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on the chassis. I don’t remember how many kids lived there, but a few years later his oldest son would go to prison for raping his twenty-seven-month old niece. Another would go for some other crime. And I assume that’s what happened to Clay.
    At fourteen or fifteen Clay Whelan was over six feet and slope-shouldered and sullen and mean. When he first saw me—flabby, weak, and quiet—he saw a target, and for the next year he’d corner me at school and squeeze my throat till I couldn’t breathe, he’d chase me the two blocks home and punch and kick me to the ground. He’d call Jeb a faggot and Suzanne and Nicole fuckin’ sluts, and I did nothing but run into the house and hide.
    More than ever now, the four of us stayed in every day after school and watched that one-eyed machine that would take us to other worlds. Hours and hours of it. Mom would get home between six and seven and fix us something quick and cheap, usually frozen or from a can, then the five of us would sit in the dark living room only feet from the street and watch more TV. If she looked over and asked me where I’d gotten a bruise or a cut, I’d tell her recess, playing. But recess at the Jackman was a forty-five-minute break on a square of asphalt out back where there were no balls and half the kids stood around taking drags off Marlboros then turning their heads to blow smoke away should one of the teachers see, though I don’t remember many teachers being out there. And these boys were even tougher than Clay Whelan.
    There was Cody Perkins, as short as I was but lean and loud. One morning in the middle of history, Mrs. Hamilton was talking about the Louisiana Purchase and he walked into the class and shouted to the back of the room, “Say it to my face, Sullivan. Say it to my fuckin’ face! ”
    Sullivan was the biggest kid in school. In the sixth grade he was as tall as Clay but weighed close to 200 pounds. A month before, a wiry boy in the hallway said something to Sully he didn’t like and he whirled around and punched him in the face and knocked him out. Now he was back from his suspension and Cody Perkins, half his size, was waiting for him in front of class. Mrs. Hamilton started yelling at Perkins to leave, but Perkins was breathing hard like he just ran here, his eyes on Sullivan who was up and coming for him.
    I was sitting close to this. I knew Sullivan would kill Perkins and I couldn’t understand how such a small kid could be so crazy, so brave.
    Somebody called out, “Kill him, Sully. Beat his head in.”
    Cody threw himself in the air and punched Sully in the chest. It was like watching a building crumble, the way Sullivan’s head dropped and his shoulders slumped and he curled forward into the air he couldn’t breathe anymore, his mouth open, his face gray, and Cody Perkins was punching him in the side of the head, in both eyes, in his nose and still-open mouth. Now there were more teachers in the room, two men who pulled Perkins off and he was kicking and trying to jerk himself away and only when he was gone did I remember he’d been screaming the whole time, not words but an anguished, unrelenting sound that could only come from some raging beast.
    Sully lay curled on the floor. He was bleeding and crying and still trying to breathe. He left school and I never saw him again and though I never spoke to Cody Perkins or he to me, I saw him all the time; I liked how loud he was. I liked how he walked around the Jackman or down the street with his chest out. A decade later he would become a prizefighter whose picture I would see tacked to telephone poles and the doors of barrooms. Sullivan had seemed nice enough, but I liked how Cody Perkins had destroyed him all by himself. Not like me, who hid daily from Clay and was too ashamed to tell my mother about getting chased and beat up three or four days a week, how I’d trip and fall and he would catch up to me, his eyes dark and intent, like this was something he just had to