There's Blood on the Moon Tonight (15 page)

Not even to his friends.

The sound of Josie O’Hara’s voice caught his attention as he pushed his way through the kids on the front stoop. He never stopped to think that this was exactly where his trouble with Charlie Noonan had taken place.

There was an anxious note to Joe’s voice that made Bud’s pulse quicken. Her Irish brogue, usually light and airy, was now thick and dark, the way it always got when she was driven to anger. “Cut it out, you
feckin’ arsehole!”
Josie shouted, somewhere ahead in the crowd.

Now Bud knew something was wrong.

Despite her proclivity with profanity, at least around her friends, Josie rarely dropped the F-bomb in public.

             
            *******

Josie had watched silently with the others, trying to mind her own business, but the Noonans’ never knew when to leave well enough alone. She sent Joel on his way, not wanting him to witness this sort of ugliness.

She was just in time, too. Lester yanked up Tubby’s shirt and proceeded to play the bongos on his hanging gut. This had the desired effect of eliciting the laughter of the masses circled about him and the Tolson kid. Tubby cried out for help, but that was a mistake. Lester would eventually leave you alone if you took your degradation in silence. Resist or call for help and it
really
pissed him off.

Lester ripped the remnants of Tubby’s shirt away…and with it what remained of the poor kid’s dignity. He tossed the tattered shirt on top of the school roof, out of reach of Tubby’s desperate attempts to get it back. It landed amid a scattering of objects Charlie and Lester had tossed onto the shingled slope over the years: baseball caps, schoolbooks, a veritable rainbow of trapper keepers, and oddly enough, a rubber chicken. Tattoos of Lester’s big hands covered Tubby’s torso and face. Every time he tried to retrieve his shirt from the roof, his boobs and belly jiggled like two hundred and ninety-nine pounds of pink Jell-O. It was a humiliating attack, even for a Noonan.

Josie had seen enough. “Leave ‘em alone, Lester!”

Tubby had given up on his shirt and was crying pitifully now, his face both purple and red. He lay curled up on the front step in a fetal ball, his lunchbox clutched tightly to his chest. In case Lester had designs on it as well.

Stepping in front of Lester, Josie saw Rusty go to Tubby’s side. The laughter, which had enveloped the small crowd just moments before, ceased at once.

Lester’s eyes, narrow, mean, and yellow, traveled up and down her body. Josie thought the feeling was akin to that of a palmetto bug crawling across her bare skin.

Humiliating Tubby had given Lester a feeling of invincibility.
Or stupidity
. He recklessly turned his attention to one of the only three kids in school who were Off-Limits
to him and his minions.

“That your new boyfriend, Tits? What happened to Mental, is he out of the picture now? Shit, you
would
go for this fat-ass! He’s the only one in school with bigger titties than you!” For emphasis, Lester poked Josie in the center of her left breast.

“Cut it out, you
feckin’
arsehole!
” Josie swore, swatting his hand away.

A look of lust passed over Lester’s face. Josie, having seen that hungry look before, recognized it for what it was. Several girls in the crowd laughed shrilly, thrilled to see the arrogant redhead brought down a peg or two.

The rude-and-running commentary surrounding Josie fell to a few course mutterings and invectives, as someone in authority shoved their way through the avid mob, ruining all their good fun. In deference to their superior they cast their eyes downward.

Josie O’Hara’s reaction was quite the opposite.

Seeing who it was, she just grinned.

Chapter Fiv
e
:

The Woods are Lovely, so Dark and Deep…

Lester’s face bleached white, his acne even going pale. Although he was almost as big as Bud—all of the Noonans’ ran to the extra large—there was no doubt in his mind who was the strongest and fittest in this particular environment. Even the roughest, salt-addled fishermen on Moon avoided Bud Brown. There was just something about that guy.

Something
invulnerable
.

The memory of Charlie’s beating still lingered as well. Lester seemed to shrink in size as Bud walked up to him. Behind Lester, his toadies deserted him—in the same fashion as he had deserted his older brother the year before. 

              “You all right, Red?” Bud asked his friend, though all the while his eyes drilled holes into Lester’s forehead.

As with Charlie, Bud’s respiration was barely negligible. Calm and cool, it was as if he’d just woken from a nap. Lester realized that Bud had absolutely no qualms at the thought of fighting him. Bud’s indifference to Lester as a threat had the adverse effect on Noonan.

It scared the living shit out of him.

In Lester’s walnut-sized brain a vision of his brother, laid up in the hospital, came to him: Eyes swollen shut, lips thrice their normal size, split through in two places, black stitches literally holding them together. A mouth nearly devoid of teeth, his skin a bruised and rotten piece of fruit. The awful sound of that fracture resonating in Lester’s head, over and over again. It wouldn’t have mattered if Bud had one hand tied behind his back—he could take any Noonan on their very best day.

Or all of them put together.

Lester accepted this as a bald-faced fact, and like the rest of the crowd, averted his eyes in deference to Bud. It was a deference that ran throughout the entire Noonan family now. Andy Noonan had had a run-in of his own with the Brown clan, and like his oldest son had come out on the losing side. The Browns didn’t fuck around…and this was something a Noonan could understand and respect.

              Despite her contempt for the jerk, Josie saw the terror on Lester’s face, and took pity on him. “Over and done with, Buddy boy,” she said, pulling on the sleeve of his army coat. She didn’t want her friend getting in any more trouble, and she knew if she mentioned how Lester had just molested her, then that’s
exactly
what would happen. Rusty, likewise, knew to keep his big mouth shut. It was unfortunate that neither of them had been around to pull Bud off Charlie the year before. Since then, they’d been keeping closer tabs on their hotheaded pal.

             
“All
right
, Red?” he asked her again, seeking out the truth in her eyes this time.

“All
right
,” she replied, avoiding his direct gaze.

No longer under Bud’s scrutiny, Lester made himself scarce, just as the late bell sounded. Everyone on the steps groaned and hurried off to class before they could get in any more trouble, some of them destined for detention, having already been late twice before.

This included Josie and Rusty.

             
“I hope you’re happy, Tits,” Rusty said. He helped Tubby to his feet. “Thanks to your heroics, we’re late.”

             
Bud looked over at the fat kid and seemed to notice for the first time that he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

             
“
Ouch
,” he said softly. “What happened to him?”

             
“Lester
happened
to him,” Josie said.

She turned away from Tubby. The poor boy was obviously mortified without his shirt on. Even Bud, whose empathy didn’t usually extend past his father and friends, was genuinely embarrassed for the kid.

Josie’s brow wrinkled in wonder at the strange look on Bud’s face just then…

             
“I’ve got another polo shirt in my gym locker,” Bud muttered. He looked distracted as he went through the school doors. “Ya’ll wait here.”

Josie followed him in anyway.

Tubby and Rusty had a seat on the stone steps. “Thanks for helping me out,” Tubby said, in a quaking voice. He kept his eyes on his shoes, unable to look Rusty in the eye. Shame oozed from his naked pores.

             
Rusty shrugged. Despite being anxious about his second detention already that year, he couldn’t help but feel bad for Tubby Tolson. He had seen the Noonans’ hand out a lot of humiliation over the years, a good deal of it directed at him; never though had he seen a kid so thoroughly shamed before. Not even when Charlie pantsed him back in the fifth grade and ran his britches up the flagpole in front of the whole damn school! Besides his pipe-stem legs and Scooby Doo underwear, there really wasn’t that much to be embarrassed about back then.

Tubby, on the other hand, with all that puckered, quivering flesh…

              “You can go now if you want,” Tubby said, covering himself as best he could with his lunchbox.

             
“Bud said wait,” said Rusty, as if reciting the law.

Tubby had heard a lot of whispers about this Bud Brown character, and despite his rescue by the big seventeen-year-old boy, he was more than a little wary of him. He wondered if he was only trading one bully’s attentions for another. He angrily wiped his face dry. More than the humiliation, Tubby hated the fact that Lester had made him cry. It was a first for him. 

“Why did you guys stick up for me, anyway?”

“I was only backing up Joe,” Rusty said, a little embarrassed by the truth.

“Joe?”

“Josie O’Hara. The Irish lass who stood between you and Lester Noonan. You want to know the truth I’m scared to death of that asshole. Josie—she’s the fearless one in our group. The one who doesn’t take no
shite
.”

“What about Bud Brown? He sure didn’t act scared of Lester. One look at him and that country boy took off like his britches were on fire!”

Rusty nodded sagely. “True
that
. It’s easy, though, to stand up to someone weaker than yourself…not so easy when that person is bigger and tougher. And ain’t
nobody
‘round here tougher than Big Bad Bud Brown.”

“You’re Rusty Huggins, right? My family had dinner at your house early in the summer; remember?"

“Sure I remember. You didn’t say boo all night. Thought you were a mute or something.”

“I’m kinda shy, I guess.”

Just then the double doors banged open. They turned and let out a joint sigh of relief. It was Josie and Bud. “You scared us half to death, man!” Rusty said, standing up and brushing off the seat of his pants.

“Relax, Gnat, all that anxiety is what stunts your growth,” Bud said, in that gravelly voice of his. He’d permanently damaged his vocal cords the night the Red Eyed Man killed his mother. Screaming all night long will do that to you. Josie O’Hara thought it made him sound dangerous and sexy. 

He threw a new shirt onto the fat kid’s bare shoulder. “This should fit you,” he said, knocking a cigarette loose from the pack he’d withdrawn from the pocket of his army coat.

Tubby quickly slipped the shirt on, noting that the very pretty girl had turned her back to him, to give him some privacy. A wave of gratitude swept over him as he tucked the shirt into his pants. This one actually covered his whole belly! “Is this
your
shirt?” he asked Bud doubtfully.

“Buddy boy took it from the supply closet,” Josie said, turning to face Ralph again. There was more than a hint of pride in her voice, thought Tubby.

“You
stole
it?” Rusty blinked. His eyes were comically huge behind his Mr. Magoo specs.

“I expect his old man paid for it with his tuition,” Bud drawled sleepily. He pointed his cigarette at Tubby. “Let me know when you need another one, Hoss.”

Tubby blinked in awe as Bud Brown cupped his cigarette and fired it with a flick of his silver Zippo. With the collar of his faded green army coat flipped up, his dark bangs hanging over his eyes, Bud Brown exuded confidence and cool. Like one of those defiant J.D.’s from the ‘50’s. Brando in
The Wild One
, or Jimmy Dean in
Rebel Without a Cause.
He’d saved Tubby’s skin, given him a shirt, and just like that, Ralph worshipped the ground Bud Brown walked on. In his mind (or maybe it was his male pride), it was Bud, not Josie, who had come to his rescue that day. Bud, who would later make all his dreams come true. As well as a few nightmares.