Better to Die a Hero Page 4

  How the hell does he do that? Steve thought.

  The strength his skinny friend exerted was surprising and impressive; however, and in spite of a lack of leverage, Steve’s greater strength impelled the bottle toward the dresser. Bryan hissed. His eyes crossed inward, one twitching violently.

  Steve laughed and let go.

  Bryan stumble back, red faced and out of breath. “You… look… disappointed.” He set the bottle down and rubbed his eyes. “May have popped… some capillaries on that one.”

  “Dude, are you alright?”

  “I’m getting there,” Bryan said. “I’ll make you a deal. We don't take any more of this stuff, but we don't throw it out either. You keep it safe and sound for the summer and this fall I'll take a sample to the University and have a professor run some tests on it.”

  Steve's eyes rolled up and to the left.

  “What do you say? I have to know what this stuff is. Wouldn't you like to know if we ingested Methel-ethel-death?”

  “I think I would.” He liked the reassuring smile that crossed his friend’s face. “It’s a deal. You analyze the hell out of it this fall. I'm going to bed.” Steve sat on the bed and bent over to untie his shoes.

  “Good idea.” Bryan drug his feet heading to the guest bedroom that for the last four years was his bedroom away from home.

  Steve turned off the light, got into bed and looked at the gouge left in the ceiling by Bryan’s sword wielding. Uncle George would never see the damage. The man hadn’t climbed the stairs in months and most likely, would never come up to the second floor—ever. All thoughts of getting in trouble vanished. He would be alone soon, in a year maybe two. Aunts, uncles, mothers and fathers, all will be gone and he will be alone.

  Of course, he’d always have friends. Bryan would be there for him. Even the next seven years while his friend was away at school, they would email often. Steve relaxed. He was relieved to find nothing unusual about the sleepiness that filled his head. He smiled as his consciousness slipped away, his last thoughts a vision of Nora in low-cut jeans.

  * * *

  Steve inspected the well-set dinner table. The place settings looked familiar, but the chairs did not. Ornate carvings of flowers and vines covered the chairs that were made of dark wood. He pulled one out from the table expecting to see chiseled lions feet, but instead found metal legs identical to the chairs in his own kitchen. In the center of the table sat a cooked ham and turkey, prepared exactly like one of Aunt Pat’s holiday feasts. A closer examination of the plates turned up the rose pattern that bordered their family’s good dishes, with the exception of Chinese symbols mixed within the green leaves and red pedals. Steve looked to the left, Aunt Pat was holding out a bowl of stuffing.

  He studied the lines in her face, the gray color of her hair, and then looked deep into her eyes. For the moment, a pain deep within him vanished.

  “Are you alive or dead in this dream?” he asked.

  Pat didn't answer. She smiled warmly, handed him the bowl of brown stuffing, and disappeared. He turned, placed the bowl on the table, and noticed something odd. The stuffing’s color shifted to dark green. That didn't seem right. He bent over to examine the food; the stuffing had transformed into spinach. A ball of spinach leapt out, landed on his wrist and burrowed into his flesh. He jumped back, his wrist aching, and grabbed the back of his forearm. No visible entry wound existed, but a lump the size of a golf ball, just under the skin’s surface, moved up his arm. His flesh seared. Skin and veins stretched to accommodate the protuberance.

  No inner voice spoke the words, the knowledge was divined him as if God had whispered it. If he could withstand the pain long enough for the mass to work its way up to his biceps, he would become successful. The lump moved painfully upward and his dream vision blurred.

  Too much pain, he thought, too much for just the spinach. The awareness came gradually that the grip he had on his arm was compressing muscle clear to the bone. A few blinks cleared his dreamy vision; it was not his own hand clenching his arm, but that of another. He recognized the long dark fingers squeezing so desperately. It was Bryan's hand.

  I can’t... I can't take it... I give up. Steve turned away and the dream faded.

  * * *

  Daylight tickled Steve’s senses awake and the sound of chirping birds filtered through the window. Thoughts of being late for school triggered a panic—he sprang up.

  No, this is Saturday morning, Steve thought.

  He fell back into bed amused at himself. It wasn’t the first time he’d made the mistake. No problem. It was all the better when he realized it would be a day of leisure. Lying there, hands behind his head, memories of the dream surfaced. He liked dreaming about his Aunt. Seeing her face so clearly, much clearer than any daytime musing, soothed an ache in his heart. He had stopped dreaming about his mother a few years ago and he knew in a few years the dreams of his Aunt would stop. They were already becoming fewer.

  Bryan said it was the dearly departed paying their loved ones a visit. According to his friend, in heaven the dead knew the sorrow of the people who meant the most to them and entered their dreams to help ease the pain. Steve thought this to be a beautiful and comforting idea, but he didn't believe it. More likely, it was the brain's way of taking care of itself.

  The door flew open. “Wake up bone head,” Bryan said, sliding in on his socks.

  “Hey Buddy, how’d you sleep?”

  “Just fine, except for this.” Bryan held up his arm revealing five purple bruises that matched the shape of four fingers and a thumb. “See what you did last night fighting over that bottle. It throbbed for half the night.” He picked up the cavalry sword. “You're lucky it doesn't hurt anymore, or else I'd have to cut your dick off.” He unsheathed the sword. “This thing is real all right. It weighs a ton, sharp too. I have a scenario for you. Let’s say this sword was used to kill American Indians, women and children, but was worth a lot of money, would you keep it? Would you sell it?”

  “I saw a movie were the cavalry rode up on this village, chasing down women and children, just hacking the hell out of them. Any sword used to do that would be a murder weapon.” Steve stroked his chin . “It would be immoral to gain from it. I would have no choice but to destroy it.”

  “Good answer my friend,” Bryan said, raising the weapon high. “Waaaaaaa.” This signaled the beginning of Bryan's Jerry Lewis impersonation. “Waaaaaa.” Sword held out, the nutty professor charged his opponent. The invisible opponent moved aside and the professor slid into the wall.

  The day Bryan discovered Jerry Lewis, now that was a good day. Steve ignored the mark cut into the wall and the impersonation continued. It was his job to name Bryan’s skits. Drunken samurai professor sounded good.

  The bucktooth professor bounced off a second wall, stopped and looking dumb struck, pushed his pretend glasses up on his nose. “Waaaaaaaa.” He slid across the room making clumsy swings at his invisible adversary.

  Steve drew his legs to his chest and hoped for the best. Enjoying the show immensely, he decided against cautioning his friend and the impersonation lasted several more minutes before Bryan's arms gave out.

  “Crap, this thing is heavy.” Bryan wiped sweat from his face.

  “You better be careful pal. You look like you’ve been exercising.”

  “Not likely Mr. Runner Boy.” Bryan sheathed the sword and placed it on the crate. “If you were any kind of a man you'd get your ass out of bed and go do your precious jogging.”

  “You mean actually run two days in a row. I think I might just do that.”

  * * *

  Steve had jogged out the front door five minutes earlier. After entertaining Uncle George with a dead on impersonation of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bryan closed that same door behind him and walked to his car, a used hatchback his mom had given him on his fifteenth birthday. He hopped in, pulled a pill bottle from his pocket, and popped the top. Judging from the amount of powder Nora had mixed in the water, this would last
him all summer. The Internet was going to have a new gaming champion. By the time he left for college, he would be a legend.

  CHAPTER 5

  New York Journal:

  “Hello, I’m Michelle O’Donnell and welcome to tonight's edition of New York Journal. All of New York is intrigued by the person who is the focus of tonight’s top story. Last Monday, that person, John Savini, appeared before a grand jury to answer questions in connection with FBI racketeering allegations. The Journal learned today that the grand jury did not find sufficient evidence to bring formal charges against Mr. Savini. New York Journal was there when the big man descended the steps at Federal Hall.”

  Recorded earlier:

  “Jeff Talbot here on the steps of Federal Hall and any second now John Savini will be coming down these steps to the limousine parked below. Take a look at this crowd will you. A lot of common New Yorkers have turned out to get a glimpse of the man.”

  “And here he comes. He is well surrounded by his own people, as big as he is it's hard to get a good look, but I see he's wearing his signature fedora and sunglasses. Will you listen to that cheering. The crowd seems to love him. You can hear a few of the questions reporters are shouting out, but his people are having none of that. They've made it to the limousine. The show is just about over. Let me ask this young man a question. Sir, I noticed you cheering. Why are you cheering for a suspected criminal?”

  “That is one cool fat guy. More power to him.”

  “And you ma'am. What is your opinion of Mr. Savini?”

  “I think he's wonderfully interesting. He's so big and white. His hair looks so soft and fluffy.”

  “What do think of his hat?”

  “Well, I don't usually like hats on men, but I guess he needs it to keep his scalp from burning.”

  “It appears to this reporter that the characteristics of John Savini, his obesity, his albinism, and his alleged Mafia ties spark the insatiable interest of New Yorkers.”

  Live in the studio:

  “John Savini is certainly an intriguing character. With us in the studio, we have Harold Jones, a law professor at New York State Law School. Professor, maybe you can shed some light as to why the grand jury chose not to bring charges.”

  “First, let me thank you for having me on your show Michelle. Now to answer your question. I believe prosecutors knew they didn't have the evidence for an indictment in the first place. There is a much larger strategy at work here.”

  “And what would that strategy be?”

  “The federal government's plan is to give the top of the mob pyramid as many legal headaches as possible. If you hit the bosses with legal actions as often as possible it disrupts the serenity of the operation and mistakes start being made.”

  “A lot of people believe that the government has their sights on the wrong person.”

  “Well, Michelle, all I can say is that the men and women who devote their careers to disabling organized crime don't put forth this degree of effort without good cause. Obviously they think Savini is a danger that needs to be targeted.”

  “Very good. Thank you for your time and insight Professor Jones.”

  * * *

  Steve watched Bryan from across the cafeteria table and sulked. It was corndog day and that usually carried with it the ritual they’d named “shucking the dog”. It consisted of peeling the bread from the corndog and making jokes about the quality of wiener underneath. Steve peeled one earlier and expose the thinnest, grayest, most wrinkled wiener he had ever seen. Yet, Bryan barely acknowledged Steve’s comparison to old man Keller’s penis.

  His thoughts turned to the survey the yearbook staff had circulated a few months ago. He had written in Bryan Sahbiny for class clown, as did many students he'd talked to. Wednesday, the results of that survey were made public and sure enough, Bryan got elected class clown. Nora was named most likely to succeed; he himself had got squat. Not that he expected to win any of the useless honors; he hadn't giving them a moment’s thought, until now. Maybe his personality just sucked compared to Bryan’s.

  During the past few years, he had developed a pretty good bullshit detector. A person had to if they were going to hang with gamers. Gamers, excluding himself and Bryan, were often a flaky lot given to exaggeration, delusions, and downright lying. This detection worked great on other people and turned inward, fairly well on himself, most of the time anyway. This bullshit detector guided himself to the true source of his melancholy. One, Bryan had been avoiding him all week, and two, he had seen Bryan and Nora talking in the hall several times the past week.

  I probably do have the personality of one of these wieners, Steve thought. He slapped the dog back on the plate, minus the cornbread they were impossible to eat.

  “We ran the Dragon's Fire Campaign without you last night.” Steve said. “I planned to run again tonight. You going to show up?” Being preoccupied with his own green-eyed dragon, he only now noticed Bryan was inhaling lunch.

  “I'll be coming over at seven, but I need you to cancel tonight’s game.”

  First, he had the audacity to talk to Nora on his own and now he wanted to cancel a Friday night game. And what in the hell was he doing eating the corndogs; he never ate the corndogs. “Say what? You don't want to play?”

  “Just for tonight,” Bryan said. “I have a surprise for you. Guaranteed you’re going to love it.” Bryan's mouth turned up in a large smile, cornbread matted his teeth.

  “I'll call the guys and tell them the games off.” Steve tried to read his friend’s face but couldn’t stomach the yellow bread.

  “You won’t regret this.” Bryan stood up with his empty tray. “I'm going to go back for seconds.”

  “Hey, Bryan, I know how you can improve your love life. Pull out the butt plug. Dropped anyone in the Hudson River lately?” The comment came from Jake “the Jock” Jennings, captain of the wrestling team. Jake's skinhead and granite jaw intimidated the hell out of most students. Everyone sitting near knew Bryan’s comical antics would commence and diffuse the situation. Jake accosted both of them at least twice a year just to make Bryan go through some silly routine.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Bryan said. “I think you should leave the comedy to people with the smarts.”

  “Oh, Savini is being a wise ass,” Jake said. “How come you look so much darker and skinnier than your crime boss relative?”

  “Now I get it.” Bryan used his tongue to dislodge a chunk of cornbread and spat it on the tray. “You've mistaken my last name Sahbiny, with Savini. I'm Turkish, not Italian, and you can improve your love life by purchasing a better grade of lotion. Try to find some vagina-scented lotion, because that is as close as an ugly jerk like you is going to get.”

  Steve almost choked on the green Jell-O sliding down his throat. Jake didn't really want to fight. He just wanted to bully people around, but standing up to the Neanderthal was a bad idea.

  “You hunchback geek.” Jake clenched both fists and bolted at Bryan.

  Steve jumped to his feet. Maybe if he got between the two he could save Bryan’s teeth. Steve barely moved two inches in the time it took Bryan to raise his tray neck high, avoiding his own knee as it sprang up, lightly tapping his own chest. Jake hesitated, and then fixated on the sole of the dress shoe in front of him, but not for long. Bryan shot his foot forward planting the hard rubber heal deep into Jake's diaphragm. The teen’s standing foot-stomp sent the athlete hurling back into one of his peers. Both of them landed flat on their backs with Jake on top.

  Bryan looked down at the two. “Who’s the butt plug now, loser?”

  Jake fought to regain his breath and his sickening gasps echoed throughout the lunchroom. Steve glanced at the twisted face on the floor then at the faces hovering near. Students hated Jake, but Steve read sympathy on all those faces—except one.

  “I’ve got to get another corndog.” Bryan turned and pressed through the crowd, tray in tow.

  Each kid in the crowd looked to the next
hoping a teacher would break through and take action. Steve stepped back letting himself get absorbed into the onlookers, as Jake's gasping hit a tone sharp enough to hurt the ears. A nervous panic began to rise in the students just before Jake squealed. Several open-mouth gasps followed and finally vigorous sobbing.

  “What in the hell is going on here.” A male teacher pushed his way in. Jake lay in a fetal position crying as if he'd been to the edge of life and back.

  The teacher's questions went unanswered and Steve slipped further back then turned to follow Bryan. Maybe his friend wouldn’t be nailed for this. This act of unbelievable courage or stupidity, he couldn’t decide which.

  Steve caught up to his buddy, placed a hand on Bryan’s shoulder, and talked quietly into his ear. “Let’s get out of here. You’re liable to get caught if you sit back down.”

  “Sounds good. I need another corndog like I need cancer.” Bryan slipped his tray on a table and changed directions toward the door. He dipped at the knees twice and then a third time before reaching the door.

  “Are you Okay?”

  “Yeah, but I really need to get out of here.”

  “No sweat, were almost out.” Steve stepped ahead and held the door open. Bryan dipped again and his legs began to violently shake.

  “I’ve got to keep moving.”

  “Good Idea. We'll keep walking.” Steve sped up to match his friend’s pace. “This is the first time you've had to physically defend yourself. I’d be shaking too. Damn, you did good.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  Steve forgot his earlier feelings of jealousy and they walked the halls for the last half of the lunch hour. By the time fifth period started, Bryan was relaxed enough to laugh a little over his first fight.