leather holsters. One of the policemen leaned forward and shouted in the long-haired man's face. Then the other policeman grabbed a handful of that hair, spun him around, and slammed his head against the windshield's gla.s.s. The gla.s.s didn't break, but the man's knees sagged. He didn't try to fight back as he was shoved into the police car. As they drove past us, I caught a glimpse of the man's face peering out, tendrils of blood creeping from his forehead.

Music throbbed and thumped from a doorway. It sounded like all rhyme and no reason. A man sat against a wall, a puddle of urine between his legs. He grinned at the air, his eyes demented. Two young men came along, and one of them held a tin gasoline can. "Get up, get up!" the other one said, kicking at the man on the ground. The demented one kept grinning. "Get up! Get up!" he parroted. In the next second, gasoline sloshed over him. The other young man pulled a pack of matches from his pocket.

Princey guided me around a corner. Franklin, slogging behind Ahmet, sighed like a bellows, his face daubed with shadow.

A siren wailed, but it was going somewhere else. I felt sick to my stomach, my skull pressured. Princey kept his hand on my shoulder, and it was comforting.

Four women were standing on a corner, under the stuttering neon. They were all younger than my mother but older than Chile Willow. They wore dresses that might have been applied with paint, and they appeared to be waiting for somebody important to come along. As we pa.s.sed them, I smelled their sweet perfume. I looked into the face of one of them, and I saw a blond-haired angel. But something about that face was lifeless, like the face of a painted doll. "Motherf.u.c.ker better do me right," she said to a dark-haired girl. "Better f.u.c.kin' score me, G.o.ddammit."

A red car pulled up. The blond-haired angel switched on a smile to the driver. The other girls crowded around, their eyes bright with false hope.

I didn't like what I saw, and Princey guided me on.

In a doorway, a man in a denim jacket was standing over a woman sprawled in a doorway. He was zipping up his pants. The woman's face was a pulped ma.s.s of black bruises. "There you go," the man said. "Showed you, didn't I? Showed you who's boss." He reached down and grabbed her hair. "Say it, b.i.t.c.h." He shook her head. "Say who's boss!"

Her swollen eyes were pleading. Her mouth opened, showing broken teeth. "You are," she said, and she began to cry. "You're the boss."

"Keep going, Cory," Princey told me. "Don't stop, don't stop."

I staggered on. Everywhere I looked, there was only mean concrete. I saw not a hill nor a trace of green. I lifted my face, but the stars were blanked out and the night a gray wash. We turned a corner and I heard a clatter. A small white dog was searching desperately through garbage cans, its ribs showing. Suddenly a hulking man was there, and he said, "Now I've got you" as the dog stood staring at him with a banana peel in its mouth. The man lifted a baseball bat and slammed it down across the dog's back. The dog howled with pain and thrashed, its spine broken, the banana peel lost. The man stood over it, and he lifted the baseball bat and brought it down and then the dog had no more muzzle or eyes, just a smashed red ruin. The white legs kept kicking, as if trying to run.

"Little piece a s.h.i.t," the man said, and he stomped the skinny ribs with his boot.

Tears burned my eyes. I stumbled, but Princey's hand held me up. "Move on," he said. "Hurry." I did, past the carnage. I was about to throw up, and I fell against a wall of rough stones. Behind me, Franklin rumbled, "Da kid's too far from home, Princey. It ain't right."

"You think I like this?" Princey snapped. "Numb nuts."

I came to the edge of the wall, and I stopped. I seemed to be looking into a small room. I could hear voices raised in argument, but only a boy sat in the room. He was about my age, I thought, but something in his face looked older by far. The boy was staring at the floor, his eyes gla.s.sy as the arguing voices got louder and louder. And then he picked up a sponge and a tube of glue, the kind my buddies and I put plastic models together with. He squeezed glue into the sponge, and then he pressed the sponge over his nose and closed his eyes as he inhaled. After a minute he fell backward, his body starting to convulse. His mouth was open, and his teeth began to clamp down again and again on his tongue.

I shivered, sobbed, and looked away. Princey's hand touched the back of my head, and drew my face into his side.

"You see, Cory?" he whispered, and his voice was tight with strangled rage. "This world eats up boys. You're not ready yet to shove a broomstick down its throat."

"I want to... I want to..."

"Go home," Princey said. "Home to Zephyr."

We were back at the railyard, amid the whistles and chugs. Princey said they'd go back some of the way with me, to make sure I caught the right train. Here came a Southern Railroad freight train, with one of its boxcars partway open. "This is the one!" Princey said, and he jumped up into the opening. Franklin went next, moving fast on those big old shoes when he had to. Then Ahmet, his cracked flesh puffing dust with every step.

The train was picking up speed. I started running alongside the boxcar, trying to find a grip, but there was no ladder. "Hey!" I shouted. "Don't leave me!"

It began pulling away. I had to run hard to keep up. The boxcar's opening was dark. I couldn't see Princey, Franklin, or Ahmet in there. "Don't leave me!" I shouted frantically as my legs began to weaken.

"Jump, Cory!" Princey urged from the darkness. "Jump!"

The tons of steel wheels were grinding beside me. "I'm scared!" I said, losing ground.

"Jump!" Princey said. "We'll catch you!"

I couldn't see them in there. I couldn't see anything but dark. But the city was at my back, part of the world that ate up boys.

I would have to have faith.

I lunged forward, and I leaped upward toward the dark doorway.