by Chris Lynch
“Watch out for him, Kevin,” Lars said as Wolfbang paired off with him. “He’s a handful. Wicked mouth on him, bad attitude.”
Kevin didn’t mind, since Kevin was their Wolfbang. “Ya? Well his mouth may be wicked, but his legs ain’t showin’ me much.”
Wolf laughed so hard that one of his legs started doing a wild, jumpy dance right there, out of control. Kevin was pleased, slapping his belly with one hand, pointing at the leg with the other. “Want me to shoot it for ya? If it’s giving ya trouble, we should shoot the sucker.”
“Sure,” Wolf said. But I don’t think he meant it.
“You know, it don’t bother me none, you being in that chair. Sixty percent of all my friends are in wheelchairs too. That’s a fact.”
“Great,” Wolf said. “Then you’re a pro at this. Run, get a sponge and give me my sponge bath.”
“I love this kid,” Kevin wheezed.
It was like I was sitting outside the principal’s office, only worse. There were limits to what a principal was allowed to do to a kid. I pretended not to notice as I saw Lars and somebody coming my way. Instead I pretended fascination at the decor of the room. The American flag taking up one wall. The Snap-On Tools Girl with a great big pneumatic gun pointed right at me. A framed, glass-covered picture of Ronald Reagan, who by that time was I think like seven or eight presidents ago.
“Here’s your man,” I heard Lars saying to Officer Timmy.
He saluted me. I saluted back. But mostly I stared. Spanning the width of him from shoulder to shoulder were his full-size silver chrome badges. Concealed Weapons Permit. United Nations Security. Federal Firearms License. Professional Firefighter. Bail Enforcement Agent. Special Agent. Military Intelligence. CIA. Sergeant, Los Angeles Police, Badge #714 (Dragnet, the TV show).
“Go ahead,” Timmy said, correctly estimating my reading speed, “ask me a question.”
“You actually held all those…jobs?”
“Held ’em,” he said.
It seemed, at that point, like we’d pretty much exhausted all we had to talk about. Timmy wasn’t a chatter. Man-of-action type, naturally. And I had reached my conclusion anyhow.
Total, over-the-top, why-is-this-man-out-loose nutbag.
But those badges were awfully nice.
“I can see it in you,” Timmy said, yanking me out of the trance caused by my staring into the reflection of my own eye in the chrome. “You are a leader without portfolio. Am I right?”
“You might be,” I said. “What’s a portfolio?”
“What I’m saying is, you know that you are a leader among men, but sometimes it seems others are slow to recognize that fact. Am I right?”
My mouth fell open. I had heard about this thing where totally insane people have pretty strong insight into the rest of us, but I never thought it could be this true. Or this specific.
“Ya,” I said. “How…?”
“I wasn’t born at the top,” Timmy said. “I had my struggles. There was a time when people had trouble taking orders from me. There was a time when people failed to recognize in me the qualities of a leader. There was a time when I couldn’t get a cab…or a driver’s license…or a date to a stinking rotten semiformal…”
“Officer?” I interrupted gently. “I’m connected in this story here someplace, is that right?”
“Huh?” he said, as if I’d just made that up. “Oh. Ya, you are. Your uncle here tells me you started this here club, which is good. Tells me you named it He-Man Women Haters, which is very good, shows you know what’s what at a very young age. Country needs more guys like you. Country needs more men, period.” He looked down at his own chest, scanning it. Then he selected a badge, removed it, and pinned it on me.
“I want you to know,” OT said, his voice breaking, “that this badge is something special. This was the one—and I got mine way back when Dragnet was the greatest American television show ever, and not that stupid movie that made fun of everything that’s good about America—this was the badge that started to make all the difference for me. And I’m giving it to you because I have so much respect for this man over here.” He pointed to Lars. “Who I hope you realize is one of the greatest living American patriots alive in America today. I’d kill for this man.”
I believed he would.
I didn’t take my eyes off his steely, unpleasant face the whole time, since I had no idea what was going on here. But when he stepped back and admired my chest—and saluted me with a little more respect this time—I was moved to look down.
I was the LAPD sergeant.
I looked around the room to see if everyone had fallen to their knees. It suddenly occurred to me that everyone in their club had a mustache.
Wolf was laughing again at whatever Kevin was saying. “Get out!” Wolf said. “Liar. Nothing’s that big.”
Ling looked like he was a monk in Tibet, actually kneeling at the feet of this Boo character, poring over his texts and absorbing his wisdom.
“I was once like you,” Officer Timmy said to me. “And I wouldn’t ever want to be that again.”
Thanks for your support there, officer.
“Now I’m Officer Timmy. And everybody knows it.” He tapped me on the badge with his thick yellow index fingernail. “Mark my words. You’ll see.”
Ya, well, I hope I never see what you see, is what I was thinking as I shook his hand. But like a laser beam, that badge kept on pulling my eye back down. My, it was an impressive thing.
“So, like a club, right? What do you all do?” Wolf asked all of them at once. “I mean, you sell candy and raffle tickets and have dances and Fourth of July picnics and stuff?”
“What are you talking about? What are you asking?” said Jimma as he walked back in from wrecking cars out in the yard.
“I’m asking what do you do here. You, like, have parties, or what?”
“This is a party,” Jimma said, in a very un-partylike tone of voice.
Wolfbang was never one to be intimidated, even when he should have been. “Ya, well, while this is really a swinging time and all, is this it? And what about girls?”
Jeez, Wolfbang, would you get off the girls already?
It was like Wolf had spat at the guy.
“Well, what about ’em, then? We like ’em! Like ’em a lot. Like ’em plenty! Who told you to ask us that?”
“We just don’t like ’em here,” Kevin added.
This seemed like not a bad time to go.
“Boy,” Wolf said when we were all back in the car. “Good thing we’re not nuts like them, huh?” But he was laughing hysterically when he said it.
10.
The High Dive
WHILE JEROME CLEARLY WANTED no part of the Captains America—and who could blame him, really—he still seemed to want all kinds of parts of me.
Winter was finally melting away, which meant it was time for me to get back in the water. I was counting on the coach to have forgotten about my chest hairs, but how likely was that? I had a lot on my mind.
“No club today, Jerome,” I said as the last bell rang and I headed for the pool.
Jerome followed right behind me, carrying a bag that looked suspiciously like mine. “I know that, silly.”
I looked him over. “Where are you going?”
“Same place you’re going.”
“Come on, Jerome,” I said. “You don’t want to be swim team manager anymore.”
“You’re right, I don’t.”
“So then what…?”
It takes me a while sometimes, but I do catch on.
“No, Jerome, no, no.”
“Yes, Steven, yes, yes. Listen, you didn’t come up with a sport for me, so I came up with one for myself. And it makes perfect sense. I can do this. It’ll be cool.”
“I was thinking, maybe soccer, Jerome. Y’know, it’s kind of for weenies, but it’s a start, you know….”
He shook his head determinedly. “I’m going splashing with you.”
Jeez, I
thought, if my old man ever gets a load of this…
But I got used to the idea pretty quickly. Jerome was getting better and better to have around. He certainly paid more attention to me when I spoke and had more respect for what I said than…anyone else in my whole entire life. So hanging out more, being on the team together, might turn out to be cool enough.
We sat on benches in the locker room, listening to the coach’s Welcome to Spring Swimming speech. I kept my shirt on to delay as long as possible before I unleashed the Jungle. Jerome was stripped down to nothing but his suit, and was so excited about his new adventure that he kept popping up, slapping himself on the arms, sitting again, slapping his skinny thighs. He looked like a chihuahua.
“As you may have noticed,” coach said, “the school has not for the last few years had a girls’ swim team—”
“Ya!” Jerome spouted.
“That’s enough of that, you,” coach said. “Well, that’s because there was simply no demand from the students. The administration, the school board, the courts, have all made it clear that, if there is any interest in girls’ athletics, the school is required to provide equal opportunity…”
Oh no. No, no.
“…and this term, it turns out that there is some interest, but not quite enough to warrant a separate girls’ team. Therefore…”
We walked out of the boys’ locker room, through the entrance to the pool, following the coach like a duck family. And when we got out there and found Monica suited up and ready to rumble, I was so deflated I would have sunk to the bottom if they threw me in the water.
“Hi, Steven,” she chirped. “I didn’t know you were on the swim team.”
There are ninety kids in the school. Everybody knows what’s in everybody’s lunch every day.
“Ya,” I said. “Well, I still haven’t decided whether I’m going to stay.”
“Oh, please do,” she said. “I bet you’re the best on the team.”
Jerome jacked in so tight behind me, I could count his ribs from their impression on my back. “Remember Darla, Steven. Remember no-good Darla,” he whispered.
“You,” she snapped at him. “That is so rude, what you’re doing back there. Why don’t you just grow up.”
I turned all the way around to get a look at Jerome’s little bat face. I gave him a so-what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it look.
“Oh ya?” he hissed at Monica. “Well, we don’t need you anyway. So stop wasting Steven’s time, you wicked redheaded…stork.”
Monica gasped. I myself was a little thrown.
“Hey, Jerome,” I said. “You don’t have to be so—”
“We have a whole club dedicated to practically nothing else but hating you, so what do you think of that?”
“Jerome, I think that’s enough—” I said nervously.
“No,” Monica said, smiling the old scary smile. “Please, do finish.”
“I will,” Jerome rambled on. “It’s called the He-Man Women Haters Club, and old Johnny Chesthair here is the…”
I don’t even recall what he said after that. The last impression I have is of Monica with both hands covering her mouth as she convulsed with laughter and I—being the strong and quick-thinking leader of men—threw myself into the pool. I hung under there, as close to the bottom as possible, for as long as I could, hoping to either pass out or breach through the surface of the water to find it was all a sick dream and had gone away.
I breached, all right. Into a world where Monica and her friend Tory—the other new recruit who was not at all a guy—and all of my old teammates were filling the building with the hysterical sound of a dozen lunatic dolphins.
Coach had noticed that I’d jumped into the water with my shirt on. He came to the side of the pool.
“Lift up that shirt,” he grouched. “I have to check something.”
I slithered out of the water and right past him on my way back to the locker room.
“You don’t have to see,” I said. “Just ask them.”
11.
What Do You Want, a Badge or a Chest to Pin It On?
IT WAS THE THING that gave me strength now, through trying times, and I kept it close to my heart.
“Steven,” Mom asked cautiously, “what exactly is that?”
“It’s a badge,” I said, craning my neck down to breathe on it, then buffing it with my shirtsleeve.
“Are you a policeman?” She handed me a plate of sunny-side ups, their googly yellow eyes wide with respect for me.
“Not quite. It’s a club thing. A guy thing. You wouldn’t understand.”
She took the seat next to me at the kitchen table. “I’d like to. Try me. Tell me about this club your father keeps raving on about.”
“He does? He raves? About me, and my club? What does he say—not that it matters to me—but, what does he say, what does he say?”
“It doesn’t matter, Steven. You know your father…he’s crazy, that’s just his way. Pay him no—”
“Ma?”
“Fine. He says it’s about time you joined the man’s world.”
I sat for a few seconds trying to form a response. But first I had to figure out whether it was a compliment or a rip.
“So…he’s glad, right, Ma?”
“Oh yes, very supportive.”
“Great!” I yelped. Then, much cooler, “Not that it really matters.”
“Not that it does, no. But now I’m curious, son. In your own words, in one sentence, what is this organization about?”
Now, there was always something about my mother, a sort of tiredness about her, I guess. And it was contagious. She could look into you with those weary cow eyes, and you wanted to just go back to bed, or maybe cry if you looked too close. Don’t know where she got it from, if it was a medical condition or if it was just her way, like she herself always says a person has a way about them. And I don’t think I want to know, either, because most of the time I can squiggle around it so that it doesn’t affect me, doesn’t pull me too far down into it with her. But like here, when she asks me something that for whatever screwy reason seems to be important to her, she has this way about her, of biting her lip and widening her eyes and gripping the arms of her chair, or the tabletop if, like now, her chair has no arms. Very much like she is a scared person waiting too long for the dentist and I am the dentist who’s about to drill on her soft, rotted tooth.
All I could tell for sure was that this was bothering her.
“It’s about…you know, guys, Ma. Just hanging around.”
She shook her head. “You know how I feel about your uncle Lars, don’t you, Steven?”
I certainly did.
“Well…no, I don’t know, exactly, how you feel….”
“Then I believe you know…approximately how I feel. I’m sorry, I truly am, for whatever went wrong in his life, and why he feels like everybody’s against him. But I simply don’t believe that women, and the federal government, and the Catholic church, and all minorities, and the cable company, are in cahoots to bring him down. I just don’t believe it. And I don’t believe apprenticing with Lars and his rootin’-tootin’ buddies is going to broaden the horizons of your little group.”
The way her voice swung upward toward the end there, it sounded like she had asked me a question. But I couldn’t find one.
“What’s cahoots, Ma?” I had never heard the word before, except possibly from Yosemite Sam. I’d certainly never heard it out of Lars.
Ma rested her chin on the table. Sighed. “Conspiracy. It means conspiracy.”
Oh yessss. I do believe I’d heard that word before. And I do believe I’d heard it out of old Uncle Lars a time or two…thousand.
“Listen, Ma,” I said, reaching out to brush her cheek as it rested there on the Formica. I really did like her a lot, and I wanted her to feel better. “All of that, it has nothing to do with me. We guys, my guys, we’re just getting together at a place where guys can be guys. Where nobody can tell nobody what to do—ex
cept for me; I tell everybody what to do. It’s just a Johnny—”
“Don’t say it!” Ma spewed, pulling away from me.
“What? It’s a Johnny Chesthair kind of a club, that’s all.”
“Ahhhh,” she kind of screamed, but not really scream-screamed. “My god, not another one, please, not another one?”
All I could do, really, was sit there and watch her. And eat my eggs. But the toast was stone-cold by now, though, so nothing doing with the runny eggs and no toast.
“Think maybe you’re taking all this a little too seriously there, Ma?” I got up from the table, and was careful to use my napkin—again, something I do because I know it makes her happy.
“Steven,” she said, rising to see me to the door. She was still way taller than me, but I was working on it. She looked around before saying more, as if the joint was bugged. “I am so worried,” she whispered, “that you’re going to turn out just like him.”
I put both hands on her shoulders and squeezed, to make her feel secure. “Ma, Lars and me are nothing alike, and we won’t ever be.”
“I meant your father,” she said.
“Ma,” I gasped, but I laughed too.
“If you tell him, I’ll deny it. I’ll deny I ever said it. It’ll be my word against yours, and he’s known me a lot longer….None of this was anybody’s fault. I was very young when we got married. How was he to know I was still growing? There’s no shame in a woman being taller than a man, everyone has told him that, but it’s no use….”
She’s not that much taller than him anyway.
Later, back at the He-Man ranch, I felt a powerful urge to do some rule-making.
“I’m making some new rules,” I said to Jerome and Wolfbang. Wolf was busy noodling around under the hood of the Lincoln, his body draped over the fender while his head and arms were swallowed up inside. Jerome, on the other hand, was paying me close attention as we sat in the front seat. Ling was late.
