Free Chasing the Bear by Robert B. Parker Page A

Dodge, said, “Hey, Spenser, how come you’re walking with the little greaser?”
    “Aurelio,” I said.
    “Okay,” Carl said. “How come you’re walking with Aurelio?”
    “He’s a friend of mine,” I said.
    Carl shrugged. Aurelio and I went on into the school and were in our homeroom when the bell rang. Aurelio sat up front. I sat in the back. Turk Ferris sat beside me. English was our first class. Mr. Hartley was the teacher. We were reading A Tale of Two Cities. Turk opened his book and pretended to be reading it while he talked to me.
    “How come you’re hanging around with Mexicans?” he said.
    “I like Aurelio,” I said.
    “He’s queer, man,” Turk said.
    “You think?” I said.
    “A maricón, ” Turk said.
    “That a new word you learned?” I said.
    “Maricón,” Turk said. “Aurelio Maricón. ”
    “I don’t know if he’s queer,” I said. “But if you’re right, and he is, does that mean he has to get beat up every couple days?”
    “How ’bout ’cause he’s a beaner?” Turk said.
    “Whatever,” I said. “Why you want to beat him up?”
    “’Cause we don’t like them.”
    “Them?”
    “Mexicans,” Turk said. “You gonna protect him?”
    “I’m gonna protect him,” I said.
    “I never had you figured for a spick lover, man.”
    Mr. Hartley said, “I’d like some quiet, please, in the back of the room.”
    We sat still, and when Mr. Hartley looked back down at his notes, I whispered to Turk, “Just leave him alone.”
    Mr. Hartley looked up again and saw Turk and me looking at him innocently, eager for knowledge.

Chapter 38
    The low buildings of the Back Bay were dark. They looked, with the effusive sunset behind them, like a stage setting.
    Standing on the little bridge, Susan and I turned and rested our hips on the bridge bulwark and looked at it.
    “That’s very pretty,” Susan said.
    “And it happens every day,” I said.
    “I’ve heard that,” Susan said. “Was Aurelio really gay?”
    “Don’t know,” I said.
    “You didn’t ask him?”
    “No,” I said.
    “You didn’t care,” Susan said.
    “No,” I said. “Didn’t then and don’t now.”
    “Mexican either,” Susan said.
    “Nope,” I said. “Mexican either. I never cared about that stuff.”
    I grinned at her.
    “Besides, I was a little hazy on exactly what it meant to be gay,” I said.
    “Did they keep bothering you?” Susan said.
    “Not bad, for a while. They teased us a little, but I didn’t have to fight anybody.”
    “Were they scared of you?”
    “Maybe a little scared,” I said. “They knew I could fight. But, you know, I played ball with a lot of the guys. I knew most of them. They all knew I’d punched out Croy Davis, who was two years older than I was. And I kept telling them to lay off Aurelio.”
    “And they listened?”
    “Some,” I said.
    “So you were able to stop walking to school with him after a while.”
    “I was, until a bunch of Mexican kids beat the crap out of an Anglo kid and everybody started taking sides.”
    “Which, unless you were more different in those days than I think you were, wasn’t your style.”
    “No, it wasn’t,” I said.
    “You’ve never been a joiner,” Susan said.
    “I wasn’t trying to solve race relations in town,” I said. “I was just trying to help Aurelio, because he was a nice little guy and because Jeannie asked me to.”
    “When I was at Harvard,” Susan said, “the concern was mostly with larger problems, saving the world, that kind of thing.”
    “How’s that working?” I said.
    Susan smiled.
    “Since I’ve known you,” she said, “you have actually been saving the world, one person at a time.”
    I grinned.
    “I guess I work on a smaller scale than Harvard,” I said.
    “Thank God,” Susan said.

Chapter 39
    I was leaning against the brick wall on the sunny side of the school, talking to Jeannie and Aurelio at recess. Carl and Turk came over to us along with an older guy I didn’t know. All