fear.
Roy told him what it was.
Curtis’s eyelid fluttered down again, came back up. He gave Roy a look. “If you can get someone to cover for you,” he said in the kind of voice used for someone you don’t know well. He went back inside.
Roy started down Curtis’s stairs. He tried not to turn back, but couldn’t help himself. Curtis was talking to Pegram. Pegram was watching Roy. His face seemed to get narrower.
Gordo covered for him. “And Roy?” Gordo said. “Here’s a little present for the boy.”
Gordo handed Roy a stained white thing, maybe an inch long, rounded at one end, surprisingly heavy. Lead, probably, oxidized lead. “What’s this?”
“A bullet, Roy. A real bullet from Kennesaw. One of ours—you can tell by the two rings.”
“You found it?”
“In the souvenir shop,” Gordo said. “Seventy-five cents.”
Roy put it in his pocket, took the elevator down to employee parking on S5, went to his space, found it empty. Empty. He felt real funny for a moment, like some bad fate was happening, then recalled he’d driven in with Gordo. Therefore—what?
Taxi. Roy went to the elevators, saw they were all at seventeen, hurried up the ramp on foot. He was running by the time he came to the exit booth.
No taxis on the street. Roy hardly ever took taxis. In the movies they were always cruising up and—
“Hey, Roy,” said the attendant in the booth. The old guy who always wore a Braves cap, and in fact looked a little like Henry Aaron, as Aaron might have looked if he’d developed a drinking problem.
“I need a taxi.”
“Yes, sir,” said the old man, picking up his phone.
Roy rode in a taxi. He checked the time: 2:27. One of the side mirrors was tilted up at a useless angle, reflecting the image of the new sign high above. He’d been right about one thing: the letters were bigger. They’d also changed from red to blue. globax was already in place, except for the big blue
X
, rising on a crane. From the window of the taxi, the whole city seemed unfamiliar, as though Roy had touched down somewhere new. He started getting less air, reached for the inhaler, felt Gordo’s bullet instead. It had a nice shape, felt comfortable in his hand. He held on to it like a prayer bead.
TWO
Rhett lay on the couch in the school nurse’s office, holding a bloody tissue over his nose. One eye, swollen and purpling, was closed; his open eye stared at the ceiling. The nurse was on the phone, laughing softly at whatever she was being told.
Roy stepped in front of Ms. Steinwasser and walked over to him. The nurse got off the phone.
Roy didn’t know what to say. “Hey.” That was what he said, the word coming out a little deeper than he’d intended, and a little ragged.
Rhett’s good eye moved, found him. Roy saw a lot of emotion in that eye, far more than he wanted to, far more than he could read. “I got in a fight, Dad.” Rhett’s lower lip trembled and so did his voice, but he didn’t cry.
“I can see that,” Roy said. Maybe he should have said something else.
Rhett cried then, just one sob before he got a grip.
Roy put his hand on Rhett’s shoulder, so bony. “Hey,” he said again.
“Take me home, Dad.”
That meant Marcia’s. “Now you’re talking,” he said.
The nurse was on her feet. “I’ll just check on that nosebleed one last time.”
Roy turned to Ms. Steinwasser. “I’m still not clear on what happened exactly.”
“As I mentioned, Mr. Hill, there was a fight at recess. The fields are very well supervised here at Buckhead, but unfortunately the boys got behind the big magnolia by the wall and no one saw them right away.”
“How many were in it?” Roy said.
“In it?” said Ms. Steinwasser.
“The fight.”
“Just two,” said Ms. Steinwasser. “Which was quite enough, as you can see.”
As you can see:
Roy didn’t quite get that part. Was she saying that Rhett’s face was convenient proof of some theory of hers? “Where’s the other