Absent Friends

handled.

Jimmy can see the sense in this. When you're a kid, you don't tell your mom you don't want to go to school because you want to watch the Batman marathon on TV. You say your throat hurts. And it does; but if today were a game day, if you had to go out on the field in front of the whole school and be a hero, slam the ball out of the park, tag the guy sliding spikes-first toward home, if that were today, would your throat matter? But it's not today, so you tell your mom about your throat, and she worries about you so she lets you stay home.

It's the same here. Mike the Bear's worried about Jack. Jack's mom, she's worried even more.

Nine years old: Jimmy sees her, Mrs. Molloy, watching out the window while Tom calms Jack down, Jack all snarly because the kids don't want to climb the tree in Mr. Conley's yard, see if they can jump to the roof of his house from there. They won't do it even on Jack's dare: For Christ's sake, you fairies, the old fart's not even home!

Jack's going to do it himself, but Marian runs up to him and whispers. Jack stops, answers her. Jimmy hears Marian laugh. Jack says a swearword, but now, it's not like he's mad, it's like a joke, and Jack laughs with Marian. Next thing, Tom's calling, Hey, Jim, you coming or what? and Jack's pounding a fist into his mitt, and they're going off to play some ball. But Jimmy catches a look between Tom and Mrs. Molloy, something he doesn't understand, but he knows it's about Jack. And Mrs. Molloy keeps watching them out the window until the kids turn the corner and Jimmy can't see her anymore.

And back in Flanagan's, this is what Mike the Bear says to Jimmy: Trouble's coming. The cops're fed up, they're ready to jump on Jack and his crew. If Jack doesn't back off, he's going down.

Jimmy frowns. You sure? he asks Mike the Bear. I mean, maybe it's not true. You know, rumors, you hear stuff.

From where I heard it, Mike says, it's a safe bet.

Jimmy doesn't ask where that is. Firemen and cops, there's no love lost. A cop would rather bust on you than help you, rather knock you down than pick you up, because he figures probably you deserve it, anything bad you didn't do you just didn't get a chance yet.

That's what the firehouse says, and Jimmy knows some cops like that. But still, mostly they're straight. Mostly they want to fight crime and stop the bad guys, and mostly they want to be Superman just like he does. He thinks what happens, after a year or two on the street, they still want the same thing, but they forget how to tell who they're for and who they're against.

Bent cops, cops on the take—that's something else. They're against everybody, even their brother cops. Everything's for themselves, and thinking about them makes Jimmy feel like he did when the kids found a dead dog once down under the bridge, its skinny legs tied together, someone threw it in the water and made it drown on purpose. Jimmy remembers how mad he was, how he didn't know who to be mad at, how he wanted to do something and the dog was already dead and there was nothing he could do. So when Mike the Bear says what he hears about Jack, where he hears it from it's a safe bet, Jimmy just drinks some beer and waits.

I can't just tell Jack, Big Mike says. Sure, yeah, I can, but it's what I've been telling him all his life. Jimmy, you know him, he's always been like this.

Jimmy nods. He knows.

I can't say, kid, this time it's real, this time you have to back off, because I can't do anything about it, this time. He won't believe me, Jimmy. He'll think I can fix it, like I always have.

Mike the Bear's talking to Jimmy, but he isn't looking at him, he's looking across the room at the pictures on the walls, racing pictures, trotters winning and losing. Jimmy wonders how many guys have ever heard Big Mike Molloy say this, that there's something he can't do anything about.

Big Mike says, Jimmy, if your father, he worries about you, he worries about your mother worrying about you, he told you to stay out of burning buildings, what would you do?

Jimmy's thinking about Mrs. Molloy's eyes; but when Mike the Bear asks him this, he has to laugh, because his father almost did say exactly this, Jimmy's first week at the Academy. He said, It's not me, son, it's your mother, she's thinking she'll be worried every day when you go to work.

He tells Big Mike, and Mike asks, And what did you do?

I took my mom to the firehouse, Jimmy says. I showed her the salamanders over the door. They always come back after a fire, I told her. Then I gave her flowers, chocolates, too, a really big box, shaped like a heart. I told her she was lucky. I told her, Not every pretty woman gets presents from a fireman.

Big Mikes smiles. Tom's right about you, he says.

Jimmy smiles, too. He's thinking about his mom, how the day after he gave her the flowers she gave him a present, too, a St. Florian medal, said, Jimmy, keep this with you, I'll feel better if you keep this with you. It's in his pocket now.

Big Mike says, And you kept going to fires.

Yes, sir, says Jimmy.

Yes. Because Jimmy, this is you. And what Jack was like, since he was a kid, he's still like that, too. That's why I've been digging Jack out of holes all his life. Because it's not his fault he gets in them. You know what I mean?

Yes, says Jimmy.

But this one, it's too deep, says Mike the Bear. Jack's gonna have to climb out himself. But he'll never do it, he won't believe it, if it's me who tells him.

Jimmy sips his beer. He's thinking two things. One is, if Jack were just some guy, maybe the cops rolling him up wouldn't be a bad thing, maybe Jimmy'd just stand back and watch.

But the other thing he's thinking is, it's Jack.

And it's Big Mike, asking him for help, saying somebody needs to tell Jack.

But even if somebody does: just Jimmy, just like that?