“What can we do?”
O’Malley shrugged. Then he smiled. “I have an idea.”
The older boys had a clubhouse they kept in a vacant lot between two buildings. The clubhouse was made of wooden pallets stolen from the docks on the river. The pallets were tied together with rope. The roof was a slab of sheet metal placed on top of the pallets, and the furniture was discarded rubber tires. The clubhouse slumped in the back of that vacant lot, hidden by the weeds, but all the neighborhood kids knew it was there. They also knew not to mess with it, or go there at all.
“I need gasoline,” O’Malley said. “And motor oil.”
A pint of gas, a pint of motor oil, that was all. The boys could siphon. The boys could steal. They had it in an hour. Then they gathered some rags together and two empty Coke bottles. O’Malley showed them how to make firebombs, two to be exact, with the gas and oil mixed together, the gas-soaked rags stuffed into the bottles, a long piece of rag blocking the neck and poking out as the wick for each bomb.
“Why the oil?” Artie said.
O’Malley smiled. “It makes the gas sticky.”
He wasn’t there when they bombed the clubhouse. He couldn’t run away if it came to that, so he waited at home for the news. He sat on the Murphy bed in the tiny railroad apartment, watching a cockroach move along the wall. From where he sat the pungent odor of burning tires came through the open window and reached his nose.
“Yeah,” he said. “We showed ‘em.”
Artie Mulligan would be pleased.
A few days later, O’Malley was on the roof of the building. Up here, there was light and space. Up here, he could escape from the dark and cramped apartment, from the narrow hallways and stairs, from the crush of people on the street. The roof was his sanctuary. He moved across the gravel and gazed out at the endless vista of clotheslines and TV antennas. Three buildings away, a one minute walk stepping over air shafts, old Mr. Principato stood waving a white flag on a long pole, putting a flock of pigeons through their paces.
O’Malley sat along the low wall and gazed down at 49^th Street, five stories below. The street was a hive of activity, the people moving to and fro, and he watched it all as if he were stationed on some far away planet.
A shadow moved behind him.
He turned and four teenaged boys stood there. They were slim and tall and well-muscled in their tight white T-shirts. True to form, one of the boys had a pack of cigarettes rolled up in his sleeve, showing off one bulging and tattooed bicep. Greaseballs. They loomed over him like dinosaurs above a scrap of hamburger. He became aware of how small he was – and not small like Artie. Small small. Small in his mind. Small in his presence. Small in his very being somehow. He became conscious most of all of his right leg and of how useless it was.
He knew a few of their names. Ace McCoy was right out in front with the cigarettes and the tattoo. O’Malley had seen Ace and his crew around, and what was bad about the situation was they had evidently seen him as well.
“Hey there, Gimp,” Ace said.
“Hi,” O’Malley said.
“Hi, that’s rich,” Ace said. He put a big fake smile on and waved like an idiot. “Hi!”
The other three laughed – a merciless sort of laugh. A tall blonde one said, “You know why we’re here, right?”
O’Malley tried to give them nothing, but already he could feel his body shaking. Already he could feel his heart pumping in his chest. “N-no.”
“Nuh-nuh-no. I knew you were a gimp. I didn’t know you were also a stutter.”
“I’m n-n-not.”
All of them laughed now.
Ace squatted down to Smoke’s level where he sat on the wall. “Our clubhouse got burned up the other day, Mr. Gimp. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you? You wouldn’t know any smart guys who like to make firebombs, right?”
Smoke shook his head, moved to say something, if only he could get his lips unstuck one from the other.
“Now wait a minute, before you say anything you need to know something about us. What you need to know is we like stand-up guys who tell the truth. Guys who lie, we don’t like them. Bad things happen to guys who lie.”
O’Malley found his voice. “I don’t know anything about it.” Once it was out there, he found he had surprised himself with the statement. It came out strong and firm, like he meant it. “The bombs, I mean. I don’t know anything about that at all.”
“You don’t, huh?”
“Nope.”
“Then how did you know there was more than one bomb?”
“You just said it yourself. You said it was bombs.”
“Did I say that boys?”
“I didn’t hear you say bombs, Ace. I heard you say bomb.”
“No, you didn’t,” O’Malley said. “You said bombs.”
Ace stood up. “Okay, if that’s what you say, I guess we gotta deal with that. You say I said bombs. You say you don’t know about it.”
“That’s exactly right.”
Ace took a long drag on his cigarette, regarded the short butt remaining, then flicked it into O’Malley’s face.
“Fuckin’ liar.”
Three of them grabbed him. He tried to kick and punch them, but they were too strong. Within a couple of seconds, they had him under control.
Ace gestured at the open air on the other side of the wall, the five-story drop to the pavement below.
“Liars take the dive. Okay boys, let’s see what he says to that.”
O’Malley fought them, but it did no good. They lifted him into the air and turned him upside down. Then they held him out over the edge by the legs. O’Malley’s arms dangled down helplessly. His hair dangled down. His shirt came un-tucked and fell down almost to his nipples. He felt the pressure of the blood rushing to his head. He saw the activity down below, all of it oblivious to his plight up here.
It went on for a long time. They were saying things to him now, and he could hear their voices, but the sounds had melted together into a slow-motion, unintelligible mush. All there was out there was that upside-down view of the street, so far away. He felt their hands slipping on his legs. They grabbed him harder and higher, the split second as they abandoned their old grip for a new one stretching out sickeningly. They laughed because they had almost dropped him. The world spun.
He felt his bladder go.
The piss went with gravity as all things will do. Instead of running down his legs, it soaked through the fabric of his pants, it cascaded between his belt and his waist, and streamed down his torso and chest. Droplets made the journey past his shirt and rolled down his neck to his chin. His tasted urine on his lips. And still more came. He had never pissed so much in his life.
“Look! He’s pissing on his own face!”
He heard that much clearly.
He didn’t care that he was pissing on his own face. He didn’t care if he ended up shitting on his own face, if that was even possible. What he cared about was these kids were going to drop him, either because they would lose their grip on him, or because they were sadistic bastards and they didn’t care if they killed him. They were going to drop him and he was going to take an incredible dive to the pavement, one that would seem long but would be too short. One that would end with him splattered on concrete like an overripe gourd.
“I didn’t do it!” he screamed. “I didn’t do it!”
The car behind him honked its horn, really leaning on it. Smoke looked up and noticed for the first time that the drawbridge was down and he was free to go. He’d been free to go for a while, by the looks of things. Traffic was streaming by him on the left. To the right, that drop to the water still beckoned. The driver behind him honked again.
