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Libertonian
and took a look at the picture of the
chess club, but oddly enough, that same Republican tendency would almost
surely make her disregard it.
What's now is forever
—ask any Republican
banker and he'll tell you that's just the way the world ought to run.
High school kids and Republican bankers when you're little you take it for
granted that everything changes constantly. When you're a grown-up, you take
it for granted that things are going to change no matter how much you try to
maintain the status quo (even Republican bankers know that—they may not
like it, but they know it). It's only when you're a teenager that you talk about
change constantly and believe in your heart that it never really happens.
I went outside with my gigantic bag lunch in one hand and angled across the
parking lot toward the shop building. It is a long, barnlike structure with
corrugated metal sides painted blue—not very different in design from Will
Darnell's garage, but much neater. It houses the wood shop, the auto shop,
and the graphic arts department. Supposedly the smoking area is around at the
rear, but on nice days during the lunch break, there are usually shoppies lined
up along both sides of the building with their motorcycle boots or their
pointy-toed Cuban shitkickers cocked up against the building, smoking and
talking to their girlfriends. Or feeling them up.
Today there was nobody at all along the right side of the building, and that
should have told me something was up, but it didn't. I was lost in my own
amusing thoughts about Arnie and Leigh and the psychology of the Modern
American High School Student.
The real smoking area—the "designated" smoking area is in a small cul-de-
sac behind the auto shop. And beyond the shops, fifty or sixty yards away, is
the football field, dominated with the big electric scoreboard with GO GET
THEM TERRIERS emblazoned across the top.
There was a group of people just beyond the smoking area, twenty or thirty of
them in a tight little circle. That pattern usually means a fight or what Arnie
likes to call a "pushy-pushy"—two guys who aren't really mad enough to
fight sort of shoving each other around and whacking each other on the
shoulders and trying to protect their macho reputations.
I glanced that way, but with no real interest. I didn't want to watch a fight; I
wanted to eat my lunch and find out if anything was going on between Arnie
and Leigh Cabot. If there was a little something happening there, it might take
his mind off his obsession with Christine. One thing was for sure: Leigh
Cabot didn't have "any rust on her rocker panels.
Then some girl screamed and someone else yelled," Hey, no! Put that away,
man!" That sounded very much ungood. I changed direction to see what was
going on.
I pushed my way through the crowd and saw Arnie in the circle, standing
with his hands held out a little in front of him at chest level. He looked pale
and scared, but not quite panicked. A little distance to his left was his lunch-
sack, squashed flat. There was a large sneaker-print in the middle of it.
Standing opposite him, in jeans and a white Hanes T-shirt that clung to every
ripple and bulge of his chest, was Buddy Repperton. He had a switchblade
knife in his right hand and he was moving it slowly back and forth in front of
his face like a magician making mystic passes.
He was tall and broad-shouldered. His hair was long and black. He wore it
tied back in a ponytail with a hank of rawhide. His face was heavy and
stupid and mean-looking. He was smiling just a little. What I felt was an
unmanning mixture of dismay and cold fear. He didn't look
just
stupid and
mean; he looked crazy.
"Told you I was gonna getcha, man," he said softly to Arnie. He tilted the
knife and jabbed softly at the air with it in Arnie's direction. Arnie flinched
back a little. The switchblade had an ivory handle with a little chrome button
to flick out the blade set into it. The blade itself looked to be about eight
inches long—it wasn't a knife at all, it was a fucking bayonet.
"Hey, Buddy, brand 'im!" Don Vandenberg yelled happily, and I felt my mouth
go dry.
I looked around at the kid next to me, some nerdy freshman I didn't know. He
looked absolutely hypnotized, all eyes. "Hey," I said, and when he didn't look
around I slammed my elbow into his side.
"Hey!"
He jumped and looked around at me in terror.
"Go get Mr Casey. He eats his lunch in the wood-shop office. Go get him
right now."
Repperton glanced at me, then glanced at Arnie. "Come on, Cunningham," he
said. "What do you say, you want to go for it?"
"Put down the knife and I will, you shitter," Arnie said. His voice was
perfectly calm. Shitter, where had I heard that word before? From George
LeBay, hadn't it been? Sure. It had been his brother's word.
It apparently wasn't a word Repperton cared for. He flushed and stepped
closer to Arnie. Arnie circled away. I thought something was going to happen
pretty quick maybe one of those things the call for stitches and leave a scar.
"You go get Casey
now
," I told the nerdy-looking freshman, and he went. But
I thought everything would probably go down before Mr Casey got back
unless I could maybe slow things down a little.
"Put down the knife, Repperton," I said.
His glance came over my way again. "Whit you know," he said. "It's
Cuntface's friend, You want to make me put it down?"
"You've got a knife and he doesn't, I said. "In my book that makes you a
fucking chicken-shit."
The flush deepened. Now his concentration was broken. He looked at Arnie,
then over at me. Arnie flashed me a glance of pure gratitude—and moved a
little closer to Repperton. I didn't like that.
"Put it down," someone yelled at Repperton. And then someone else: "Put it
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