Chapter 7: Ugly High School Incident
Almost halfway to my eighth decade I am home at last thanks to my brother, in a snug cottage older than me with a glass-front gas furnace whose flames wake nostalgia for fireplaces of earlier homes. Without the need to saw, split and haul firewood. That frees me to write like mad after creativity was bottled up by a year of motels and succession of failing computers. I gladly returned to my Iliad.
My brother, in his words, is now a patron of my art. He secured me this home. He exhibits kindly interest in my work. Even thinks my Iliad might sell.
His own Iliad lately has been one of fitness and weight loss. He took the occasion of his seventieth birthday to report he’s down to his ninth-grade football-playing weight of 235. I watched those games. He loomed like a White Hulk at left linebacker in his white JV uniform. He looked bored. No opponent ran plays to his side of the field.
Three years ahead of him, in my final school year, I weighed 208 and stood 6'2. This made me fifth heaviest in my graduating class. Fourth tallest. At least two of the bruisers heavy as my brother were under six feet. But for height there was Murphy the basketball center. So I was fifth and fourth. The odd details brought to mind by my brother regaining his playing weight.
The four heaviest of my class created the ugliest memory of my senior year. They invaded my homeroom class one bright morning, confronted me and threatened to beat the crap out of me.
For about thirty seconds I thought it was a joke.
But the varsity fullback was so mad his spittle hit me in the face. Two were so angry their faces were bright red. Biggest of them all was impassive. Six years before, already bigger than anybody else, he rammed me so hard when I tried to block him in a tag-football game that I landed on his teammate cutting behind. I lay there with all wind knocked out. His teammate was no better off. I swore off football.
Now he was varsity center. I pitied opposing linemen.
The fullback and the linebackers backed me into a corner, spitting curses. The center waited, a dangerous Buddha. Classmates stared in shock. Where the homeroom teacher was I have no idea. I could not get my mind around it. They kept calling me a dirty pervert, a sneak and worse, inarticulate with rage.
They scared me. Badly. My gaze locked on the fullback’s prominent Adam’s apple. He was grade-school class bully when I moved to the Beaches six years ago. Jumped me to show me my place. I bloodied his nose. So I knew he could bleed. My mind was racing like a rat trapped in a maze. But even rats fight when cornered.
My grandfather always said, when outnumbered destroy the leader, jump the next one and the rest would run. I didn’t believe it that morning. A straight right to the throat should disable the fullback, but his thick throat looked like cement. I resolved to hit him with all my might if they closed in.
They didn’t. Just stood at arm’s length ranting. I was so scared I would have tried to punch clear through him. Maybe killed him. We formed a quivering tableau of poised violence. Their accusations became intelligible. That was even more terrifying. They said I was making obscene phone calls to their girlfriends! Talking dirty about what I’d like to do to them. When the girls said they’d tell their boyfriends on me, I said I’d whip the bunch.
“Well, here we are!” the fullback said. “Gonna whip us?”
They were so sure. Their absolute conviction gave me a horrid sick feeling outside fear. Had I gone off the rails so far in my frustrated virginal lust that I blacked out and did those things? The matriarch always warned me about associating with teenage girls. I never had. Not one date, not one kiss, no phone calls back and forth. But somehow the mysterious sex thing had reached out to grab me. Girls were accusing me of nasty things anyway.
I began to talk. Deny. Appeal to reason. The accusers decided to march me out of class and through the halls to their football coach, a sloppy giant of a man they revered. I wouldn’t dare lie to Coach! Not one teacher intervened. On the walkway to the coach’s gym office, one of the asshole linebackers shoved me hard, intending to put me down. Who knows what would have happened if I fell? I shrugged him off. His throat cartilage did not look as armored as the fullback’s…
The fullback intervened, saying save it for Coach. To his eternal credit the coach was shocked at their behavior. Said they courted expulsion. Worse, suspension from the team.
The team would be a shambles without them. He did not care what I had or had not done, the team came first. That was the tipping point. Violence became unlikely. He ordered us all to the vice principal’s office to sort it out.
The vice principal was a brutal asshole who believed them and called me a dirty pervert. I was beginning to half believe it myself. All I could say over and over was call my home, like a mantra. He sent the others to class and pushed me to confess. Finally he called.
The matriarch and the old man arrived like avenging angels. When the asshole accused me, she almost stripped skin from his bones with her coldest drawling contempt. He goggled and sputtered.
The old man picked up the big flat paddle with holes punched in it to raise blisters on backsides. This guy used it for corporal punishment. The old man sneered: You use this on boys’ asses? Give you a thrill? Who’s the real pervert here? The man shrank before my eyes. The matriarch supplied the finisher: if you ever touch our grandson I will personally kill you.
They took me home. Whether the four were expelled I don’t know. I was terrified to go back to school for fear they were laying for me. The matriarch gave me a medicine bottle full of her Butternut snuff. What she carried in her wild days as a rum-runner’s girl. Throw it in their eyes she said, it will blind them. Then beat them to death.
The vice principal’s paddle gave the old man an idea. He came in from the garage with the oak arm of a wrecked rocking chair, electric tape around the small end for a grip. Leave it in your book bag on the scooter, he said. If they jump you it will probably be there. This won’t break, but their heads will. Say you were repairing it in Shop Class if anyone asks. I was to carry the snuff in my pocket. If they struck inside the school, douse them and run for the scooter. Ready as I could be without the old man’s .45 or my hunting Bowie.
The first day back, when I parked my scooter by the hurricane fence to chain it, Cricket and Jay and Kenneth were there. We’ll walk you in, Cricket said. Words cannot convey my emotion. None of them were fighters. None of them were in the weight-class of my pumped-up enemies. The courage that took! None of them of course had the shotguns they hunted with (Cricket and Kenneth) or Mauser K-98 (Jay). Not even a switchblade.
By fifth period I had a switchblade of my own. Leon, member of the Flat Top gang, had been a loyal friend since I refused to rat him out for bad behavior. From his leather motorcycle jacket he produced the blade, red plastic pearlized handle, razor-sharp. Where I couldn’t carry the knife he recommended a banker’s roll of quarters to hold in my fist. He used one to knock teeth out in a gang rumble. Over the course of fifty years I lost the switchblade (and my original Bowie knife) but never forgot the quarters trick. Not even airport security objects to a roll of quarters.
Meanwhile my first novel stalled. I told the matriarch I could not finish it because I was writing about heroes but was the worst kind of coward. She said don’t be silly. Do you think writers are brave as their heroes? Why do you think they write? It’s wish fulfillment.
The ambush I feared never took place. The fullback arranged with his girlfriend to listen on an extension when the obscene caller continued his harassment. Then he called me. I expected more threats and did not want to talk. The matriarch said I must. First thing he said, “It’s not you. Don’t sound anything like you. We gonna find this asshole and mess him up. Since he screwed with you too, you want a piece?” I said no — in case you’re wrong again. He didn’t know what to say to that. So we left it there.
Just to put the cherry on top of this craziness his girlfriend called. She didn’t believe him, wanted to hear me on the phone herself. Said damn, he was right. I said of course it wasn’t me, I don’t call girls. Her answer floored me. She said all us girls noticed that. Why don’t you? You could you know. I really thought it was you making those sexy remarks. I wouldn’t mind if it was really you…
Suffering Christ on a crutch. I got off the phone quick as I could. Then the girls who got calls began stopping by my table in the lunch room to say hello and invite me to call, to prove no hard feelings. I wanted to say I’m the one with hard feelings. But I didn’t.
I watched with jealous envy as my young Leviathan brother cut a wide swath through what the matriarch called his beach bunnies. He was too young to drive. I had to chauffeur! Once at a beach bonfire one of the moms — I got to sit with the moms while the younger teens snuggled in the shadows — asked which of the twins he dated was with him out in the dark. Another mom: “Knowing him, both!” Ha-ha-ha. I was never gonna get laid. Hell I probably was never gonna get kissed!
The ugly incident fed my paranoia. And my self-disgust for failing to fight. Just like third grade when I crawled to a sixth-grader, who hurt me anyway. Girls were at the root of both third and twelfth-grade troubles. Wasn’t sure what to make of that.
There was an absurd, implausible postscript graduation night. Cricket scored liquor from a fish camp operator. Jay drove his dad’s wide-track Pontiac while I topped up his drive-in Coke with bourbon. Cricket and a weird kid named Duane rode in back. We cruised the parties. I was amazed how many drunken “good girls” were openly comparing their fucks with football players.
A brainy scholarship recipient, flushed with alcohol, rolled her eyes at me: “Ish, grow up!” My companions got so drunk they were afraid to go home. So I took them home with me to sober up.
The matriarch perked coffee and held Cricket’s forehead over the kitchen sink while he was sick. He owlishly said he was not drunk. He could read cans on the shelf. “A-J-A-X — Ajax! See?” Jay went to the beach — and walked right off the seawall. We rushed behind — he was on the sand, still walking. Did not even notice his fall.
Ah, but Duane…Duane in his cups was remorseful. Confessed he was the one who called girls saying he was me. Why did he do that? Because he could not get a date. The football players had all the cool chicks. And it was exciting how girls reacted to his dirty talk. He couldn’t help himself, but needed a name they would believe. I was the only one the football team would fear. If they tried anything I would hurt and humiliate them, maybe free up girls for him to date…
