Free Stars Screaming by John Kaye Page A

double-jabbed him again; then he threw a right cross that split open his eyebrow. Tomlinson howled in pain and the crowd behind Burk surged forward, knocking him to the ground. For the next thirty seconds, while a wave of bodies swept over him and a jet streaked by overhead, the air was filled with cheers and screams and the sound of thudding fists.
    As soon as he pulled himself to his feet, he saw Gene and Tomlinson trading punches, with Gene getting the best of it, his right hand clubbing the side of Tomlinson’s head. Very soon more fights began to break out. Everywhere you looked, blood was flying and kids were punching and kicking each other and rolling around on the parking lot or down on the warm yellow sand.
    By the time the police arrived, Gene had Tomlinson backed up against Timmy’s car, and he was hitting him with punch after punch—not roundhouse punches, either, but neat sharp rights and lefts to the head, the kind of punches he learned in the back of Yesterday’s Pages. Both of Clay’s eyes were closed, his lip was all busted up and lopsided, and blood poured out of his nose, soaking the hairs on his chest.
    Finally, when the cops pulled him away, Gene turned and looked over his shoulder at his younger brother. Smiling through a mouth filled with blood and broken teeth, he said, “Nobody’s ever gonna call me a coward again, Ray. Fucking nobody.”
    The police ran a check on Clay’s car, found out it was stolen, and loaded him into the back of a black-and-white. Burk and Tim and PK drove Gene over to the emergency room at St. John’s, where it took a doctor and two nurses a good hour to stitch up his face.
    On his way home that night, Gene stopped at Billy’s Bop City, a record store on Lincoln Boulevard. He bought an album by The Meadowlarks and a single by Fats Domino. When he finally fell asleep, leaving the ecstasy and terror of that long day behind, “I Want to WalkYou Home” was spinning on the phonograph, playing over and over and over until Burk woke up and finally switched it off. The next morning, after he got up and flipped over the record, Gene realized that his father was standing awkwardly in the doorway of his room. His expression was blank, concealing his worry.
    Gene laughed through his swollen lips. “I guess I look pretty bad.”
    Nathan Burk nodded his head slowly. “Yeah. You do,” he said, but when he tried to laugh along with his son, the sound was blocked by a swelling in his throat.
    Gene stepped forward and put his arms around his father’s shoulders. “It’s okay, Dad. It’s over,” he said. “I won.”
    “I know you did,” Nathan Burk said, and Gene could feel his pounding heart. “This morning I was scared. Now I’m just . . . proud.”

Four
    Max and Jack
    December 6, 1969
    When dawn broke on the day that Burk kissed Bonnie Simpson for the last time, a red-lead band of sky flared above the eastern horizon. With the first thin light came the Santa Ana winds, and by 5 A.M. that morning the sky framed outside Max Rheingold’s bedroom window was streaked with indigo and silver clouds, trailing silky threads the color of sunburned flesh.
    Rheingold had already been up several times during the night, roused first by distant sirens and the yowling of neighborhood dogs, later by the warm winds whirling through the canyon. Finally, he was jolted awake for good by a sharp, stabbing pain deep inside his rectum.
    “Jesus Christ,” he said under his breath, and he reflexively reached for the bottle of Demerol he kept in the top drawer of his nightstand. He chased down three pills with a gulp of leftover wine and closed his eyes, counting backward from one hundred while helistened to the bedroom shutters vibrate and the branches of the avocado and lemon trees scrape against the side of his house.
    Gradually the painful pounding behind his testicles began to subside, and Max reached between his legs, continuing to count down slowly through the teens until his right leg