by Bryn Roar
Joel snickered behind two freckled hands.
Josie didn’t bother reminding her friend that they too carried the burden of cruel nicknames. Rusty went by Gnat. The Assholes called Bud Mental (though, never to his face) and she, of course, had the worst of the lot: Tits. Her friends and family sometimes called her Big Red, or Joe—short for Josie, but also because she was so much like her old man. Rusty was sometimes brave enough to call her Tits. Of the bunch, though, Josie preferred Joe.
Joel’s curiosity was peaked. “What’s the big deal, Joe? What’s his name?”
“Tolson’s his name, Freckle Butt,” Josie said, calling her brother by the name he despised most.
“It’s Tubby,” Rusty whispered to the younger O’Hara. Josie glared at Gnat menacingly.
“Tubby? Really? My name is Tubby Tolson,” Joel mimicked in a basso voice. “Oh man, that’s rich!”
Despite herself, Josie laughed. “That can’t be his real name. No parent would name their child Tubby.”
“He and his folks came over for dinner one night in June, shortly after coming to the island,” Rusty said, shrugging. “I can’t recall what they called the boy.”
“You never told me that. What’s he like?”
Rusty shrugged again. “Like you said, Big Red. Quiet. Didn’t string two words together all night.”
Josie watched the lonely boy climb the school steps several yards ahead of them.
Assorted oinkings and Suuueeeyy! Suuueeeyy! greeted Tubby, as he pinballed his way through the motley group congregating on the front steps. It was a daily gauntlet that onlyThe Creeps got through unscathed.
And even then, only when Buddy boy was around.
Fat kids didn’t stand a chance.
Josie shook her head. Well, at least he doesn’t have to deal with that jerk—
“Uh, oh.” She nudged Rusty with her elbow.
It wasn’t necessary.
Nobody had a nose for trouble like her Rusty.
Sitting atop his throne on the brick balustrade framing the front doors was Lester Noonan. Moon River Academy’s Resident Bully Supreme.
He grabbed a passing kid’s lunch and began rooting around in the bag, tossing aside an apple as if it was a turd.
“Fuck a yellow duck! I thought that greasy asshole was suspended till next week!”
“Yeah, so did I,” said Josie. “And watch your damn mouth around me little brother!”
When Rusty was scared he blinked a lot. At the moment he was blinking like one of those marquee lights at the wax museum. So fast you couldn’t tell open, apart from closed. The lenses on his glasses began to fog. “C’mon, Joe. Buddy boy’s not here. Let’s go around back, okay?”
Josie, who usually went out of her way to avoid Lester Noonan, just stood there and looked up at the Academy’s front stoop with concern. Why, she couldn’t say. She and her friends always kept to themselves. It was easier that way to tell friend from foe. There was something about the Tolson kid, though, that reached out and touched her heart. So reserved. So resolute. So all alone.
Like a tub toy adrift on a stormy sea.
She watched as he edged closer to the front doors.
Maybe he’ll make it before Lester sees—
“Hey! Augustus Gloop! Stop right there, fat boy! Now where in hell do you think you’re going?”
Chapter Four:
Big Bad Bud Brown
Joel’s idol, Bud Brown, was coming from the other direction on Huggins Way when he heard a commotion in the front yard of the Academy, further up the road.
Bud barely looked up from the tangle of dark brown hair hanging over his face. Only seventeen years old and he was a living legend on Moon Island. First off, there was his size. As Rusty Huggins liked to say, Bud Brown was one big motherfucker. At six-foot-four, two hundred and twenty-five pounds, and built like a heavyweight in his prime, Buddy boy was indeed an imposing figure. His piercing, ice blue eyes only added to that sinister mystique.
Then there was that thing that happened with his mother, back in October of ‘96—incidentally, the same night Joe Rusty was lost at sea—that caused most Mooners to forever postulate on Bud’s current state of mind.
It seemed inevitable that Bud and Josie would eventually seek each other out, when such a tragic twist of fate had given them so much in common. To their great surprise it was only the first of a great many things they shared in duality. Josie was the only one on Moon who came close to understanding what he was going through.
In all honesty, though, Bud envied Joe the way her father had gone out (although, he never would have told her that!). Bud’s mother hadn’t died in a tragic accident—no, her death had been the only known murder on Moon.
And the way she’d died!
There’s nothing like a sensational homicide in a small town to make the good folks there sit up and take notice. Their eyes would turn avid and bright whenever the subject arose. Pretending, of course, to act shocked and dismayed by the grisly details. Bud knew better. His mother’s gruesome death had ever since kept the tiny town entertained. It was often the main source of gossip overheard at the local diner. Bud’s subsequent mental breakdown had only added fuel to the lurid rumors. As if he and his mom were nothing more than the shocking ending of an Urban Legend come to life.
It was no wonder then that Bud hated the people of Moon. Not everyone, of course. There were some good eggs mixed in there. The Huggins’s for example. Garfield, Mr. Pete, Joe and her little brother, and naturally his old man—but all in all, he wouldn’t care if the whole sorry island somehow slipped back into the sea.
Deep down he realized it would’ve been the same anywhere else in the world. Worse, even. But Moon was his home, and his home should’ve known better.
He took out a soft pack of Marlboros from the top pocket of his army coat, rapped out a cancer stick, and lit up with his Zippo. The lighter was his most prized possession. It had once belonged to his namesake, a man he’d never even met before. His grandfather, Sergeant Major Bud Brown, United States Marine Corps. A famous tunnel rat who had done most of his fighting underground during the war, in the rabbit-like warrens the Viet Cong had tunneled out underneath that steaming landscape called Vietnam. And where he’d eventually met his end.
The scarred and scuffed Zippo was the Sergeant Major’s only possession to find its way back home to his son, William Beauregard Brown, who’d later passed it on to his only son, Bud. It bore Bud’s initials on one side, while the other vowed to Never Say Die!
The hands shielding the flame from the breeze were large and veiny, the fingers long and blunt. His complexion was clear, his face, when not covered by greasy shocks of hair, strangely beautiful. More suited for a gentle soul, than one so often angry. Blue smoke leaked from Bud’s nostrils as he approached a sizable knot of kids on the school steps.
The Academy held classes for the nearly six hundred school age kids on Moon, in a long, single-story brick building. The front entrance was for the high school students, while the rest of the pupils—1 grade through the 8—walked around to the rear of the building to get to their classes (and woe be to those who broke this unwritten rule!). The administrative offices and the cafeteria, which sat in the middle, separated the two groups, making the Academy two schools in one. A state of the art gymnasium, a playground for the younger kids, and a ball field took up every square acre on the grounds behind the school, all the way back to the sand cliffs.
On most mornings there were usually two meandering lines of kids heading into the Academy: older, taller youths straggling through the front entrance, the shorter, younger children trailing along to the rear. It reminded Bud of an anthill, where for no apparent reason there would be long lines of ants taking their own predetermined routes to the colony. Today, however, all of the “ants” had gathered around the front stoop.
Bud couldn’t see what all the fuss was about but he felt confident of its cause. Had to be a fight or some other schoolyard calamity. Probably one with blood involved. N
othing stirred up your typical kid like spilt blood.
As long as it belonged to someone else, that is.
Unless it was of the make-believe variety, violence held no such interest for Bud. He’d been involved in enough real violence to last him a thousand lifetimes—which relates to the other reason for Bud’s fearsome reputation: his blitzkrieg of a temper. Coupled with his size, this made Bud a force to be reckoned with—or better yet, avoided at all costs. Most kids had the sense enough not to mess with him. Their natural born instincts, not to mention their very own eyes, told them not to get on the bad side of this brooding bear. Some, unfortunately, had to learn the hard way. Bud Brown never wanted to be a legend. He just wanted to be left alone!
Like Hitler picking on the Russkies, Charlie Noonan should’ve left Bud Brown the hell alone.
On the last day of school, the year before, Charlie Noonan (Lester’s older brother) decided to pick on someone his own size. Enter Bud Brown. No one really knew why. The Noonans’ natural target of choice was anyone weaker than themselves. Whatever Charlie’s motives were that day, it was the subsequent events of this head-on collision that cemented Bud’s status as the schoolyard superstar: Big Bad Bud Brown.
Charlie had just graduated from the Academy, while Bud had only completed his sophomore year, and as anyone who’s attended high school knows, those two planes are light years apart. The Noonans’ were notorious bullies on Moon, Lester a third generation asshole. His dad, Andy Noonan, had been Moon’s very first schoolyard tough; picking on anyone whose last names weren’t Huggins or O’Hara. The man may have been meaner than a dyspeptic honey badger, but he sure wasn’t stupid!
Charlie was the worst of that lot, though.
He collected his lunch money like a loan shark, practiced random acts of malice in-between classes, and harassed the pretty girls. Unless, of course, she had older brothers who could protect her from his advances. As bullies went, Charlie was smarter than your average thug.
For one thing, he was slick enough to stay away from trouble he couldn’t handle—and that had always included one Bud Brown. Everyone knew that the Red Eyed Man had scrambled Mental’s brains. That’s why Charlie had given the poor crazy bastard a free pass! There was just no percentage in roughing up a whack job.
At least that was the reason Charlie Noonan had always given his toadies, whenever they had the balls enough to question him on the matter.
His old man had instructed him and Lester in the ways of subduing the herd. Which is how the Noonans’ viewed anyone weaker than themselves.
“Don’t pick on retards, gimps, or real little kids,” the old man would often tutor them. “That won’t gain you any respect or fear from the herd. Though it might make them hate you! There’s a fine line, boys, between hate and fear, and you gotta keep your herd on the safe side of fear! Let ‘em stray on over to hate, and you’ll end up with nothin’ but mutiny on your hands. ‘Cause hate leads to anger, which is an emboldening emotion! Get ‘em angry enough and they won’t even feel your foot up their ass!”
At which point Andy would pause meaningfully, glaring at his sons. “Such a fool is hard to beat down. And if you should let one of those fuckin’ faggots kick your sorry ass, then you best not let me hear about it!”
That was Andy Noonan for you…rednecks’ very own version of Yoda. Wisdom for today’s white trash.
According to Charlie’s self-serving logic, Bud Brown had always fit in this category as a mental gimp; someone who didn’t have all his marbles upstairs. Therefore, someone with the sympathy of the herd.
Only Bud didn’t act like any retard he’d ever known! Bud was smart. Real smart. And everyone knows how bullies loathe their intellectual betters. Maybe Charlie Noonan decided it was time to put Mental in his place. The other kids were starting to look at Bud with the same sort of awe usually reserved for him and his little brother Lester. Whispering in the bathrooms and in the hallways that Charlie was in fact Scared of Bud.
If so, who could blame him? Bud Brown, with his size alone, was definitely an unknown commodity.
This theory gained legs when Bud started hanging around with Josie O’Hara and Rusty Huggins—the latter being the Noonans’ former favorite punching bag. How else to explain it when suddenly those two became off limits? Then again, maybe Charlie was feeling invincible that day. After all, he’d managed to do something that even his father hadn’t been able to accomplish: Graduate from high school. Besides, as Charlie approached Bud Brown (minding his own business, his head buried in a monster magazine) he knew that Lester had his back that day.
In predictable bully fashion, Charlie knocked the magazine out of Bud’s hands and kicked it down the front steps of the schoolyard.
The story goes that Bud didn’t even look up or acknowledge the assault. Instead, unperturbed, he bent down and picked up his magazine, in tatters now.
Charlie kicked him in the ass for good measure…
And still Bud Brown didn’t retaliate! To a gaping asshole like Charlie, this was a sure sign of weakness, and it cleared up any doubt he might’ve had in his mind.
Bud Brown was most definitely of the herd!
Bud was stuffing the remnants of the monster magazine in the back pocket of his Levi’s, ignoring the laughter of the Noonan brothers and their gathered toadies, and had already walked several feet past them, when Charlie Noonan made a mistake he would lament the rest of his miserable life. “Hey, Mental! I heard the loony what killed your ma got hisself some head before tossing it in your lap! Get it? He got some Head…from your mama’s head! Hee! Hee! Hee! Hee! Hee!”
The schoolyard fell silent. Every kid there gaped up at Charlie in utter disbelief. Even Lester Noonan ceased his hee-hawing. His mouth dropped open at his brother’s colossal lack of decency. In the adolescent world, where almost nothing is off limits, Charlie had not only stepped way over the line, he’d taken a shit on it as well.
Bud stopped dead in his tracks and slowly turned around. His ice blue eyes found Charlie at the top of the steps, locking onto him like two heat-seeking missiles.
The assortment of kids, who only moments before had been happily leaving another school year behind them, now stood rooted in place. Something historic was about to take place in their little world and they didn’t want to miss a second of it. The air felt heavy, like before a big storm.
Every kid on the island would later swear to have witnessed the momentous event, even though only a dozen or so remained behind that day. Who could blame them? What happened next was the stuff of legend.
Bud walked slowly back up the steps…and here, once again, Charlie made an unfortunate assumption. He decided that Bud’s dull deliberation was due to a lack of confidence in his abilities. Poor bastard couldn’t have been more deluded. If Josie and Rusty had been there, they would have begged Charlie to run for his life! Literally.
The few kids standing between the two combatants parted like a curtain to let Bud pass.
Those closest enough to see into Bud’s eyes, swore they’d seen madness in his Artic glare. For them the result of the impending battle was a foregone conclusion.
Charlie Noonan was dead meat on two feet.
By the time Bud was halfway up the stoop, Charlie was beginning to regret his lack of tact. Or more likely, he’d seen the same glacial glint in Bud’s eyes.
“My bad, Buddy boy. I shouldn’t have said that about your Ma. What say we forget all about it—”
Charlie’s rare entreaty for peace fell on deaf ears. Or maybe it was because Charlie called him Buddy boy. An unfortunate choice on Charlie’s part, since that was what Bud’s Ma had always called her baby boy.
Without taking his eyes from Charlie’s, Bud spat a bullet loogey between Noonan’s splayed sneakers—just as neat as you please. He now stood level with the Noonan brothers, his lack of fear evident in his blunt stare and oddly calm body. His respiration was slow and even, barely negligible. Charlie on the other hand was clearly unsettled. Breathing hard,
nostrils flaring. Adrenaline and dread surging through his veins. Trembling uncontrollably. He’d overplayed his hand, and Bud was calling his bluff. His only option now: End this quick! He threw the first punch.