Web of the City Read Free

chisel bit too deep into the chair leg between the lathe points. The design was ruined. The chisel snapped away, and Rusty spun, anger flaming his face. He stared hard at the other boy, changed his grip on the wood chisel. Now he held it underhand—knife-style.
    The other boy didn’t move.
    “What’s a’matter, spick? Y’don’t wanna talk to your old buddy Candle no more?” His thick, square face drew up in a wild grimace.
    Rusty Santoro’s face tightened. His thin line of mouth jerked with the effort to keep words from spewing out. He had known the Cougars would try to get to him today, but he hadn’t figured on it during school hours.
    Over him, somehow—tense as he was, knowing a stand was here and he couldn’t run without being chick-chick—Rusty felt the brick-and-steel bulk of Pulaski High School.
    You just can’t run away from them, he thought.
    The boy, Candle, had come into the basement wood shop a minute before. He had told the shop teacher, Mr. Pancoast, that he was wanted in the Principal’s office. Mr. Pancoast had left the shop untended—oh, Kammy Josephs was monitor, but hell, that didn’t cut any ice with anyone —and Candle had moved in fast. First the little nudge. Then the shove that could not be ignored. The dirty names. Now they were face-to-face, Rusty with the sharp wood chisel, and Candle with a blade. Someplace. Somewhere. It wasn’t in sight, but Candle had a switch on him. That boy wouldn’t leave home without being heeled.
    Rusty looked across into Candle’s eyes. His own gray ones were level and wide. “You call me spick, craphead?”
    Candle’s square jaw moved idly, as though he were chewing gum, when he was not chewing gum. “Ain’t that what you are, man? Ain’t you a Puerto? You look like a spick…”
    Rusty didn’t wait for the sentence to linger in the air. He lunged quickly, slashing upward with the chisel. The weapon zipped close to Candle, and the boy sucked in his belly, leaped backward. Then the switchblade was in his square, shortfingered hand.
    The blade was there, and it filled the room for Rusty. It was all live and lightning, everything that was, and the end to everything else. Rusty Santoro watched—as though what was about to happen was moving through heavy syrup, slow, terribly slow—and saw Candle’s hairy arm come up, the knife clutched tightly between white fingers. He heard the snick! of the opening blade, even as the other’s thumb pressed the button.
    Then there was a green plastic shank, and a strip of light that was honed steel.
    The shop was washed by bands of lazy sunlight, slanting through the barred window; and in those bands of light, with sawdust motes rising and turning slowly, slowly, Rusty saw the blade of the switch gleam. Saw it turn in Candle’s hand, saw the way his flesh cleaved to it with more than need; this was part of Candle. Part of his thought and part of his life. His hand had been formed to end in a knife. Anything else would have been wrong, all wrong.
    “Don’t you ever call me that again, man. Just don’t you call me no spick again!”
    Candle dropped his shoulders slightly. He automatically assumed the stance of the street-fighter. No spick bastard was going to buck him. There was more to this than just a wood chisel. Nobody, but nobody, leaves the gang.
    “Well, ain’t you gettin’ big these days. One minute you’re too good for the Cougars, and the next you’re particular who calls ya what.” His green eyes narrowed, and the knife moved in aimless, circling little movements, as though it were a snake, all too anxious to strike.
    “I don’t dig you, spick man…”
    And he came in fast.
    The knife came out and up and around in one movement that was all lightning and swiftness. Rusty slipped sidewise, lost his footing, and went down, his shoulder striking hard against the base of the lathe. He saw Candle strut back and get ready to pounce. Then there was all that knife in his vision, and he knew he was