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“Come on, Sanchez!” Rourke said. “We know you’re lying, so why don’t you—”

“I’m not,” Sanchez said. He shook his head absently, and his eyes were beginning to cloud with tears now. He clenched and unclenched his hands in his lap, and Dave watched him, feeling this great compassion for the boy, feeling a sudden, overwhelming brotherly emotion for him, but not allowing the emotion to take hold of his mind and his body, not allowing it to intrude upon the orderliness within his head. He had avoided trouble ever since he’d come to the school, and he did not want trouble now. There were five minutes left to the period now, and then all this would be forgotten. Rourke would have purged himself, and he’d forget all about Sanchez, and no one would get hurt.

Except Sanchez maybe.

Oh, not really hurt, not a trip down to Hampton, only the mark of a bully and a thief, on a kid who wouldn’t hurt a fly, on a kid as mild as... as mild as...

“Who?” Rourke said again, the sweat running down his face and staining his shirt collar. “Who, who, Sanchez? Who robbed you?”

The tears were running freely down the boy’s face now. His lip trembled and he could not stop the tears, and he rubbed at his eyes and shook his head, and all the while he watched the menacing brass knucks on Carlton’s desk, knowing the knucks were a warning to him, knowing they could be used on his face and his body. He kept shaking his head and crying, and his whole body began trembling as if something deep inside him were struggling to reach the surface. His thin frame shook violently, and Dave watched him, again feeling this empathy, and wanting to help, but at the same time not wanting to help.

And then, suddenly, as if the thing inside were too much to bear, Sanchez leaped to his feet. His brown eyes shone wetly behind the film of tears. He trembled for an instant, a last explosive shudder, and then the thing inside rose into his throat, and his lips parted, and his voice bubbled out of his mouth.

“No!” he shouted, “I don’t care! I don’t care the brass knucks!”

Dave saw Carlton slip the garbage lid handle over his fist, saw the fist tighten over it. Sanchez looked at the homemade knucks once more, and then he threw back his head and yelled, “Carlton!” as if he were ridding his body of something filthy. “Carlton beat me up, Carlton took my money, Carlton is the one!”

Carlton jumped out of his seat and started for the front of the room, the brass knucks gleaming on his fist.

“You lousy spic son of—” he started and Dave watched him, amazed that Sanchez had defied Carlton, amazed that the little guy had taken a stand, had fought against the odds, had defied the big things in life. Carlton rushed past him, and he could see the knucks gleaming with the sunlight from the windows, and suddenly Dave realized he’d been avoiding trouble all his life, all his goddamned life.

He saw his own hand reach out, and then he found himself spinning Carlton around. Carlton’s face changed in that instant. The hatred fled before a look of surprise, and then the surprise vanished, and a smirk perched on his mouth, and that was when Dave’s bunched fist lashed out and collided with his jaw.

He felt a sudden exultance sweep through him, and he knew then how Sanchez must have felt when he’d thrown back his head and shouted, “Carlton!” He saw Carlton drop into a heap at his feet, and suddenly all the boys in the class were shouting, roaring their approval, and Rourke stood by, surprised, the surprise smeared on his face like shaving cream.

“What are you going to do?” he asked. “Dave, you shouldn’t have hit him. What the hell are you going to—”

“Shut up!” Dave said, unused to the words, smiling because they were new to his tongue. “This is my goddamned class and I’ll handle it however the hell I want to. Now get your kids out of here!”

“What?” Rourke asked. “What?”

He turned his back on Rourke, and then walked to Carlton and picked up the homemade brass knucks. He tossed them on his palm, and he was aware of Sanchez’s gaze upon him, and of Rourke leaving the room with his kids. He did not pay any attention to Rourke. He returned Sanchez’s gaze, and then he said, “We’ll take care of Carlton, don’t worry. We’ll have him sent where he belongs. If” — he paused — “if you’re willing to tell the principal what you just told... the court.”

“I’ll tell him,” Sanchez said. He looked at the brass knucks on Dave’s palm. “Thank you, Mr. Kemp,” he added. “He could have—”

Dave smiled. “No,” he said. “No. Thank you, Sanchez,” and Sanchez smiled back, even though he did not fully understand.

The Beatings

August was a shimmering canopy of heat, August was the open mouth of a blast furnace, August was a hot cliché, all the hot clichés, and the city wore August like a soiled flannel shirt.

And in August, the bars were serving tall Tom Collinses or gin and tonics to polite society who drank to chase the heat. No one on the Bowery drank to chase the heat. Winter and summer were twin seasons on the Bowery, merged together in a heavy fog of persistent memories. You drank to squash the memories, but the drink only strengthened them.

And in the brotherhood of wine, you somehow began to feel a sense of real brotherhood. Everything else was gone then. Your Trina was gone, and your agency was gone, and your life was gone — all poured down the sink like a bottle of sour wine. The others had nothing, either. The others were only faces at first, but the faces began to take on meaning after a while, the members of your exclusive fraternity, the cast of the living dead. These were your brothers. Louse-infected, bearded, rumpled, sweating, empty hulks of men, they were nonetheless your brothers. The world above Fourteenth Street was a fantasy. The Bowery was your life, and its inhabitants were your friends and neighbors.

If your name is Matt Cordell, there’s something inside you that makes you a part of your friends and neighbors.

My name is Matt Cordell.

My friend and neighbor owned a very bloody face. My friend and neighbor was called Angelo, and he tried to talk but his lips were puffed and bleeding, and the teeth in the front of his mouth had been knocked out. He had never looked pretty, Angelo, but his face was almost unrecognizable now, and the words that trailed from his ruptured mouth were indistinct and blurred.

“Who did it?” I asked. I was only another face in the ring of faces surrounding Angelo. The faces were immersed in an alcoholic haze, but the sight of Angelo was evaporating the stupor. We crowded around him like bettors in a floating crap game. He shook his head and drops of blood splashed to the sidewalk.

“Don’t know,” he mumbled. “Didn’t see. Couldn’t...”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Danny asked. Danny was tall and thin, a wino who’d been on the Bowery for as long as I could remember. The rumble had it that Danny used to be a professor of history in a swank upstate girls’ college until he’d got into some kind of trouble. Danny did not like violence. His dislike showed in the sharp angle of his shaggy brows, the tight line of his mouth.

“Didn’t see who,” Angelo mumbled. He shook his head. “Just like that. Fast.”

“Were you carrying money?” I asked.

Angelo tried to smile, but his broken mouth wouldn’t let him. “Money? Me? No, Matt. No money.”

“A jug then? Did you have a jug on you?”

“No.”

“Then why would anyone—” Danny started.