Hearts In Atlantis

around.

“Shut up, Gerber Baby!” he snarled. “Why don’t you just shut up and kiss your boyfriend while he’s still got all his teeth?”

The third boy was wearing a motorcycle belt cinched on the side and ancient Snap-Jack shoes covered with dirt from the baseball field. He was behind Carol. Now he moved in closer, still walking his bike, and grabbed her ponytail with both hands. He pulled it.

“Ow!” Carol almost screamed. She sounded surprised as well as hurt. She pulled away so hard that she almost fell down. Bobby caught her and Willie—who could be nice when he wasn’t with his pals, according to Carol—laughed.

“Why’d you do that?” Bobby yelled at the boy in the motorcycle belt, and as the words came out of his mouth it was as if he had heard them a thousand times before. All of this was like a ritual, the stuff that got said before the real yanks and pushes began and the fists began to fly. He thought of Lord of the Flies again—Ralph running from Jack and the others. At least on Golding’s island there had been jungle. He and Carol had nowhere to run.

He says “Because I felt like it.” That’s what comes next.

But before the boy with the side-cinched belt could say it, Robin Hood with the homemade bat-sling on his back said it for him. “Because he felt like it. Whatcha gonna do about it, Maltex Baby?” He suddenly flicked out one hand, snake-quick, and slapped Bobby across the face. Willie laughed again.

Carol started toward him. “Willie, please don’t—”

Robin Hood reached out, grabbed the front of Carol’s shirt, and squeezed. “Got any titties yet? Nah, not much. You ain’t nothing but a Gerber Baby.” He pushed her. Bobby, his head still ringing from the slap, caught her and for the second time kept her from falling down.

“Let’s beat this queer up,” the kid in the motorcycle belt said. “I hate his face.”

They moved in, the wheels of their bikes squeaking solemnly. Then Willie let his drop on its side like a dead pony and reached for Bobby. Bobby raised his fists in a feeble imitation of Floyd Patterson.

“Say, boys, what’s going on?” someone asked from behind them.

Willie had drawn one of his own fists back. Still holding it cocked, he looked over his shoulder. So did Robin Hood and the boy with the motorcycle belt. Parked at the curb was an old blue Studebaker with rusty rocker panels and a magnetic Jesus on the dashboard. Standing in front of it, looking extremely busty in the chest and extremely wide in the hip, was Anita Gerber’s friend Rionda. Summer clothes were never going to be her friends (even at eleven Bobby understood this), but at that moment she looked like a goddess in pedal pushers.

“Rionda!” Carol yelled—not crying, but almost. She pushed past Willie and the boy in the motorcycle belt. Neither made any effort to stop her. All three of the St. Gabe’s boys were staring at Rionda. Bobby found himself looking at Willie’s cocked fist. Sometimes Bobby woke up in the morning with his peter just as hard as a rock, standing straight up like a moon rocket or something. As he went into the bathroom to pee, it would soften and wilt. Willie’s cocked arm was wilting like that now, the fist at the end of it relaxing back into fingers, and the comparison made Bobby want to smile. He resisted the urge. If they saw him smiling now, they could do noth-ing. Later, however . . . on another day . . .

Rionda put her arms around Carol and hugged the girl to her large bosom. She surveyed the boys in the orange shirts and she was smil-ing. Smiling and making no effort to hide it.

“Willie Shearman, isn’t it?”

The formerly cocked-back arm dropped to Willie’s side. Mutter-ing, he bent to pick up his bike.

“Richie O’Meara?”

The boy in the motorcycle belt looked at the toes of his dusty Snap-Jacks and also muttered something. His cheeks burned with color.

“One of the O’Meara boys, anyway, there’s so damned many of you now I can’t keep track.” Her eyes shifted to Robin Hood. “And who are you, big boy? Are you a Dedham? You look a little bit like a Dedham.”

Robin Hood looked at his hands. He wore a class ring on one of his fingers and now he began to twist it.

Rionda still had an arm around Carol’s shoulders. Carol had one of her own arms as far around Rionda’s waist as she could manage. She walked with Rionda, not looking at the boys, as Rionda stepped up from the street onto the little strip of grass between the curb and the sidewalk. She was still looking at Robin Hood. “You better answer me when I talk to you, sonny. Won’t be hard to find your mother if I want to try. All I have to do is ask Father Fitzgerald.”

“Harry Doolin, that’s me,” the boy said at last. He was twirling his class ring faster than ever.

“Well, but I was close, wasn’t I?” Rionda asked pleasantly, taking another two or three steps forward. They put her on the sidewalk. Carol, afraid to be so close to the boys, tried to hold her back, but Rionda would have none of it. “Dedhams and Doolins, all married together. Right back to County Cork, tra-la-tra-lee.”

Not Robin Hood but a kid named Harry Doolin with a stupid homemade bat-sling strapped to his back. Not Marlon Brando from The Wild One but a kid named Richie O’Meara, who wouldn’t have a Harley to go with his motorcycle belt for another five years . . . if ever. And Willie Shearman, who didn’t dare to be nice to a girl when he was with his friends. All it took to shrink them back to their proper size was one overweight woman in pedal pushers and a shell top, who had ridden to the rescue not on a white stallion but in a 1954 Studebaker. The thought should have comforted Bobby but it didn’t. He found himself thinking of what William Golding had said, that the boys on the island were rescued by the crew of a battle-cruiser and good for them . . . but who would rescue the crew?

That was stupid, no one ever looked less in need of rescuing than Rionda Hewson did at that moment, but the words still haunted Bobby. What if there were no grownups? Suppose the whole idea of grownups was an illusion? What if their money was really just play-ground marbles, their business deals no more than baseball-card trades, their wars only games of guns in the park? What if they were all still snotty-nosed kids inside their suits and dresses? Christ, that couldn’t be, could it? It was too horrible to think about.

Rionda was still looking at the St. Gabe’s boys with her hard and rather dangerous smile. “You three fellas wouldn’t’ve been picking on kids younger and smaller than yourselves, would you? One of them a girl like your own