Stoney shrugged. “Depends. I get a charge out of playing snatch at the five-and-dime. You can sell the stuff for enough to take in the movies. You can smoke in the balcony. Or you tell a guy you watch his car he’ll give you two bits. And let him know that maybe you don’t get the two bits first, he gets a hole in a tire. Or at night you can go hunting in the alleys for drunks. Roll ’em for everything but their clothes.”
I couldn’t follow him very clearly. And I didn’t want to show my ignorance by asking questions. But he had opened up exciting possibilities I never knew existed. I saw myself sitting casually in a movie balcony, puffing on a cigar.
He sighed. “But you can’t do that stuff here. This place is — empty. No noises except bugs and birds. My old man was on a prison farm once. He didn’t like it.”
I said, “Want to look around?”
He shrugged. All the things that had looked pretty good to me turned out to be as childish as the pictures on the walls of my room. I had been pretty proud of our six acres, the same as Dad, but under Stoney’s cold stare everything dwindled away to a horrible, insipid emptiness.
At one place he came to life. The Branton twins and I had got hold of a feed sack, stuffed it with sawdust and hung it by a long rope from one of the rafters in the barn. When Stoney saw it, his shoulders went back and he strutted up to it. He went into a crouch, jabbed at it lightly and expertly with a flicking left, and jumped his right fist deep into it. He bounced around on his toes, jabbing, hooking, snuffing hard through his nose. The thump of his fist into the sawdust gave me a horridly vivid picture of how that would feel in my stomach.
He finished and said, “Little workout’s a good thing.”
“Yeah,” I said, consciously imitating his cold tone.
“Another couple years and I try the geegees.”
“The what?” I said.
“Golden Gloves, kid. Golden Gloves. That’s a life. Win in your division and turn pro and play it smart and you’re all set. Better than lugging a shine box around in fronta the Forty-second Street library, kid. I watch ’em work out at the gym. Look, we got to get a bigger bag and fasten it more solid. It swings too much.”
“Yeah,” I said coldly.
“Got any funny books?” he asked. “I feel like reading. The crime kind.” “They’ll only let me have cowboy ones,” I said apologetically.
“Them big sissies in the pink shirts give me a laugh.”
“I like Roy Rogers,” I said defensively.
He stared at me and chuckled coldly. “Roy Rogers! Ha!”
I went moodily back to the house alone. Looie was trudging around on the pointless walk, following Stoney. I didn’t like her following me usually, but this sudden shift of allegiance annoyed me. I sat in a chair on the porch.
Dad came out and said, “Where’s Johnny?”
“Walking,” I said.
“Can’t you think up a game or something?”
“He doesn’t like games.”
Mother came out and heard that last part. She said to Dad, “It’s quite an adjustment for the boy. I think we ought to leave him alone for a little while. Polite, isn’t he?”
Stoney did not come out of his mood of chill disdain. Within three days he had settled into a pattern. He fixed the sawdust bag and spent two hours every morning working out. Dad lined up some chores for him, and after his workout, he did his chores quickly and expertly. He was silent at the table, speaking only when spoken to. In the afternoon he wandered around and around, tagged by Looie. She talked to him constantly and I never heard him say anything to her that was longer than one word.
On the eleventh day of Stoney’s visit Dad had set us to work grubbing the tall grass out from around the bases of the apple trees. The dogged way Stoney worked made it necessary for me to work just as hard. Looie had found a hoptoad and she was urging him along by poking him with a twig.
Suddenly there was a loud neighing sound and the Branton twins, Kim and Cam, came galloping down the hill. They were the biggest kids of their age in our school. They had long faces and bright blue eyes and not very much sense.
Stoney straightened up and looked at them and I heard him say one short word under his breath. I saw that word once, chalked on a fence. But I’d never heard anyone say it.
They ran around us three times and pulled up, panting and snorting. They both talked at once, much too loud, and I finally got the idea that there was some kind of sickness at Camp Wahmbahmoo and everybody had been sent home.
Stoney stood and stared at them. Kim said, “Hey, you’re from the Fund, Mom said.”
“You want it drawn for you in a picture?” Stoney asked.
“Yipes, he can draw,” Cam yelled. Kim jumped up and grabbed an apple tree branch. He swung his feet up and got them over the branch, let go with his hands and hung by his knees. Then he started a gentle swinging. At the right part in the swing, he straightened his legs and dropped, twisting in the air so his feet hit first. He had to touch his hands to the ground for balance.
Cam stared at Stoney. “Okay, let’s see you do that.” Both the twins seem to be made of nothing but hard, rubbery muscle and pink skin.
Stoney gave a snort of disgust and started to work again. “Scared to try, even,” Cam shouted.
Stoney straightened up. “What does it get me, pal, falling out of a tree? Once I see a guy fall out of a thirty-story window. When he hit, he splashed. There you got something.”
Cam and Kim went into their act. They hung onto each other and yelped. They gasped with laughter. They pounded on each other and jumped up and down and gasped about thirty-story windows. When they do that to me I get so mad that tears run right out of my eyes. Stoney acted as if they weren’t there. After a while the twins got tired. Kim snatched Looie’s toad and they went racing up through the orchard, yelling that they’d see me later. Looie was yelling about the loss of her hopper.
When they were seventy feet away Kim threw the toad back to us. We heard it hit up in one of the trees, but it didn’t come down. Probably wedged up there.
Looie was screaming. Stoney said, “Pals of yours?”
“Well, they live in the next house.”
He gave me a contemptuous look and took Looie’s hand. “Come on, sis, and we’ll get us another hopper.” She went snuffling off with him. I was about to complain because he had left me with the work, and then I noticed that he’d finished the last of his trees.
The next time I saw them, Stoney was leaning against the barn, his eyes half shut against the sun glare. Looie had a hopper and she was hopping along behind it.
With the Branton kids back, the tempo of things stepped up. They galloped into the yard in the late afternoon. Stoney stood and watched them without expression. They separated to gallop on each side of him. Kim dropped onto his knees and Cam gave Stoney a shove. Stoney went over hard. He got up and brushed himself off.
Cam and Kim circled and came back to stand panting in front of him. “Well?” Cam said.
“Well what?” Stoney said.
“What are you going to do about it?” Cam asked.
Stoney hunched his shoulders. He looked at the house and for a moment he seemed to be sniffling the air like a hound. Then the tension went out of him. “I’m not going to do anything, friend.”
“Yella!” Kim yelled.
Stoney looked amused. “Could be, friend. Could be.”
I was disgusted with Stoney. I headed out of the yard and hollered back to the twins, “Come on, guys. Leave him with Looie.”
We went over to the Branton place. I was late getting back to supper. I came in with my shirt torn because they had ganged me. They hurt my arm, but I got over it before I went home. I didn’t want Stoney to see me crying.