El Paso: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

be an upperclassman. It will let up, I promise you.”
    Arthur said nothing. He could not begin to explain the indignities he felt had been heaped on him at Groton. He had told his father only that the other boys were rude to him, but could not bear to go into details.
    “All right, Arthur,” the Colonel said at last. “Just promise me you will think about it—is that fair? It’s your decision to make.” Even though the Colonel knew Arthur well enough to believe that the situation was bad, he did not like this business of quitting. It could be habit-forming.
    Arthur nodded, appreciating this concession by his father. He’d always felt he was treading on thin ice in the Shaughnessy home. To make matters worse, Alexa made him feel like a leper at every opportunity. She declined to introduce him to friends she brought over to the house and, recently, when the Colonel had asked Arthur if he might want to get a dog, she loudly complained that fur made her sneeze.
    Beatie and the Colonel, however, were warm, obliging, and kind: the Colonel told him that what he did mattered; Beatie complimented him on his curiosity, and told him that he had a destiny to fulfill, though she had not ventured what it was.
    Still, Arthur felt a little knot of anxiety deep down inside him. He’d developed a hunger for a place of his own in the world, and ever since the first day at the Shaughnessys’ there was that little lurking fear that it could all be taken away just as fast as it had come. Even though there wasn’t a whit of evidence that such a thing might happen, Arthur seemed incapable of severing relations with the harshness of his past, a past weighted with his childhood loneliness.
    Next afternoon he went to the Laura Bostwick Home to see Mick Martin. Mick had quit school and at the age of sixteen looked almost like a grown man, tall and muscular, with a handsome rugged face set off by a chiseled nose and a short mustache. Now he ran a lathe in a shoe factory and on the side he had a rather murky job that he didn’t much talk about. But from what Arthur guessed, it had to do with one of the gangs that controlled the gambling, shakedowns, and prostitution in Southie.
    They took a walk around the old neighborhood. Mick told Arthur he was going to move out of the orphanage pretty soon and find a place of his own. Soon as he got up enough money. He told him he had a girlfriend, too, who worked in the shoe factory. After a while, Arthur told him his own story.
    “And so these punks are really laying it to you?” Mick said.
    Arthur nodded.
    “And you ain’t going back.”
    Arthur shook his head.
    “Well, just suppose,” Mick said, “that I go up there with you when the classes start again. I don’t think any of those little snots are going to fool with you after I give them a talking-to.”
    Arthur shook his head again. “It’s not worth it, Mick, but thank you,” he said. Arthur just couldn’t see it, not after what they’d done. How they’d treated him. He felt sick to his stomach every time he thought about it.
    “So let me ask you this,” Mick said. They were stopped at the curb to let a trolley rumble past. “Who’s the one who’s the ringleader? The one who gives you the most trouble?”
    “They all do,” Arthur said dejectedly. “I’d rather be back in Southie than to go back there.”
    “C’mon, there’s got to be a ringleader. There’s always a ringleader.”
    “I don’t know,” Arthur said. “I guess if it’s anybody, it would be Hawkins. He’s from Ipswich.”
    “And you don’t want me to go and say hello to Master Hawkins?” Mick asked.
    “No, Mick, like I said, it’s too late, at least for me.”
    Mick looked at his friend. He felt terrible for him. With all Arthur had now, all the things he himself could only dream of, and now this unhappiness.
    “Well, bucko,” Mick said, draping a thick arm over Arthur’s shoulder, “you do whatever you think best. That’s the thing—the only