“Oh,” Junior said with a touch of relief.
Pat said earnestly, “Believe me, Rick, you’ll get in trouble talking like that. You’re in now. The guys all like you, and you could be the most popular fellow in the club. But you sound off the way you’re talking now, and you’ll end up talking to yourself. Because you won’t have any friends to listen to you.”
“Including you, Pat?”
Pat stared at him a moment before answering. Then she squeezed his arm and said confidently, “You won’t be a schmoo. You won’t be silly enough to kick your chance of getting in. Not when you’re right on top of the heap.”
Rick let the subject drop. Later the three of them stopped by the Cardinal Shop for a time. But Rick didn’t enjoy himself. He kept thinking of what his father had told him.
He also kept remembering the conversation he’d had with his father just before they left Philadelphia, and his amused question, “What would I be doing with a bunch of squares?”
6
On Thursday football spring training started. Rick reported for practice and got a favorable reception from both the coach and members of the squad. The coach examined his sturdy frame with an approving eye and looked quite pleased when he learned Rick had been a first-string fullback in Philadelphia. He was greeted with equal enthusiasm by the regular squad members, all of whom turned out to be Prospectors.
Max Jelonek reported for practice too. Rick learned that the previous season Max had been a substitute quarterback on the first team.
There was no scrimmage this first day. The coach merely put them through some hardening exercises and had everyone hit the tackling dummy a few times. He sent them to the showers at four p.m. with the gruff announcement that real training would start the next day.
As they were dressing in the locker room, Max said, “Tonight’s meeting night, Rick.”
“Yeah,” Rick said.
He’d been thinking about the Prospectors almost constantly since his conversation with his father. He still hadn’t decided what to do. Trained to obedience, it was against everything he’d been taught since birth to go against his father’s express order. On the other hand, he’d never before been in a situation such as this, where obedience meant almost certain social ostracism.
He had thought of discussing the whole problem with his father, but had decided against it. He sensed that Big Sam’s reaction would be simply, “You don’t want to be accepted by kids like that anyway. Find some friends you can respect.”
Which, like most adult solutions to teen-age problems, would be meaningless advice. In the end, he had simply tabled the problem.
Rick stayed home that evening, Junior came over for a time and they did some homework together. They didn’t, as had become their custom, walk over to see Pat for a while.
Friday during the lunch period Rick finally had to face the problem of what to do about the Prospectors. Max called him and Junior aside.
“You’re in, studs,” he announced with a grin. “Unanimous votes for both of you.”
“Gee, that’s swell,” Junior said a little uncertainly, and looked at Rick.
Rick merely nodded.
“Your chore is a little tougher than I thought it would be,” Max said apologetically. “Sort of a sop to Artie. We let him pick it, and I guess he’s a little burned at you, Rick.”
Junior asked, “What is it?”
“Well, you’ve heard of the Purple Pelicans, haven’t you?”
Rick nodded and Junior said uneasily, “Sure. Over the other side of Atlantic Avenue.”
“Uh-huh. They meet on Monday nights. Got a basement clubroom they’ve fixed up. With a half dozen street-level windows.”
“So?” Rick asked.
Max grinned again. “The windows will probably be locked, but a hunk of brick can fix that. You studs are going to drop a couple of stink bombs in the middle of their meeting.”
Junior attempted an appreciative smile that came out more mechanical than enthusiastic. Rick remained silent and expressionless.
“Well, what you think, man?” Max asked Rick.
Rick said slowly, “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to bust up their meeting? What’s the purpose?”
Max frowned. “I told you the other night. To prove you’re worthy to be Prospectors.”
“What’s worthy about tossing stink bombs?” Rick inquired. “Any five-year-old kid can toss a stink bomb and run. Why not something that proves something? Like swimming the Hudson River?”
Max’s frown deepened. “We pick the chore, man. Not you candidates.”
“I don’t even know these Purple Pelicans,” Rick said with the beginning of anger. “They never did anything to me. An initiation stunt is one thing. We both had to pull stunts to get in Iota Omega. But we didn’t have to hurt anybody else. I’m not going to toss stink bombs at a bunch of strangers.”
“You are if you’re going to be a Prospector,” Max told him coldly.
Rick said flatly, “Then I’m not going to be a Prospector,” and walked away.
Junior didn’t follow him. A few yards away Rick glanced back over his shoulder. Junior gave him an embarrassed look and averted his eyes.
By the time school ended, Rick’s ultimatum had spread all over the school. When he met Pat in the front corridor after the last period, she was upset.
“Why did you talk to Max that way, Rick?” she inquired breathlessly. “Didn’t I explain how important it is to get in the club?”
“That’s stuff for twelve-year-olds,” Rick told her coldly. “Who wants to belong to a club that childish?”
“You mean you’re not going to apologize?” she asked, wide-eyed. “Rick, fellows beg to get in the Prospectors.”
“I don’t,” Rick said shortly.
Turning his back, he stalked off to the locker room to change into football clothes.
Max and several of the other squad members were there ahead of him. Silence fell when Rick entered, and everyone looked at him. Rick began to change into his suit. Max presently said, “Rick, do you want to be a Prospector?”
“No,” Rick said. “And I’m not going to change my mind.”
Max studied him for a time. Finally he said, “Nobody we ever asked turned down the chance, Rick.”
Rick said, “I guess there’s a first time for everything.”
Max glanced around at the other boys. There was a general shrugging of shoulders. No one said anything further to him, either in the locker room or later on the field. He was simply ignored. The coach ordered scrimmage today. He picked out two teams and placed Rick at fullback on the offensive team.
On the first play, with one of the halfbacks carrying the ball, Rick was blocked by three opposing players, an unnecessary amount of attention for a backfield man who wasn’t carrying the ball. An elbow grazed his jaw and a knee caught him in the groin, knocking the wind from him. There was a five-minute time-out for Rick to recover.
On the next play he was clipped from behind by Max, who was playing left tackle on Rick’s own side. Rick limped back into position with a thoughtful expression on his face.
On the third play Rick carried the ball. He ended up on the bottom of a pileup, where the coach couldn’t see the chopping right that caught him alongside the jaw. It was Max who swung the right. He buried his nose in his arms to avoid a cleated foot swinging toward his face and caught it on top of the helmet. When the tangle of players finally rose and let him climb to his feet, he was half-dazed.
He was also angry. Shaking the cobwebs from his brain, he got set for the next play, a quarterback sneak.
The instant the ball was snapped, Rick moved into action. He made no attempt to take out any of the opposition. Taking a running leap, he landed on his knees in the middle of Max’s back before the tackle could start his charge into the opposing line.
The air whooshed out of Max as he hit the ground belly-down with Rick’s full weight on him. Rick was in
stantly up again and rushing forward in a crouch. His right elbow crashed into the jaw of an opposing lineman and knocked him flat. His foot caught another in the crotch. The coach’s whistle was blowing furiously when he dropped the next nearest man who happened to be his own center, with a right to the jaw.
“What the devil do you think you’re doing, Henderson?” the coach screamed at him.
“Quitting,” Rick said bitterly, and walked off the field toward the showers.
7
Junior Carr came over to see Rick that night, but they didn’t go out anywhere. Junior seemed a little nervous about even being inside with Rick.
“You’d better straighten things up with Max, Rick,” Junior pleaded. “You don’t want the Prospectors down on you.”
“The devil with them,” Rick said.
“Look, Rick, I’m going to join.”
“It’s a free country,” Rick said shortly.
“But we’re friends. We’ve always been in everything together.”
“We can still be friends,” Rick told him. “I’m just not joining that bunch of squares.”
When Junior left, discouraged, Rick walked over to see Pat. He found her on the verge of tears.
“Rick, why do you have to be so stubborn?” she asked. “Look, even after what happened at football practice today, Max would accept an apology. I talked to his girl on the phone. He likes you, Rick.”
“Don’t go intervening for me,” Rick said. “I’ve made up my mind, and it’s final.”
Pat dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “Don’t I mean anything to you?”
“Of course,” he said. “You’re my girl, aren’t you?”
“Not if you turn down the Prospectors,” she said tearfully. “I couldn’t be.”
“Why not?” he demanded.
“You don’t know what it will be like,” Pat said in a plaintive voice. “Nobody will even talk to you. If I went with you, I’d get the same treatment. They might even hurt me.”
“Hurt you?” he asked without belief.
“Hasn’t it occurred to you that you might get beat up, Rick? Don’t you see it’s the whole club you’ll be up against? Maybe they’ll only ignore you and make everybody else ignore you too. They wouldn’t jump you without Max giving the word, and probably he won’t because he likes you. But he might, and then you could get really hurt. You can’t fight a hundred and fifty boys.”
“One at a time, I could.”
“It wouldn’t be one at a time,” she said wearily. “People the club’s down on don’t get a fair fight.”
Rick contemplated this thought without enthusiasm. He remembered the knife Max had taken from Artie, and his stomach lurched again.
“I don’t want to get you in a jam,” he said stiffly. “I guess this is good-by, huh?”
“Unless you change your mind.”
“Then it’s good-by,” Rick said.
Rick’s ordeal didn’t really start until Monday, because over the weekend he simply stayed home. In answer to his parents’ questions as to why he was mooning around the house, he said he had studying to do. But most of the time he watched television.
He didn’t hear from Junior.
On Monday he got his first taste of what it meant to offend the Prospectors. First, Junior didn’t appear as usual to walk to school with him. At school he was greeted by blank stares from everyone, including nonmembers of the club. Apparently the word had gone out that he was taboo, and even non-members were afraid to violate the taboo.
Every time Rick encountered Junior Carr, his friend turned fiery red and hurried off in another direction. When he ran into Pat, she looked as though she were going to cry and averted her eyes.
On Tuesday he sat alone in the cafeteria during the lunch period, his back to a table containing Max, Junior and a number of other Prospectors. From the overheard conversation he gathered that Junior had performed the stink-bomb mission alone, and it had been a huge success. There was a good deal of hilarity over the discomfiture of the Purple Pelicans.
By the end of the week Rick had stopped listening in classrooms, had stopped studying and spent his evenings dully staring at the television screen without seeing it. His parents discussed calling a doctor.
Saturday night he got a phone call from Junior Carr.
“Listen, Rick,” Junior said. “I’m taking a chance phoning you like this, but we were always friends, and I wanted to tip you off.”
“Yeah?” Rick said without much interest.
Junior spoke with a tremor.
“You know I didn’t want to give you the treatment, Rick. I had to.”
“Sure,” Rick said. “I’m not blaming you.”
Junior’s tone turned a trifle relieved. “I’m really sorry about the way things happened, Rick.”
“It’s not your fault,” Rick said.
“What I’m calling about is that the word is out to clobber you, Rick. Artie’s been talking it up, and Max finally gave in. Rick, you got to be careful.”
“Yeah,” Rick said. “Thanks, Junior.”
He hung up the phone and went back to stare at television.
The warning didn’t particularly frighten Rick. He was in too comatose a state to be much concerned about anything. It didn’t really penetrate that he might be in actual physical danger until he was confronted with it on the way home from school on Monday.
They caught him in the center of a block only two blocks from his home. As he passed the alley mouth, eight of them poured out of it and formed a semicircle around him. Artie Snowden was in the lead.
Rick backed against the brick side of the building next to the alley mouth and warily examined the ring of faces.
Artie said with enjoyment, “How’d you like your face parted, stud? Down the middle?”
His hand came out of his pocket encased in a set of brass knuckles.
Rick might have attempted to slug it out even against the impossible odds if it hadn’t been for the knife another boy drew. His stomach lurched when he heard it click open and he saw the gleam of the seven-inch blade.
His stark terror saved him. Lowering a shoulder, he plowed between Artie and the boy next to him as though he were hitting a defensive line. He knocked both boys sprawling and was racing up the street, carrying his books like a football, before the rest of the group realized their quarry had escaped.
Rick ran all the way home and tumbled onto the front-room couch gasping. His mother glanced in from the kitchen, gave him a vague smile and said, “You’re home early, dear.” She disappeared into the kitchen again.
Rick sat without moving for a full half hour. Then he lowered his head into his hands and sat that way for another twenty minutes. When he finally raised his head again, there was an expression of defeat on his face.
Going to the phone in a corner of the living room, he dialed Pat’s number.
When she answered, he said in a blurred voice, “Rick, Pat. You think Max might still accept an apology?”
“Oh, Rick,” she said happily. “I’ll call his girl right now and get her to find out.”
The appointment was for ten p.m. Rick didn’t go inside the Cardinal Shop. He stood looking through the plate-glass window until he was noticed from inside.
Max came out with Artie Snowden, Eightball and Duty Bullo. He gave Rick an amicable smile.
“You got something to say, man?” he asked.
Rick gulped. In a low voice he said, “I’m sorry about everything, Max. I’d like to get in the club, if you’ll still have me.”
Max said indulgently, “Sure, boy. Some of the guys are sore, but me, I like a stud with guts. That charge you made on the football field was real cool.”
Rick said nothing, merely waited abjectly.
“You got no objections to the chores we assign now, huh?”
Rick shook his head.
“Only thing is, now it’s not going to be so easy,” Max told him. “The guys are pretty burned up. A lot of them say no—no
matter what chore you pull.”
Rick waited in silent subservience.
“Only way we could talk them around was to give you a really tough chore,” Max went on. “It’s not going to be as simple as tossing a stink bomb.”
Rick said fervently, “Anything you say, Max.”
“Well, the stud who’s war counselor for the Purple Pelicans is getting a little big for his pants. He got sore about Junior’s stink bombs and brought some of his boys over for a raid last night. Caught a couple of our citizens alone and put them in the hospital. Right on our own turf.”
“You want me to fight him?” Rick asked.
Max grinned genially. From his jacket pocket he produced a small-caliber pistol, then dropped it back again. “We want you to burn him, Rick.”
Rick stared at him with slowly growing comprehension. “You mean kill him?” he finally asked in a husky voice.
“You got the scoop,” Max said.
Rick stared from one face to another. Artie brought out his set of knuckle dusters, examined it interestedly and put it away again. Eightball flipped open a knife, shut it and dropped it back in his pocket. Duty merely grinned at Rick.
“See what we mean?” Max asked. “It’s either all the way, or not at all. Take your choice.”
Rick swallowed and his eyes made the circle of faces again. “Do I have to decide right now?” he managed.
“Take your time,” Max said generously. “We’ll give you till midnight.”
Doing an about-face, he re-entered the Cardinal Shop. The other boys followed him in.
Rick stood for a long time staring at nothing. Then he turned and staggered off like a drunk.
He walked the streets for two hours. At midnight he came back to the Cardinal Shop.
THE RIGHT KIND OF A HOUSE
by HENRY SLESAR
The automobile that was stopping in front of Aaron Hacker’s real-estate office had a New York license plate. Aaron didn’t need to see the yellow rectangle to know that its owner was new to the elm-shaded streets of Ivy Corners. It was a red convertible; there was nothing else like it in town.
Mike Shayne's Torrid Twelve Page 17