Finding the Worm

by Mark Goldblatt

  I’m kind of amazed, to be honest, that his mom even let him go outside so soon. But Quentin can be pretty stubborn—like the time, a couple of years ago, when he was teaching himself to make a yo-yo go around the world. It took him a week to learn that stupid trick, and he wound up with a black eye and a bloody lip from smacking himself in the face with the thing. But you know what? He got it.

  He came out this morning like nothing was wrong—unless you count the fact that he was rolling up Thirty-Fourth Avenue in a wheelchair. Eric was the first to notice him. We were hanging around on the corner of Parsons, the five of us, arguing about whether it was too early to ring Quentin’s doorbell, and then there he was, rolling up the block toward us. If you’d snapped a photo at that second, you’d have gotten five jaws hitting the pavement.

  But once the shock wore off, what were we supposed to do? For the next couple of hours, we just hung around on the corner of Parsons, yakking and arguing and flipping baseball cards. I mean, it’s a decent way to kill an afternoon, but like the song goes, it’s not “hot fun in the summertime.” Or even in March, for that matter. What made it worse was that the sun came out for the first time in a week, and the temperature warmed up to like sixty degrees, so it almost felt like summertime, and Quentin knew, even though no one said a word, that we were dying to head back to Ponzini. So he finally said, “C’mon, let’s do something.”

  The rest of us just kind of stared at him.

  But he wouldn’t let it go. “C’mon, guys, I’m sick of this corner.”

  Except what was the difference whether we stood around doing nothing on the corner or in Ponzini? Plus, doing nothing in Ponzini would feel worse, because Ponzini was where we did stuff.

  But Quentin kept after us, and when we wouldn’t listen, he got fed up and started to roll himself down the block in the direction of Ponzini. As he made the turn into the alley that led to the torn-down fence, he glanced back at us and shouted, “You guys coming or not?”

  So we followed him back to Ponzini. There was a game of tag going on when we got there. Victor Ponzini was running around, slow as molasses, and behind him was Mike the Bike, who’d left his bike at home for once, and behind him was Bernard Segal, who was doing something that you couldn’t even call running. He would’ve had to speed up to come to a stop.

  The three of them, at that moment, were chasing Beverly Segal.

  She was the first to notice us as we stood next to the torn-down fence. She stopped running, and then Victor caught up and tagged her, and then Mike crashed into his back, and then Bernard crashed into Mike’s back. It was comical to watch.

  “Hey, Quentin!” she called.

  He waved to her from the wheelchair.

  “I heard you got sick.”

  “Yeah,” he called back.

  “You feel better now?”

  “Yeah.”

  The second “yeah” made him cough.

  She looked straight at me. “Any of you clowns want to stretch your legs?”

  Lonnie shook his head. “Nah, we’re just going to watch.”

  “Have it your way,” she said, and then tore out. It took a couple of seconds for the other three to react, but then, slow as molasses, they started chasing her again. For the next minute, we stood by the torn-down fence and watched them.

  Then Quentin said, “Why don’t you guys get out there?”

  “C’mon,” I said. “They’re little kids.”

  “Beverly’s not.”

  “Yeah, but she’s still ticked off at us—at me.”

  “Then why’d she ask you to join in?” he said.

  “She asked all of us,” I said.

  “Then why don’t you do it?”

  “I don’t feel like it,” I said. “None of us do.”

  “C’mon, I’ll hold your jackets.”

  “Quent—”

  “Will you just go and do it!”

  I glanced at Lonnie, and Lonnie nodded, and then the two of us pulled off our jackets, handed them to Quentin, and trotted over to join the game. Howie, Shlomo, and Eric followed a few steps behind. I felt real guilty leaving Quentin in the wheelchair with a pile of jackets in his lap—I’m sure the rest of them did too. But if you think about it, either we were going to feel guilty, or Quentin was going to feel guilty. That was the choice we had.

  Plus, I’m not going to lie: it felt good to be running around, even if we were running around with a bunch of little kids. The sun was shining in my face and on the back of my neck, and my skin felt warm, and my clothes felt loose, and my heart was pumping. I even let myself get tagged a couple of times to keep the game interesting. But I didn’t chase Beverly, and she didn’t chase me. We steered clear of one another the entire time.

  It was maybe ten minutes later that Howie tackled Bernard Segal. Why he did it, who knows? Maybe he was sticking up for me because he’d seen Bernard poking his finger into my chest at Eric’s bar mitzvah, or maybe he was taking out years of frustration with Beverly on her kid brother. Or maybe he did it just because that’s what he does. Like I said, Howie’s a tackler. Whatever the reason, he’d just gotten tagged by Shlomo, and he turned and sprinted toward Bernard. Except instead of tagging him, he slammed into him and rode him to the ground.

  Then he rolled off Bernard and said, “You’re it!”

  Bernard sat up and crossed his arms over his chest. He wasn’t hurt, but you could see the shock on his face. I walked over to him and stuck out my hand. He looked up at me. His eyes had that wet look—when you’re not quite crying, but not quite not-crying either. I felt bad for him, so I said, in a low voice, “It doesn’t mean anything. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m not scared,” he said, then forced himself to smile.

  “Here, why don’t you tag me?”

  He reached up and tagged my hand.

  I turned and looked for someone to chase, but the game had ground to a sudden halt. Quentin had gotten out of his wheelchair and was jogging over to us. He jogged the entire distance, but he was out of breath. He coughed a few times. Not hacking coughs, just out-of-breath coughs.

  Lonnie sighed real loud, like he knew this would happen. He said, “What are you doing, Quent?”

  “C’mon, let’s go. I’m it.”

  But he started coughing again. These coughs were deeper and louder.

  “Quentin—”

  “I’m okay!” he shouted.

  Lonnie said, “Your dad said you have to use the wheelchair.”

  “You never cared what my dad said before,” Quentin shot back.

  “Well, I care now.”

  “He only said I have to use the wheelchair. Well, I used it to get here. You saw me do it. He never said I couldn’t get out of it.”

  “Look, you’re not playing—”

  “You’re not the boss of me!”

  “Put it this way,” Lonnie said. “If you play, we’re not playing.”

  “Fine with me,” Quentin said.

  “Have a good time, Quent.”

  Lonnie started walking away. He headed toward the wheelchair, which was where Quentin had put our jackets. The rest of us followed a couple of seconds later. That left Beverly, Bernard, Mike the Bike, and Victor Ponzini. I heard Quentin say, “All right, I’m it.… C’mon, where are you going?”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Beverly was walking away, and the sixth graders were following her. Quentin was standing at the far end of Ponzini, alone.

  “C’mon!” he yelled. “It’s just a game of tag!”

  Lonnie stopped walking and turned around. “That’s right. It’s just a game of tag. It’s just a stupid game of tag. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It means something to me!” Quentin called back.

  “You got out of the hospital two days ago. Give it a week, all right? We can meet back here next Sunday, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel. We can pick right up where we left off.”

  “Please, Lonnie!”

  “No!”

  “Please.�
�

  The sound of his voice went right through me. It was like his entire life was riding on one stupid game of tag.

  Lonnie stared him down. “You want to play tag?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You want to play right now?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lonnie started to walk back, and the rest of us just kind of stood where we were. It was hard to know if he was serious, or if he was going to grab Quentin and drag him back to the wheelchair. He walked past us and over to Quentin.

  “All right,” he said. “Hop on my back.”

  Quentin looked confused. “How come?”

  “We’re going to play tag,” Lonnie said.

  “C’mon—”

  “Will you just hop on my back?”

  “You can’t run with me on your back.”

  “Sure I can.”

  “Not fast enough to catch anybody.”

  Lonnie waved for the rest of us to come back. “Eric, you get on Shlomo’s back. Bernard, you get on Howie’s back. Mike, you get on Ponzini’s back. And Beverly, you get on Julian’s back.”

  For a couple of seconds, we weren’t quite sure if he actually meant it. We were glancing around at one another but not moving.

  “Just do it!” Lonnie yelled.

  So that’s what we did. You could tell Bernard didn’t want any part of Howie, but what could he say? The only one who grumbled was Shlomo, who thought he should be on top of Eric, but Lonnie said we’d switch off after a few minutes.

  It felt weird having Beverly climb on my back, especially since she wouldn’t look me in the eye beforehand. She just came up behind me, and I pulled my arms back, and then I felt her weight, and I grabbed the undersides of her legs. As soon as she was on my back, her hair fell across my face, and I got a whiff of her strawberry shampoo. I was going to tell her how nice it smelled, but I didn’t. It didn’t feel like the right time. Neither of us said a word.

  It was only after he saw the rest of us going along that Quentin climbed onto Lonnie’s back. Then Lonnie walked over to me, with Quentin riding him, and stopped about a foot away. He said, “Well, Quent?”

  “Well, what?” Quentin said.

  “Don’t you have something you want to say?”

  The light went on in Quentin’s eyes. He reached out and tagged Beverly’s shoulder. “You’re it!”

  Lonnie turned and ran off. I just stood there, getting used to the extra weight, until Beverly grabbed me by the hair and gave a soft tug. “Are you going to giddyup, Seabiscuit?”

  I started to run, and the rest of them started to scatter, and just like that, Lonnie had invented piggyback tag.

  It was more fun than you’d think. For one thing, Beverly had her arms wrapped around my neck, and she was holding on tight, and even if she was still mad at me, which I was guessing she was, she seemed to forget about it. For another thing, for once, I wasn’t the fastest guy in Ponzini. That was Lonnie, by far, because he was bigger and stronger than the rest of us, and because Quentin was still real skinny on account of being sick. You should’ve heard that guy laughing—Quentin, I mean. He was just about squealing, which makes sense, if you think about it, given that we were playing piggyback tag.

  After the first few minutes, we rested up and switched off, and Quentin got on my back, because he said he wanted to know what it felt like to be fast instead of just quick. I told him not to expect too much, but the thing was, I was warmed up by then, and Quentin felt like a feather, and he kept saying into my ear that he wanted to go faster, even when no one was chasing us, so I was running as fast as I could, and the wind was swirling around us, rushing by our faces, and then it got in right behind us, and it was like getting a hard push, and then, for a few seconds, it felt like I wasn’t carrying him, and I was almost running full speed, and he was laughing and squealing, and I could feel his heart beating into my back.

  It was the greatest game of tag I ever played.

  March 25, 1970

  Getting Beaten Up

  Quentin was itching to skip the bus ride home this afternoon. You couldn’t blame him, since the temperature was about sixty-five degrees and the sun was out for the fourth day in a row.

  If Quentin hadn’t been stuck in the wheelchair, we’d have walked home without thinking about it. But we did have to think about it, because he was stuck in the chair. Except then Quentin pointed out that if we walked home, we wouldn’t have to haul the chair onto and off the bus. That clinched it. So at three o’clock, the six of us gathered in front of the school, as usual, and then we walked right past the bus stop and kept going down Twenty-Sixth Avenue. Eric started off pushing Quentin, and Howie called, “Next!” and Shlomo called, “Next next!”

  The going was pretty slow for the first couple of blocks. Even without a wheelchair, the going is always slow at three o’clock. Twenty-Sixth Avenue gets jammed up, because both schools, P.S. 23 and McMasters, let out at the same time, and kids from kindergarten to ninth grade spill out onto the sidewalk, and they hang around in groups, or they wander toward their buses, or else they start walking home, and meanwhile the crossing guards are blowing their whistles, trying to keep them out of the street, and it’s just chaos.

  We’d gotten two blocks down Twenty-Sixth Avenue, to the corner of 146th Street, when we heard a shout behind us. I recognized Devlin’s voice even before I turned around. “Where are you guys going?”

  Then I turned around.

  He had about a half dozen of his ninth-grade friends with him, staring us down. Tagging along with them were at least another dozen kids, with more hurrying down the block toward us. They were coming in waves, from both McMasters and P.S. 23. The looks on their faces, the late arrivers, even more than the looks on the faces of Devlin and his friends, were the giveaway. They were waiting for something big to happen.

  Lonnie stepped out in front of us. “You guys got a problem?”

  “Nah,” Devlin said. “We just want to see the freak show.”

  “Then why don’t you look in the mirror?”

  “Don’t be like that, man. We came to make friends. Hey, look, it’s Barf Boy and the king of Egypt.…”

  “C’mon, Devlin, why don’t you go home?” I said.

  “Who said you could use my name, Twerpski?”

  “Okay, what do you want me to call you?” I said.

  That seemed to confuse him.

  Lonnie picked up on it right away. “How about knucklehead?”

  But Devlin ignored him. “How about you and me, Twerpski?”

  “He’s not a fighter, knucklehead,” Lonnie said. “How about you and me?”

  “Oh yeah, I forgot,” Devlin said. “Twerpski’s not a fighter … he’s a writer.”

  That got to me, the way he said “writer,” and I stepped out from behind Lonnie. “You’re right, Devlin. I’m a writer. Too bad you’re not a reader. Then maybe we could pass notes.”

  “That’s real funny—not!”

  “Wow, nice comeback. Did you make it up yourself?”

  “Shut up, Twerpski!”

  “See Devlin think,” I said in a flat Dick-and-Jane voice. “Think, Devlin, think.”

  “I said shut up!”

  “Hear Devlin yell. Yell, Devlin, yell.”

  “You’re dead!”

  He charged at me, but I dodged him.

  “See Devlin miss. Miss, Devlin, miss.”

  He charged me again and dove at my legs, but I jumped to the right, and he landed on his stomach on the front lawn of the house behind us.

  “See Devlin fall. Fall, Devlin, fall.”

  He scrambled to his feet. His face was beet red, and his hands were balled into fists. He charged me a third time. I dodged him again, and he tripped and fell onto the sidewalk. This time, he came up with two skinned palms, and his right pant leg was torn at the knee. The tear was a perfect flap, and you could see the first traces of blood starting to gather in the hole. The sight of the blood was like a jolt. It reminded me of when we egged Danley
Dimmel, of how bad I felt afterward.

  “Devlin, this is stupid. I don’t want to fight you—”

  That was as far as I’d gotten when one of Devlin’s friends hit me from behind and knocked me to the ground. I fell on my stomach, with my legs on the sidewalk and the rest of me on the lawn. The next second, I felt Devlin jump onto my back. I could tell it was him because no other human being is that bony. After that, there was total confusion.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lonnie rush over, but at least three of Devlin’s friends jumped him, and then I saw Howie, Shlomo, and Eric jump them, and then the rest of Devlin’s friends piled on, and that was when I started to feel Devlin’s fists hitting me in the back of the head and neck and shoulders. I turtled up as tight as I could, with my face in the grass, my hands cupped behind my neck, and my forearms over my ears, and waited for Devlin to get tired.

  Getting beaten up doesn’t hurt as much as you’d think. Once you get past the first shock, it kind of feels like a hard massage. I’m sure it would’ve been much worse if I’d landed on my back and Devlin was whaling away on my face. But to be honest, after the first few seconds, I was lying there thinking, Okay, he’s beating me up. So when is this thing going to be over?

  It was maybe ten seconds later that someone tackled Devlin and knocked him off me. The two of them rolled away, and I jumped up and backpedaled several steps.

  As I was doing that, I heard Devlin yell, “Whoa!” and right afterward, there was a sudden hush as the fighting stopped, and Devlin and everyone else were staring in the same direction.

  Quentin was kneeling on the lawn, about three feet from Devlin, trying to catch his breath. His wig had come off and was lying on the grass between the two of them. He didn’t have a single hair on his head.

  “Holy crap!” Devlin said. Before Quentin or anyone else could react, he snatched up the wig and flung it over his shoulder into the next yard. “The king of Egypt is a cue ball!”

  There was a roar of laughter.

  Quentin’s eyes were raging. He caught his breath enough to climb to his feet, and he took a step toward Devlin. “C’mon, fight me!”