by Dale Peck
Throughout the procedure the boy didn’t risk another peek at his enemies. By now he’d crossed the street, was so close to them he caught snatches of their conversation. He didn’t know what he’d’ve expected them to be talking about—girls maybe, or baseball, or beating him up—but he was surprised by what he heard.
George Armstrong Custer was headstrong, arrogant, and vain, Robert Sampson intoned as if reading straight from the cavalry manual. He marched into enemy territory against orders and without adequate forces. He got what he had coming.
George Armstrong Custer? As in Custer’s Last Stand? Little Big Horn, Crazy Horse, every U.S. soldier dead and Custer’s blond hair hanging on a peg in a teepee like an abandoned baseball cap—that Custer?
For a moment the boy thought Robert must have been speaking for his benefit, especially when Vinnie said, Me scalp white man good! but then Bruce St. John said, Hey, any-a youse guys know who won the Yankees game last night? and he relaxed just a little. By then he’d breasted his enemies, the brim of his father’s hat had slipped below his eyebrows but he dared not push it up with one of his pitch- and dirt-flecked hands, sweat stuck his shirt to his back and seemed to flood his drawers, and he would have sworn there was mud leaking out the bottom of his pants. He could see Bruce’s battered canvas sneakers out of the corner of his left eye, the frayed cuffs of his black jeans, and when Bruce lifted one of his feet the boy nearly bolted. But all Bruce did was use his left foot to scratch the top of his right, and then he set it down again. And then the boy was past them, two steps, three, the point of his cane gouged chunks of dry dirt and brittle grass out of the schoolyard beneath the boy’s weight and there was nothing fake about its tremor. It vibrated like the gearshift in the old man’s truck when it idled at a stoplight.
Hey Bruce you live in a cave or something? The boy was so close he could hear Vinnie drag on his cigarette. Yankees slaughtered them, eleven-three. But by now Bruce was on to something else—something feminine, judging by his whistle, and the mocking laugh that responded to it.
When he could no longer hear their voices behind him the boy picked up his pace a little. He hadn’t thought about what to do with the old man’s reeking hat and coat beforehand. He could put them in his locker, he thought—but both Robert Sampson and Bruce St. John had lockers almost directly opposite his. They might see him. Then up ahead he saw the bulletin board used to announce future events, PARENT-TEACHER CONF 9-27 FALL H’COMING OCT 30. He ducked down behind it, whipped off coat and hat and stuffed them in the straggled prickly bushes clumped around the sign’s masonry pedestal. A couple of girls he didn’t recognize looked at him funny but didn’t say anything, and the boy was halfway up the school steps before he realized he was still carrying the stick. He tossed it in the hedges beneath the open windows of the receptionist’s office, narrowly missing a couple of boys in pressed white shirts and dark narrow ties.
Hey watch it there pipsqueak! You could take out somebody’s eye!
The boy’s dirty hands curled into fists but just then the warning bell rang. He whipped around, saw Vinnie Grasso grinding out a cigarette on the sole of his shoe. Robert Sampson and Bruce St. John were already cutting across the grass toward the door. Trying not to run, he headed off for first period.
He waved at Lois during morning recess where she was jumping rope with a group of second graders before winning six cents pitching pennies, ran into Joanie and Edi at lunchtime. Joanie had an apple she’d saved for him from last night, but Edi looked at him so plaintively he ended up giving it to her—and besides, the cafeteria monitor had taken one look at his hands and announced that lunch was a privilege the boy hadn’t earned today. Of his three enemies, he only had class with Bruce St. John—arithmetic, Mr. Humboldt. Mr. Humboldt was also the vice principal and served as assistant coach to the high school football team, and there was a story that he’d once hung a boy by his belt off one of the hooks at the back of the room for talking during class and left him there for the custodial staff to take out with the trash. It was the safest forty-five minutes of the boy’s day, marred only by the numbing dullness of fractions, decimals, long division.
When the last bell rang he didn’t bother dumping his books in his locker. Just ran straight for the exit in one of those great universal rushes—to the Red Sea, across homesteadable prairie, out of the starting blocks. Or, in the boy’s case, the race to beat the barbarians inside the city walls. He knew there was safety in numbers, or at any rate invisibility, and he let himself be swept along by the wave of arms and legs and hairspray and voices until he reached the bulletin board. The coat and hat were where he’d left them, and he’d just kneeled down and dropped his books to the ground and slipped his right arm through the coat’s sleeve when he felt a hand around his left. Fingers that felt thick as hot dogs curled all the way around the thin flesh of the boy’s upper arm, and even without looking the boy knew the hand was too big to belong to Vinnie Grasso or one of the other boys.
The first thing he saw when he turned was a pair of thick thighs in dark trousers. He had to crane his head all the way back to see the face of Mr. Humboldt towering above him. The collar of his shirt had flipped up on one side, revealing the noose of his dark red tie. From the boy’s vantage it looked as if Mr. Humboldt’s round head was a soap bubble poised on the end of its blowstick.
Mr. Humboldt lifted the boy to his feet as though he were a toddler that had wobbled to its knees. Now the boy was faced with the buttons of his teacher’s blue pinstriped shirt, straining to hold the expanse of his stomach in place; the flap of his wide red tie curled in at the edges like the tongue of a tired dog. Beyond him, the initial flood of students had already thinned to a stream.
I believe it’s Mr. Peck, is it not?
The boy swallowed but didn’t say anything. He’d never been this close to the math teacher before. Mr. Humboldt was fatter than he’d realized, but that didn’t lessen his impression of enormous strength. It just made him creepier. Mr. Humboldt looked like a giant baby, the kind who throws temper tantrums and beats its doll’s head into the ground as though it were a drumstick. He squinted now, his small eyes disappearing into the folds of his white cheeks.
May I ask what you’re doing? Is there a school scavenger hunt I don’t know about?
The boy looked down at his father’s coat. Even though it hung off one arm, it was obviously too big for him, not to mention too warm for a day like today. In the bright light of day the boy could see it was stained with who knew what—the smears ran the gamut from white to brown to red to black—and the ragged wool itself had gone shiny with age, until the coat had acquired a rubbery sheen. Its time outside seemed to have done it some good though, at least as far as the smell went. It didn’t reek nearly as badly as the boy remembered from the morning.
The boy looked back up at Mr. Humboldt.
It’s my dad’s coat.
Mr. Humboldt opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked at the boy’s coat again. It was not the kind of coat you’d say belonged to your father unless it really did.
Well, uh, yes. Mr. Humboldt licked his lips, then wrinkled his nose. You should probably get it back to him, don’t you think?
Mr. Humboldt let go of the boy’s arm and stepped to one side. His body was so large it seemed like a curtain was being pulled open on a stage, and there, behind him, were Vinnie Grasso and Bruce St. John and Robert Sampson. They were just descending the steps at the far end of the sidewalk, Vinnie and Robert laughing about something, Bruce scanning the schoolyard for—
There he is!
By now the students had trickled down to ones and twos, and Bruce’s voice carried all the way down the sidewalk. The three boys started to run toward him, then slowed to a walk when they registered that it was Mr. Humboldt who stood between them and their prey. They didn’t stop though. Robert Sampson had a smirk on his face and Vinnie Grasso smacked his right fist into the palm of his left hand while Bruce St. John, the most timid of the three, shoved his h
ands in his pockets and lagged a little behind the other two.
Mr. Humboldt— the boy began, but then something stopped him.
He thought again of the dilemma the stick had brought to mind. It wasn’t that he didn’t know how to ask for help: he just didn’t know whether he wanted that help for himself, or against his enemies. He wanted … he didn’t want to have to ask. He wanted Mr. Humboldt to offer to protect him. Wanted it badly enough to seal his lips shut and stare at his math teacher with wide-open pleading eyes.
Yes Dale?
Mr. Humboldt wrinkled his nose again. He looked at the boy impatiently, if not simply with distaste.
Go on now, he said when the boy still didn’t speak. Get on home.
By now Vinnie and Robert and Bruce had stationed themselves on the opposite side of the sidewalk. Vinnie had tucked a cigarette behind his ear as though he were Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront and Bruce hung even farther back, his glance shifting nervously between his friends’ backs and Mr. Humboldt’s. As Mr. Humboldt turned toward the door they shuffled to the left Three Stooges style, keeping out of the math teacher’s line of vision. The boy knew he had only a few seconds’ head start and turned and started running. It was half a block to Fifth Avenue, where the boy had the choice of turning left and trying to lose them in the Barrens or turning right and running for home. It was his shoes that made up his mind. As soon as he’d started running his feet had protested inside the pinching leather, and at Fifth he veered right, running across the street at a wide diagonal.
In a fight he didn’t stand a chance—at least not when there were three of them—but in a race he knew from experience the three boys behind him could never catch him. For a moment he even allowed himself to enjoy the chase, too tight shoes or no. He sucked in air through his mouth and shot it out his legs as though they were pistons, and in his mind’s eye the old man’s ridiculous coat flapped behind him like the cape of Zorro. He even took the time to turn and flip off his pursuers once he’d crossed Fifth, and when he did he saw that the other boys had already given up the chase. But not because they knew they were outgunned. Instead they stood on the corner of the schoolyard, Robert Sampson and Bruce St. John methodically tearing pages out of the schoolbooks he’d dumped by the bulletin board, Vinnie Grasso holding the old man’s hat by the brim like a prop in a vaudeville show. As soon as he saw the boy was looking, he lifted his fist with a flourish and punched it through the crown, and then he waved his hand in front of his crinkled nose and threw the hat into the street like a frisbee. It landed ten feet in front of the boy, the top of the ripped crown angling up like the lid on a half-opened can of peas. Across the street the pages of the boy’s books fell straight to the ground. There was no breeze, he realized then. The old man’s coat had fallen closed around his body, encircling him in a cocoon of hot dead air, and the pages of the boy’s books lay on the dirt as still as fallen tombstones—and when he remembers that the boy starts in the bed in his uncle’s house, suddenly remembering the broken windowpanes in the garage door from early this morning. It occurs to him that he is even farther away from home than he’d realized.
The threesome’s obsession with the boy was inexplicable, coming and going on a schedule he never could predict or parse. There had been no singular incident to start it off, nor did their altercations seem to have any shape or goal. It was simply a pitstop in their daily routine, the way some people walk to the refrigerator and stare into it, letting the sight of food tell them whether they’re hungry for a glass of milk or a baloney-and-cheese sandwich. Today was a light snack day. Within a few minutes the boys had turned their backs on him, left his half-shredded books on the ground behind them. Only Bruce St. John looked back every once in a while to see if the boy dared come after his property. But all the boy did was put his hands in the pockets of the old man’s coat, where the knuckles of his right hand knocked against something hard. Perhaps the boy was still trying to figure out how victory had so suddenly been turned into defeat, but it wasn’t until he’d pulled the object out of the pocket that he saw it was an empty bottle of the old man’s medicine. He stared at it for a moment, then lobbed it as hard as he could at the backs of the three boys. By then they were so far away they didn’t hear it hit the sidewalk behind them. The bottle exploded when it struck the concrete, seemed almost to disintegrate. As soon as the shards stopped moving they became invisible and, retrieving his father’s ruined hat, the boy headed for home.
Perhaps he was still distracted. The boy doesn’t remember now, lying in his cousin’s bed on his uncle’s farm. How could he possibly have forgotten the two most important facts of his parents’ lives? His father’s medicine, his mother’s—
What have you got on?
The boy looked up at her. She stood in the open door of their house, the baby cradled in one arm.
Good lord. You look like Hobo Joe.
Gregory’s head lay on their mother’s shoulder facing away from him. His hair was long and slack, the ends just starting to curl the way the boy’s hair did, and Lance’s too, when they went for more than a few weeks without a haircut. The lanky strands were echoed in the shape of Gregory’s thin arms hanging limply on either side of his body. The boy realized his brother was sleeping in his mother’s arms. His aching feet carried him inexorably toward her.
She screwed up her face, stared at his coat. Is that—She stopped, looking at the hat now. He was close enough that she was able to grab it off his head, and when she did the ripped brim puckered up in a shape that mirrored and mocked her sneer. The boy didn’t remember putting the hat back on his head either.
Is this your father’s hat?
The boy looked down at her feet. Watched as one rose from the floor in its thick-soled black shoe and kicked him in the shin.
Look at me when I’m talking to you! Is this your father’s hat?
The boy looked up at her. Inside the pockets of the old man’s coat his hands balled into fists but he kept them there, hidden. He thought of the bottle of the old man’s medicine, wished he’d saved it until now.
Why you—
His mother hit him in the face with the hat in her fist. The felt was soft if scratchy, the rancid odor of the old man’s scalp almost worse than the abrasive rasp across his skin. The boy shut his eyes against the blows as his mother swung back and forth, smacking one cheek and then the other, and then all at once she stopped. When the boy opened one eye he saw that the ripped crown had separated from the brim and lay on the ground a few feet away. The open ring of the brim was crunched in his mother’s clenched fist like a wobbly figure eight and Gregory, awakened by the commotion, looked at him blearily, rubbing his eyes. He stared at the boy blankly and then closed his eyes and turned his head back onto his mother’s shoulder.
Go get the hose, his mother said.
She was impatient that day: she beat him while he was still wearing the old man’s coat, and the tattered but still thick wool protected his back from the bite of the metal coupling at the end of the hose. But she beat him again when he got home from work that night and couldn’t produce any pay for the last two days, refusing to believe him when he said that Mr. Krakowski had docked his wages for coming in late. This time he had on just his undershirt, and he had to sleep on his stomach that night, and when at some point Lance’s arm fell across his back his own cry of pain woke him from sleep. She beat him the next morning when he asked her for money to replace the books that had been ruined the day before—undershirt, outer shirt, and his jacket worn in anticipation, but his undershirt was still stuck to his back when he pulled it off that evening after everyone else was asleep. He slept on his stomach again, to keep from staining the sheets with his own blood, and then the weekend came and he was mostly able to avoid her. Monday dawned a little cooler than the week before. There were still wisps of fog on the ground when the boy went to school that morning, and that afternoon Vinnie and Robert and Bruce ambushed him and cut his lip open and ripped a button off his shirt befo
re he was able to wriggle out of their grasp and run away. They were more persistent that day. They chased him all the way home, and they weren’t that far behind—those damn shoes!—when the boy dodged round the fallen shade tree and turned up the front walk, only to be stopped by the sight of his mother in the open door. She held the hose in one hand, the shirt he’d worn last week in the other, and like a dart to the bull’s-eye his gaze went straight to the bloodstain on the collar. Vinnie and Robert and Bruce literally ran into him as they rounded the fallen shade tree, knocking him to the ground and piling on him before Bruce noticed the boy’s mother in the door. The boys stopped what they were doing but didn’t get up. Instead they looked at her expectantly, and the boy on his back beneath his assailants looked as well, stared for a full second at the big woman standing in the entrance to the funny little eight-sided house before she threw his shirt on the lawn and turned her back on him and closed the door behind her.
When the memory releases him from its grip the boy finds himself back in the strange house. He has kicked the quilt off at some point and lies in a ball, shivering, and he retrieves the quilt from the foot of the bed and spreads it over him, and then he peels his ears for some sound from his uncle or Aunt Bessie. He doesn’t know how long he’s been asleep. Perhaps they are sleeping already in the room behind his. Then:
I suppose you’re right Bess. I’ll call Lloyd in the morning, tell him to come get the boy.
