Bruiser

by Neal Shusterman

  “My uncle is more of a baseball kind of guy.”

  And that’s all my dad needs to hear. Brew is hoop impoverished. Suddenly my dad’s in his element; and for the first time in years, the teacher in him has a blank athletic slate—a new subject to whom he can impart all the family basketball moves.

  “You know, I played in college,” Dad brags, doing some Globetrotter stuff that was only impressive the first hundred times—but Brew’s eating it up. Even Cody looks up from his irrigation project as Dad deftly handles the ball. I suppress the urge to roll my eyes, hoping that someday my own children will return the favor.

  “Stick with me,” Dad says, “and you’ll own the court in no time.”

  It feels good to see my father in this altered state—actually enjoying himself, with no thoughts of Mom and the nest of termites that’s eating away at the foundation of our family. In fact, none of that seems to bother me either. It all feels far, far away.

  Brew—with that photographic memory of his—is a quick study. By the time we’re done for the day, he’s got himself a respectable layup and can guard without fouling.

  “Thank you, Mr. Sternberger.” His gratitude is genuine.

  “Not a problem, Brewster.”

  “Call me Brew.”

  It feels good to be out here and away from all the frustrations of life. In fact, the entire day feels abnormally good in a way I can’t quite describe. It’s that quirky kind of weekend feeling they write ridiculous sunny-day songs about. You know the ones—I’m sure they’re on your iPod even though you’d never admit it. As for my father, he’s more up than I’ve seen him in weeks.

  “An hour on the court puts things into perspective,” Dad says as he hands the ball to Brew for a final shot. “I have a feeling things are just going to get better.”

  It turns out he’s right. And at the same time very, very wrong.

  CODY

  35) STUFF

  Uncle Hoyt had a bad day the next week. He hadn’t had a real bad day for a while. Sure, he was always grumpy, but grumpy wasn’t foul. There were times when he was actually nice—like the night Tri-tip had died and he read me Goodnight Moon and a bunch of other little-kid books, and actually even kissed me good night.

  “Don’t you worry about Tri-tip,” he’d told me, “he’s gone to a better place.”

  Well, since I heard a chain saw going for two whole hours, I knew that the “better place” didn’t take a dead bull whole; but I guess he musta meant cow heaven.

  That was a side of our uncle we didn’t see all that often, but it was good to see it when we did. Those are the times I always try to hold on to when he goes foul.

  Like he did when his steamroller hit a car.

  I wasn’t there when it happened, since he’s not allowed to ever take me to work, even on Take Your Kid to Work Day, cuz the work is dangerous and he usually does it at night. I found out the next day, when I got home from school.

  It was Thursday, and Brew was out with Brontë at the mall. I wanted to go, but Brew said I wasn’t invited this time. He wasn’t even makin’ up stories for Uncle Hoyt anymore—not since last Sunday when he’d played basketball with Tennyson and his father. Things changed a little bit on that day. See, Uncle Hoyt wasn’t gonna let us go anywhere that morning, but Brew said he was gonna go out anyway.

  “Where are you going? Who you gonna be with?” Uncle Hoyt had asked, but all Brew said was “None of your business, and none of your business.”

  I expected Uncle Hoyt to start yelling, but he just said, “Careful there, Brew.” I couldn’t tell whether he meant to be careful out there, or be careful of him.

  Then Brew showed him the cigarette burn and said, “One of these days you’re gonna test me, and there’ll be no one getting hurt but you.”

  “Is that a threat, boy?”

  “No, just the truth. I don’t know how I could go on caring about someone who won’t even let me have my own life.”

  Even though it was my idea for Brew to tell Uncle Hoyt he wouldn’t like him no more, I never thought it would be such a big deal. Before it could get any worse, I shouted out, “Basketball! Brew and me are just going to the park for some basketball.”

  Uncle Hoyt nodded but kept his eyes stuck on Brew. “Fine, then,” he said, but his voice didn’t say it was fine at all. “You want what’s out there, you go grab it, boy. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Ever since then things haven’t been right between them. They don’t fight, but they don’t talk much either; and when they’re in the same room, I feel like I don’t want to be there.

  So anyway, it’s Thursday night, and it’s getting dark, and I come inside from tryin’ to fly that stupid kite again; but now it’s got so many holes, the wind couldn’t pick it up even if it wanted to cuz it would just blow through the holes. Once I’m inside, I can hear Uncle Hoyt all worked up on the phone. He’s pacing the kitchen, shouting about an accident he had the night before, explaining how it wasn’t his fault. A car veered over the cones and hit his steamroller, not the other way around. But I guess that doesn’t matter—someone has to get blamed. From what I can hear, a person is in the hospital. Stable condition, which I guess is better than dead.

  I did believe Uncle Hoyt when he said he didn’t do nothing wrong, because if there’s one thing he’s proud of, it’s the way he drives that steamroller. He drives it like there’s no one else in the world can do it as good as him.

  So I’m standing in the living room, listening to him on the phone; but he’s already been drinking, and he’s slurring his words. I don’t think that helps things. From what Uncle Hoyt yells into the phone, I know that his boss has taken him off the roller and has given him the lowest job in road construction.

  “Pushing tar?” he says. “I’ve been at this for years, and you’re making me push tar?” I hear some yelling on the other end of the phone, and then Uncle Hoyt says, “Fine, then I won’t come in at all.”

  When Uncle Hoyt hangs up, he doesn’t just hang up; he hurls the phone at the refrigerator and it shatters into a gazillion pieces. That’s when he notices me standing there, watching him.

  “What are you looking at?” he says. “Go do your homework.”

  “I got none,” I tell him.

  “Then just get out of my sight.”

  “You gonna get fired, Uncle Hoyt?”

  “Get outta here!”

  I don’t need another invitation. I go to my room while Uncle Hoyt keeps on drinking. All the while I keep looking out of my window at the empty field and the fence and the houses beyond that, looking for Brew, hoping he’ll get home soon. I know he’s still out with Brontë. There’s no telling when he’ll get back. And I get to thinking that part of Uncle Hoyt’s bad mood is my fault, because I told Brew to say he wouldn’t like him no more. If I hadn’t done that, Brew would be home now instead of off with Brontë and if he was home, maybe Uncle Hoyt might not be so mad.

  Right around sunset—the time Uncle Hoyt would usually be leaving for work—he goes out onto the porch instead. I can hear the squeak of the folding chair as he sits down and starts talking. He’s talking to nobody, having conversations with himself—all the things he wishes he could say to his boss and everyone else but doesn’t have the guts to actually say. He’s still chewing out his boss to the crickets when I get up to go to the bathroom.

  I should have known what would happen next, and if I had been thinking ahead, I could have stopped it. See, he’s outside and I’m inside, and just last week our screen door handle busted. You can push it open from the inside, but once you’re outside you can scratch and paw at that door all you want; it’s near impossible to open—and totally impossible if you’re drunk.

  “Cody!” I hear him call, but I’m still in the bathroom, taking care of business.

  “Cody,” he calls again, “open the stupid door!”

  And I’m hurrying as fast as I can to get off the pot, but there’s only so fast you can do such a thing. By the t
ime I’m out of the bathroom, he’s screaming bloodymurder; and when I get out into the living room, I can see him through that screen.

  His eyes.

  I know those eyes.

  Uncle Hoyt’s gone foul, and Brew is nowhere to be seen, and I don’t know what I’m gonna do, so I just stand there staring at him, afraid to open that door, knowing it’s only going to make it worse; but still I just stand there anyway, watching those eyes get fouler and fouler as he screams, “Open this goddamn door!” Finally he punches his fist through the screen and reaches inside, pulling the door open.

  Now there’s nothing between him and me.

  I start backing up—I think that maybe I can run out the back door—but Uncle Hoyt’s fast for a drunken man. Before I can make a move, he’s there. He grabs at me—missing mostly, but catching enough of my shirt to get me off balance. I fall, hitting the edge of the TV, and I know that Brew isn’t anywhere close because it hurts!

  “You think that was funny, huh?” he growls. “Letting me stand out there? Had yourself a laugh, did ya?”

  He gets a good grip on me this time, and I think, Rag doll, rag doll, be the rag doll, just like Brew always tells me; but I can’t do it because Brew isn’t here. Uncle Hoyt tosses me, though, like I really am a rag doll. I think maybe he’s aiming for the sofa; but I miss and hit the table beside it, knocking over a lamp. The bulb blows out, and I wish I woulda been more careful, because Uncle Hoyt’s gonna blame me for that just like his boss blames him for that car hittin’ his steamroller.

  “You’re useless,” he shouts. “You’re useless!” because when he’s drunk, Uncle Hoyt says lots of things twice. “You and your brother, both! He thinks he can go out there and do whatever he wants? If it wasn’t for the two a you, I’d have a life! You both owe me! You owe me everything!” And now I know this is my fault, because it’s Brew he’s mad at even more than me, but I’m the one who’s here and Brew’s not, and it’s all because of me.

  He moves closer. I can see his right hand clenching into a fist, and I know he’s gonna use it, so I reach for something—anything—and I find a glass ashtray on the table next to me, all square and heavy, and I throw it at Uncle Hoyt. I don’t know what an ashtray is going to do to stop him; all I know is I gotta do something.

  It hits him on the forehead with a bonk that I can hear, and in a second there’s blood on his forehead. The way he looks at me now makes me think that maybe I just ended my own life.

  “Did you just throw that at me?” he says, all amazed. “Did you just throw that at me?”

  And my own mind is such a knot, I shake my head and say, “No, sir,” like denying it might calm him down; but I know it won’t do no good, because Uncle Hoyt had a bad day, and now my day’s gonna be even worse than his.

  I scramble away toward that screen door. I can push it open from the inside easy, but he grabs my foot and pulls me back before I get there.

  “You are going to be sorry you did that, boy,” he says. “I am going to teach you to respect me. You hear me? You hear me?”

  He reaches to pull his belt out of his pants, but his belt isn’t there—and he knows if he goes to find it, I’ll get free, so he doesn’t let go. He picks me up, carrying me like a football. There’s nothing I can do but kick and squirm.

  “I’m gonna teach you a lesson. Both of you. Two birds with one stone. He don’t want to be here; he’ll pay the consequences!”

  In a second we’re outside, and I can see the screen door banging closed behind us, getting farther away.

  “You’ll learn to respect me!”

  The way he’s holding me I can see where we been but not where we’re going. But I know without having to see. It’s the same place he always takes me when he goes foul. There’s a shed way back at the edge of our property. It’s the place farthest away from any other homes, so you can’t hear much of what goes on in there. Not that our neighbors would care. Not that our neighbors even know us.

  There’s no way out of this, and I’m scared. More scared than I’ve ever been in my life. Not even when they told me about Mom dying and all I wasn’t this scared because I didn’t understand that then—I was too little. But this I understand. And although Uncle Hoyt has needed to teach me lessons before, he’s never been this foul—and it never happens without Brew.

  Tonight it’s going to be bad.

  Uncle Hoyt opens the door to the shed with his free hand and closes it behind him. Then he pulls a string dangling from up above and a light comes on. The first things I see are the tools on the wall: hammers, screwdrivers, shovels. A wild part of me thinks that Uncle Hoyt might use them; but there’s crazy and there’s crazy, and Uncle Hoyt isn’t crazy. He ain’t no murderer. Or if he is, he’s an accidental one, because although I know he means to teach me proper respect, tonight he might teach it too well.

  “Please, Uncle Hoyt!” I beg. “Wait till morning—lessons are best in the morning, right?”

  “You’ve got it coming,” he says, staggering. “You got it coming now!”

  I try to hide underneath the workbench. It’s full of webs and bugs down there, but I don’t care about those, not now. I squeeze all the way into the corner, but he reaches right in and grabs my leg, and drags me out. I feel the concrete floor scraping my elbows; and as he pulls at me, I bite his arm with all the force that I can, figuring it might sober him up. He curses and swings me a backhanded slap across my face. It’s the first time he’s actually hit me tonight; but it won’t be the last, because I know the first one makes all the rest easier. My face stings, and I’m crying now, which is bad because my eyes are all clouded and I can’t see straight enough to move out of the way of his swinging hands. I think if I’m fast enough and he’s drunk enough I can dodge the worst of it, like in dodgeball. I never get hit in dodgeball, but I can’t dodge nothin’ with blurry eyes.

  “I never wanted you,” Uncle Hoyt slurs. “Neither of you. Neither of you.”

  Hearing it woulda hurt awful if he hadn’t already said that a hundred times—and if I didn’t know that only a part of him means it anyway.

  “It shouldn’t never have been this way,” he says as he grabs me again. “But if it’s got to be, then you’ve got to learn to treat me the way you woulda treated your own father.”

  I push out of his grip again and bounce against the wall. Tools fall around me, clattering to the ground. My back should hurt from hitting the wall so hard, but it doesn’t. Not just that, but the stinging on my face from the slap is fading much faster than it should.

  And that’s when I know.

  That’s when I know he’s there.

  Brew’s come home to save me! I look up to the little window, and I can see him there outside. Just a hint of his face in the darkness, looking in on us.

  He doesn’t kick down the door or nothin’. He doesn’t come in to stop Uncle Hoyt. He never does. He says he can’t, but what he can’t do don’t matter. Just what he can do. And he’s doing it now.

  But Uncle Hoyt doesn’t know yet.

  “Get up!” Uncle Hoyt says to me.

  But I don’t. Instead I do what I have to do. I become the rag doll, falling limp on the floor, pretending I got no bones. Pretending I got no flesh—just stuffing sewed up in cloth.

  A second more and Uncle Hoyt knows Brew is there, because that little cut on his forehead where the ashtray hit him slowly zips itself closed. It don’t happen as fast as it does for me, because Brew don’t care about Uncle Hoyt as much as he cares about me. But he cares about him enough, because that wound is gone; and Uncle Hoyt knows it, because now his anger moves away from me to Brew, and Uncle Hoyt sees him in the window.

  “Finally came back, did ya!” Uncle Hoyt growls like a bear if a bear could speak. “Well, you’re too late! Let the boy take his own due.”

  But Brew stands there, stone-faced, and won’t say a word.

  “Just as well. This is for both of you then.”

  That’s when Uncle Hoyt starts to use his fists,
taking everything out on me, but it’s nothing to me cuz I’m the rag doll.

  I hear grunts from outside. Not screams, because Brew, he’s good at holdin’ it all in, keepin’ it all to himself. I know how much it must hurt, and it just makes Uncle Hoyt angrier that I’m not getting his lesson. He screams and curses, wishing I was, but knowing I’m not.

  I close my eyes and stay limp, bouncing and flopping around the shed, lettin’ him kick, and hit, and pull, and tug. I even start smiling, like it’s all just a whole lot of rocking in a crib. You can’t hurt me, Uncle Hoyt, no matter how foul you get, because I’ve got Brew to protect me. And he’ll never let you hurt me. Never never never.

  BREWSTER

  36) RECEIVER

  I stayed out till dark,

  And my brother went home alone,

  To face our worst nightmare.

  Now I stand at the shed window

  Until my legs give out.

  My uncle is a weapon turned on my brother.

  Now turned on me.

  “Let the boy take his own due.”

  But I won’t allow it, and he knows it.

  Is it me my uncle beats?

  Is his foot so swift,

  Are his hands so furious

  Because he knows it’s coming to me?

  For being disloyal?

  For wanting more than this?

  Or is he furious at the futility,

  Furious at knowing

  He will never teach us to respect him?

  The muddy ground,

  All fours,

  I roll to my side,

  Ear in mud,

  Knee to chest,

  I swallow my screams.

  Forcing them into my stomach.

  Digest the pain.

  Dissolve it,

  Then sweat it out,

  Piss it out,

  Wetness spreading in my jeans,

  As foul as my uncle,

  Who I should hate,

  But can’t.