I Pledge Allegiance Read Free Page B

to look out over treetops at the skyline and talk ragtime about the bigness of our futures and the smallness of Boston in comparison.
    I’m doing all that by myself for a while, as I’m the first one there. This chicken is amazing, and without the bones it is so easy to buzz through it. If they don’t arrive soon, I cannot be held responsible.
    I do like the skyline. I do like the city. It’s not too small at all, really, and I believe I could be happy here for a long time to come. I’ll still talk ragtime, though.
    “Hey,” Beck says, tromping up behind me. “Want a brownie? They’re still warm.”
    I can smell them. I don’t even turn around.
    “Can’t have brownies yet. We’re still on savory.” I wave a piece of chicken in the air. Like a fish jumping to a fly, he comes alongside and snaps it out of my hand. He sits down next to me on the block of granite that serves as our bench, facing out at the city and the world on the far side of the city. “And the drinks are nowhere to be seen yet. Can’t do brownies without something to wash them down.”
    “Could try,” he says.
    “See, Beck, man, that’s where you start to worry me. That’s where your whole
scientist
thing starts to look like
mad
scientist.”
    “You think?”
    “I do. I know you are smarter than everybody everywhere, but sometimes that can get in the way. That’s why you need me, so my normal level of intelligence can keep you in touch with the rest of us.”
    He is examining the piece of chicken he has just bitten into. He is admiring it. “Thanks, Morris,” he says. “We’ll never discuss it again.”
    “Well, good. What are you ever going to do without me at college, Beck?”
    “I’ll just embarrass myself, Morris,” he says, putting a light headlock on me as we still stare in the same direction over Boston. I can hear inside his head as he chews.
    The truth is, his brownies are kind of dry. But I refuse to be the first person to tell him he’s failed at something.
    “Hey, is this what happens when I show up late?” Ivan asks.
    We turn to see him swaggering toward us, an open can of Moxie in one hand and four more hanging off the rings in his other.
    “Ugh,” I say, “again with the Moxie? That stuff tastes like carbonated tires.”
    “Quiet. Nobody needs Moxie more than you do.”
    “You were supposed to bring a full six,” Beck says, pulling a can off the ring.
    “Yeah, well,” Ivan says as I pluck another of the cans, “I mugged myself on the way over. I put up a brave fight, though. Where’s Bozo, anyway?”
    “Not here yet,” I say, and offer Ivan the chicken bucket. He reaches in and grabs a fistful of flesh, like he’s getting bait to go fishing.
    “Well, he better get here soon.”
    “Aw, you miss him,” Beck says.
    “Quiet, Brownie, I’m only thinking of you two.” He takes a seat on a boulder a few feet away and swallows a chunk of chicken whole, like a snake would with a frog.
    “Us?” Beck asks.
    “Yeah,” Ivan says, holding up the ring with two last cans dangling. “If Rudi doesn’t show up, what are you two gonna drink?”
    Fortunately, we don’t have to answer that, because Rudi comes walking up the face of the steep hill in front of us. It is not the normal way we come up, but the normal way of anything is always optional for Rudi. We watch him for a while, in the bluey evening light, and itseems to take him forever to reach us. It is a tough hill, but not this tough.
    “What’s that he’s carrying?” Beck asks.
    It’s white. It’s paper. It flaps in his hand in the light breeze, catching the remaining light as if it is some kind of signal flag he’s waving in surrender.
    Finally, he reaches the top of the hill, stands there silently in front of us. Kind of a cool picture, I think for a few seconds — Rudi standing tall with the skyline and the first stars hanging there behind him.
    But only for a few seconds. It becomes obvious pretty quickly that this is not cool at