Yanking out the old ties, he threads in the spares.
Duffel slung over his shoulder, one hand resting casually inside the fashionably open zip on the topside, Chapin loiters near the door, staring at notices on a bulletin board. At Sam’s emergence, he breaks out a confident smile and then his eyes widen as Sam drops his duffel to surge suddenly across the corridor and bodyslam him against the board. As J.C. scrabbles, paper trapped between the corkboard and his thrashing torso crimps and tears and the plastic high hats of pushpins pinch and nip at him.
Sam gets a hand under J.C.’s chin and around his throat. “I’ve had enough of you, shithead.”
J.C.’s hand trapped in the duffel squirms as if he is trying to work it free. And something rigid and hard pokes against Sam’s stomach from inside the duffel.
“Leggo my throat,” Chapin whispers, “or I’ll blow you away, fucker.”
Sam hesitates, then lifts his hand slowly and carefully.
Chapin digs the hard thing inside the duffel into the muscle of Sam’s gut. “Just take one baby step back and then don’t ya move a goddamn inch,” Chapin murmurs. He clears his throat. “It’s a three-fifty-seven, Sambot. Your shit’ll be dripping off the ceiling.”
Behind Sam, Tim Kasten stops in the doorway of the weight room and nearly trips on Sam’s duffel. It takes only a quick glance to assess the situation and he pauses, uncertain about whether to proceed and risk getting caught in the confrontation between Sam and Chapin. Rick appears and starts to brush by Tim, who catches his elbow and holds him in place.
“And I thought you were just glad to see me,” Sam says.
Chapin snickers. “Very fuckin’ funny, asshole. Take a walk with me.” He keeps his voice so low Sam has to bend to hear it; Chapin speaks directly into Sam’s ear. “This is too public.”
“Fuck it,” Sam mutters. “Shoot me, shithead. Go ahead. Spend the next thirty years at Shawshank. You’ll be a fat old man when you get out, with a doorknob in your asshole to keep it from falling out on you. I’ll be dead but trust me, it’ll be a slow thirty years for you.”
Chapin’s grin freezes. He digs the thing in the duffel deeper into Sam’s stomach, drags it down a little until it slips into Sam’s navel. Gives it another shove.
Sam is surprised at how tender his navel is; it hurts. Suregod, if it isn’t the barrel of a gun biting his belly button, it’s a goddamn good fake. Close up to Chapin, he can smell the stink of crazed fear coming off J.C. and he can feel the tremor in J.C.’s muscles—it doesn’t matter whether it’s terror or toot, the guy is wired with it and might do anything.
Chapin makes a heroic effort to appear sane and reasonable. “What the fuck, Slammer, this is self-defense. You threw me into the wall, remember? I’m just trying to get along. Just take a walk with me a little ways and we’ll work it out.”
Sam glances back at his duffel.
J.C. shakes his head no. “Come back for it.”
Rick takes a step toward them and Sam thrusts his chin out in warning. Chapin smiles winningly at Rick. Full of questions, Rick’s gaze travels back to Sam, who moves in response to a slight tug from Chapin. The bottleneck at the door of the weight room breaks and the others move in the direction of their next class. Rick, Kasten and Todd Gramolini fall in a few steps behind Chapin and Sam.
Chapin glances back at them but they hang in, not hiding their interest in whatever is going on between Chapin and Sam.
“Things are kinda crazy,” Chapin tells Sam conversationally. “You were there last night at my house. Watched that crazy fucker wreck my car. You and D. I find out from the cops that crazy fucker went after Fosse first, all over that dim little cunt Lexie. I don’t like how this shit is coming down at all. You two are fuckin’ with me. I don’t like being fucked with, man. Lay off me, or I’m gonna fuck back so hard somebody’ll get dead.”
Sam shoves into Chapin and knocks him off balance. Rick and the other two start forward but Chapin recovers quickly. He tightens up against Sam, the tip of the gun barrel digging angry and hard into him again.
“Stupid!” Chapin spits. “You wanna be on the receiving end of a bad accident or what?”
“Chickenshit,” Sam needles. “You haven’t got the balls to blow your own load. Why don’t I just take that toy away from you and put it up your ass?”
Chapin’s face is a sheen of sweat. All at once, the pressure of the thing in the duffel lets up. Chapin grins weakly. “Shit happens, Slammer. That’s all I want you to remember. Shit happens.”
“To all.” A glint comes into Sam’s eyes and his voice rises into sonorous preachment, ringing down the corridor, arresting students and staff in their passage. “Time and chance… brother, that’s right, shit happeneth to all… All things come alike to all… one event unto all.” Startled, Chapin jerks away from Sam, who now grasps his forearm with passionate intensity. “That which is crooked cannot be made straight; and that which is lacking cannot be numbered,” Sam informs him fiercely.
“Testify, brother Sam’l, testify!” Rick cries out, skidding to his knees with his hands upraised.
Laughter begins to break out up and down the corridor and others call out encouragement.
“Tell it like it is, brother!”
“Amen!”
“Fucking asshole,” Chapin mutters, shaking loose his arm and fading into traffic.
“The wise man’s eyes are in his head but the fool walketh in darkness,” Sam bellows after him. As Rick and Todd and Tim Kasten close on him, Sam falters. “Shit happeneth to them all,” he concludes in
