“No,” I said. And someone kicked me through the net.
“What I want you to do, kid,” Chipper Dove said, “is stay right here, in our giant spider web, until one of the spiders tells you you can go. You understand?”
“No,” I said, and someone kicked me again, a little harder.
“Be smart,” Franny said to me.
“That’s right,” said Lenny Metz. “Be smart.”
“And you know what I want you to do, Franny?” said Chipper Dove, but Franny didn’t respond. “I want you to show me that place, again,” he said. “That place where we can be alone. Remember?”
I tried to crawl closer to Franny, but someone was tightening the net around me.
“She stays with me!” I yelled. “Franny stays with me.”
I was down on my hip, then, with the net growing tighter and someone was kneeling on my back.
“Leave him alone,” Franny said. “I’ll show you the place.”
“Just stay here and don’t move, Franny,” I said, but she let Lenny Metz pull her out from under the net. “Remember what you said, Franny!” I cried to her. “Remember—about the first time?”
“It probably isn’t true,” she said, dully. “It probably isn’t anything.”
Then she must have made a break for it, because I heard a scuffle in the dark, and Lenny Metz cried out, “Nuff! Son of a bitch, you bitch!” And there was that familiar sound of pounding—flesh on flesh again—and I heard Franny say, “All right! All right! You bastard.”
“Lenny and Chester are going to help you show me the place, Franny,” Chipper Dove said. “Okay?”
“You turd in a birdbath,” Franny said. “You rat’s asshole,” she said, but I heard flesh on flesh again, and Franny said, “Okay! Okay.”
It was Harold Swallow who was kneeling on my back. If the net hadn’t been all tangled around me, I might have been a match for him, but I couldn’t move.
“We’ll be back for you, Harold!” Chipper Dove called.
“Hang in there, Harold!” said Chester Pulaski.
“You’ll get your turn, Harold!” said Lenny Metz, and they all laughed.
“I don’t want no turn,” said Harold Swallow. “I don’t want no trouble,” he said. But they were gone, Franny occasionally cursing—but farther and farther away from me.
“You’re going to get in trouble, Harold,” I said. “You know what they’re going to do to her.”
“I don’t want to know,” he said. “I don’t get in no trouble. I come to this shit-ass school to get outa trouble.”
“Well, you’re in trouble now, Harold,” I said. “They’re going to rape her, Harold.”
“That happens,” said Harold Swallow. “But not to me.” I struggled briefly under the net, but it was easy for him to keep me pinned down. “I don’t like to fight, either,” he said.
“They think you’re a crazy nigger,” I told him. “That’s what they think you are. That’s why they’re with her and you’re here, Harold. But it’s the same trouble,” I told him. “You’re in the same trouble they’re in.”
“They never get in no trouble,” Harold said. “Nobody ever tells.”
“Franny will tell,” I said, but I felt the candy corn pressed against my face, and into the damp ground. It was another Halloween to remember, for sure, and I felt as weak and small as I’d ever felt—on every Dairy Halloween I could recall, scared to death by bigger, always bigger kids, stuffing my head in my trick-or-treat bag and rattling it until all I heard was cellophane, and then the bag bursting around my ears.
“What did they look like?” Father would always ask us.
But every year they looked like ghosts, gorillas, skeletons, and worse, of course; it was a night for disguises, and nobody ever was caught. Not for tying Frank to the fire escape of the biggest dorm, where he wet his pants; no one ever caught anyone for that. Not for the three pounds of cold, wet pasta someone threw on Franny and me, crying, “Live eels! Run for your lives!” And we lay writhing on the dark sidewalk, the spaghetti sticking to us, beating each other and screaming.
“They’re going to rape my sister, Harold!” I said. “You got to help her.”
“I can’t help nobody,” Harold said.
“Somebody can help,” I said. “We could run and get somebody. I know you can run, Harold.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But who’s going to help you with those guys?”
Not Howard Tuck, I knew, and by the sound of sirens, which I heard now—from the campus and the town—I guessed that Father had figured out the police car enough to use its radio for help. So there would be no authorities available to help Franny, anyway. I started to cry, and Harold Swallow shifted his weight on my shoulder.
It was quiet for a second, between the deep breaths the sirens take, and we heard Franny. Flesh on flesh, I thought—but it was different now. Franny made a sound that moved Harold Swallow to remember whomight help her.
“Junior Jones could handle those guys,” Harold said. “Junior Jones don’t take no shit from nobody.”
“Yes!” I said. “And he’s your friend, isn’t he? He likes you better than them, doesn’t he?”
“He don’t like nobody,” said Harold Swallow, admiringly; but suddenly his weight was off me, and he was pawing at the net, unwinding it from around me. “Get up off your ass,” he said. “Junior does like somebody.”
“Who’s he like?” I asked.
“He likes everybody’s sister,” said Harold Swallow, but this thought did not reassure me.
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“Get up on your feet!” said Harold Swallow. “Junior Jones likes everybody’s sister—he told me so, man. He said, ‘Everybody’s sister is a good girl’—that’s just what he said.”
“But what’s he mean?” I said, trying to keep up with him, now, because he was the fastest organization of human flesh at the Dairy School. As Coach Bob said, Harold Swallow could fly.
We ran toward the light at the end of the footpath; we ran past where I knew I’d last heard from Franny—where the ferns were, where Iowa Bob’s backfield was taking turns. I stopped there; I wanted to run into the woods there, and find her, but Harold Swallow pulled me along.
“You can’t do nothing to those guys, man,” he said. “We got to get Junior.”
Why Junior Jones would help us, I didn’t know. I only thought that I would die before I found out—trying to keep up with Harold Swallow—and I thought that if Jones indeed liked “everybody’s sister,” as he apparently claimed, that didn’t necessarily mean good news for Franny.
“How does he like everybody’s sister?” I panted to Harold Swallow.
“He likes them like he likes his own sister,” Harold Swallow said. “Man!” he said to me “Why are you so slow? Junior Jones has got a sister himself, man,” Harold said. “And some dudes raped her. Shit,” he said. “I thought everybody knew that!”
“There’s a lot you miss, not living in the dorms,” Frank was always saying.