The Planet of Junior Brown Read Free Page B

we’ll get together with the solar system somewheres else.”
    Buddy and Junior slipped quickly through the door. They tiptoed down the long hall which turned twice, until they had reached the outer door.
    Buddy Clark took a bunch of keys from his pocket and unlocked the triple police lock. Outside, a line of students streamed down the steps at the front of the school. When the stream was large enough to become raucous, Buddy rushed up the basement steps with Junior close behind him. In the mass of students the boys separated. Alone, neither of them registered on the mind in any special way. For one more time they had worked their escape.
    Buddy hummed to himself as he always did at the moment he knew that he and Junior were going to make it. Two blocks beyond the school he saw Junior, whom he had allowed to pass him, and caught up with him.
    Junior didn’t look around when Buddy came up beside him.
    â€œYou got anything particular in your mind?” Buddy asked him.
    â€œJust me going to the river,” Junior told him. He didn’t feel like talking to Buddy anymore, or anyone. The effort of talking and walking at the same time took his breath.
    â€œI’ll just go with you,” Buddy said, “make sure you don’t slip and fall in that messy water.”
    â€œNot going to fall. Even if I did, I can swim enough,” Junior told him.
    â€œShoot,” Buddy said. “You is big as a boulder and you would sink as fast as a boulder.”
    â€œShuh,” Junior said. He refused to speak to Buddy for the rest of the way.

2
    JUNIOR LOVED THE low sky and the Hudson River surrounded by zero winter. The river was smooth. Breaking into it was a light of yellow mist out of a sky the color of sulfur and filled with fumes from chemicals. The sky above the river was vibrant with cold poison, the kind of sky Junior felt he knew best. Cold winter was the one season he could be outdoors and feel comfortable seeing the day. In this late November he wore only a yellow Dacron shirt and brown denim trousers.
    The river looked clean. The putrid light out of the sky made New Jersey on the far bank seem a fantasy Christmas land atop the Palisades. These past weeks Junior had needed Jersey to seem as unreal as possible. He had needed to wipe it away with a flick of his hand over his vision, if only he could.
    â€œ A’m a low-life clown, with muh head on upside dow-ow-wown ,” he sang.
    He and Buddy had climbed the iron fence on the bank of the river and now braced themselves against boulders at the water’s edge. They filled their pockets with rocks. Here there were rats living on the river’s filth. Not even freezing winter could rid the shore of its awful smell.
    â€œI can’t stand it, whew!” Buddy said.
    â€œShuh,” Junior told him. He wished Buddy would just disappear.
    â€œBut I’m cold. I already froze myself getting here,” Buddy said, “and you going to freeze yourself too.” Buddy wore his windbreaker; even so the weather coming off the water went right through it.
    â€œWhyn’t you go on home then?” Junior said. “Nobody ask you to freeze your diaper out here.”
    They settled down uncomfortably on icy rocks. Junior put his Fake Book and torn textbooks carefully down beside him. He was feeling mean toward Buddy and impatient with the slow passage of time. He could tell by the dull yellow light closing in on them that the time was about three-thirty. He still had a whole hour to get down to 79th Street and Broadway.
    They saw a rat move boldly. It was big and hungry, with hair almost black. Swiftly Buddy aimed and threw a stone all in one sure motion. The stone grazed the rat.
    â€œHe ain’t going to move. He thinking about fightin’ back,” Junior said.
    Buddy hurled three stones in succession; one whucked sickeningly against the rat’s side. The rat’s hindquarters quivered; then it moved off under