It was only by an effort of will that I kept my hand away from my smarting face. Don't fight it, I told myself. I walked toward the cruiser parked in a corner of the lot. Harry Coombs tramped along beside me, muttering under his breath.
The five of us rode downtown. I never said a word. Inside the police station a cop who had previously taken no part took my arm and led me to a door opening on two steel cells with cement floors. He motioned me inside.
Even a couple of years later I'd have known they were just trying to scare me. Nobody goes into a cell without a charge against him. A session in an interrogation room would have been the correct thing. But I didn't know. I took it seriously.
I looked around inside the cell. There was a steel cot without even a blanket. Nothing else. The policeman didn't close the cell door, but he closed the outside door. I got a good look at his face before he went out.
I sat down on the cot and tried to get myself organized. I knew they'd be coming in. I didn't feel worried, just mad. Edwards' tactics infuriated me, and I knew I would get that big sonofabitch some day if it was the last thing I ever did. And if I could do it today, so much the better.
I stood up quickly when the outside door opened. It was Harry Coombs. He closed the door and stood with his back to it. "Listen, kid," he said hurriedly. "I got through to him finally that you're no juvenile delinquent. He don't think so much of himself right now, but when he comes in here he's got to make a little noise to justify himself. Get smart. Agree with him. Do what he says, y'hear?" I looked at him. "Ahhhhhh, you're as thick-headed as he is," Coombs growled. He opened the door and walked out.
I took off my shoes and put them on the steel cot beside me, then stretched out on my back. I stared up at the ceiling that was covered by misty-looking cracks. Do what Edwards told me? Not a chance. Not a bloody fucking chance. If he was on a hook because of me, he'd stay there (ill his liver and lungs rotted for all the help I'd give him.
I sat up when the outer door opened again. Three of them filed into the cell, Edwards in the lead. I didn't know the names of the other two, but by now I knew their faces. Harry Coombs wasn't with them. I sat there and watched them enter.
"Let's hear the answers to a few questions now," Edwards began. His voice was rough. He looked the same, his red face as shiny as ever, but even disregarding what Coombs had said he didn't sound the same. His voice said he was uneasy. "I want a statement from you about what you were doing in that parking lot," he blustered. "A signed, witnessed statement."
I didn't say anything, and his face grew dark. He walked toward me, slowly. I sat still on the cot. "I said I want a signed statement from you!" Edwards bellowed.
I -.at there. Any statement I gave him he could probably twist around for his own purposes. He'd get no statement from me. When I said nothing, Edwards made a movement with his left hand. Just a gesture. Testing my nerve. I ■..it there "God, how I love you Hoy Scout tough guys!" he said between his teeth. He loomed up over me as I continued to sit on the cot. He jabbed me in the ribs with a stiffened thumb "Stand up when I talk to you!"
I didn't move I le slapped me. My head hit the wall behind m< One of the men with him made some kind of sound, whether assent or protest I couldn't tell. I couldn't see tin in All I could see was Edwards' bulk, his red face, and Ins let looking little pig eyes. My own were squeezed tight trying to keep the tears behind them. My face stung like fury. "Stand up, damn you!" Edwards barked. He stiffened the thumb again and advanced it slowly toward my rib cage, waiting for me to flinch. I set my teeth and sat still. Edwards jabbed me in the ribs. He jabbed me again. And again. Each time it felt like a red-hot poker.
When I saw he meant to keep it up, I reached behind me and picked up one of my shoes by the toe. When Sergeant Edwards' arm moved again, I came up from the cot, fast. I smashed him right across the bridge of his nose with the heel of my shoe. I mean I hit him with every ounce I had in me. He went reeling backward, blood spurting like a geyser from his smashed nose. Only the men behind him kept him from going down.
He rebounded from them and leaned into me, clubbing at me with both fists. His weight bulled me backward, then down. On my way to the floor he hit me three or four more good shots. I hit him in the belly with both hands on my way up. Edwards knocked me down again.
There was a lot of noise and confusion. People yelling. People hurting me. I couldn't see very well. I went down and got up twice more. I think it was twice. My vision got worse. If I could have seen Edwards clearly, I'd have butted him squarely in the middle of his ugly face with the top of my skull.
But I couldn't see or reach him.
And after awhile I couldn't get up any more.
It seemed like a long time later I heard my father's voice. I wondered how he'd gotten there. His voice was loud and angry. "—Bet someone's going to pay for this!" he was saying. "And I don't care if it's you, John!"
I opened my eyes cautiously. I could see from the left one. I was in an iron bed, covered with a white sheet, and my father and John Mullen, the chief of police, were nose to nose at its foot.
"Take it easy, Henry," the chief said. He lived just up the street from us. I'd taken his youngest daughter to a school dance. "I'll get to the bottom of it."
"You're damn right you will!" my father said hotly. "And I want the boy moved to a hospital right now!"
"Doc Everhard says it isn't necessary, Henry."
"Don't try to tell me what's not necessary, John! I said right now! Don't think you can keep my boy from getting the treatment he needs just because you've got a stinking situation you'd like to cover—"
"I said I'd get to the bottom of it!" Flint-edge steel ridged Chief Mullen's tone. His voice had risen like my father's. "The boy could have been at fault, too."
"Fault? Fault? Good God, John, have you gone out of your mind? If he burned down an orphans' home, should he look like this at the hands of your men? I know this Edwards. A thug in a uniform. A disgrace—"
Chief Mullen had seen my opened eye. He walked quickly around the end of the bed. "What happened, son?" he asked quietly. My father pushed in beside him, and they both stood looking down at me.
I had to make three starts before my voice would work. "I—fell down," I said finally in a breathy rasp.
"Fell down!" my father echoed incredulously. "Fell?" He stared at me, then whirled on the chief. "What kind of intimidation is this, John? I warn you, I'm going—"
"Take it easy, Henry." There was a warning note in the official voice. The chief's shrewd-looking eyes were studying me. "Don't forget we walked in here together. Don't let me hear you say 'intimidation' again." He was still looking at me thoughtfully. "We'll talk to him later."
"We'll talk to him right now, damn it!"
Hut Chief Mullen finally got my father out of there.
I never told them any more than that, then or later. I never heard what Edwards told them, I didn't care. I think my father thought at first the beating had affected my mind. Right from the beginning, though, the chief came closet lo the Until Day after day he came to the house with path in questions. After awhile I stopped answering them at all. And eventually he stopped coming.
I was out of school for three weeks until my face healed up I still had three broken fingers on my left hand, and from shoulders to knees I was spotted like a leopard. I didn't remember anything about the fingers. Someone must have stepped on them during the melee.
Nobody at school—or anywhere else—knew what happened. I didn't say anything, and the police didn't say anything. I found out without too much trouble that the two men in the cell with Edwards that day had been Glenn Smith and Walter Cummin's.
I took to skipping classes at school, then whole days. I spent more time out of the house at night than I ever had. The first three marking periods I'd been on the honor roll, but when the school office called me in about my sliding grades, they said I might not graduate if I didn't straighten up. I didn't give a damn. I didn't think they could flunk me so quickly after the marks I'd carried, but I didn't care if they did. I was busy.