“Hey! Stop!” A voice yelled from behind, about two seconds after we exited the store.

The dumb fucks always did that. Always with the “Stop!”; it was one of those actions that was both helpful and irritating at the same time. And it meant only one thing.

“Run!”

Tess didn’t need to be told twice. And we were off, as only gazelles and shoplifters our age could be off. We tore across the House of Values parking lot, both consciously resisting the temptation to look back. But I had caught a quick glimpse of our pursuer reflected in the back window of a station wagon. It was the chunky young clerk who’d been giving me the weather eye for weeks. Nineteen, maybe twenty-two, he looked like one of those testosterone driven freaks who was always looking for an easy chance to play hero, to be the tough guy. Maybe he needed to make up for successfully avoiding Vietnam–you saw a lot of that in guys his age at the time.

“Never look back. Just run like hell and get off the property as fast as you can and get into the lots,” I’d more than once instructed Tess before going on our little “shopping” trips.

The people who worked at the chain stores would only chase you to the end of the property–always figured that was universal company policy. And few ever committed that far; unlike Mom and Pop, House of Values’ employees were going to get paid anyway. Yet every so often you drew a John fucking Wayne. And if your luck was very bad, sometimes a samaritan would try to help the chaser out–but they were easy to avoid if you ran directly at them–people think that sort of thing over and almost always opt for the better part of valor.

Our retreats, though simple, were well planned. If whoever was in pursuit could still be heard chugging along behind once we reached the end of the store’s property, we’d split up then dash into the lots and back alleys of Charleston, which we knew as well as the rats, hide our loot in predetermined drop holes (fuck giving up swag you had to run for), meet up at Fort Oxenfree, then double back for the goods later.

“Split!”

Tess veered left and timed a run between a pair of cars headed opposite directions on Fourth Street. She deftly avoided both to the extreme annoyance of the drivers and my cardiovascular system, but it would delay Mr. Man Asshole, if he chose to chase her. Once across the street Tess vanished into a wildly overgrown lot like a ghost through a keyhole, much to my relief. She was as gone as Moonlight Mover. But I decided to take measures to prevent the fuckhead from going after her, for she was much smaller and slightly slower than me–predators and would-be tough guys always go for the easier kill.

Instead of blazing across the street, completely aware that I hadn’t lost an inch of a hundred foot lead (that, to its credit, refused to stretch), I stopped, picked up a stone and hurled it at the guy who, sure as shit, had chosen Tess’s trail. He was sort of running in place waiting for cars to pass. That changed when the rock hit his ankle, I had a good arm. The black deep set eyes in his pig-like face shone at me with hate. I recall thinking “Something’s gone wrong in there.” But I didn’t give a rip, he was already sweaty and I was fresh and could run him to Hell if I wanted. Although I knew that Tess was already clear, just to make certain, I laughed, flipped him off with both hands and yelled, “Catch me if you can, Jody-boy!”

Due to the shipyard, Charleston was a military town and “Jody-boy” was a mean thing to be called in wartime. And being called that by a kid put an hitherto unknown kick into the clerk’s pace–who stopped being a clerk the instant he was off company property. But I didn’t care. I mockingly skipped backwards, maybe five steps, then bolted across Fourth, passing closely in front of the Hull Street bus passing by in that brief opening between the honk of the horn and application of the brakes.

Downtown Charleston in the seventies was a busted smile sort of place. One block would be perfectly reasonable looking, with a run of tidy businesses in it, while the next might contain shuttered shops or ruins being slowly swallowed by the ever flourishing weeds and the grow anywhere trees of heaven. Again, due to the yard, Charleston had been a boomtown during the Second World War, but it was never designed to be the permanent residence of sixty-thousand as the population had swelled from 1942 to 45. After the bomb was dropped the population shrank back down to its prewar level of twenty-thousand and has held it ever since. This emptied plenty of lots and shuttered dozens of shops. Tess and I were frequent explorers of forgotten territories.

I entered a lot located about fifty yards east on Fourth from the one Tess had vanished into. It was late spring, and it had rained earlier for the first time in a couple of weeks, which caused a moldy, earthy smell, sorta like bed bugs, sorta like the odor that often wafted up from the sink-traps in our apartment, no matter how much bleach we poured down the drain. The little trees of heaven and omnipresent Scotch brooms were heavy with moisture and I was careful to avoid snatches of brambles that tried to wrap around my ankles by lifting my feet high as I rushed across the lot aiming for a bluff that lay ahead in a clearing across Fifth Street at the end of the lot. I had already planned on dashing across the street, scramble up the twenty-foot, damn near vertical rise, take the fence at the top and be gone with or without sharing further witticisms. It would be over– there was no easier way up and out that didn’t require a good five minute walk in either direction on Fifth Street.

It’s a myth that you run faster when angry. It takes energy to sustain rage, and the fuel has to come from somewhere. A part of me was disappointed to hear the Jody-Boy (as I thought of him) blundering through the thatch-life behind me, falling further behind. I figured that he might be running out of steam and close to giving up.

I cleared the lot and took the first nineteen feet of the bluff that led to safety, but slipped on the wet switch grass and fell hard just before I was able to take the fence. I slid halfway back and, naturally, that’s when the fucker exited the brush. He had a face like a pig and his work shirt was untucked and appeared to be torn. A weird sort of exhilaration overcame me, so close to being caught.

I laughed, scrambled to my feet but slipped a second time and he was on me.

“Fucking little cunt!” he screamed and pinned my arms down. His face was off the boil and filled with madness and I felt that I could feel what might have been a hardon as he lay against me and moved his piglike face close to mine. God knows what would have happened if Tess hadn’t hit him in the back of the head with her fist.

Over the years I’ve often wondered what the statutes of limitations for a twelve-year-old assaulting an adult. Tess didn’t injure the fuckhead, but I sure the hell did. Her blow took him by surprise and I slipped my left hand out from his greasy grasp and punched him in the throat. Hard. His hands went up like Kennedy’s in the Zapruder film, just before the kill shot. Tess and I were able to push him off of me. I kicked him in the balls and wanted to kill him with a piece of rebar I saw lying in the grass. After a couple of sturdy rebar whacks to his side, the fuck you cunt went out of his attitude and he was blubbering, which made me angrier.

“Fuck you and your fucking boner,” I hissed, fixing to hit him again. Tess grabbed my arm but that wouldn’t have been good enough if Lydia hadn’t yelled for me to stop; she appeared at the top of the bluff, behind the fence. Like out of a dream.

Seeing her clad in denim overalls stunned me. And watching her take the fence with ease and sliding down the bank, landing on her feet was, frankly, a beautiful thing.

She looked me in the eye and calmly placed her hand on the rebar and shook her head no. Tess said we ought to be going. The pig was getting himself together; some people can’t get beat enough. Still, leaving was the best idea.