Free Wise Men and Other Stories by Mike O'Mary

dribbling a cold, gritty basketball in the alley behind Louie Eberhardt’s house than they were to be ice-skating.
    Joey Russo lived on the fringes of Germantown, in a little apartment above a bar at the corner of Burnett and Shelby Streets. Joey was the tough guy in our neighborhood. The local bully.
    I first encountered Joey Russo at St. Elizabeth Elementary School. He was a year older than the rest of our class, having been held back to repeat the second grade. I got halfway through the school year without any trouble from him, but then one day, a strange thing happened.
    Our class was outside for recess after lunch. I was leaning against the short fence that separated the boy’s side of the playground from the girl’s side, and the next thing I knew, Kathy Johnson was standing a foot or so away from me on the other side of the fence. It was a pretty unusual for a boy and a girl to be standing so close to each other at recess, but nobody seemed to notice. Then, suddenly, it happened: Kathy Johnson, very quietly, very calmly, very gently, leaned over and kissed me.
    I had no idea how to act in that situation, so I did the only thing that made sense: I turned and ran as fast as I could in the opposite direction. Not that I minded being kissed by Kathy Johnson. On the contrary. She was one of the prettiest and smartest girls in school, and she was to be my girlfriend for the next two years. But I did mind being kissed in public. It felt to me that everybody was staring at me after the kiss, but in actuality, it was a nonevent. No one had noticed—no one except Joey Russo.
    Joey cornered me a few days later while I was waiting to walk Kathy Johnson home after school.
    “What are you doing here?” he asked.
    “Nothing,” I said.
    Joey smiled. “You’re waiting for Kathy Johnson, ain’t ya?”
    I hesitated for a moment, then answered, “Yes.”
    “You like her, don’t you?” he asked.
    “Yes.”
    “She likes you, too, don’t she?” he asked.
    “I guess,” I said.
    Joey walked around me, sizing me up.
    “I like her, too,” he said, “but I saw her kiss you the other day.”
    Upon hearing those words, I prepared myself for the worst: Joey Russo was going to kick my little seven-year-old butt.
    “Don’t worry. I ain’t going to do nothing to you,” he said. “If she likes you, that’s all right.” Then Joey started to walk away. Before he got very far, he turned and added, “Be nice to her.”
    His final words struck me as very odd. They came not so much as a threat or a warning (as in, “Be nice to her or I’ll kick your butt”), but more as a piece of friendly advice—and more than that, as a piece of friendly advice that he knew he didn’t really need to give.
    I didn’t have any more run-ins with Joey Russo for several years after that. During that time, he was in and out of trouble—if not for fighting, then for stealing, talking back to the teachers, or skipping school.
    Then, when I was eleven years old, I once again found myself face-to-face with Joey Russo. It was a hot, humid summer night. I was playing in the front yard when all of a sudden, there was a huge commotion from around the corner at the Gerard family’s house. Somebody was yelling, and I heard a fence gate clang open and shut several times. I ran toward the noise and as I turned the corner, I ran right into Joey Russo.
    There was a black kid with him, but the kid kept on running. Joey stopped though and looked right at me. He didn’t say anything, but he walked slowly past—staring at me the whole time—then continued on down the middle of the street at a jog.
    I watched him run off, and then I went to the Gerards’ house. It turned out that some bikes had been stolen. The Gerard kids were distraught, and Mr. Gerard was ready to kill someone. I walked up to him and said, “I know who did it.”
    It occurred to me later that I did not really know who did it. When I saw Joey Russo, he was on foot, which meant someone