Things rarely work out that way in real life. Arnie didn’t get anywhere near Repperton’s chin. Instead he hit Repperton’s hand, knocked the bag of peanuts on the floor, and spilled Coca-Cola all over Repperton’s face and shirt.
“All right, you fucking little prick!” Repperton cried. He looked almost comically stunned. “There goes your ass!” He came for Arnie with the jackhandle.
Several of the other men ran over then, and one of them told Repperton to drop the jackhandle and fight fair. Repperton threw it away and waded in.
“Darnell never tried to put a stop to it? I asked Arnie.
“He wasn’t there, Dennis. He disappeared fifteen minutes or half an hour before it started. It’s like he knew it was going to happen.”
Arnie said that Repperton had done most of the damage right away. The black eye was first; the scrape on his face (made by the class ring Repperton had purchased during one of his many sophomore years) came directly afterward. “Plus assorted other bruises,” he said.
“What other bruises?”
We were sitting in one of the back booths. Arnie glanced round to make sure no one was looking at us and then raised his T-shirt. I hissed in breath at what I saw. A terrific sunset of bruises—yellow, red, purple, brown—covered Arnie’s chest and stomach. They were just starting to fade. How he had been able to come to work after getting mashed around like that I couldn’t begin to understand.
“Man, are you sure he didn’t spring any of your ribs?” I asked. I was really horrified. The shiner and the scrape looked tame next to this shit. I had seen high school scuffles, of course, had even been in a few, but I was looking at the results of a serious beating for the first time in my life.
“Pretty sure,” he said levelly. “I was lucky.”
“I guess you were.”
Arnie didn’t say a lot more, but a kid I knew named Randy Turner was there, and he filled me in on what had happened in more detail after school had started again. He said that Arnie might have gotten hurt a lot worse, but he came back at Buddy a lot harder and a lot madder than Buddy had expected.
In fact, Randy said, Arnie went after Buddy Repperton as if the devil had blown a charge of red pepper up his ass. His arms were windmilling, his fists were everywhere; He was yelling, cursing, Spraying spittle. I tried to imagine it and couldn’t—the picture I kept coming up with instead was Arnie slamming his fists down on my dashboard hard enough to make dents, screaming that he would make them eat it.
He drove Repperton halfway across the garage, bloodied his nose (more by good luck than good aim), and got one to Repperton’s throat that made him start to cough and gag and generally lose interest in busting Arnie Cunningham’s ass.
Buddy turned away, holding his throat and trying to puke and Arnie drove one of his steel-toed workboots into Repperton’s jeans-clad butt, knocking him flat on his belly and forearms. Repperton was still gagging and holding his throat with one hand, his nose was bleeding like mad, and (again, according to Randy Turner) Arnie was apparently gearing up to kick the son of a bitch to death when Will Darnell magically reappeared, hollering in his wheezy voice to cut the shit over there, cut the shit, cut the shit.
“Arnie thought that fight was going to happen,” I told Randy. “He thought it was a put-up job.”
Randy shrugged. “Maybe. Could be. It sure was funny, the way Darnell showed up when Repperton really started to lose.”
About seven guys grabbed Arnie and dragged him away. At first he fought them like a wildman, screaming for them to let him go, screaming that if Repperton didn’t pay for the broken headlight he’d kill him. Then he subsided, bewildered and hardly aware how it had happened that Repperton was down and he was still on his feet.
Repperton finally got up, his white T-shirt smeared with dirt and grease, his nose still bubbling blood. He made a lunge for Arnie. Randy said it looked like a pretty halfhearted lunge, mostly for form’s sake. Some of the other guys got hold of him and led him away. Darnell came over to Arnie and told him to hand in his toolbox key and get out.
“Jesus, Arnie! Why didn’t you call me Saturday afternoon?”
He sighed. “I was too depressed.”
We finisned our pizza, and I bought Arnie a third Pepsi. That stuff’s murder on your complexion, but it’s great for depression.
“I don’t know whether he meant get out just for Saturday or from then on,” Arnie said to me on our way home. “What do you think, Dennis? You think he kicked me out for good?”
“He asked for your toolbox key, you said.”
“Yeah. Yeah, he did. I never got kicked out of anyplace before.” He looked like he was going to cry.
“That place bites the root anyway. Will Darnell’s an asshole.”
“I guess it would be stupid to try and keep it there anymore anyway,” he said. “Even if Darnell lets me come back, Repperton’s there. I’d fight him again—”
I started to hum the theme from Rocky.
“Yeah, fuck you and the cayuse you rode in on, Range Rider,” he said, smiling a little. “I really would fight him. But Repperton might take after her with that jackhandle again when I wasn’t there. I don’t think Darnell would stop him if he did.”
I didn’t answer and maybe Arnie thought that meant I agreed with him, but I didn’t. I didn’t think his old rustbucket Plymouth Fury was the main target. And if Repperton felt that he couldn’t accomplish the demolition of the main target by himself, he would simply get by with a little help from his friends—Don Vandenberg, Moochie Welch, et al. Get on your motorhuckle boots, boys, we got plenty good stompin tonight.
It occurred to me that they could kill him. Not just kill him but really, honest-to-Christ kill him. Guys like that sometimes did. Things just went a little too far and some kid wound up dead. You read about it in the paper sometimes.
“—keep her?”
“Huh?” I hadn’t followed that. Up ahead, Arnie’s house was in view.
“I asked if you had any ideas about where I could keep her.”
The car, the car, the car that’s all he could talk about. He was starting to sound like a broken record. And, worse, it was always her, her, her. He was bright enough to see his growing obsession with her—it, damn it, it—but he wasn’t picking it up. He wasn’t picking it up at all.
“Arnie,” I said. “My man. You’ve got more important things to worry about than where to keep the car. I want to know where you’re going to keep you.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“I’m asking you what you’re going to do if Buddy and Buddy’s buddies decide they want to put you in traction.”
His face suddenly grew wise—it grew wise so suddenly that it was frightening to watch. It was wise and helpless and enduring. It was a face I recognized from the news when I was only eight or nine or so, the face of all those soldiers in black pajamas who had kicked the living shit out of the best-equipped and best-supported army in the world.
“Dennis,” he said, “I’ll do what I can.”
10
LeBAY PASSES
I got no car and it’s breakin my heart,
But I got a driver, and that’s a start…
The movie version of Grease had just opened, and I took the cheerleader out to see it that night. I thought it was dumb. The cheerleader loved it. I sat there, watching these totally unreal teenagers dance and sing (if I want realistic teenagers—well, more or less—I’ll catch The Blackboard Jungle sometime on a revival), and my mind just drifted away. And suddenly I had a brainstorm, the way you sometimes will when you’re not thinking about anything in particular.
I excused myself and went into the lobby to use the pay-phone. I called Arnie’s house, dialling quick and sure, I’d had his number memorized since I was eight or so. I could have waited until the movie was over, but it just seemed like such a damned good idea.