He hears a distant scraping roar, and other voices, not his brother’s. He peers far to his left, towards the other end of the long canal, the end opposite the tunnel. He sees a couple of familiar figures, the two skaters of his neighborhood, Jason and Troy, doing half-pipes on the inclines. They, like his brother’s friends, haven’t eyes low enough to see him. So he pretends not to see them. He folds his forearms across his eyes, trying to black out the world.
But the sound of those wheels, like tears in paper, grows closer and closer.
Soon, he can actually feel the vibrations and the wind, and he has to open his eyes.
“Yo runt,” says Jason, with flat eyes. “Get out of the way. You messin’ up our run.”
He’s above the young boy, at the top of the slope he’s on, the fingers of one hand meshing with the chainlink fence. His right foot’s on the tail of his board, and the only thing keeping the green plastic wheels from careening down is his other hand holding the board’s eager nose high in the air.
Jason’s friend Troy, meanwhile, is at the dirty base of the canal, looking up at the young boy and grinning like a shark.
The young boy obediently gets up, stands clumsily, brushing the dust off his back.
Jason peers down the length of his rat-shaped nose. “So, where’s your brother?”
The young boy nods towards the tunnel. It’s still possible to hear, faintly, echoes bouncing off the dirty concrete walls. Jason has to believe him.
Jason stares at the tunnel for a few seconds at least. Then, he shakes his head slowly, like a dog shedding water in slow motion. When he looks at the young boy again, it’s so that he can smile through him.
“Listen, kid.” He leans out, the arm gripping the chain link extending straight, his only anchor. “What’s your name again?”
Jason had never asked him his name before, so the “again” part’s just his way of being friendly. As if he had once had even a passing thought of him.
“Randy,” murmurs the young boy.
It’s pretty clear that Jason doesn’t hear the name, but it’s also quite clear that he doesn’t particularly care. “Well, kid,” he continues, “your brother’s not always around.” Jason’s weaselly eyes roll around, as if to drive home the point. “And if you tell him, well, you might feel safe for a little while. But when you’re by yourself, just like you are now, then.”
He leaves it at that.
And then he nods to Troy.
Before Randy realizes what’s going on, Troy pushes him from behind so that he falls into the concrete slope. He feels the wind rush out of him as his chest slams hard. He places his small palms beside him to push himself back up, but Troy plants a foot firmly into the small of his back.
“I wouldn’t get up if I were you,” he calls, laughing, from somewhere up above. Troy’s foot springs off Randy’s back, leaving a sharply painful footprint.
And that’s when he hears the sound.
Randy turns his head towards it, even as it deafens him, the sound of a phonebook tearing. He sees the eating edge of green plastic wheels spinning hungrily towards his head.
And then, for a moment, Randy blanks out.
When he comes to, his throat is hoarse, and he feels warm wetness between his legs, his pants legs sticking to his thighs.
Dim and fuzzy at first, he hears voices.
“Whoo hoo!” he hears. It’s Troy. “You did it!”
Jason’s voice is breathless, but struggling to remain calm, nonchalant. “Check it out,” he chuckles. “The runt wet himself.”
“Yo, we better get out of here,” Troy says giddily. “That kid screams like a fucking girl.”
And then Randy hears the two of them, Jason and Troy, running up the slope beside him to a wire-cut hole in the chain-link fence, and from there, out into the weedelia field.
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