“What is it? Just a social club?” Rick asked. “Sort of like an unchartered fraternity?”
“I guess you could call it that,” Pat said. “It’s the thing everybody who is anybody belongs to. A boy from around here who doesn’t get asked in is nowhere. The Prospectors run everything.”
“You mean in school?”
Duty Bullo laughed. “In school and out, man. You want to make the football team, you better be a Prospector first. You got a yen to work on the school paper, you don’t ask your school adviser. You ask Max. Outside of school you get the urge for some witch, she wouldn’t look at you unless you’re wearing the belt.”
“What belt?” Rick asked, looking puzzled.
Duty unzipped his jacket to display a brown elastic belt with a silver buckle bearing the raised symbol of a pickax. Rick and Junior examined it with suitable respect.
“How do you get in this club?” Junior asked.
“You don’t, unless you’re asked,” Duty told him. After a moment of general silence, he added generously, “Most all-right guys are eventually asked. You guys already got a good in. I mean Max letting you stick around tonight and all.”
Pat gave Rick’s arm a squeeze. “Don’t you worry,” she whispered in his ear. “They’ll ask you in.”
It was midnight when the group began to break up. Rick offered to walk Pat Quincy home, and got a surprised look in return. Apparently she had taken it for granted that he’d walk her home, and considered the offer superfluous.
Junior and Duty left with them. A moment after they got outside the Cardinal Shop, Max, Artie and another boy who went by the nickname of Eightball came out too. Max called to Rick and his companions to wait, as they were all going the same way.
They walked along Flatbush Avenue in a group, Max and his two companions leading the others walking two-by-two behind them. Rick and Pat brought up the rear.
Pat’s family lived in an apartment at Grand Army Plaza, only three blocks from Rick’s new home, but about a dozen blocks from the Cardinal Shop. When they started out, Rick was in a pleasantly exhilarated mood. Considering that it was his first night in new surroundings, he’d been a pretty fair social success. He was surrounded by new friends who represented the cream of local teen-age society, and he had an attractive girl on his arm.
Then his mood began to change. The three boys in the lead suddenly got the whim of monopolizing the sidewalk. There weren’t many pedestrians out at this time of night, but what few there were got the treatment without regard to age or sex. Max and his two friends deliberately drove everyone they met into the gutter. Linking arms, with Max in the center, they spread the width of the walk and bore down inexorably on everyone coming the other way.
An elderly man was the first forced to scurry off the curb into the street to avoid being run over. Next was a pair of middle-aged women, who scrambled aside making indignant noises and glaring after the trio.
Pat and Duty seemed to find the exhibition hilarious. Rick was only embarrassed. Junior seemed uncertain how to react. A fixed smile settled on his face, but it was a forced one.
“Showoff” behavior had been held in contempt by Rick’s sophisticated Philadelphia set. But there was nothing he could think of to do about the situation, except endure it. He was in a new environment now, and was in the minority. He sensed that any objection on his part would lose him the esteem he had so far managed to gain.
They were almost to Sterling Place when they encountered a pedestrian who refused to give ground. He was a burly, middle-aged man who looked as though he might be a truck driver. Planting himself squarely in the center of the walk, he awaited the approach of the arm-linked trio with a belligerent expression on his face.
The three boys didn’t slow down a bit. They strode straight into the man. Just as they reached him, the man lowered one shoulder to butt Max in the chest.
Things happened so fast, Rick could barely follow them. The three boys unlocked arms. Artie grabbed the man by one shoulder and Eightball grabbed the other. Jerking him off-balance, they forced his head downward just as Max brought up a knee.
Max’s knee connected with the man’s face with a sickening crunch. He went over backward, blood streaming from both nostrils. He was in a seated position on the sidewalk when Artie’s foot lashed out to catch him on the jaw. As the blow stretched the man out flat, Eightball jumped onto his stomach with both feet.
Then all three boys were running down Sterling Place. Rick stood still in stunned disbelief at the vicious attack on a total stranger. Junior’s mouth hung open.
Duty reacted next. Without a word he raced away after the other boys.
Pat tugged at Rick’s arm. “We’d better get out of here,” she said fearfully.
Without stirring, Rick slowly looked around. Across the street a couple and a lone man had stopped to peer their way. A passing car slowed to a stop and the driver in it craned to see what was going on.
Junior suddenly broke into a run up Sterling Place, leaving Rick and Pat alone.
The lone man on the opposite side of the street started to cross over. The man with the woman left her alone to cross too. Pat tugged at Rick’s arm again.
“We didn’t do anything,” Rick said indignantly. “Run, if you want. I’m staying here.”
He bent over the unconscious figure on the sidewalk. Pat looked around fearfully, but she stayed.
4
The lone man from across the street was the first to reach the scene. As Rick rose from his examination of the unconscious man, the newcomer said, “What happened? A mugging?”
“I don’t know,” Rick said. “Just a fight, I think. You saw as much as I did.”
The other man from across the street arrived then, and the driver of the car got out, leaving his car double-parked. Both stood staring at the prone figure.
“He’s really out cold, ain’t he?” the driver commented.
Rick said, “He’s hurt bad. Somebody ought to call an ambulance.”
The man who had left his woman companion waiting across the street said, “There’s a tavern over there. I’ll call the cops.”
He recrossed the street, took the woman’s arm and both of them entered the tavern.
By the time a police radio car arrived, a considerable crowd ringed the unconscious man, most of it from the tavern from which the police had been called. Rick took Pat’s hand and quietly led her up the street. The police, busy questioning bystanders, took no notice of their departure.
They were a block away before Pat breathed a sigh of relief and lost the strained expression she had been wearing.
Giving Rick’s hand a squeeze, she said admiringly, “Boy, wait till the bunch hears about this in school tomorrow. You’ll get invited in for sure.”
“Hears about what?” Rick asked.
“How you bluffed it out. I never saw such nerve. Standing right there and talking to those men just like you didn’t know any more about what happened than they did. They never even suspected we were with the bunch that beat him up.” Pat smiled approval.
With a sense of shock Rick realized that Pat had entirely misinterpreted his motive in refusing to run. He had stayed partly because he hadn’t done anything wrong and refused to run because of another’s act, partly because he didn’t want to desert an injured man until help arrived. Pat seemed to think he had stayed through sheer bravado, to demonstrate to her that he could face down the other witnesses. She thought he had simply been attempting to prove that he could “get away” with things.
He didn’t enlighten her. He couldn’t without sounding stuffy. Furthermore, he found himself enjoying the admiration in her voice.