The boy's eyes widened. "Jesus, there's meat in it!"
"Naw, we jus shat in it to make it thicker," Bradley said. The boy looked up sharply, saw his brother was joking, giggled, and fell to.
"Will that druggist go to the cops?" Richards asked quietly.
"Curry? Naw. Not if there might be some more squeezin green in this fambly. He knows Lassie's got to have heavy dope."
"What about this Manchester thing?"
"Yeah. Well, Vermont's no good. Not enough of our kind of people. Tough cops. I get some good fella like Rich Goleon to drive that Wint to Manchester and park it in an automatic garage. Then I drive you up in another car." He crushed out his cigarette. "In the trunk. They're only using Jiffy Sniffers on the back road. We'll go right up 495."
"Pretty dangerous for you," Richards said.
"Oh, I wasn't gonna do it free. When Cassie goes, she's gonna go out wrecked."
"Praise Gawd," Ma said.
"Still pretty dangerous for you."
"Any pig grunts at Bradley, he make 'em shit in their boot an eat it," Stacey said, wiping his mouth. When he looked at Bradley, his eyes glittered with the flat shine of hero worship.
"You're dribblin on your shirt, Skinner," Bradley said. He knuckled Stacey's head. "You beatin your meat yet, Skinner? Ain't big enough, are ya?"
"If they catch us, you'll go in for the long bomb," Richards said. "Who's going to take care of the boy?"
"He'll take care of himself if something happens," Bradley said. "Himself and Ma here. He's not hooked on nothin. Are you Stace?"
Stacey shook his head emphatically.
"An he knows if I find any pricks in his arms I'll beat his brains out. Ain't that right, Stacey?"
Stacey nodded.
"Besides, we can use the money. This is a hurtin family. So don't say no more about it. I guess I know what I'm doin."
CHAPTER NINE
Richards finished his cigarette in silence while Bradley went in to give Cassie some medicine.
MINUS 063 AND COUNTING
When he awoke, it was still dark and the inner tide of his body put the time at about four-thirty. The girl, Cassie, had been screaming, and Bradley got up. The three of them were sleeping in the small, drafty back bedroom, Stacey and Richards on the floor. Ma slept with the girl.
Over the steady wheeze of Stacey's deep-sleep respiration, Richards heard Bradley come out of the room. There was a clink of a spoon in the sink. The girl's screams became isolated moans which trailed into silence. Richards could sense Bradley standing somewhere in the kitchen, immobile, waiting for the silence to come. He returned, sat down, farted, and then the bedsprings shifted creakily as he lay down.
"Bradley?"
"What?"
"Stacey said she was only five. Is that so?"
"Yes." The urban dialectic was gone from his voice, making him sound unreal and dreamlike.
"What's a five-year-old kid doing with lung cancer? I didn't know they got it. Leukemia, maybe. Not lung cancer."
There was a bitter, whispered chuckle from the bed. "You're from Harding, right? What's the air-pollution count in Harding?"
"I don't know," Richards said. "They don't give them with the weather anymore. They haven't for... gee, I don't know. A long time."
"Not since 2020 in Boston," Bradley whispered back. "They're scared to. You ain't got a nose filter, do you?"
"Don't be stupid," Richards said irritably. "The goddam things cost two hundred bucks, even in the cut-rate stores. I didn't see two hundred bucks all last year. Did you?"
"No," Bradley said softly. He paused. "Stacey's got one. I made it. Ma and Rich Goleon an some other people got em, too."
"You're shitting me," Richards said.
"No, man." He stopped. Richards was suddenly sure that Bradley was weighing what he had said already against a great many more things which he might say. Wondering how much was too much. When the words came again, they came with difficulty. "We've been reading. That Free-Vee shit is for empty-heads."
Richards grunted agreement.
"The gang, you know. Some of the guys are just cruisers, you know? All they're interested in is honky-stomping on Saturday night. But some of us have been going down to the library since we were twelve or so."
"They let you in without a card in Boston?"
"No. You can't get a card unless there's someone with a guaranteed income of five thousand dollars a year in your family. We got some plump-ass kid an kifed his card. We take turns going. We got a gang suit we wear when we go." Bradley paused. "You laugh at me and I'll cut you, man."
"I'm not laughing."
"At first we only read sexbooks. Then when Cassie first started getting sick, I got into this pollution stuff. They've got all the books on impurity counts and smog levels and nose filters in the reserve section. We got a key made from a wax blank. Man, did you know that everybody in Tokyo had to wear a nose filter by 2012?"