Chasing the Bear

"He do it to you, Jeannie Queenie?"

I stood up.

"I'll be back," I said.

Jeannie's face had an odd flush to it. I walked down to where Croy was sitting and jerked my head at the door.

"What?" Croy said. "You want to go outside?"

I nodded and kept walking toward the door.

"You little twerp," Croy said. "You want to fight me?"

"Yep," I said, and went out the front door and walked down the three steps and turned and waited. In a minute Croy pushed the door open. His face looked a little tight. He was mostly mouth and probably deep down he knew it.

"You sure you want to do this, kid?" Croy said.

"Yep."

"I don't want to hurt you," Croy said.

I put my hands up, like I did every weekday evening with my father and my uncles and had done every weekday evening with my father and my uncles since I was six.

"Good," I said. "But I want to hurt you."

He didn't like the boxing stance. But he was too far into this to back out. People had crowded out of Martin's to watch. He was stuck. He came down the step and walked at me.

I stuck a left jab onto his nose to stop him. It did stop him and it made his nose bleed. He shook his head and swung at me with his right hand. I blocked the punch and hit him with a straight right on his nose again. This time I broke it.

He yowled and took a step back and covered his face with his hands. Then he took his hands away a little and saw the blood and stared at it. Then he stared for a moment at me. Then he turned and pushed through the people watching and went away, walking very fast.

"Wow," Barry said. "You can really fight."

I dropped my hands and nodded to him.

"Keep it in mind," I said.

And went back into Martin's.

Chapter 28

I walked Jeannie home later that night. When we got to her house, we stopped and she turned and faced me.

"You're always taking care of me," she said.

"Not always," I said.

"I'm serious," she said. "You took care of me on the river. You defended me from Croy."

She seemed kind of intense. I didn't know what to say. I was a little uncomfortable.

"You like me," she said. "Don't you?"

"Sure," I said. "I known you since first grade."

She stood close to me, looking at me. I realized I was supposed to do something.

"I mean, you really like me," she said.

"I do," I said.

She sort of lunged forward and put her arms around me and raised her face. I realized I was supposed to kiss her. So far in life, I'd had more fights than kisses. She pressed herself hard against me. A feeling of, like, overheating flashed through me. I felt a little short of breath.

"Show me how much you like me," she whispered. "Kiss me."

I stared down at her face. Her eyes were closed. I realized I didn't quite know what I should do. Some of the women my father and my uncles brought home had kissed me on the cheek. I knew I shouldn't kiss her on the cheek. Okay, I thought, and took in a breath and bent down a little and kissed her on the mouth. She kissed back hard with her lips tight together. It hurt a little where the inside of my lip was pressed against my teeth.

I felt more of the overheating feeling. But not much else. No stars fell. No skyrockets. No moon-beams. No music. She kept pressing against me. I didn't think this was going the way it should. I liked her fine, but not the way I think she wanted me to. And I thought we might be making a mistake that we weren't really ready to make. On the other hand, there was that overheated feeling and the sense that I didn't want to hurt her feelings.

She broke off her kissing and leaned back with her arms still around my waist and looked up at me.

"My mom doesn't come home until eleven," she said. "You want to come in?"

From off to one side, where there was the me that always looked on calmly, I heard myself say, "Sure."

My voice sounded kind of hoarse, I thought.

Chapter 29

"No surprise there," Susan said. "A young woman with an abusive absentee father whose mother feels a woman is incomplete without a man."

"I was a little surprised at the time," I said.

"You were fourteen," Susan said.

"I was," I said.

The sun was now entirely behind the low buildings in the Back Bay, and the people walking past us in the Public Garden looked like people going home from work.

"So here she is kidnapped by her brute of a father and the handsome young Galahad comes galloping"—Susan smiled—"or in this case, mostly drifting downriver and saves her."

"My strength was as the strength of ten," I said. "Because my heart was pure."

"Sure it was," Susan said. "And then you defend her honor from a local bully."

"It was probably mostly about my own honor," I said.

"Probably," Susan said. "But she almost had to fall in love with you."

"Or what she thought was love."

"Shrinks call it cathexis," Susan said.

"Cathexis?"

"A powerful emotional investment in something or someone, which in fourteen-year-old girl terms feels like love, but probably isn't."

"You were once a fourteen-year-old girl," I said. "Did you do a lot of cathexis?"

"Several times a year," Susan said. "But I was, of course, always waiting for the one."

"Are you making sport of my obsession?" I said.

"I am," Susan said. "How did it work out after that night?"

"Not too well," I said. "She always sat beside me in study hall. She wanted to hold my hand if we walked anyplace. She started talking all the time about us."

"And that wasn't what you wanted."

"No. She was a friend, but not the only one. Sometimes I wanted to play ball or hang with the guys."

"Did you tell her this?" Susan said.

"Yes."

"How did you break it to her?" Susan said.

"I told her about what I just told you," I said. "That she was a friend, but not my only friend. And, you know, we didn't have an exclusive contract."

"How did she take it?"

"She cried," I said.

Susan nodded.

"I remember so clearly. It was raining like hell, and a lot of wind, and we were standing under the marquee of the Main Street Movie Theater to stay dry. She cried for a little bit, and I felt I had to put my arm round her shoulders, at least. And she shook it off, and took in a big deep breath, and said, ‘No. I'm okay.' And I said, ‘You're sure?' and she said, ‘I can wait.' And I didn't say anything. And she said, ‘But I have to walk. You have to walk with me.' And I said, ‘Okay.' And we walked for about an hour in a driving rain. And when we finally went to her house, she turned around and put her head against my chest and said, ‘It's okay. I'll be fine. But I'm not giving up.' Then she gave me a little kiss on the lips and went into her house."

"How was it next day?" Susan said.

"Fine," I said. "She stayed my friend. I'm sure she was waiting to be more. But she never pressed it again."

"Good for her," Susan said.

"Good for both of us."

Chapter 30

I was in study hall pretending to take notes on a book I was reading. The book was a novel about Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodman, by Rex Stout. My father had come across a Nero Wolfe novel at the library a while ago and brought it home and we all read it, and now all of us were reading all the Rex Stout we could find. Their household was all men, like ours.

Jeannie came into the study hall and sat down beside me. The teacher eyed her, and Jeannie opened a geography book and began to look at it.