opening with “Rockin’ Robin,” a hit for Michael Jackson earlier that year, and then got the throngs going when he moved into his own material. During “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours),” a handler came out and turned Stevie around, as he was inadvertently singing to the empty, obstructed-view portion of the stands. After a dead period during which people got more inebriated, more unruly, and more high, the Stones walked onto the stage, and Mick Jagger, cocaine skinny in a white jumpsuit and red silk scarf, shouted, “Hello, campers!” launching the band into “Brown Sugar.” Forty thousand were up on their feet, fueled by alcohol, speed, acid, pot, and youth. A police officer twirled his nightstick in unison with the rhythm section. The band played cuts from Exile on Main Street, which had recently been released. Mick Taylor’s guitar solo on “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” was epic. Jagger pranced, pirouetted, and whipped the stage with a leather belt during “Midnight Rambler.” Jagger toasted the crowd with a bottle of Jack, saying, “I drink to your independence.” Tear gas drifted in from police action outside the stadium. The boys’ eyes burned, but they didn’t care. Girls who tried to climb onstage were thrown off or hauled away by security and had their hands cut by nails driven up through the stage’s edge. Near the end of the concert, during a violent “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” the houselights were turned on, and the smoke in the air was industrial as it moved up into the night sky. Alex could not remember being happier. He had never experienced anything like this and doubted that anything in his life would ever top it.
“The Hole must wear a halter top down there, too,” said Billy. “ ’Cause she likes to allow that easy access.”
“For real,” said Pete.
Billy and Pete were still talking about Jenny Maloney. Alex wondered how long they had been discussing her. He wondered if he had blacked out.
“I know you had your fingers in it,” said Billy, setting Pete up.
“I had my arm in it, man,” said Pete. “In the stairwell up at the HoJo hotel? Her parents were giving her a sweet sixteen party and shit. While they were passing out party favors, me and Jenny were up there on the landing, making out, and she put one foot up on this step and took my hand and kinda guided it up there. I didn’t need no petroleum jelly, either, no lie…”
As Pete went on, Alex Pappas tuned him out. Billy and Pete always sat together up front, and at some point when they were partying, they forgot he was in the car. He didn’t mind. The things they said when they were high, he had heard them all before. Pete, elbow deep in Jenny Maloney’s pussy at her sweet sixteen party, in the stairwell of the HoJo hotel up in Wheaton while her parents passed out birthday hats in the rented room… no shit, he knew it by heart.
Alex looked out the window. The world outside was tilted a bit and moving, and he blinked to stop the spin. He could feel the sweat dripping down his chest under his T. They were at the red light at the Boulevard. They were in the middle lane, which meant straight only. He had never been “over there” to Heathrow Heights, and as far as he knew, neither had his friends. He vaguely wondered why Billy was in this lane. He remembered the conversation between Billy and Pete the night before, and he thought: Now Billy is going to show us that he is not afraid.
PGC was playing “Rocket Man.” The song reminded Alex of his girlfriend, Karen. Karen lived on a street called Lovejoy. Billy called the street “Lovejew” because the neighborhood was heavy with the Tribe. In the spring, Alex and Karen had cut school and gone out to Great Falls in Karen’s eggplant-colored Valiant. They swam in a natural pool and drank warm Buds, sunning themselves on the rocks. On the way home, Karen let Alex drive her car. “Rocket Man” was on the radio, and Karen sat beside him smoking a cigarette, shivering in her bikini top and damp jeans, tapping ash into the tray as she sang along to the song and sometimes smiled at him with strands of black hair stuck to her face. Karen’s cold father and hateful stepmother made him want to protect her. He pondered if this was what it meant to love someone and he guessed that he did love Karen. He thought, I should be with her right now.
“What are we gonna do when we get in there?” said Pete.
“Just fuck with ’em,” said Billy. “Raise a little hell.”
Alex wanted to say, “Let me out here.” But his friends would call him a pussy and a faggot if he did.
Alex looked through the windshield as Billy caught the green.
They were crossing the Boulevard and then they were across it, going down an incline along the railroad tracks and past a bridge that spanned the tracks and then down into a neighborhood of ramshackle homes and cars that said poor. There were three young black guys grouped on the sidewalk ahead, in front of what looked like a country store. Two of the guys were shirtless and one of them wore a white T-shirt that had numbers written on it in Magic Marker. Alex noticed that one of the shirtless ones had a scar on his face. Pete and Billy were rolling down their windows.
“You ever been back here, for real?” said Pete. Alex could hear excitement and a catch in Pete’s voice. Pete was rooting through the paper bag at his feet and coming up with one of the Hostess cherry pies in his hand. He tore the wrapper off the pie.
“Nah,” said Billy, who was looking at the group of black guys, now eye-fucking them as they approached. They were thin, flat of chest and stomach, broad shouldered, and muscled out in the arms.
“You know how to get out of here, right?” said Pete.
“ Drive outta here,” said Billy, switching off the radio. “I got the wheel. You just do your thing.”
“Why you goin so slow?”
“So you don’t miss.”
“I’m not gonna fuckin miss.”
“Billy,” said Alex. His voice was soft, and neither Billy nor Pete turned his head.
And now the Torino was there, and the young men were stepping slowly to the car as it pulled alongside them. Billy’s face was stretched tight. He leaned toward the passenger window and yelled, “Eat this, you fuckin niggers!” and Pete backhand-tossed the cherry pie. It glanced off the scar-faced, shirtless young man, and Pete ducked to avoid his punch, thrown through the open window. Billy floored it, cackling with laughter, and the Ford left rubber on the street as it fishtailed and straightened and headed down the road. Alex felt the color drain from his face.
They heard the angry calls of the young men behind them. They passed more houses and an intersection and then a very old church, and down at the end of the road they saw a striped barrier erected by the county and behind it, beside the railroad tracks, thick woods and vines in full summer green.
“It’s a turnaround,” said Alex, as if in wonder.
“The hell it is,” said Billy. “It’s a dead end.”
Billy put the Ford through a three-point maneuver, slamming the automatic shifter into reverse, then into drive, and headed back up the street. The young men were standing in the road, not moving toward them, not yelling anymore. The shirtless one who had been hit by the pie looked to be smiling.
Billy tore his bandanna off his head, letting his black hair fall free. He turned left at the intersection, and the tires cried as they passed more houses in disrepair and an old black lady walking a small dog, then they came to a T in the road and all looked right and left. On the right, the road became a circle. On the left, the road ended with another striped barrier bordering woods. All of them pondered their stupidity and bad luck, and no one said a word.
Billy turned the car around and drove back to the main road. He stopped at the intersection and looked left. Two of the young men were spread out in the middle of the road, spaced so the Ford could not pass through. The other had taken a position on the sidewalk. An older black woman with eyeglasses had appeared and was standing on the porch of the country market.
Pete touched the handle of the door.
“Pete,” said Billy.
“ Fuck this,” said Pete. He opened the door, leaped out, closed the door behind him, and took off. He ran toward the woods at the end of the street, the soles of his three-stripes kicking up as he slashed left and hit the railroad tracks without breaking stride.
Alex felt betrayal and envy churn inside him as he watched Pete vanish behind the tree line. Alex wanted to book, too, but he could not. It wasn’t just loyalty to Billy. It was the suspicion that he would not make it to the woods. He was not as fast as Pete. They’d catch up to him, and the fact that he had run would only make it worse. Maybe Billy could talk them out of this. Billy could just apologize, and the ones in the street would see that what they’d done was nothing more than a stupid prank.
“I can’t leave my dad’s car,” said Billy very quietly. He hit the gas and went back up the road, the way they’d
