In the Punching Scenario, Aleksander will step out of the radius of the assailant’s punch, and as soon as the fist has sailed past his face, he will step back into the radius, just close enough to smash the attacker’s nose with an immediate counterpunch.
Step out, lean in.
Then, as his opponent staggers backward from the blow, sometimes swinging wildly on his way down, Aleksander will deliver a quick, hard kick between his aggressor’s legs, which usually sends the guy tumbling backward onto the pavement. About seven times out of ten, a tailbone fracture results from the fall.
Step out, lean in.
In the Tackling Scenario (which is about to take place here), the manoeuvres are even simpler. As the guy barrels toward him, Aleksander merely steps out of the path of the attacker’s charge at the very last minute. His opponent will sometimes be bent forward far enough that Aleksander can deliver a spin-kick to the guy’s balls from behind as he passes; but if the guy isn’t leaning into it enough (or has very small balls), Aleksander cracks the guy’s tailbone with the steel toe of his black boot instead.
Step out, lean in.
In this scenario, the broken nose will be delivered from above, after the other guy hits the ground. And then, if Aleksander missed them on the first pass, he will retroactively kick his opponent in the testicles.
Step out, lean in.
It’s not about being tough. It’s not about being brave.
It’s about geometry. It’s about physics. It’s about mathematics.
Trajectory. Circumference. Deflection. Timing.
Step out, lean in.
The equation has always added up to this: Aleksander will remain standing; his assailant will not. Aleksander will remain uninjured, except maybe for some bruised knuckles, while his attacker will possess at least one (but usually all three) of the following modifications to his physiology: a broken nose, a broken tailbone, and traumatically injured testicles.
Now Captain Football is curled up in a quivering fetal ball on the cold, cracked pavement, coughing up vomit and blood. His upper lip is split, and his nose is certainly broken; Aleksander felt the cartilage snap against his knuckles. Aleksander landed his single punch and two kicks with the accuracy of sniper’s bullets; this one won’t be able to sit comfortably or blow his nose without pain for some time.
Predictably, a few of the buddies run over to aid their fallen comrade. A few others, the ones who were laughing the loudest less than a minute ago, advance on Aleksander.
“You’re dead, asshole!”
“So fucking dead!”
This is the point at which Aleksander reaches into his black leather jacket and then snaps open the switchblade.
The advance halts.
Aleksander stands with his feet wide apart, his knees bent, his arms stretched wide, as if he’s about to leap up into the misty air and fly away. The blade in his right hand glints amber from the sodium-vapour parking lot lights overhead.
Captain Football limps away with his brothers in arms. One of them calls out, “You’re gonna die, buddy.”
Aleksander says, “No, I will not.”
As they retreat toward a shining Dodge pickup truck, another teammate says, “We’ll find you, gimp.”
Aleksander says, “No, you will not.”
Another, who is helping to lift Captain Football over the tailgate, adds, “We know where you live, fucker.”
Aleksander says, “No, you do not.”
He doesn’t lower his arms or move his feet until the pickup truck has roared away, its red tail lights vanishing into the foggy air. Then Aleksander plunges headlong into the mist, the last figure to vanish from the scene, as always.
Step out, lean in.
No matter how close she stands to her tiny bedroom window, from whatever angle she looks, Clementine’s view of the outside world is now filled with the billboard.
The first advertisement to go up was for a local insurance agency. Beneath the company’s logo was a huge photograph of the office’s “Number One Sales Agent,” with her pimples and lady-moustache expertly airbrushed away. Beside her portrait, the words:
Brooklynn Tripp
Broker
One night, while Clementine was sleeping, someone with a can of black spray paint climbed the billboard’s tall iron frame and added the following:
Brooklynn Tripped and
Broker NECK!
Clementine gasped when she saw it through her bedroom window in the morning, and she giggled when she told her mother about it at breakfast.
Her mother reached across the table and slapped her face. “Vandalism is not funny,” she said. “Defacing the property of others is a sin.”
Well, technically, it was a sin to covet the property of others, not to deface it. Clementine was about to correct her mother on this point but then decided against it. She wasn’t in the mood to offer the other cheek.
“Besides,” her mother added, “they pay us a few dollars a month for the land that billboard’s on, and Lord knows, we need all the help we can get.”
From his seat at the kitchen table, Clementine’s father rasped, “I’m doin’ the best I can, woman.”
“Lord knows,” her mother said, to nobody in particular. “Lord knows.”
Her father wasn’t sure about what to do next. Should he call the police? The municipality? The billboard company? So he went to seek the counsel of Pastor Okonjo.
After praying, consulting the scriptures, and meditating on the issue, the pastor decided that it would be best to have the commercial advertising removed from the billboard altogether and to have church-approved messages pasted up there instead.
The pastor reasoned that, because the billboard was strategically located along the concession road that led to the church, many lost and wayward souls might be saved by the billboard’s divine placement; and, although Clementine’s father would lose his small cut of the advertising revenue, he would surely be compensated a hundredfold in Heaven for helping to communicate the Word of the Lord to His followers.
So, in letters four feet tall, the next message on the billboard read simply:
JESUS is COMING!
Pastor Okonjo was pleased. That would put a few extra bodies in the pews and a few extra dollars on the collection plate.
Within two nights, though, the message had become:
JESUS is COMING!
Look Busy!
Clementine’s father went to see Pastor Okonjo right away. The pastor, after once again praying, consulting the scriptures, and meditating on the issue, decreed that Clementine’s father would climb the billboard with a can of white spray paint and obliterate the offending words. The vandal would see that his blasphemy was being actively resisted, and the coward would move on to other victims with less pure resolve.
Clementine’s father did as he was instructed. He eradicated the offensive black words, the white paint jetting from the can with hissing, evangelical fury.
Yet, within another two nights, the message became:
JESUS is COMING!
Hide the booze!
Clementine’s father did not go to the pastor this time. This was personal now.
He climbed the frame again, and, with dignity and fervour, he once again sprayed good clean white over the offensive back letters.
Then, for the next week, Clementine’s father sat on the front porch at night with his twelve-gauge shotgun laid across his lap. This was his God-given property, and he would protect it from evil. He rocked back and forth, levelling his steely gaze at the billboard across the field, waiting to see if the vandal would have the audacity to reappear. He would not forgive those who trespassed against him.
By the evening of the seventh day, her father decided that the danger had passed, and he eventually came inside to watch reruns of 7th Heaven on TV.
&
nbsp; Clementine stayed up late that night, gazing through her small window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive spray-paint hoodlum. He never appeared, though, and eventually she lay back on her bed and, surrounded by dancing purple phalluses and gyrating pink vulvas, stirred her whirlpool until her desires were sucked under and drowned once again.
On the morning of the eighth day, the message on the billboard read:
JESUS is COMING!
Oh god, oh god, oh god!
* * *
Now it is Sunday, and today at church, the parishioners are particularly incensed that the vandal didn’t spell “God” with a capital G, and most are far too flustered to even mention the … the … connotation … in the vandal’s most recent blasphemy.
Pastor Okonjo, in one of his more rousing sermons, intones that the vandal has declared Holy War, and that reaction from the church will be swift and just.
Within a week, the billboard will have a new message:
JUDGMENT DAY is COMING
No one will have the gall to mess with that message, the pastor reckons. No one will have anything funny to say about that.
And, as it turns out, no one does. The vandal will not strike again.
In the shadowy back left corner of the church, a young man in a black leather jacket sits quietly in an otherwise unoccupied pew, casually twisting the simple silver ring that encircles his left-hand ring finger.
Clockwise, counter-clockwise. Clockwise, counter-clockwise.
No one in the agitated congregation seems to notice him, no one but Clementine, that is.
“Mother,” she asks at the end of the service, “are we staying for the after-service luncheon?”
“No,” her mother says, shooting an icy glance at Clementine’s father. “It’s cheaper for us to eat at home.”
“Well,” Clementine says, all saccharine sweetness, “would it be all right if I stayed behind to help the ladies pour the tea?”
Of course this is all right with her mother! She wants to see Clementine kept busy. The Devil makes work for idle hands.
As soon as she sees her parents drive away in their pickup truck, Clementine walks across the street to where the young man in the leather jacket sits on a park bench beside the cenotaph.
“So, you’re new to the church, aren’t you?”
“I’m pretty familiar to the church, actually,” he says, pausing to light a cigarette. “But if you mean that my presence is unfamiliar inside this particular building, then yes, you are correct.”
Slender tendrils of smoke curl around his wrist like ghostly serpents.
She asks him, “Is that black spray paint on your fingers?”
“Is that a halo hovering over your head?”
She blushes a little. “No. Definitely not.”
“Good,” he says. “Saints are boring. Most of them, anyway.”
“You know a lot of saints, do you?”
“All of ’em. Every single one.”
He holds the lit cigarette out toward her.
“I don’t smoke,” she says.
“Ah. Not a sinner, then.”
“I don’t think smoking’s a sin,” she says. “Spray painting graffiti on billboards probably isn’t, either. But I’m not sure that doing either one is good for your health in the long run.”
“I was just being funny. Jesus doesn’t mind. Neither does Brooklyn Tripp. They’ve both got a sense of humour.”
“How do you know that?”
He takes a long drag and then exhales white smoke. “I just do.” He raises the cigarette to his lips once again. “Want to sit?”
She does.
Her heart throbs. It’s like he’s from another time. Not from the days of her namesake great-grandmother, but not from this era, either. He is from someplace in between, a more liberated age, a place in time where Clementine wants to be.
“You should probably get some blinds for your bedroom window,” he says.
Clementine’s breath catches in her throat.
“Somebody might see you,” he says. “Somebody might start believing in love at first sight.”
Clementine’s mouth drops open. Could he see her in her bedroom from his perch upon the billboard? Clementine knows that she should find this weird. She should find this creepy. But she doesn’t. She finds it stimulating. She finds it sexy. She is filled with want. “You’ve got a beautiful mouth,” he says.
She is drawn to the calm confidence in his cool blue eyes. She wants to reach out and touch his sculptured-stone jaw. She longs to lean forward and kiss his round, moist lips.
She hears herself saying, “Thank you.”
“You aren’t going to run away now?”
“No.”
“Aren’t you afraid that I might be dangerous?”
“A little bit.”
“I’m only dangerous to those who intend to cause harm. And you don’t intend to harm anyone, do you?”
“No.”
As he raises his smoke once again, his silver ring glints in the afternoon sunlight.
“Is that a wedding ring?” Clementine asks. “Are you a married man?”
He tosses the cigarette aside. “Nah. I bought this ring at the pawn shop right up the street from here. I always like to pick up a little souvenir from each town I pass through.”
He twists the ring between the thumb and index finger of his right hand.
Clockwise, counter-clockwise. Clockwise, counter-clockwise.
Finally, it pops over the bulbous knuckle of his left-hand ring finger.
“The guy at the pawnshop said that some lumberjack — named Bobby, he thought — brought the ring in a while back. The guy had found it wedged into one of the seams of a log flume, of all places, so Bobby, if that was his name, traded it for a pewter whiskey flask. That was the story, anyway. Everything has a story. Every single thing.”
He offers the ring to Clementine. She takes it and reads aloud the inscription engraved inside the simple loop: “Forever More.”
“I think that the engraver might have made a mistake, though,” he says. “I think it should read ‘For Evermore.’ ”
“What’s the difference?” Clementine wonders.
“There’s a profound difference,” he says.
She extends her arm to hand the ring back to him, but he says, “Keep it. It’s yours.”
Clementine knows that the ladylike thing would be to protest, but she doesn’t. She closes her fingers around the ring and holds it against her chest.
“So,” she says, leaning toward him, “did you enjoy watching me sleeping?”
She is surprised when his face flushes. He looks away for a moment before he says, “I wasn’t watching. I just happened to see.” Then he grins a sly, mischievous little smile. “And you weren’t sleeping.”
Clementine’s jaw drops open again.
“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in a long, long time,” he says. “It’s the first honest moment I’ve seen in this town. It’s the first thing that anyone has done that wasn’t disguising itself as something else.”
Clementine knows that she should get up and walk away, run away even, but those eyes. Those lips. He generates some strange kind of gravity that holds her in his orbit.
For the seventh Sunday in a row, Clementine volunteers to stay behind to help at the after-service luncheon.
In the cab of the pickup truck, Clementine’s mother sighs. “Our girl is growing up.”
Her father nods as he steers the pickup around the ruts in the laneway. “She’s been a woman for some time now, Pearl. You were younger than she is when we got together.”
Pearl turns on the bench seat, reaches out to pat her husband’s thigh. “I’m sorry if I’m hard sometimes, Darryl. I do love you, y’know.”
Darryl grins shyly. �
��I know, Pearl. I know.”
He brings the truck to a gentle halt in front of the old farmhouse. It rocks back and forth on its rusty springs.
At the same moment, in the forest behind the cenotaph across the street from the church, Clementine is leaning back against the trunk of an ancient tree, entwined with Aleksander, rocking back and forth at a similar frequency. The silver ring lies between her breasts, on the same slender chain that carries her crucifix.
This is the first time that they have coupled like this. Aleksander has pleasured her in other ways: spiralling his dextrous tongue against her sweet spot as she lies back on the spongy ground with her legs spread wide, fingering her from behind as she stands with one leg wrapped around a smooth-barked tree trunk.
But this time is different. It’s beyond anything else. Clementine feels untethered from time, free in space. Each stroke fills her with a pulse of warm red light
Light on, light off. Light on, light off.
Light on.
Light on.
Light ON.
They collapse against the body of the tree, bonded together by shared heat and mingled sweat and the dénouement of mutual breathing.
When Clementine whispers, “Oh, God,” she means it. She is a believer once again.
“Well, well,” a voice rasps from over Aleksander’s shoulder, “what have we here?”
Aleksander spins around. Clementine pushes her dress back down below her knees.
It takes Aleksander a moment to recognize Captain Football and his posse; they have replaced their purple-and-white team jackets with dark, Sunday-best suits.
This will not be predictable. There is a new variable that changes the equation.
“Run, Clementine,” he whispers in her ear. “Run. Now. Go.”
Clementine runs. By the time she bursts out of the forest, Captain Football and his minions will have repaid Aleksander’s single punch and two kicks many, many times over.
Rockets Versus Gravity Page 2
