Boys Life

the seat, his head lolling. He’d been hurt bad.
    After Mr. Hargison had turned the mail truck around and sped off in the direction of Dr. Parrish’s office, Davy and I rolled Johnny’s bike up under the bleachers, where it wouldn’t be readily seen. The Branlins might come back and tear it to pieces before Johnny’s dad could come get it, but it was the best we could do. Then it dawned on our foggy minds that the Branlins might be in the patch of woods still, where they’d been waiting for Mr. Hargison to leave.
    That thought hurried us up some. Davy retrieved his baseball and got on his bike and I picked Rocket up again. I saw, for a brief instant, the golden eye in the headlight. It seemed to regard me with cool pity, same to say, “You’re my new master? You’re gonna need all the help you can get!” Rocket had had a rough first day, but I hoped we’d get along all right.
    Davy and I pedaled away from the field, both of us hurting. We knew what was to come: horror from our parents, indignation at the Branlins, angry phone calls, probably a visit by the sheriff, an empty promise from Mr. and Mrs. Branlin that their boys would never, ever do anything like this again.
    We knew better.
    We had escaped the Branlins for now, but Gotha and Gordo held grudges. At any moment, they might swoop at us on their black bikes and finish what they’d started. Or what I had started, by throwing that danged baseball.
    Summer had suddenly been poisoned by the Branlin touch. With July and August still ahead, we were not likely to have all our teeth by September.

XI – I Get Around
    OUR PREDICTIONS OF THE FUTURE WERE CORRECT.
    After the parental horror and the angry phone calls, Sheriff Amory made a call on the Branlins. He did not, as he told my dad, find Gotha and Gordo at home. But he told their parents that the boys had broken Johnny Wilson’s nose and come close to fracturing his skull, and this was what Mr. Branlin replied, with a shrug: “Well, Sheriff, I kinda figure boys will be boys. Might as well learn ’em when they’re young that it’s a tough old world.”
    Sheriff Amory had clamped his anger down tight and stuck his finger in Mr. Branlin’s rheumy-eyed face. “Now, you listen to me! You control those boys of yours before they end up in reform school! Either you do it or I will!”
    “Don’t matter none,” Mr. Branlin had said as he sat in front of the television in a room where dirty shirts and socks were scattered around and Mrs. Branlin moaned about her bad back from the bedroom. “They ain’t scared of me. Ain’t scared of nobody on earth. They’d burn a reform school smack to the ground.”
    “You tell ’em to come see me, or I’ll come here and get ’em!”
    Mr. Branlin, probing his molars with a toothpick, had just grunted and shaken his head. “You ever try to catch the wind, J.T.? Them boys are free spirits.” He had lifted his gaze from the Calling-for-Cash afternoon movie and stared up at the sheriff, the toothpick between his teeth. “Say my two sons beat the asses of four other boys? Sounds to me like Gotha and Gordo were fightin’ in self-defense. They’d have to be crazy to pick a fight with four boys at once, don’t you figure?”
    “It wasn’t self-defense, from what I’ve heard.”
    “From what I’ve heard”-Mr. Branlin paused to examine a brown glob on the end of his toothpick-“that Mackenson boy threw a baseball at Gordo and came near breakin’ his shoulder. Gordo showed me the bruise, and it’s as black as the ace of spades. Those people want to push this thing, I reckon I might have to press charges against that Mackenson kid.” The toothpick and the brown glob went back into his mouth. He returned his attention to the movie, which starred Errol Flynn as Robin Hood. “Yeah, those Mackensons go to church all high-and-mighty, and they teach their kid to throw a baseball at one of my boys and then whimper and whine when he gets his clock cleaned.” He snorted. “Some Christians!”
    In this matter, though, Sheriff Amory prevailed. Mr. Branlin agreed to pay Dr. Parrish’s bill and for the medicine Johnny was going to need. Gotha and Gordo had to sweep and mop the jail and couldn’t go to the swimming pool for a week by order of the sheriff, which I knew, of course, simply stoked their rage at Davy Ray and me. I had to have six stitches to seal the gash on my lower lip-an experience almost as bad as getting the lip split in the first place-but Mr.