The Hard Bounce - страница 48

He reaches into the nightstand by the bed and pulls out a large hunting knife. Viciously, he slices the clothes off her. Cassandra doesn’t move, either in a state of shock or still stunned from the blows. Snake roughly forces her legs open while she struggles weakly.

“This motherfucker’s dead,” Junior said, looking at a space far beyond the television.

I tried to respond. My jaw clenched so tightly, the muscles around my mouth started trembling.

The world bloomed red. The room pulsed deep crimson in perfect time with my heartbeat. Heat surged from my eyes.

I stood up and pressed rewind. I ran the video back to the first blow when she walked in the door.

“I can’t watch that again, Boo.”

I pressed play.

“Goddamn it, Boo!” Junior’s voice sounded like he was yelling from the other end of a hallway.

I watched it again frame by frame. Watched Cassie’s fear with a sharp eye. Remembering it. Watched her in slow motion stumbling toward the heavy curtains. Her tiny hand brushing the curtains ever so slightly.

Ever so slightly enough.

Outside the window, at an angle toward the street, was a portion of a sign. I couldn’t make out any details, but I knew someone who could.

Gotcha, fucker.

It was the spring of 1994, Opening Day at Fenway, when we first officially met Ollie. All the kids at The Home were buzzing with the welcome distraction from our shitty day-to-days. At St. Gabe’s, you found hope wherever you could, even as misplaced a hope as the Red Sox might provide.

Having a regular broadcast game was a treat, an event. But our one TV in the rec room was always flipping between light snow and blizzard conditions. Not blessed with cable or a serviceable antenna, we’d pocketed enough tinfoil from the dining common to wrap the television like a cocoon. The only parts visible were the knobs and screen. Problem was, the night before, the TV decided to shit the bed all the way. Most of us had spent a large part of the day figuring out what the fuck we were going to do come game time.

After lunch, a large group of us headed to the rec room, tinfoil in pockets, hoping to wrestle some life, if not reception, into the old Zenith. We would suffer reprimands and punishment for cutting classes, but fuck it. Hope had a price, and we were willing to pay it.

We walked into the rec room, then stopped short enough to get nearly knocked over by the kids behind us. Mouths hung open in shock at what lay before us. The kids in the back swept around us, all trying to see what had stopped us in our tracks.

Somebody said, “The fuck?”

A lanky new kid named Ollie had not only unwrapped years’ worth of carefully calibrated foil, but also managed to get the TV apart. We all stood there, gobsmacked at the sight of our beloved television, its parts laid out like chess pieces on the checkered linoleum. Ollie only looked up at us briefly, adjusted his Coke-bottle glasses, and furiously went back to his task.

Grumbling began to well up from the stunned mob. Grumbling that ran along the lines of how to make the new kid’s head fit up his ass. It may have been a shitty TV, but it was ours. We didn’t have many things we could call ours.

The threats grew louder and more ominous. One boy picked up a folding chair, tested its heft, and made his way over to Ollie in order to brain him properly. As the chair was raised overhead, Ollie plugged in the set. The screen lit up on Roger Clemens warming up in the bullpen. The grumblings erupted into cheers and handshakes. Ollie was smiling nervously and sweating through his shirt in a dozen places. He had to know how close he’d come to getting crippled. The kid ready to do the crippling lowered the chair and opened it front and center, a seat of honor for Ollie. Ollie watched the entire game seated in the chair that almost caved in his skull.

The Red Sox won the game, 9-8.

At St. Gabe’s there were only two ways to insure your safety: be dangerous or be useful.

Ollie became one of the strays who wandered in with me and Junior’s crew. He may not have been a brawler, but he earned his keep. And those smarts had brought him a lot of cash since his days at The Home. He wasn’t a complete flake job like Twitch, but he was koo-koo for Cocoa Puffs in his own fashion. If the Unabomber was pro-technology rather than anti, he might have been Ollie.