The Town: A Novel by Chuck Hogan Read Free Book Online

the risers where the bleachers ended at center ice, splitting a sausage-and-burger pizza and drinking out of paper-bagged bottles of beer the shape of artillery shells.
    “What are you two pedophiles up to?” said Doug, rapping their fists and sitting one row above them.
    Freddy “Gloansy” Magloan of the Mead Street Magloans wore the same splotchy freckles that were the birthright of his seven brothers and sisters. His face was jaw-heavy, jocular and dumb, his ears so mottled they were tan. His pale hands were tarnished with the same sun rust.
    Jimmy “Jem” Coughlin of the Pearl Street Coughlins was all shoulders and arms, his head a small squash under swept-back hair that was thick and old-penny brown. The pronounced ridge beneath his nose didn’t help, and then there were those blue-white snowflake eyes. The Jem machine operated at two speeds: Mirth or Menace. The gang of knuckles around his emerald-studded gold Claddagh ring were still purple and swollen from his tune-up of the assistant manager.
    “Here’s the criminal mastermind now,” said Jem. “Where’s the Monsignor?”
    “Coming,” said Doug, setting his bag down over some ancient racist knifescratchings.
    “Cheryl, man,” said Gloansy, crooking his head at the teacher with the dark, frizzy hair squeezed off in a leopard-print scrunchy. “Ever I see her, I think of third-grade class picture—Duggy, right? Front row and center.
Little House on the Prairie
dress with ruffles, pink plastic shoes. Hands folded, legs crossed tight at the ankles.”
    “Last time that happened,” chewed Jem.
    Doug remembered one day in fourth grade, coming out of school to find Cheryl waiting. To kiss him, she said, which she did—before shoving him backward off a curb and running home laughing, leaving him scratching his head about girls for the next few years. Home for her, then as now, was the town-within-a-town of the Bunker Hill Projects, a brick maze of boxy welfare apartments whose architects had taken the word
bunker
to heart. A couple of years ago her younger brother, known around Town as Dingo, got dusted and leaped off the Mystic River Bridge, catching a good shore breeze and only missing his mother’s gravel roof by two buildings. One of the black kids tripping over the ice out there now was Cheryl’s.
    “Think about her mouth and where it’s been,” said Jem.
    “Don’t,” said Gloansy, his own mouth full.
    “That girl could give a plastic soup spoon gonorrhea.”
    Gloansy said, garbled, “Let me swallow first, for fuck’s sake.”
    “You know she had to take a Breathalyzer once, came back blue-line pregnant?” Jem took a mouthful of beer and gargled it. “Think of Gloansy’s shower drain trap, all gooey and hairy—that’s Cheryl’s tonsils.”
    “For Christ!” protested Gloansy, choking down his food.
    Desmond Elden entered the rink, muscled though not to the extent of Jem or Doug, but with an added bookishness, thanks to his thick-rimmed Buddy Holly eyeglasses. He wore lineman’s boots, fading jeans, and a denim work shirt with the Nynex logo over the pocket, his fair hair matted down from wearing a phone company helmet all morning.
    Dez gave Cheryl and her posse the courtesy of a
Howzitgoin’
before mounting the bleachers, his insulated lunch sack in hand.
    Jem said, “I should dock you just for being polite.”
    Dez sat down one riser below them. “What, you didn’t even say hello?”
    “Fuckin’ softie,” said Jem. “Anything with chicks.”
    Doug said, “Where’d you put the truck?”
    “Foodmaster parking lot. Cruiser there, so I walked the long way around, just in case.” Dez unzipped the nylon bag between his knees and pulled out a thick sandwich wrapped in wax paper, smiling. “Ma made meat loaf last night,”he said, then bit in big. “Gotta snap to. I’m due in Belmont in like forty minutes, install a ISDN line.”
    Jem took a long pull on his beer and pointed at Dez. “That’s why I hadda swear off work.