they are), very serious and so quiet you might make the mistake of dismissing them as stupid. Most of them looked like the leftovers from 1968 with their long hair tied back in ponytails and their jeans and their tie-dyed T-shirts, but in 1978 none of these guys wanted to overthrow the government; they wanted to grow up to be Mr Goodwrench.
And shop is still the final stopping place for the misfits and hardasses who aren't' so much attending school as they are being incarcerated there. And now that Arnie brought up Repperton's name, I could think of several guys who circled him like a planetary system. Most of them were twenty and still struggling to get out of school. Don Vandenberg, Sandy Galton, Moochie Welch. Moochie's real name was Peter, but the kids all called him Moochie because you always saw him outside of the rock concerts in Pittsburgh, spare-changing odd dimes from the crowd.
Buddy Repperton had come by a two-year-old blue Camaro that had been rolled over a couple of times out on Route 46 near Squantic Hills State Park - he picked it up from one of Darnell's poker buddies, Arnie said. The engine was okay, but the body had really taken chong from the ton in the rollover. Repperton brought it into Darnell's about a week after Arnie brought Christine in, although,Buddy had been hanging around even before then.
For the first couple of days, Repperton hadn't appeared to notice Arnie at all, and Arnie, of course, was just as happy not to be noticed. Repperton was on good terms with Darnell, though. He seemed to have no trouble obtaining high-demand tools that were usually only available on a reserve basis.
Then Repperton bad started getting on Arnie's case. He'd walk by on his way back from the Coke machine or the bathroom and knocked a boxful of balljoint wrench attachments that Arnie was using all over the floor in Amie's stall. Or if Arnie had a coffee on the shelf, Repperton would manage to hit it with his elbow and spill it. Then he'd bugle 'Well ex-cuuuuuse . . . ME!' like Steve Martin, with this big shit-eating grin on his face. Darnell would holler over for Arnie to pick up those attachments before one of them went through a hole in the floor or something.
Soon Repperton was swerving out of his way to give Arnie a whistling clap on the back, accompanied by a bellowed 'How ya doin, Cuntface?'
Arnie bore these opening salvoes with the stoicism of a guy who has seen it all before, been through it all before. He was probably hoping for one of two things - either that the harassment would reach a constant level of annoyance and stop there, or that Buddy Repperton would find some other victim and move on. There was a third possibility as well, one almost too good to hope for - it was always possible that Buddy would get righteously busted for something and just disappear from the scene, like his old buddy Roger Gilman.
It had come to blows on the Saturday afternoon just past Arnie was doing a grease-job on his car, mostly because he hadn't yet accumulated sufficient funds to do any of the hundred other things the car cried out for. Repperton came by, whistling cheerfully, a Coke and a bag of peanuts in one hand, a jackhandle in the other. And as he passed stall twenty, he whipped the jackhandle out sidearm and broke one of Christine's headlights.
'Smashed it to shit,' Arnie told me over our pizza.
'Oh, jeez, lookit what I did!' Buddy Repperton had said, an exaggerated expression of tragedy on his face. 'Well, ex-cuuuuuu - '
But that was all he got out. The attack on Christine managed what the attacks on Arnie himself hadn't been able to do - it provoked him into retaliation. He came around the side of the Plymouth, hands balled into fists, and struck out blindly. In a book or a movie, he probably would have socked Repperton right on the old knockout button and put him on the floor for a ten-count.
Things rarely work out that way in real life. Arnie didn't get anywhere near Repperton's chin. Instead he hit Repperton's hand, knocked the bag of peanuts on the floor, and spilled Coca-Cola all over Repperton's face and shirt.
'All right, you fucking little prick!' Repperton cried. He looked almost comically stunned. 'There goes your ass!' He came for Arnie with the jackhandle.