A Song for Mary Read Online Free Page B

and down, always throwing the jabs. Hit the bag, hit the bag, hit Shalleski the ratski. Swing the roundhouse. Keep the chin up.
    Billy comes into the room and watches me some.
    “You’re doing pretty good,” he says.
    “Yeah, I know.”
    “You want to box?” He begins to pick up a pair of gloves.
    I don’t want to fight with my brother, even if the gloves are ten times bigger than my fists.
    “No,” I say, taking one last hard punch at the bag, pleased that I beat the bag to a pulp. “Let’s go home.”

Chapter Six
    B illy puts his arm around my shoulder as we walk up Second Avenue, past Gasnik’s Hardware, past Moe’s Diner, past the newsstand. He’s only nine, but he knows how to do everything. He’s the basketball champ, the baseball champ, and he’s never in fights, because nobody wants to tangle with somebody that moves as fast as Billy. And he is always good with lessons, no matter if it’s history or boxing. “Just don’t take any crap from people,” he is saying. “Shalleski may give you some lumps every time, but he’ll begin to respect you.”
    “I don’t want his respect,” I say, trying to walk in step with my brother. “I just want him to stop bothering me and maybe kick the crap outta him. Like kick the can.”
    Billy laughs.
    “Maybe you hafta get madder,” he says. “Maybe you’re not mad enough to hurt him.”
    “I could kill him.”
    “You could? Paddy Gilligan has a zip gun.”
    That was something I didn’t think about. Not only could I say I could kill Shalleski, but I really could kill him. I only had to talk Paddy Gilligan into loanding me his zip gun. But there is a problem. Paddy Gilligan is the toughest guy in St. John’s, and he is in the eighth grade, and he would never talk to me.
    “Maybe I just wanna break his nose, give him a nose like Dick Tracy.”
    We walk past Speece’s drugstore and over the Second Avenue cobblestone at 55th Street where they didn’t finish the new street paving. We turn at 56th Street, and when we pass the Hotel Sutton, we cross to the other side of the street. It is late in the afternoon, but we had just put the clocks forward and it is still light.
    It is only at the stoop that my brother takes his arm from around my shoulder. He takes a good look at me and gives me a small smack at the back of my head, and laughs. I guess he sees the dried blood at the end of my nose, but he doesn’t mention it.
    A few women are sitting there, newspapers shoved under them to protect their skirts. One is drinking out of a cardboard container of beer which she got at Billy’s Bar and Grill on the corner. It is the only place in the neighborhood that still sells beer in containers. This is Sue Flanagan’s mother. Sue Flanagan is sitting there, too. I love her, even though she is ten years older than me and in nursing school. She always pretends to want to kiss me, and she laughs when she squeezes me. She doesn’t know that I love her. Usually, I like to pretend that I don’t like to be squeezed, because I know that makes her squeeze me harder and longer, but now I just want to get home. If there is any blood showing on me, I don’t want her to see it, and so I whiz by before she catches my eye.
    My mother sees the blood before I get a chance to wash it off. She is dishing out the tripe. The tripe is like the inside of a dead sponge, and she puts it beside a few carrots and peas. It looks limp, like it died just a minute ago. I hate the tripe, because it is like eating the cardboard from inside my shoe. It smells like that, too.
    “What’s with the bloody nose?” Mommy asks.
    “Dodgeball at Kips,” I say, sitting down.
    I know I am risking all my future friends by lying, but she will strap me for sure if she finds out I was fighting in the street, even if you could call protecting yourself fighting.
    “Go wash your face.”
    I go to the sink in the middle of the kitchen and open the medicine cabinet above it. I take the soap from the shelf