I raised my eyebrows and shook my head slightly. “So you wouldn’t rape Susan Fraily,” I said.
I saw Mattis whip a fist in my direction. I leaned back, grabbed his wrist, and used his momentum to pull him past me, releasing him face-first into the water. The move was perfect, but I felt my feet slipping. In an effort to correct my balance, I brought my head forward — a terribly bad move. One of the Thing 2’s softball hands, which was anything but soft, connected with the back of my head. I dropped like a bag of cement, my face planting in the mud.
I moved to get up, but felt a boot connect with my ribs. Then another and another. They began singing the high school fight song as they kicked me over and over. All I could do was squirm enough to avoid a kick to the head or groin area.
Galaxies of pain were born and died every microsecond of their attack. I felt a rib crack. The bones in my left hand snapped. The toe of a boot found my kidney and I knew I’d be peeing blood for days.
There was a lull in their kicking, as if they wanted to examine the newly pulped being they were creating. I used the opportunity to slide back into the water by twisting to my knees and launching myself. I hit the water on my left side. They ran to the water’s edge, but I pulled myself deeper into the pond, grabbing mud from the bottom as purchase. As polluted as the water was, it soothed my body, reducing the pain to mere explosions instead of the never-ending avalanche it had become.
“Who you calling a sister?” Mattis howled, dripping black water on the edge of the pond.
Then they patted themselves on their backs and retreated. Eventually, I heard two cars start and roar away.
“Hey, you okay?”
“Where the hell were you?” I asked, each word a jolt of pain.
“I’m here now, aren’t I?” Wheatie splashed into the water next to me.
I held up my broken hand.
“Damn, they got you good.”
It was two hours before I managed to limp home. I emptied the ice container in the bathtub and got in, turning the cold water on. The ice melted right away, but the cold remained. I stayed that way a long time, then went straight to bed.
When I woke the next morning, I felt as if I’d been steamrolled by a ten-thousand-pound Zamboni. My father cracked open the door a little after eight. It was Sunday, so he was off and he usually spent the day down at the races, betting on horses. When he saw me, his face fell into something akin to Roosevelt on Mount Rushmore.
“You were in a fight again.”
If you call being jumped by four football players getting into a fight, then yes, but I didn’t answer.
He made no move to come in the room. “Your mom isn’t going to be happy about this.”
I wouldn’t expect her to be.
A few more seconds ticked by, then he asked in a monotone, “Do you need a doctor?”
If I asked for one, he’d get pissed. It’s not as though we could afford one. Then he’d be ragging on me for days, if not weeks.
“No, Dad. I got it covered.”
“You sure?” he asked.
I nodded, gritting my teeth at the pain.
He began to close the door.
“Uh, Dad?”
He stuck his head back in the room. “Yeah?”
“Did Wheatie stop by?”
He stared at me for a long moment, as if he were contemplating saying something, but then just shook his head and closed the door.
I listened through the walls as he began to talk to my mom, probably telling her not to worry.
The next time I woke the clock said 1:00 and Wheatie was at my side.
“Brother, you are one messed-up dude.”
Wheatie helped me out over the next four days. My hand swelled up like a purple pumpkin, but by day four, it was back to regular size and discolored. I kept it wrapped, applying ice when I could. My ribs were okay, just bruised… as was the rest of my body. I ate by grabbing whatever was available in the fridge. By Friday I was ready to return to the real world, but I wasn’t ready to go back to school.
My water sample was unbroken. Because it was in my pocket by my groin, it had been protected. So the first place we went after I left the house was the swimming pool shop to have the water analyzed.
When the nice man behind the counter got the results later in the day, he frowned. “If you’re swimming in this your pecker’s going to fall off.”
“So I heard,” I said, remembering having to scramble in the water to save myself. I was lucky it hadn’t already plopped to the ground. “What’s in it?”
“Mostly sodium and turpentine,” he said, eyeing me speculatively.
“Sodium like salt?”
He hesitated before responding. “There are different kinds of sodium. My machine can’t tell the difference.” He looked around the swimming pool showroom, then added, “If you want a definitive answer, I’d recommend going to the University of Maryland’s Science Department.”
I wondered what sodium and turpentine were doing in the water.
“There were also trace amounts of lead, mercury, and argon.”
“What could be doing this?”
The man leaned over the counter and whispered, “Listen, you didn’t get this from a pool. I know. I’m not sure where this is from, but I don’t want any part of this. I recommend you just leave this alone.”
“Why? What’s the matter?” I asked.
He gestured toward the readout. “I looked this up. You’ve tied into some black liquor.” Seeing the expression on my face, he explained. “It’s the substance that’s created when wood is pulped in the process for making paper. I made a few calls, including Patton’s Paper Plant, and was told to shut up.”
“Or else what?” I asked.
“Or else I might wake up one night to find my store a pile of ashes.”
“The paper plant told you that?”
“No. Someone else. Someone… how do I put this… connected. He didn’t say his name; he just said to lay off. He called and that’s all I’m saying.”
This was a turn of events I hadn’t anticipated. I was keen on getting to the bottom of the pollution and eventually stopping it. But if the Mob was somehow involved, I wasn’t sure what I’d do. Then I smiled. Truth be told, I didn’t know what I’d do even without the Mob. But I trusted my mind and body to figure it out.
I nodded. “Don’t worry about this. As far as we’re concerned, I was never here.”
He nodded. Then he paused. “We?” he asked nervously. “Who else have you told about this?”
“Just me and Wheatie,” I said. “No one else.”
I turned and left, Wheatie beside me. When we hit the street, we walked for a time so I could figure things out. Even I knew I couldn’t go against the Mob. Heck, I couldn’t go against four football players. No, that wasn’t what I was going to do. One day I’d be in a position to do something dramatic, be Spider-Man. But for now I’d have to settle for being Peter Parker. I’d gather evidence and find a way to report it. If not for me, for the memory of Helen, because the more that I walked, the more the memories of the two of us morphed until we were swimming together in a cauldron of black water, pieces of our skin smoking and then falling away.
Just as she began to scream, Wheatie brought me back to the present.
“What now, boss?”
“Now I go and find a camera.”
“What’s the camera for?”
“Another stakeout.”
Wheatie groaned.
“Except this time we’re not hanging out just to see if an asshole is going to rape some girl. This time we’re there for that and to see who’s dumping in the pond.”
I went around to Luskin’s to apologize to Mr. Howison, but that didn’t go well. I really should have called and he let me know just that.
“Plus, I can’t have any fighters working for me. I mean look at you. What would the customers say if they saw you?”