Strays (9 page)

Was it such a small price to pay?

“Don’t!” Seby cried suddenly, his voice like a pinky-nail on a chalkboard.  His lip was quivering, and his face glistened with sheen of tears.  “Y-you ... you put that in m-my face ... I’ll ... I-I-I’ll ... I’ll
bite it off
.”

“Will you now?” asked Bran the Man.  “Well, if that don’t beat all.”  He took an awkward step toward Seby.  He had unfastened the top snap of his pants, and they were starting to sag around his thighs.  “Tell you what, you little faggot.  I feel so much as a tooth on me, these boys will hurt you bad, worse than before.”  He motioned to Kyle, but kept his eyes locked on Seby.  “He won’t bite you, Kay-Dub, not if he knows what’s good for him.  And there’s always that faggot cat of his, man.  If Seby tries anything funny, DC over there’ll hurt his cat
baaaaaad
.”

“It’s not my cat!” Seby screamed.

“But you like the pussy, don’t you?”  Bran the Man grinned back at Kyle again, and Kyle’s skin turned to a killing frost.  “You don’t want me to hurt Mr. Kitty Cat.”  He turned back to Seby.  “I can see that in your face.  But DC’ll hurt Mr. Kitty.  DC’ll hurt him
baaaaad
, won’tcha DC?”

As if on cue, DC dropped the black long-hair cat.  For a brief second, the kitty’s paws splayed out, bracing itself for the landing, but its body was suddenly jerked short.  DC was holding its tail, swinging it like a clock pendulum at his knees.  The cat screamed, something unearthly and distant. 

“DC’ll cut its tail off and stick it up its ass,” said Bran the Man. “Light it like a firecracker with his daddy’s Zippo.”

“Please,” Seby cried.  “Let the cat go!  I’ll do anything you want, just let it go!”

DC stopped swinging the cat and gathered it up in his arms again.  He grabbed it by the neck and held it tight.  It looked to Kyle like he was ready to break it in half.

“Anything?” Bran the Man asked.  “Did you say
anything
?”

“Yes,” Seby whimpered.  “Anything ...”

Bran the Man shot Kyle another grin, then slide his sagging pants and underwear down to his knees.  He sunk into a crouch, steadying himself with one hand on the pavement, and his face began to redden with strain.

“What are you doing?” Kyle asked.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Bran the Man said.  “I’m taking a dump.  And then the faggot is going to eat it.”

“No!” Seby squealed.

“Oh yes,” said Bran the Man, pinching his face with the strain.  “You’ll lick up every scrap of it.  Or else DC goes to work on the cat.”

DC grinned and again dropped the cat, catching it by its tail and letting it swing at his knees.  The cat’s scream rose to a piercing new pitch.  Kyle had to dig his hands into his pockets to keep from clapping them over his ears … and that was when something in him snapped, the way rubber bands sometimes did if you stretched them too tight.

“You better let the cat go.”  Kyle wanted to kick himself.  Did those words come out of his mouth?  If so, who spoke them?

Bran the Man turned his head, and DC took a step away from the boxes, still swinging the cat in front of his knees by its tail.  With slow, deliberate steps he moved toward Kyle.

“You got something to say, Winthrop?”  Just like that, the cool nickname was gone.

Kyle didn’t know where the words came from.  All he knew was they came to him like a bad idea, and he was vomiting more of them out before he knew what hit him.

“Reggie Isler won’t take too kindly to you swinging his cat by its tail,” he said.

They were the right words because Bran the Man rose on a spring, tugging up his pants.  DC’s face lost a shade of its color, and at once he gathered the cat in his arms, holding it protectively to his chest.

“Reggie ...?” Bran the Man stammered.

“Reggie Isler, yes, the linebacker for the Cougars.”  The Cougars were the football team at Kirby Southern College, where Kyle’s Dad taught.  Although it would be a few years until their first National Championship, they were still a great team, and Reggie Isler was one of the best players.  Six-foot-four, 260 pounds of chiseled muscle, Reggie was a punishing linebacker who led the team in tackles and had almost single-handedly held some of the best backs in the league to under 60 yards a game.  Oh, and he was black, an import from St. Louis.  In an almost-lily-white town like Landes with maybe three black families in its 10,000-head population, Reggie stood out like a horsefly in the butter.  He was a good guy—Kyle’s Dad could vouch for that—but in 1980, big, strong, hard-hitting black men were more than a little intimidating to a bunch smart-ass white kids.

His name was not lost on Bran the Man and company.

“This is Reggie Isler’s cat?” DC asked.

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“He lives in those apartments on Warren just down from the library.  It’s catty-corner from my house.”

Bran the Man looked at DC to see if he was buying it.  He was.  Marty Segerstrom remained silent, and his grip on Seby’s belt-leash seemed to loosen.

“So what’s Seby Lee there doing trying to catch the cat?” Bran the Man asked.

“Seby lives in my neighborhood,” Kyle said, grasping for more lies.  “Everyone in the neighborhood knows about Reggie’s cat.  It ran away last week, and Reggie’s been worried sick.”

Bran the Man considered this, and his face hardened.  “This sounds like crap to me.  You makin’ this up?”

“Ask Seby,” I said.

“I ain’t gonna ask the faggot,” said Bran the Man.  “He'll say whatever you tell him ‘cause he don’t want his ass kicked.”

“Then come to my house with me and ask my Dad.”  It was the only bluff Kyle had.

The caught Bran the Man short.  He glanced back at DC again.  DC was still buying it, and he looked worried.

“Look,” Kyle said, the lies flowing freely now.  “There are a whole bunch of football players who live in those apartments.  They’re over at our house all the time.  Whenever they want a home-cooked meal, Dad invites them over and Mom makes a pot roast.  I talk to Reggie Isler all the time.”

“I dunno,” said Bran the Man.  “I think you’re making this up.  Right DC?”

DC looked at Kyle, his eyes as helpless as Seby’s now.  “Uh, right.”

“That cat got a tag on its collar?” asked Bran the Man.

DC looked.  “Hey, it don’t even got a collar.”

“That’s what I thought.  Making this up.”

“Fine,” Kyle said.  “So I’m making this up.  Kick my ass, kick Seby’s ass, and stick a lit firecracker up the cat’s ass.  But you better kill me because when I tell Reggie what happened to his cat and who did it ...”

“You’d nark us out like that?”

“If you kicked my ass, you better believe it.”

Bran the Man looked at his crew again.  DC still held the cat, stroking it gently now, and he backed up against the refrigerator boxes.  Marty Segerstrom was letting the belt-leash around Seby's neck go just the slightest bit slack—he was already sold. 

“Maybe we should just scram,” said Marty, “just get the hell outta here.”

That was when Kyle knew he had won.  Marty was the biggest of the three bullies, and if he wavered, even the leader, Bran the Man, would eventually crash.  Kyle made his move then, walked over to DC, and held out his arms.  “Give me the cat.”

DC hesitated.  He was not going to crumble that easily.   “You know so much about Reggie and this cat, what's its name?”

“Its name is Reggie’s Cleats Up Your Ass if you don’t hand it over.”

DC glared at him and looked past his shoulder at the others.

“Do it,” said Bran the Man from somewhere behind Kyle.  “We’ll take care of these faggots later.”  And in that second, Kyle Winthrop had been demoted even lower.  First he had lost the cool nickname, and now he was a “faggot” like Seby Lee.

DC glared and handed Kyle the cat.  Kyle held it carefully, stroked its head, and it seemed to calm.

“You tell Reggie I didn’t do a damn thing to his cat,” said DC.  “I didn't hurt it one damn bit.”

“Except for when you were swinging it by its tail.”  It was Seby speaking now.  Kyle glanced over, and Marty had let go of the belt.  Seby was standing now, shivering in his underwear, the belt still hanging from his neck.  He wiped fresh tears from his face.  “I’ll tell Reggie Isler all about that!”

“You do that, faggot, and I’ll—”

“Let it go,” Marty said.  “Let’s just get the hell out of here.” 

Bran the Man looked at Marty and seemed to soften.  He finished zipping up his pants, re-secured his belt, and then extended his arm, snapping his finger and pointing at Kyle.

“Later for you, Winthrop.  Marty was wrong, you ain’t cool at all.”

They left, and that was how it ended.  That was how a cat saved Kyle Winthrop from being on the inside with three of the coolest and most popular guys in school.

But God wasn’t done laughing.  He had a whole notebook full of jokes to play. 

“Hey Kay-Dub.”  It was Seby Lee’s voice.  He was busy getting the last of his clothes back on.  “Thanks for helping me.”

“Don’t call me that,” Kyle said.

“Call you what?”

“Kay-Dub.”

“What should I call you then?”

“Don’t call me anything.  What am I going to do with a stupid cat?”

“Isn’t it Reggie Is—”

“Reggie doesn’t have a cat.  He doesn’t even live in the apartments across from me.  He lives in the dorms at the college, like the rest of the football team.  Geez, are you dressed yet?”

“Yes.”

“Good, I already saw more of you than I want to.”

“Will you walk me home?”

“I'm not your boyfriend, Seby.  Geez!”

“Those guys might be out there waiting.”

Kyle looked at Seby as he wiped his face.  And then he looked down at the cat.

“Where you live?”

“Up on Franklin.”

“I’m only going as far as Warren so after that you’re on your own.”

“Okay.  That’s cool.  What about the cat?”

“What about it?” Kyle asked.

“If no one wants it, maybe I’ll take it home.  My stepdad, he’s a bastard, but he likes cats.  Maybe if we had a cat he wouldn’t feel like beatin’ on me so much.  Can I have it?”

Kyle handed the cat to Seby.  It took to the meager little boy with the squeaky voice at once, nuzzling his neck and purring, and Seby started in on that annoying baby-talk that people reserve for animals. 

“Geez, will you stop making those faggot sounds?”

Seby grinned.  “Sorry, Kyle.  I like cats too.  Come on, buddy, let’s go home.”

Kyle didn’t know if the “buddy” was meant for him or that cat, but that was how God’s next big joke began.  As collateral damage, as if God hadn’t gotten a good enough laugh watching Kyle’s social status plummet, the Good Lord had now sent Kyle a new and most unwanted best friend.  His name was Seby Lee, and for the rest of their time in junior high and high school, he would be Robin to Kyle’s Batman, clinging to Kyle’s coattails like a hungry orphan.  Try as he might, Kyle would not be able to shake Seby until it got to the point where people would think of them as a package deal—if Kyle were to attend any school function or participate in an extracurricular activity, there would be Seby Lee, as ubiquitous and unwelcome as a face full of pimples. 

As if they were a couple, for Pete’s sake, a
freaking married couple
!

And that was how Kyle spent the next six of those all-important teenage years. 

1986: Paper Route

One early May morning in the spring of 1986, some three months before young Sarah Smallhouse would finally run away from Big Buddy’s home, Kyle Winthrop awoke from uneasy dreams to the sound of The Rolling Stones droning in his clock radio.  Years before, he had asked for the radio as an early birthday present when he turned 15.  The steady, pulsating
chint!-chint!-chint!
of his old alarm clock had reached the point where he feared it might drive him mad, and once he made a reasonable case for his sanity to Dad, the clock radio turned up the very next day, decorated in old Christmas wrapping some two months before Kyle’s birthday.  Now, on those early mornings when Kyle arose to do his paper route before school, he could at least be lured out of sleep by the melodious strains of KEYN, the only station out of Wichita that the radio picked up in Landes some 30 miles away. 

It was 5:00 a.m.  Kyle had set the alarm half an hour earlier to avoid Seby Lee.  Some time back—their sophomore or junior year, it seemed—Seby had learned of Kyle’s “cool job” getting up before dawn to deliver newspapers.  It was a secret Kyle had held close to his vest, telling no one at school or at church, precisely because his greatest fear was that Seby would find out and this one little sanctuary in Kyle’s otherwise miserable world would be lost.  Sure enough, once the secret was made known to Seby, the greasy little geek went out of his way to get up early and join Kyle on the job, sauntering alongside as they walked the route, talking Kyle’s ear off about TV shows and comic books and stupid movies.

Prior to the Seby’s infiltration into this morning routine, Kyle would get out of bed at 5:30 to do the route.  It took him a little over an hour to walk to the front curb, pick up his newspaper bundle, and—after rolling and tying each paper with a rubber band—walk the roughly two-and-a-half miles of residential neighborhood distributing the morning news on the porches of
Eagle
subscribers.  He had just under 70 houses on his route, pretty easy to complete in an hour.  Sundays were a little longer.  The papers were larger, and it took two trips, making it almost impossible to avoid Seby.  But on weekdays, before school began, all Kyle had to do was rise a half-hour earlier, roll papers a little faster, and hit the streets before Seby could make his way from his own home on Franklin over to Kyle’s house on Warren.  Much like the simple act of replacing the alarm clock with a clock radio, this shift in his schedule was one of the few things Kyle needed to keep himself out of the laughing house.

Kyle clawed his way out of the last remnants of sleep and out of bed, swinging his legs out of the sheets and sitting on the edge of the mattress.  He did not turn on his light but instead groped around on the floor until he found his clothes.  By the time he was dressed, his eyes had adjusted to the dark, and he could make his way across his room and down the stairs using only the light from the street lamps that angled in through the house’s ample windows.  He went to the front door and peered outside.  No sign of Seby, but sure enough, the newspaper bundle was there on the front curb.  He turned the bolt lock back with care and opened the front door slowly.  It was not a warm morning, but neither was it cold, just a soft sort of cool that promised to be gone by daybreak.  It was early May, and Kyle liked early May.  Early May meant that school would soon be over and Kyle could break free at last from the hated hallways of LHS, where he had walked with the most disinterested gait as silly little Seby Lee scampered alongside him, drawing the wrong kind of stares from every girl in his class.