The Hard Bounce

Chapter Twenty-Two

Fourteen hours. Paul died.

Twice.

Twice they brought him back by the skin of his teeth.

Junior hadn’t woken up yet.

We got to the hospital, and I waited. I got another batch of stitches to keep my blood where it belonged, and I waited, numb. I don’t know if I dozed or not. I sat and stared at the pattern on the worn carpet for long stretches.

I didn’t take my lies too far from the truth when I talked to the cops. I told them we were going to ask about some movies when the car shot out of the alley. Sooner or later, the police were going to cross-check some names and see that I’d just been shot a week earlier. But for the moment, my answers seemed to satisfy the bored-looking detective.

Every few decades, I’d get a report on Junior.

In and out, they’d say.

He’s still on the operating table, they’d say.

They were doing everything they could, they’d say.

I stared at the name on the triage paperwork.

Darrell McCullough.

Junior.

It was a name I knew but didn’t recognize. It was a name for someone who hadn’t existed for nearly twenty years. He’d disappeared into the same place that took Billy Malone.

An older man in green scrubs came up to me. “Are you the gentleman who came in with the hit and run?”

“Yeah,” I said, waiting with my guts in my shoes for I’m sorry.

“Your friend is in critical condition. I’m afraid he suffered a lot of internal injuries.” He read from a clipboard like he was going over a grocery list. It was a long grocery list. “Five of his ribs are broken. One lung collapsed, and the other is severely bruised. On top of his arm and leg, both of which are broken in a couple places, he’s suffered a fairly serious head trauma.”

Suddenly, I realized I didn’t know who he was talking about, Paul or Junior. “Wait a minute. I came in with two people.”

With a sigh, he flipped back a couple of pages. “This chart is Mr. McCullough’s.”

“Can you tell me about the kid?”

“Far as I know, he’s still in surgery. His family has arrived, so I’m afraid that any information about him will have to come through them first.”

I nodded. “So, give me the shorthand. What’s happening with Jun-Mr. McCullough?”

“I’m afraid he’s in a coma.”

Seemed the doctor was afraid of an awful lot.

I was afraid, too.

Finally, I tore myself from the waiting area. I needed something to eat. I needed sleep even more.

I went home to my empty apartment. For the first time in twenty-three years, alone was a presence in my life. Alone was a noun.

The Boy was sitting coiled on my kitchen floor, holding himself tightly. Fire and hell burned in that little boy’s eyes.

I trudged into my bathroom to change my dressing. For the briefest of glimpses, I thought I saw the ghost of Billy Malone in the mirror, but I was wrong.

It was only Boo.

The next morning, I was bedside with Junior.

Lost.

I took his rough, bandaged hand in my own. “I’m with you, buddy,” I said. The only response was the beeping of his heart monitor and the asthmatic wheeze of the respirator.

I was ten. I hadn’t spoken a word in two years.

The other boys at The Home took easy potshots at me, seeing my trauma for the weakness it was. I took a lot of beatings, daily humiliations. They called me retarded, even though I spent most days alone in The Home’s meager library, spending hour after hour lost in the worlds of Asimov’s robots, roaming the streets of Metropolis, having dinner with the Hardy Boys. My most vivid memories about the adventures of Frank and Joe Hardy involve the luxurious meals described in the books. It made for one hell of a fantasy for a boy forced to eat state-subsidized food three meals a day.

I devoured the fiction, making a different world inside my mind. I was detached from their world, their cruelty. I was detached from my own. I was the boy at the bottom of the well.

And I liked the well just fine.

But sometimes the abuses just wouldn’t be ignored. One afternoon, some of the bigger kids dragged me into the bathroom. While two held my arms, a third would piss on my head and laugh. I hardly reacted, just tried to keep my head up and my mouth closed. With two down and the third opening his fly, the bathroom door crashed open. I remember imagining the whole population of The Home was in line outside, waiting for the opportunity to piss on the back of my neck.

“Yo! The fuck is this? You fags having a circle jerk in here?” The new voice sounded younger than my attackers. The voice was fearless.

“Get out of here, fucko,” one said.

“Fuck off,” the new voice said. I turned my head to see one of the newer residents of The Home standing at the door. The new kid was a little red-haired hellion who’d already caused himself a lifetime’s worth of trouble at St. Gabe’s. The administrators had taken something of a gentle touch with him. Word around the concrete schoolyard was that his family had been wiped out in a fire.

Even from the position I was in, with my urine-soaked head in the urinal, I could feel the charge in the room, the older kids’ uncertainty. They were accustomed to having their age and size advantages being enough to bully the younger kids. They sure as shit weren’t prepared for a challenge.

“Why don’t you leave him alone?” the new kid asked.

“Why don’t you mind your Ps and Qs?” the boy holding my right arm said.

“Well, I gotta take a whiz and you got his head in the urinal.”

The third kid laughed. “Just piss on the retard.”

The new kid paused. “Who is that? That the mute? Boo?”

“Yeah. He won’t say nothing even if you-” The kid behind me had his words cut short with a thump. A squealing wheeze of pain followed.

“Hey!” the kid on my right said. Another thump and a guttural groan. My right arm was free.

“Hit ’em, Boo!” the new kid said.

I threw an uppercut with my freed arm into the sternum of the third, right under the ribcage. With a pained explosion of breath, my left arm was released, too.

“In the nuts! Hit him in the nuts!” my new coach yelled.

I lowered my aim and brought my right fist up into the boy’s crotch. Hard. Another yelp. Another moaning body on the floor. The other two were in identical positions, rocking on the ground and clutching their assaulted balls.

I felt a flush of victory as the new kid stepped over them and started pissing in the urinal where my head used to be. “Little trick, Boo. The bigger they are, the bigger their nutsacks.” He finished and zipped up his fly. “Why do you let them do that to you?” he asked as he stepped back over them. He held the door open. Did he want me to follow him? Nobody ever wanted to talk to me, much less hang out.

I had no answer, so I shrugged.

“Are you really retarded?”

I shook my head.

“Then how come you don’t talk?” He was leaving. I followed him out. “You’re not deaf, ’cause you answer my questions. Kinda.” He looked at my face thoughtfully. “Unless you’re reading my lips. Is that it?” He held his hand over his mouth to test the theory. “You a lip reader?”

I shook my head again.

“My name’s Junior.” He stuck his hand out, then pulled it back. “Never mind. You got pee all over. Your name really Boo Radley?”

I shook my head once more.

“That all you can do? Shrug and nod?”

I shrugged. “W… whu…”

Junior’s eyes bugged out. “What? Say it.”

“What’s the Junior for? What’s before Junior?” My voice, unused for so long, sounded more like Froggy from the Little Rascals than the falsettos of the other boys my age.

“Wow! You can talk!” He laughed and clapped his hands. “It’s short. Short for Junior Mints. One time, we went to the movies and I ate so many that I threw up.” He smiled at the memory. Then the smile caught on something and faded away. “My brothers, they used to call me Junior Mints after that.” A deep ache shadowed his face at the mention of his brothers. He’s never mentioned them since.

The rest is my life. Boo Radley and Junior Mints. My first words in two years were to Junior. Maybe I never would have talked if I hadn’t met him. I don’t know. I didn’t want to talk to him as he lay on the hospital bed. I wanted, needed the next words passed between us to be his. I didn’t know what to say, anyway. Instead, I just held my brother’s hand.

And remembered the last word Paul said.

“Gahp,” he’d shrieked. The word mangled in his broken mouth.

An accusation.

Cop.