The Risk Pool

said when we were alone.
    “Who?”
    He looked over at me. “Who. Your ass, who.”
    Pretending ignorance never got me anywhere with him, somehow, though he never questioned legitimate dumbness.
    “Nothing,” I said, which wasn’t exactly a lie, since he certainly hadn’t said anything specific. But it wasn’t exactly the truth either.
    “Nothing,” my father repeated.
    When we pulled up in front of the apartment, a pair of big legs were sticking out of the dark entryway and onto the sidewalk. They didn’t move, but when my father turned off the ignition an empty bottle landed on the canvas top of the convertible and broke in the middle of the street. “Speaking of nothing—” my father said.
    When we got out, Drew Littler tried to stand, lost his balance and crashed backward through the fogged glass door and into the unlit hall at the foot of the staircase.
    “Get back in the car,” my father said.
    There was just enough light from the street to see Drew Littler trying again to struggle to his feet. I had half a mind to do what I was told for once, but I stayed where I was.
    “Come on, Sammy,” Drew Littler said. “Let’s do it. You and me.”
    “Do what, Zero?”
    “Don’t call me that. I’ll have to kill anybody calls me that,” hesaid seriously, as if the need to kill my father were to him a matter of infinite regret.
    “All right,” my father said, stepping through the door frame and into the broken glass. “What should I call you?”
    “Let’s fight,” Drew said, as if the proposal required my father’s permission.
    “Nah,” my father said.
    “Come
on
,” said Drew, disappointed. “Let’s fuckin’ fight. Kick my ass, Sammy. You’re supposed to be some kind of ass kicker. Kick my fuckin’ ass, Sammy.”
    “I got a better idea,” my father said. “We go upstairs, get a good night’s sleep, and fight in the morning when we’re fresh.”
    “No sleep,” Drew said. “Kick ass.”
    He didn’t look like he’d be doing any ass kicking to me. I’d got close enough to see pretty well. He was leaning up against the banister, a jagged piece of opaque glass sticking out of the top of his blond head. He seem unaware of both the glass and the ribbon of black blood that snaked down his neck and into his shirt.
    “Aw, Sammy,” he said, slumping onto the stairs. He was crying now. He ran his fingers through his hair where they encountered the shard of glass. Lowering his head between his knees, he shook his head like a wet dog until the fragment fell out. Then he began to moan. I missed what he said the first couple of times, then finally understood. “He’s dead, Sammy,” Drew Littler cried. “He’s dead.”
    He was way too big, and we had to get Wussy to help us. My father went looking for him while I stayed with Drew in the hallway. He was bleeding quite a lot, but my father said head wounds always did, and not to worry. Remember whose head it is, he said.
    Drew slept peacefully, slumped up against the wall. He smelled something awful, a mixture of sweet odors—whiskey and body odor and blood. And my guess was that he’d wet his pants too. I stayed with him as long as I could, then went outside to keep from throwing up. After a while my father returned with Skinny Donovan in tow.
    “Jesus H. Christ on a crutch,” Skinny said when he saw. “You sure he’s alive?”
    Drew groaned, as if in answer, then was still again.
    “Wha’d you do, Sammy? Knock his ass through the door?”
    “Didn’t have to,” my father said. “He fell through it.”
    “You need somebody to swear to it?”
    My father said he didn’t think so, though it was good of Skinny to offer.
    “He sure did show those coons where the bear shit in the buck-wheat,” Skinny observed, as if he hated to see someone of demonstrated worth so cruelly reduced. “You want to drag him upstairs?”
    “Let’s wait for Wuss,” my father said. “It’s three flights up and he weighs a ton. We’re liable to get halfway up and lose him.”
    “You and me and the kid could manage,” Skinny said, insulted.
    “Probably, but let’s wait.”
    Skinny shrugged. “Let’s wait outside then. It’s like a toilet in here.”
    In a few minutes Wussy pulled up and parked across the street. He’d changed back into his regular clothes, including his fishing hat. He shook his head at me. “More foolishness, eh Sam’s Kid?”
    We went inside and stared at Drew.
    “Which end do you want?” my father said, ignoring