guy working there, and he had to put the new tyre on Arnie's wheel-rim and pump gas at the same time. The operation stretched out over forty-five minutes. I offered to pump gas for the guy while he did it, but he said the boss would shoot him if he heard of it.
By the time I had the mounted tyre back in my boot and had paid the guy two bucks for the job, the early evening light had become the fading purple of late evening. The shadow of each bush was long and velvety, and as I cruised slowly back up the street I saw the day's last light Streaming almost horizontally through the trash-littered space between the Arby's and the bowling alley. That light, so much flooding gold, was nearly terrible in its strange, unexpected beauty.
I was surprised by a choking panic that climbed up in my throat like dry fire. It was the first time a feeling like that came over me that year - that long, strange year - but not the last. Yet it's hard for me to explain, or even define. It had something to do with realising that it was August 11, 1978, that I was going to be a senior in high school next month, and that when school started again it meant the end of a long, quiet phase of my life. I was getting ready to be a grown-up, and I saw that somehow - saw it for sure, for the first time in that lovely but somehow ancient spill of golden light flooding down the alleyway between a bowling alley and a roast beef joint. And I think I understood then that what really scares people about growing up is that you stop trying on the life-mask and start trying on another one. If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die.
The feeling passed, but in its wake I felt shaken and melancholy. Neither state was much like my usual self.
When I turned back onto Basin Drive I was feeling suddenly removed from Arnie's problems and trying to cope with my own - thoughts of growing up had led naturally to such gigantic (at least they seemed gigantic to me) and rather unpleasant ideas as college and living away from home and trying to make the football team at State with sixty other qualified people competing for my position instead of only ten or twelve. So maybe you're saying, Big deal, Dennis, I got some news for you: one billion Red Chinese don't give a shit if you make the first squad as a college freshman. Fair enough. I'm just trying to say that those things seemed really real to me for the first time . . . and really frightening. Your mind takes you on trips like that sometimes - and if you don't want to go, it takes you anyway.
Seeing that the be-pop queen's husband had indeed arrived home, and that he and Arnie were standing almost nose to nose, apparently ready to start mixing it up at any second, didn't help my mood at all.
The two little kids still sat solemnly astride their Big Wheels, their eyes shifting back and forth from Arnie to Daddy and back again to Arnie like spectators at some apocalyptic tennis match where the ref would cheerfully shoot the loser. They seemed to be waiting for the moment of combustion when Daddy would flatten my skinny friend and do the Cool Jerk all the way up and down his broken body.
I pulled over quickly and got out, almost running over to them.
'I'm done talkin atcha face!' Dads bellowed. 'I'm telling you I want it out and I want it out right now!' He had a big flattened nose full of burst veins. His cheeks were flushed to the colour of new brick, and above his grey twill workshirt, corded veins stood out on his neck.
'I'm not going to drive it on the rim,' Arnie said. 'I told you that. You wouldn't do it if it was yours.'
'I'll drive you on the rim, Pizza-face,' Daddy said, apparently intent on showing his children how big people solve their problems in the Real World. 'You ain't parking your cruddy hotrod in front of my house. Don't you aggravate me, kiddo, or you're gonna get hurt.'
'Nobody's going to get hurt,' I said. 'Come on, mister. Give us a break.'