Blood Brothers by Richard Price

Author:Richard Price [Price, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

15

STONY HELD COURT in the day room facing a semicircle of six wheelchairs. Besides Derek and Tyrone his fan club had expanded in the course of the day to a red-headed nine-year-old anemic named Felix; a horribly scarred ten-year-old, Freddy, who had fallen on a third rail while hitching a ride on the back of a subway and had been in Cresthaven for a year undergoing skin grafts; a long-haired, thin, eight-year-old girl, Esperanza, who had an undiagnosed blood disease; and an eleven-year-old girl named April, who had a wired jaw.

"Anyway, folks, this next story is true. It's about something that happened right outside this hospital."

"Man, you lyin' awready." Derek laughed.

"Hey look, I'm an Indian, you forget?" Stony leaned forward in his folding chair. "Indians don't lie."

"You really an Indian?" Felix asked.

"Ask Derek and Tyrone. My grandfather's name was Cochise. You ever hear of him?"

Six negatives. "Well, how 'bout my father, Creamchise?"

Freddy laughed, the others still indicated no. Stony winked at Freddy.

"Well, see, my tribe, the De Cocos, useta live on a reservation hundreds a years ago right outside on Fordham Road, which was pretty good because we could get out of our tepees in the mornin' an' go shoppin' in Alexander's, right?"

Finally everybody laughed, except April, who couldn't move her jaw.

"Well, actually, there was nothin' to Fordham Road in those days, just a couple of hamburger places, a beauty parlor and the Loew's Paradise. Matter of fact, Fordham Road used to be such a drag that the Indians called it Boredom Road. There was really nothin' there but Indians, millions a Indians an' they were all De Cocos, just one big fat tribe."

"Was there buffaloes?" Esperanza giggled, covering her mouth after the question.

"Buffaloes! Man, there was buffaloes, antelopes, lions, elephants, turkeys, there's still a lotta them, there was tigers, gorillas. Hey, look, down by this water hole there was so many different animals, that they just threw a fence up and called it the Bronx Zoo."

April smirked as best she could. Stony gave her Groucho eyes, tapping an imaginary cigar.

"Was there snakes?" Tyrone asked with a look of disgust on his face.

"No, no snakes."

"Good!"

"The snakes in the zoo came up on the subway from Manhattan." Freddy flinched. Stony cursed himself.

"Anyway, gettin' back to my story, hundreds a years ago Fordham Road was nothin' but Indians. An' these were tough Indians, man, they were so tough they useta eat steak with a spoon."

"I hate steak," said Tyrone.

"Shut up, stupid!" Derek sneered.

"The De Cocos had a ritual you had to go through to be a full-blooded Indian. See, when you got old enough they gave you a test to see how tough you were. There useta be this big cave right outside this hospital. This was way before Cresthaven was built, and what they would do was they would line up all the young men and blindfold 'em, give 'em an ax each, an' one by one they would take them way, way back into the cave, where there was spiders an' bats"—Stony curled his face in disgust—"but no snakes.

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