down, walked toward the back. The manager yelled at him, “You’re fired. You hear? That’s it. Fired!”
“That’s good,” said the counter boy. “I won’t have to quit. I was looking for a job when I found this one, so it’s no big deal.” He disappeared into the storage room.
The manager was wild-eyed and his hair looked spiked from having gone greasy and uncombed for so long. His lips were purple, and there was something on his shirt that might have been dried vomit. He was mumbling under his breath about “freeloaders and sorry no-goods.”
Willard was next in line with the manager, who was doling out the popcorn, and when he got his little sack handed to him, he said, “Hell, that ain’t half what you’re supposed to give.”
“Think not?” the manager said.
“No, it ain’t half.”
“That right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Yeah,” Randy said.
“Who asked you, you four-eyed nigger?”
And then the chili hit the fan.
Willard may have lost some pounds off his frame, but unlike me, he still had some stamina. His right hand flicked out and hit the manager in the nose, flicked out again, grabbed the manager by the throat. Willard applied both hands then, and the bag of popcorn went flying. A woman dropped to her knees and scuttled after it, chased the bag across the floor. A man stepped on her hand, hard, and she screamed. A kid grabbed for the bag, but his foot was ahead of his hand, and he accidentally kicked it, and it was like a hockey puck going into play. The line broke, folks went after the bag. It sailed past us, then sailed back our way. No one could quite lay a hand on it until the girl with the poodle cape nabbed it with “I got it, I got it,” but a man behind her slammed a fist into the back of her head and knocked her to the ground. “No you don’t,” he said triumphantly.
The bag and the little girl both were now in play, getting kicked up and down the length of the aisle. The bag burst and pops of corn rolled every which way. People scuttled after them on their hands and knees, shoving what they could grab into their mouths. I wanted that corn too, but I was too weak to let go of Bob.
Meanwhile, back to Willard, who was choking the manager.
Willard had the guy pulled across the counter, and he quit choking him long enough to grab him by the back of the hair and slam his face into the glass display case. The manager’s face went through with a crack of glass and skull, and a shard of glass went through his throat, spraying the candy boxes and wrappers below with blood. The Candy Girl said, “Oh wow.”
Randy, who was still miraculously on Willard’s shoulders, was yelling, “Four-eyed nigger, my ass. That’ll show him, that’ll show him.”
The little girl with the poodle cape had become open season. She was surrounded by people who were kicking her, including her mother, who was screeching, “I told you not to jerk on that leash.”
“Time to shake out of here,” Bob said. He grabbed me and steered me away from the line, headed me toward the door. A fist caught me in the side of the head, and it hurt, but I was already so dizzy and messed up, it didn’t make much difference.
A woman with a nail file tried to stab Bob, and Bob kicked her kneecap with the toe of his boot. She went yipping and hopping along the wall, past the rows of horror-movie posters. She clutched at a strand of black-and- orange confetti strung across the window and pulled it down, along with some paper bats and skulls. Finally she tripped over a foot and fell down. The crowd that had been kicking the little girl moved in mass over to the woman and went at it. I could see the shape of the little girl beneath her dog cape. Her body was the color of the red ribbon in her hair, but the ribbon didn’t flow.
Then I saw Willard. He had his knife out. He was spinning around and around with Randy on his shoulders, slashing out at anyone in reach. For a moment Randy’s eyes caught mine, held recognition, then went savage.
Bob pulled me out of there, outside into the storm.
9
Bob sat me on the tailgate of the truck and went away. He came back with the shotgun, pushed me inside, pulled up the tailgate and locked it. He sat me over by one of the camper windows, then hunkered down by me. From there we could see the concession and the lightning that was sparking across the sky. The truck rocked against the wind, paper bags and cups fluttered across the lot. It was the strongest wind yet.
People were fleeing out of the concession, jamming in the door. There were fights out front of the place. Lots of biting and kicking.
Bob moved over to the trap that held the spare tire and pulled it up. There was a cardboard box next to the spare. He took it out, opened it. It was full of homemade jerky wrapped in cellophane. I had forgotten about that. Something tried to click together in the back of my mind. but it wouldn’t. All I could do was say “But-”
“Not right now,” Bob said. “Take this and eat it. You’re hypoglycemic, pal. Bad. You eat this. Chew it slowly and swallow the juice.”
I took it and began to chew. It hurt my gums at first, but it was like new blood was being pumped into me. I wanted to gobble it, but Bob kept warning me to suck it, to make it last.
“If Willard and Randy come back to the truck,” Bob said, “I’m not going to let them in. No matter what. Understand?”
“Randy’s our friend.”
“Not anymore. Eat.”
I looked at him holding the shotgun. He looked like a young Clint Eastwood, only shorter, ready to step out of a spaghetti Western.
“I’ve had the jerky all along,” Bob said. “I forgot about it at first-all that was happening and it out of sight. I brought it for you and Randy to split and take home, enough there so your folks could have some. I’ve been slipping in here and eating it from time to time.”
It was as if my head were clearing, cotton stuffing was being pulled out. “You should have told us,” I said,
“I can tell you’re feeling good already. You’re starting to get self-righteous again. First thing you’ve said in a while that makes any sense. You been out in Bozo Land, pal. All you needed was a rubber nose and some flappy shoes.”
“You could have told us,” I said again.
“Naw. Randy and Willard were out there in orbit, man. If I’d told them about the jerky, it would have been all she wrote. Willard would have taken it from us, and if we’d given him any trouble, he’d have killed us. No, wasn’t nothing friendly about it. And telling him about it and keeping him at shotgun point all the time didn’t appeal to me none neither.”
“It was needing protein that made them goofy,” I said. I closed my eyes and chewed the last of the jerky. I had never tasted anything better in my life.
“That may be, but I ain’t no hero, Jack. I was watching after me. What can I say? I knew we had us a ticklish situation here, and I wanted to have my strength for as long as I could. More meat I had, longer I could last. I took it easy on the soft drinks and the candy, tried to drink enough to keep liquid in my body, but to balance the sugar out with the meat. I figured if I could stay alive long enough, all this might go back to the way it was.”
“So how come you’re telling me?”
“I don’t know. Worse you got, worse I felt. Hell, we been partners a long time… Look at you. You look like crap. It was tough to look at.”
“But you managed.”
“For a time. My dad always said when it got right down to it, people weresonofabitches. If it was a difference between honor and no food, he said they’d take the food every time. Looks like he was right about that. We get home, I’ll tell him so.”
“Well, you don’t look so good neither,” I said. “And to hell with your old man.”
“I ain’t feeling up to snuff, Jack, but with this jerky in me I could kind of figure which was my left hand and
