“I know where Chessey is,” Jack said.
“Well, I know you know. But let’s face it, Jack, he’s got practically the whole rest of the college thinking—”
“I know what he’s got them thinking. For Christ’s sake, Ted. What do you think I’m looking for the asshole for?”
“I know you’re supposed to be looking for him,” Ted said patiently, “what I’m trying to tell you is, the joke around campus right now is that you found him.”
“I wish I had.”
“Found him and stuffed his teeth down his throat and that’s why—”
Jack put the solderer down on the bench. His head hurt. It always did when he had to talk about Donegal Steele, especially about Donegal Steele and what he was doing to Chessey. For Jack Carroll, Chessey Flint was a kind of miracle. She had everything the girls who wouldn’t go out with him in high school had had, except the attitude. The girls who wouldn’t go out with him in high school had looked at his clothes, and at the tiny house his family had lived in, and at the used car that his father had to drive, and made up their minds right away: Jack Carroll wasn’t the kind of boy who was going anywhere. Chessey had looked at all the same things their freshman year, and decided Jack Carroll was the kind of boy who was. Add to that Chessey’s virginity—which Jack saw less as a miracle than as a crazy, wildly extravagant form of heroism—and the fact that Chessey Flint was in love with him often made Jack Carroll feel as if God had appointed him king of the world. It also went a long way to explaining why he did as much as he did. Without Chessey to show off for, Jack would probably have left extracurricular activities strictly alone.
He plugged the solderer into the wall socket to heat it up—the only way to get hardened solder off the tip—and said, “Look, I saw Steele last night, in the Beer Cellar. He was drinking himself silly, popping beers.”
“Popping beers in the Cellar? How did he get away with that?”
“He’s the Great Doctor Donegal Steele.” Jack shrugged. “It’s like that little guy says. Father Tibor Kasparian. Him. The Great Doctor Donegal Steele.”
“I don’t have Father Kasparian for anything,” Ted said. “Everybody tells me he’s good.”
The solderer was hotter than an electric range burner on high. Jack shook it a little, but the solder wasn’t soft enough yet.
“Steele was punching his holes in the bottom of his cans with an ice pick,” Jack said. “He must have got it from the bar. Then he’d stand up on a table, tilt his head back, pull the tab—”
“And a can of beer would go down his throat in thirty seconds. I know how to pop beers, Jack.”
“I wasn’t trying to tell you how to pop beers. I was trying to tell you Steele wasn’t making a secret of it. He was standing on tables, for God’s sake.”
“So?”
“So,” Jack said. The solder was finally off. Jack unplugged the solderer. “I was in there with Stevie and Chuck, in the back, and we heard him. He said he was warming up for a challenge.”
“A beer can challenge?”
“That’s what it sounded like. Christ, Ted, he must have popped five cans of beer while we watched him. Can you imagine what happened to him if he went off and took a challenge?”
“Maybe he cracked up his car somewhere,” Ted said. “Maybe he’s in a smash somewhere at the side of the road.”
“If he was, we’d have heard about it. There aren’t that many roads, and the cops around here don’t have anything else to do. Don’t be an ass. He passed out someplace, that’s all. He’s probably just coming to.”
“With a head the size of a watermelon.”
“Trite, but undoubtedly accurate. I just wish I knew who he had the challenge with. I’d just love to get that son of a bitch in a corner when he couldn’t fight back. Chessey can’t fight back.”
“I always think what you ought to do is kick him in the head with those climbing shoes of yours,” Ted said. “Those cleats would go right through his skull to his brain.”
“Right.” The solderer was clean. Jack got up and started looking through the boxes on the shelf above his head for something he could use for a speedometer cable.
The problem, as Jack saw it, was this: You could take the boy out of the grease pit, but not the grease pit out of the boy. Most of the time he was an ordinary college kid, polite, civilized, neat. Some of the time, what came up out of the core of him looked a lot more like his brother Dan. His brother Dan had committed his life to stomping butt from the time he reached six feet—when he was twelve—to the time he’d smashed his Ford Falcon into a concrete abutment out on Route 94. He’d had a passion for violence that was like something out of a Freddie movie, and all his friends had had it, too. So did all the guys Jack knew down at the Sunoco station, if they were young enough.