."
Jem started for Doug, and Doug started for Jem, Gloansy and Dez lunging after their respective teammates, wrapping them up to prevent a brawl. Gloansy was just strong enough to keep Jem off Doug, and though Dez was over-matched by Doug, Doug didn't really want a fight here. He wanted to win the argument, then leave.
"Every split you ever did was soft," said Doug. "And why did we let you handle the cash? Because we trusted you? No-- because you're Jem. Because that's the cost of being fucking friends with you."
Jem lunged again, Gloansy digging his skates into the ice and fighting hard to hold him, swinging Jem around, taking some of his blows.
Doug went on, shouting, "'Cause you're a thief with a petty fucking heart. Little rip-offs, ever since I known you. A Wiffle bat here, a comic book there. Things of mine that would vanish."
Another swipe missed, Jem getting closer, saliva slicking his chin. Doug kept himself back just enough to deny Jem contact.
"That Phil Esposito photo card you needed to complete your set, that I wouldn't trade you? What-- you thought I never knew? But that's the kid you were, and that's the kid you are still. Funny-guy Jem, the cutup-- that's what's carried you through. But it's not funny anymore. This is the last split of mine you are gonna handle, and I mean
ever
. Always gotta have more than the rest, always gotta be in charge."
"I
am
in charge, you mother-- "
"No." Doug used his skating advantage to muscle Dez off him. "You keep your skim, and when you're using it to buy your next pair of fucking speakers or whatever, just remember how, yeah, it did all used to be all about us, four kids from the Town. How, yeah, we did have something once."
He looped around past Jem, just beyond his reach, bringing Jem tumbling down on top of Gloansy. Doug curled to scoop his Dew back up off the ice, then skated for the doors, Jem's vulgarities bouncing off his back like boos.
His skates were off, socks stuffed inside them, by the time Dez came out, looking more anguished than usual, a guy full of questions, forever quizzing the world about himself and his place in it. Doug stopped him before he could say word one. "You cut loose of Krista, you understand me? Now you know for sure that I got no stake in it. You had your thing with her, now get out. These Coughlins'll kill you. You hear me?"
Dez nodded, shocked.
Gloansy came out skate-walking over the hard rubber flooring to where Doug sat lacing his Vans. It surprised Doug that Gloansy, of all of them, was the one most desperate to keep the crew together. "Duggy, hey-- you're gonna cool this down, right? And so's he? You guys, huh?"
Doug could already hear the dominoes clicking, tiles spilling from the end all the way back to the beginning, spelling out his flight. But there was no point trying to explain this to Gloansy. Doug stood and carried his skates to the door.
33
Billy T.
F
RANK G. LOOKED GRAY under the yellow doughnut-shop lights. He hadn't shaved in two or three days, and kept running his hand across his bristly lips like a rummy. His eyes were tea-bagged and his shoulders flat under a
Malden Little League Coach
shirt.
"Well, that's good to hear," said Frank G., distracted. "Yeah, you been needing to break with them for a long time."
Doug waited, shrugged. "That's all I get? No trumpets, no angels singing?"
Frank G. squirmed in his seat. "So-- we get this call at the station last week."
Doug was startled. Mr. Anonymous made a point of never talking about himself or his work. "The station," said Doug, alerting Frank G. to his slip.
"Guy's hit by a truck on the Fellsway. Okay, no big deal, we suit up and head out to assist EMS, it's routine. Then, big commotion as we arrive on the scene. Something's up. Middle of the road is this huge dump truck with a haul full of sand, engine still running. They tell us there's an elderly man pinned underneath it. Truck's got four twin sets of wheels, big mothers, and I'm thinking, mashed foot, some poor jaywalker's looking at a wheelchair for the rest of his days. So my guys are getting out the equipment, and I go round this truck, find the driver sitting on the curb median, bawling into his hands. A big guy, and he's falling apart, sobbing, asking for a priest. So I know it's gonna be bad.
"I go round to look, and my eyes, it takes a second to process this. The tire, the outside one, is right on top of this guy's pelvis. Flattening it. Inside tire has his legs crushed at the knees. EMTs and a young lady cop are crouching by this guy, attending to him, and my mind's telling me it's fake, it's a movie, guy lying in a hole in the road, dummy legs set on the other side of the tires.
"And then the old guy's head turns. I can't even believe he's still moving. His head turns and his eyes find me, his mouth open like a baby's. And now I
really
can't believe it. Because I fucking know this guy. It's Billy T."
Doug said, "Whoa, whoa. Billy T.? Sad-sack Billy T.?"
"From the meetings. The scally cap he always wore, that moth-bitten thing, it's lying next to the EMT's medical case. And then I see in his eyes, his wet, little wooden eyes-- he recognizes me. He's trying to place me-- I'm in uniform, red helmet, jacket, reflective stripes-- but he knows the face. Probably thought I was an angel or something, you know? The body like that, the brain releasing those, whatever they're called, hormones, opiates, whatever. Least I hope that's what it does, when you wake up under a dump truck."
Frank G. watched steam escape from the triangle torn out of his cup cover.
" 'Billy,' I says to him. The people attending to him, they look up at me like he's my dad or something, I know this guy's name. One EMT jumps up, takes my arm, handles me like I'm next of kin, tells me Billy was crossing the street against the traffic, truck knocked him down, rolled over him, stopped. Billy T. should be dead, he tells me. Any other way this had happened, he would be gone already. But the truck was like a giant tourniquet, cutting off the bleeding, keeping him alive.
"Meantime, my crew is scrambling to slide a twenty-five-ton hydraulic jack under the dumper, setting up these two big seventy-ton air bags. They see me huddled with the EMT and think Billy's my wife's uncle or something, so they're working double-time for me, and I'm like, Whoa, whoa,
whoa!
We raise this thing off him and Billy dies. We leave it where it is, Billy dies too-- only more slowly.
"So now I've got the EMT in my face, he's flipping out on me, talking about surgeons and field amputations and such, and I'm no doctor, but I can see there's nothing to amputate here. A magician, maybe, could saw Billy T. in two, pull him out, then wave his hand and put him back together again. So I become the point guy on this. I want to go off, sit down with the truck driver, wait for the priest-- but I'm the guy now. I have to make the call.
"So I kneel in the road next to Billy. They'd cut his shirt off and I can see his little heart beating through his old dishrag of a chest, but real slow. He moves his arm-- guy's moving still-- reaching for me, so I take his hand. His little fingers are hot, he's burning up. And the look on his face. But I see his lips are working, so I get down low. Both feet in the grave and he's still able to whisper to me. 'Frank,' he's says. I yell back to someone to turn off the truck so I can hear, and then the engine goes silent, the whole world goes silent.
" 'Billy,' I says to him. 'My friend.' All of a sudden this weepy old man's my friend, like we're soldiers on a battlefield somewhere, the same unit. I take off my helmet. 'We gotta lift this truck, Billy. We gotta get it off you. Anything you want to say?' I don't know if he's got kids, what. 'Any message for anybody, something I can do for you, my friend?' I keep calling him my friend, over and over. 'Anything you want to tell me, Billy, anything to say?'
"And his hand, there's like this little squeeze of pressure, and I get in tight. I'm right there, him breathing on me, this half-ghost, looking me square in the eye. 'Frank,' he whispers. 'Frank.'
"I say, 'What is it, Billy, anything at all.'
" 'A drink, Frank. Get me a drink.'
"The EMT next to me, he jumps up again, calling for bottled water, a dying man's last request. Me, I'm kneeling there as cold as a fish on ice. Because I know Billy T. I know this weepy old, bandy-legged Irish punter with bologna on his breath. He didn't want any
water
to drink just then. He didn't want fucking
water
."
Doug shared Frank G.'s chill, but not his anger. Frank left it hanging there, until Doug finally had to ask, "So what happened?"
Frank G. looked at him like Doug hadn't heard a word he'd said. "
That's
what happened.
That's
the story."
"No, what happened to Billy T.?"
Frank shrugged, pissed. "My guys did the best they could for him. We shimmed some timber cribbing around the wheels to cut down on the vibration, we raised the truck. What happened to Billy T.? They put a sheet over his face and took him away. We hosed off the road and went back to the station."
A gust of laughter from the clerk and an Indian customer at the counter-- Doug and Frank G. sitting there like two guys who had just donated blood.
"Okay," Doug said.
Frank G. looked up from the study he was making of his coffee cup. "Okay, what?"
"Okay, so I'm waiting for you to drop some wisdom on me."
"Wisdom? I got nothing for you, buddy. I'm fresh out here. Billy T., he was a royal pain in the ass at meeting-- but the guy did good work. He was dry some twelve fucking years. I can't get my mind around this thing."
"What, that he-- "
"That with all the work he did,
twelve long years
-- every single day of it he was just marking time until he could take a drink again. Waiting for that day. Like someday he'd hit all nines on the odometer and it would roll over to zero again and he'd get to start fresh. A life with no restrictions on it. And what
I
want to know is-- is that all of us? Just marking time here, waiting? Thinking someday, some miracle's gonna happen, and we're going to be free again?"
Doug nodded. "Maybe, yeah."
"Christ, don't agree with me, Doug. I'm fighting for my life here. What was he thinking, what? That heaven is an open bar? Jesus wiping out pint glasses, setting out a coaster,
What'll you have?
That's what we're being good for here?"
"The guy was dying, Frank."
"Fuck him." Frank sat back. "Fuck Billy T."
"All right, Frank. Hey."
"Fuck you,
hey
. You weren't there. How would you like it if I was going down, you holding my hand, and I asked you for a quick pop? Huh? I
begged
you?"
"I wouldn't like it at all."
"You'd be sick. Fucking repulsed. All my words here? You'd tell me I was full of shit, and you'd be right." He dropped his hands on the table. "I am, anyway."
"Frank, man," said Doug, looking around for something to say to him. "I don't wanna see you like this."
"Listen, Doug, you're still my obligation, you got my number. But I can't do this anymore. Least not right now."
"Whoa, hold up. What are you-- "
"I'm saying maybe you ought to be in the market for another sponsor."
"Frank-- no fucking way, Frank. No way. You can't."
"Can. Am."
Doug stared. "Frank-- you would never let me."
"No? How would I stop you? Huh? How you gonna stop me?"
Doug rubbed his face hard in a panic. Up popped a memory from a long-ago meeting, one Jem had appeared at-- uninvited, twenty minutes late, and stinking drunk. He had dropped into a folding chair two rows behind Doug and, in the middle of Billy T.'s lament, started humming "The Star-Spangled Banner." When someone finally asked him to leave, Jem burst out crying and started talking about his father and how he never really knew the guy, and all he ever wanted was his love. Two people slid down the row to comfort him, at which point Jem jumped up and cackled,
Suckaz!
-- knocking over chairs and lurching toward the door.
Duggy,
he had said,
c'mon, man, lezz go!
And it was Frank who came over to Doug later, telling him,
Your friends are afraid of you getting healthy. They want to keep you sick.
"Frank," said Doug, still searching for some angle to play, some lever to pull-- but all he could summon was unreasonable anger. "Don't walk out on me now. I
need
this."
"Hey. Sorry if my little crisis of faith is inconvenient for you. Sorry if I'm the one maybe needs a little counseling now."
"I-- I can't fucking counsel you. I wouldn't know the first-- "
"Then respect my decision and leave it at that, for Christ's sake." Frank picked up his keys and started to stand, then sat back down again. Something else was tugging at him. "I wasn't going to tell you this. But this guy came to see me about you."
