Spring, 1969.

So Shorty would show up, to help us out, we thought.

We stalk Northland Shopping Center, all around it, 4 or 5 times, past the shoe store, Radio Shack, the department store, the family restaurant, back around the dumpsters; circle again. We wait for Tony and his friends. Coming, so they say, to pound us. We are seven, mostly shrimpy, all of us dreading the fight. Exhilarated by Randy's mace can. We always stop at the dumpsters, each time around.

"I'll mace his face" says dumb Eddy.

The can hypnotizes us, our heads swivel to it as Randy nervously pulls it from his jean jacket, waves it around. Puts it back. Takes it out.

"Randy! Have you used it before?" I ask.

We all stop, again, examine it. Again. Teeth chattering, from the cold.

Uh-huh.

"Yeah. sure." He hasn't. "It has some kind of rod on a small chain, you pull it out before you squirt, um, some guy."

"No, you leave it in." Eddy again, reaches for it, Randy rotates away.

Car tires squeal. We all look up. Same el Camino as a few minutes ago. We wait. It stays on the dark edge, never comes close, drives out. I kick against loose mortar on the brick wall, it comes out faster so I slow down.

Randy sits on the shallow curb. The rest of us are too nervous. We spiral around each other, light cigarettes, play cool.

We hear Shorty before we see him. Chopped harley: dual carbs & mufflers, swept back, glass pack, gleaming chrome in the ozone parking lot light. He's with the two assholes. They stop a hundred yards away, rev engines, then throttle down, re-position on boot-toe til they can lean in, bike and all, and talk in each other's ears. Skinny asshole holds a beer in two fingers, wipes his nose on his arm. We soak it in like sunshine.

Shorty rides over. Randy throws rocks from the curb, watches his brother swing wide and sweep the stand, in one fluid move, and walk across the parking lot to us. The rest of us assume positions. Can't decide where to put hands, feet, eyes.

Shorty says: "Que pasa."

We know nothing. Except this: grunting is safer than real words. Randy just looks at him, in that sort-of-pissed way he gets whenever his older brother was around. Shorty stares back, half-smiles. He has no helmet of course. Long sandy braid, fu manchu beard, club colors on an old denim vest. An incongrous clean white T.

He lights up, looks away. "They show up?"

We all say: "I think so" and "El Camino" and "They left though".
Dumb Eddy starts to say, "Who? NO! man they're just..."

"Mustard color?"

"Huh?" says Randy.

Long drag. "The Camino."

"Oh. Yeah."

"That's Tony's brother's." I suddenly feel squeezed, short of breath. I dig my elbows in, cup my hands, light a fag, hope i look cool.

"They left."

"They'll be back."

We smoke, talk. Shorty has no problem with us squirts, so long as we don't pretend anything. He loves his brother. He shows him how to use the mace. He steps back, amused, as we posture, huddle. His pals are still drinking, the fat asshole is under his broke-ass piece of shit Indian, fixing something, cursing. It echoes across the lot. I want them to stay. Shorty lights another one, hits his brother in the shoulder, hard, and sparks go into us from the butt in his fist. A bottle hits the pavement, over there. Too loud, starting up again, and Shorty is gone.

"Shit!"

"I thought he was gonna help us."

"Is he coming back?"

"Randy shrugs. "Fuck if I know."

We no longer want it. Shorty could stomp anybody, even Tony's hardcase big brother, but especially Tony Bonaventura, with his hairy back and 5 o'clock shadow. In the fucking 8th grade. They called him the wall. He played football, and he was gonna stomp us, the freaks, cause of what I said in the locker room, about his mom thinking him stupid, and 'Nam and all. And now somehow it was all the freaks against the all the jocks.

"It's colder than a witch's tit!" says dumb Eddy.

The Camino comes back.

...

I'm heading for Randy's, to see Randy, but really to see Shorty. He's the real thing. He saved our asses, yeah, but it's not just that. I need to breath his air, to watch him ratchet a tough nut. I need to see him build something and not lose his temper. I want to see him look at his baby brother, I need the way he defers to his "moms", I need to be there when she tells him to clean up and he gets up right away and does it.

Assholes do what he says, and not because he's the toughest, or the strongest. I want to be with that.

He saved our asses that night, and ever since. Tony and his buddies make faces, flip things at our heads in class, but we know and they know they won't ever wait for us later. I like to think they get all loosey-goosey when they hear a bike at a light. Watch rapt, with shame a broken timber in them, when wrists flick and rev. Throats dry. Shorty did that, put protection on us, with a shove and a couple of quick punches. It might not last, but he stepped up. And he was Christ Almighty cool.

On Randy's street leaves blow in curving arcs over bad pavement. Too many trees, not much sky, an old neighborhood. St. Looey Eye-talian. Fake brick, new storm doors, porches with unused chairs. Well-trimmed hedges, truck on blocks, Mary grottoes: working-class pride. I get there, walk across the street, and at the bottom of the steep street steps i hear it: the back door? slam? BAM! so I figure Randy's back there, on the porch.

He's always back there.

Their yard is steep, it's long steps, too, so I slide my hands up, push down on each raised  knee, panting at the top. I go up four more, to the porch, knock on the screen, peer in. The Harley, the other one, is in there, in several big pieces on a tarp and newspapers, all neatly arranged. I wonder how they watch TV. I knock again. "Randy?"

There's music: "Hey Jude" is ending on the radio from somewhere. I can see all the way back, past the dining room, through the kitchen. I can see the back porch, and the back door is open, a little. He might not be here.

His mom says keep it closed, and Shorty enforces it, maintains all the rules. Randy resents it, but he puts up with it.

"Randy?" I think about going in. I wonder if I'm allowed. I think so. I want to be. We're almost best friends now. I want to be anything to this house. Tolerated is ok. Beloved, i wish. I walk over and peer over the rail, up the side drive. I'm not sure I can get through: there's fence, dense shrubs, a car in the narrow space. Blue haze drifts from out back. Faint. Gunpowder smell. Burnt leaves smell.

I go back, start to open the door, close it. His mom is almost always upstairs, or else she's at the bodega on the corner. I open again. "Mrs. Selvaggio?" It feels wrong to say her last name; it's always Moms or sometimes "Rosario" when Shorty teases her. Randy is always out back.

The rickety stairs there go up to his room; his dog is up there, behind the door. Sniffing. Whining..

There's a sound, like papers falling, like plastic sliding. "Time of the Season" comes on, it's upstairs, I think. "Randy! It's me, man." I'm inside, my hand behind me muffles the screen closing. I walk to the dining room, past the framed pictures of family. I look as usual at the one called "Moose-stache".

I'm in the kitchen, and stop. There's that smell. Burnt something. The kitchen is unpainted, the chairs are old. Cereal boxes, auto parts, dirty dishes.

"Randy?" Louder now. I want to leave, he's not here. I have to go. I'll check the back first. I don't want to be standing here if they come in the front. I suddenly realize I have no business here, they'll never let me come back, they won't know me anymore. But they always let people come and go, i think. It's ok.

I imagine Shorty mad at me. I stand there, then I walk to the back door, open it wide. I stop, there's a step, two steps down to the cracked cement porch floor, so I check my foot, look up, ahead, out the back, to the swinging screen, unlocked, then to the left, past the crappy covered divan, the card table, the old sagging arm chair. Burnt smell.

I don't see that it's Shorty. I see everything, then I see snapshots: his right arm braced up, loose fingers on the blue steel barrels; his jeans, legs splayed; dark stain at his crotch; plastic baggies, empty on the floor, on him, all over; his left hand, fingers broken, still stuck in the trigger guard; his colors, a vest, open, the T-shirt, all red. I want to think.

I want to think it's a joke, his head way back, like a cartoon guy, snoring. I say Shorty but it doesn't come out. My foots slips down that last step, I breathe again, rough, look down; I flicker my eyes over again.

There's a pie slice out of the right side of his face. His teeth are wrong, the lower jaw is dropped on that side. There's no ear on that side. I can see the wall through the gap. There's red and pink back there, all of it wet; black and red, on his head and shoulder. A piece of his collar is stuck on the wall. I really look now: his eyes are open, almost looking at me, the right one full of red. I look beyond again, at the wall and swallow a ball of rocks.

The pink is moving down, the collar falls.

The radio plays: "Fill me up, Buttercup".

I step up, back, look right at his eyes, make sure he can't see me.

I turn and make it to the living room and throw up, up and out. I am terrified about leaving my vomit here. I push it with my foot, to the side, into the small rug, under the coats. Out the door, down the stairs, to the sidewalk, I make it a few doors down, to thick bushes. I look around once and crawl under and it comes up again and again. Cars go by. Doors slam. I remember the red shirt, the baggies.

I will never tell, never, never tell. I say this out loud, over and over.

I get up, walk out. No eye contact. I am blocks away. I cross the road, cut the parking lot corner at Northland, start to cry again. I get home.

My brother Chris is at meditation. I wash my face, hands, and then again and again the cold water, up onto my face. I'm in a clean shirt when my Dad gets home. He steps in, says "Hello, Mr. Greg", chipper. Notices the jeans. "Rinse those out before you put them in the hamper", and hobbles into his room.

We sit on the plastic sofa with our TV trays. "Green Acres", Eva Gabor, sunset out the one small window. I eat some from each compartment, to avoid trouble. Meat loaf. Green beans. Apple cobbler. I get up and dump my tray, open the fridge, wolf down a slice of bologna. I take out an apple, bite it. I think I am crying, and I wonder that they can't tell.

I hear my Dad get up. I wash my face in the sink, not fast enough: he comes in. The apple in my hand is wet. Looks odd. I take more bites noisily: "I'll take this garbage out." I step next to him, eyes down. He says something as I tie the bag. I go out.

My brother comes home. “Que pasa?” he says, on his way inside. I stay outside and cry, and kick the dumpster, again and again and again.