The Arangment

The hillbillies lived in the brown, brick, eight flat above the butcher’s. You could tell who they were because of there Appalachian accent and they didn’t where shoes. For a nickel they would walk on glass.

One year out trick-or-treating, I went in there building, They lived upstairs from Fat Georgie, who mother was the famous Zsa Zsa. Anyway, one of the hillbilly’s mothers invited me into their cabbage-smelling apartment and there was a retarded boy chained to the iron headboard of his bed. The mattress was bare and pea stained. He made loud grunting sounds at me and strained against the chain cuffed to his wrist like a dog. They gave me some kind of unwrapped, homemade sticky candy. I threw it away once I got outside. I wasn’t aloud to take anything that didn’t come in a wrapper.

The hillbilly’s were tough and we fought often. Sometimes they came out three or four at a time trying to catch one of us alone. They almost caught one Sunday, but I climbed up into the rafters of the little closed porch roof over the door to the butcher’s. They looked in the porch, but they didn’t look up.

One Saturday morning my cousin Wayne said he was talking to Claude. Maybe that was his name. Wayne said he bet Claude I could take his little brother. We were about the same age and size.

“The hillbilly’s are pretty tough,” I said.

“I think you can take him. Anyway I made the bet. Come on. It’s all arranged.”

“What’s arranged?”

“The fight,” he said. “Me and Claude got it all figured out. We’re having it by where they’re digging out for the expressway. It’s all fenced in. No body will bother us.”

“They’re pretty tough. I never fought him before.”

“Don’t worry. Your tougher than every other kid your size on the block. Come on they’re waiting. You don’t want them to think you’re chicken, do yeah?”

He took off up the block at a trot. I could just make out the fence a couple long blocks away. Even if I was chicken, he was right. I didn’t want them to think so. I ran after him. We snuck through and opening in the fence. The field of battle was churned up dirt and clay graded some in front of the deep wide trench that would become the Eisenhower Expressway. There was six or seven ragged boy waiting, most about twelve years old. I was eight. I don’t know how old my opponent was.