by JF Freedman
“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” I asked him, talking fast.
He looked at me for a second.
“You talking to me, kid?”
“You’re on the football team, right? I saw you play against Maryland last year, didn’t I?”
You always ask a big guy if he’s on the football team. Even if he isn’t it makes him feel good, like he’s this big stud jock.
“No,” he answered, like the question embarrassed him almost. Maybe he’d tried out and hadn’t made it.
“You look like a football player to me,” I told him. “A good one.” A little flattery never hurts, I learned that early on.
“I play lacrosse,” he said, trying to come on real modest-like.
“Bet you’re good, too,” I said.
“Good enough. I start.”
He was smiling. Everybody likes to brag on himself.
“I knew it,” I crowed triumphantly. “I saw you play against Hopkins last year, didn’t I? You probably scored a mess of goals.”
Wrong move. His face clouded up right away.
“I missed the Hopkins game,” he said. I could hear the anger rising in his voice. “Lousy demerits. Cost me my letter.”
“Hey, you’ll get it this year, no sweat,” I told him. I was getting nervous—we were almost at the front door.
“Shake it, Maguire,” one of the other ones said to my mark, “the bus for the Colts game leaves in half an hour.”
“Take me in with you,” I pressed, hearing the begging tone in my voice. Maybe he’d take pity on me, as long as he got me inside I didn’t give a shit how.
“No.” He walked faster, trying to get away.
“Listen, I’m not kidding, it’s simple, just tell the checker at the door I’m your brother, I do it all the time, nobody cares.”
“Forget it.” He pushed me away as he walked through the door.
It was that damn Hopkins game. I’ve got to learn to keep my stupid mouth shut once I’m ahead.
“Fuck off, lardass,” I yelled after him, “the only team you’ll ever get a letter from is the beat-your-meat team.”
He spun on his heel like he was going to chase me, but I was already gone. He couldn’t have caught me if he’d chased me clear to Baltimore. He really did have a fat ass, he was probably called lardass all the time, he didn’t want some kid reminding his friends about it.
The morning was slipping by. I should’ve gone into town and eaten, but I wanted to eat here, it was like something inside of me had to have it. I could smell the hot cakes and bacon and sausage aromas drifting out from inside. I was so hungry I could’ve eaten a horse, tail and all.
Then I saw him—the mark of all time, this skinny little guy wearing glasses that looked like Coke-bottle bottoms, they were so thick. I didn’t know you could get into the Naval Academy if your eyes were that bad. Maybe they hadn’t been as bad when he came, maybe they got bad from all the studying you have to do. You have to work your ass off to get through four years here. You’ve got to work your ass off and really be smart at the same time.
He was a complete wet-shit, that’s the only honest description you could give him. No way this pussy was a jock. The only sport he’d be good for would be tiddlywinks. I could run rings around him on the obstacle course, I knew that for sure. This poor guy probably didn’t have a friend in the world. He’d be happy to have company for breakfast.
I strolled up to him, synchronized my steps with his.
“Today’s take-a-buddy-to-breakfast day, okay?” I told him in a low voice, talking fast out of the side of my mouth.
He looked at me kind of strangely but didn’t say anything; he probably hadn’t ever had anyone want to eat breakfast with him before. I was going to do him a favor, to tell you the truth.
“Just tell the guy checking the door I’m your brother,” I explained, “they don’t give a shit on Sundays, I’ll shine your brass for you if you bring me in, that’s a good deal.”
The guy cracked a smile. I had him, I knew it. I fell in lock-step with him as we hit the door together.
“I’m your brother, got it?” I instructed him under my breath. You’ve got to be patient with these guys sometimes, they’ve got their heads way up in the clouds, all the studying they do.
We passed through the door into King’s Hall, which is the actual dining room. This asshole nodded to the checker without saying a word, he just kept going. The checker leaned over and grabbed me by the collar.
“I’m his brother!” I called to the dumb bastard’s back: “Hey, tell him!”
The checker was this stout, happy-go-lucky-looking plebe. He smiled kind of sympathetically to me.
“Sorry, kid.” He pushed me away.
I looked inside. The mark was standing in the hallway, talking to another midshipman, another loser from the looks of him. They must’ve been charter members in the Annapolis loser’s club.
“Asshole,” I muttered under my breath. I was pissed off, no way I was going to let him get away with treating me like that, so I grabbed a handful of snow, made a hard ball out of it, and threw a Johnny Unitas spiral into the doorway, right at his scalped head.
“Hey!” he yelled, startled and angry.
I took off, running across the quad. He was a wet shit but he was still bigger and stronger than me. Stupid asshole—served him right. Like another order of pancakes and sausage would hurt anyone. When I’m a midshipman I’ll take in any kid that asks. I’ll go find kids and bring them in. I’ll be the best friend here a kid could ever have.
The Severn River was choppy, big dark-green waves slamming against the breakwater. There was another storm coming in tonight, I can tell when the weather’s going to turn shitty, it’s usually when I’m out on the road. I’d have to make sure I hit the highway early enough to hitch a ride while it was still light out, otherwise I could be standing there with my thumb hanging out all night long.
I walked along the embankment, hunched over against the wind. My jacket isn’t all that warm, it’s just a car coat for the fall, I don’t have a real winter jacket. The one I lost was a good one, but my old man didn’t feel like throwing good money away after bad, was how he saw it, meaning I’d lose another one. That’s one of the things I really like about my old man, how much he believes in me.
The boats on the river were drifting in the water, their mooring lines straining tight against the piers, the masts bare. It was quiet—the only sounds were the windblown whitecaps moving across the water, slapping against the sides of the hulls. One halyard had got unfastened, snapping back and forth against itself like a bullwhip.
I bought a couple of hot dogs off a stand down by where the Academy keeps their racing sailboats: high-masted yawls, brought up out of the water, dry-docked for the winter. The rolls were stale—the vendor must’ve been hanging onto them since last weekend, waiting for some hungry sucker like me to take them off his hands. I ate the hot dogs and threw most of the rolls away for the seagulls.
The sun finally came out around midafternoon, but the clouds were still hovering. The snow was half-melted, turning to slush. I hate it when snow melts like that. Somehow all the dog shit in the world surfaces under the slush, it’s like one big carpet of dog crap. I drifted around the campus, looking at the families that had come down to be with their sons. Some of the families had kids my age. They always look like they belong here, like they fit in. I think that’s part of my problem—I don’t look like I fit in.
For a while I played in a pickup basketball game with some boys my age. They didn’t want me to, I could tell, but they were too chickenshit to keep me out. They played this finesse game, fancy dribbling and stuff like that. My style is to put my head down and go for the basket and everybody get the hell out of my way. I call a lot of fouls, too. Needless to say they weren’t real happy with my coming in and upsetting their little applecart. We played one game of twenty-one, then they picked up their ball and left. I didn’t have a ball of my own, so there wasn’
t much point in sticking around there.
By the time I wound up back at the obstacle course the sun was fading fast. It didn’t matter—I could run it blindfolded if I wanted to. I ran it hard, really attacking it, punishing it, running as hard and fast as I could until I ran out of gas and had to finally stop, bent over double, sucking in the air, my hands on my knees. It feels good, running hard like that, sucking in air so hard it feels like your lungs are burning.
I ran it one more time. I didn’t much feel like it, but I did it anyway.
TWO
IT WAS COLDER THAN shit out and snowing again. I couldn’t get a lift to save my life. I felt like some stray dog left out in the rain to fend for itself, like those dogs you see whose owners don’t want them anymore and just leave them by the side of the road, chuck them out of the car without even looking back. They come up to you with this begging kind of look, their tails between their raggedy legs, all dirty and matted up, kind of whimpering and whining, expecting you to kick them. That’s about how I felt right then.
I don’t get rides as easy as I used to. I hit my growth spurt last year and put on a good four inches. I grew so fast I outgrew all my clothes; I looked like the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. It’s especially bad at night, when you’re standing out there in the dark on Defense Highway, ’cause the only light is when a headlight hits you from a car going by and by then it’s too late for them to stop. I don’t look like a kid anymore, that’s the problem. When I was a little kid, even last year, rides would come real easy, not only men drivers but women, too, they’d see this kid standing out there with his thumb sticking out, looking all forlorn like Little Orphan Annie, and they’d get feeling guilty and motherly and they’d pull over and take a look at me to make sure I wasn’t some midget ax murderer or something and then once I was in the car they’d ask where I was going and where I lived and did my parents know I was out by myself at night and all that other motherly shit. I’d make up some story for them, whatever popped into my head. It was usually a good one. One time this woman started crying, I laid such a load of pathetic shit on her.
Finally I got a ride from some guy driving this raggedy-ass milk tanker heading into D.C. from the Eastern Shore. It was an old Mack in serious need of a ring job, the smoke was coming out the exhaust so black you couldn’t hardly see out the little back window of the cab. Not only that but the guy had a serious case of the farts—I had to crack my window, the fart smell was so putrid. The funny thing was, I don’t think he even knew he was doing it. He was a real farmer, this guy.
“Ravensburg,” he said when I told him where I was going, “I can drop you there, night like this rides’re gonna be hard to come by.” He had one of those super-thick Eastern Shore accents, the kind even people from other parts of Maryland can’t hardly understand. The only reason I can is because my mother’s people came from Tilghman Island originally, which is this real neat little island over on the Eastern Shore where they do oyster fishing in these old sailboats called skipjacks. Her people weren’t oyster fishers, though; my mom gets seasick just looking at a boat.
Anyway, big fucking deal, he can drop me there. Defense Highway, the road we were on, which is the only road between Annapolis and Washington, goes through Ravensburg. Splits it right down the center, in fact. The way he put it, it was like he was doing me a big favor, going out of his way for me. I hate it when people act like they’re doing you a big favor when they aren’t doing jack-shit. Beggars can’t be choosers, though, not when you’re out there thumbing in a snowstorm.
“Bum one of your smokes?” I asked. He had a pack of Chesterfields sitting up on the dash. I personally can’t stand Chesterfields, but I needed a smoke to calm my nerves and to cut the fart odor.
He gave me a funny look, like he didn’t want to, but he did. It’s funny how people are, they won’t want to do something like let you bum one of their cigs but they won’t come out and say no, they’ll just give you one of these looks that’s supposed to do it for them. And then you’re supposed to know that the look means “I don’t want to” and not bum one, or whatever it is you asked for they didn’t want to give you. But I don’t go for that, not if I really wanted it, and I really wanted that Chesterfield, although normally I wouldn’t touch one with a ten-foot pole, so I just pretended like I didn’t understand the “look” routine, and slid one out of his pack.
“Where you been?” he asked after I fired it up and blew a smoke ring. I blow the best smoke rings of any kid in my class, it’s one of my specialties.
“Annapolis,” I told him. “The Naval Academy.”
“Uh huh,” he said, like the Naval Academy was no big deal.
“My brother’s a midshipman,” I elaborated.
“Oh, yeah?” That impressed him—kind of. Like I said, he was a real farmer, having a midshipman for a brother had to impress someone like him.
“He’s a middie second-class,” I continued, “he graduates next year.”
He didn’t comment on that. Probably still worrying about that one pathetic Chesterfield.
“He’s captain of his company. Actually of his whole brigade. He’s on the football team, too. Halfback.”
That got his attention. The funny thing was, if he’d known anything at all about the Naval Academy he’d have busted me there and then, because you don’t get to be a brigade commander until your senior year. But he was so stupid he didn’t even know that.
“I must’ve seen him play last year,” he said. “I went to the Maryland game.”
“Right,” I answered, getting into it, “that was him. He had a real good game, even though he was only a sophomore.”
“Maryland creamed ’em,” the driver said, real pissed-off, “nobody from Navy had a good game the Maryland game.” He said it like it was my fault Maryland creamed Navy last year.
“He had a better game than anyone else,” I said, quick to defend my “brother,” “anyway, they’re gonna be good this year. He might make All-American.”
The driver looked over at me kind of suspicious, like he thought I was bullshitting him but wasn’t sure.
“What did you say his name was?” he asked. “Your brother?”
“Tolliver,” I lied. It slid right off my tongue. “Peter Tolliver.”
“Oh, sure. I’ve heard of him. Everybody’s heard of him. There was a big article in the Sun’s sports section about him last fall.” His tone of voice was suddenly a lot more respectful.
“I ride the team bus when they’ve got a game in Baltimore,” I continued, really into my own bullshit now, when I get on a roll I can talk your ears off and make you believe it. “They eat breakfast early Saturday morning and then they get on the team bus up to Baltimore. I eat breakfast with them and ride up on the bus.”
“Like the team mascot,” he chipped in. I had him eating out of my hand.
We drove a little ways without talking. It was snowing good, he had to pay attention to the road.
“It ain’t none of my bidness,” he said, looking at me again, at my raggedy jacket and all, “but this is lousy weather for a kid to be hitchhiking in. How come your parents didn’t come up with you?”
I fidgeted around in my seat like I was embarrassed, which I was, kind of, but not because of the reason he thought.
“My father’s dead,” I said real low, like I didn’t want to, “he got killed in Korea. He was a fighter pilot in the Marines. He got shot down over North Korea.”
“Jesus,” he muttered.
“My mother has to work weekends,” I went on. When I get going on a story I’m like a runaway freight train, I can’t stop even if I want to. “She sews clothes. She’s never seen my brother play.”
“Damn.”
“That’s why it’s real important for me to go. So I can come home and tell her all about it. She listens on the radio, though.”
“It’s a shame she can’t get one weekend off to see him,” he said, real sympathetic-like, “especially since you live so close. Not many
mothers have a son who’s starting halfback for one of the best teams in the country.”
“It wouldn’t make any difference,” I told him, my voice getting real quiet. “She’s blind. She’s been blind ever since my father died. It’s in her head is what the doctors say. Like once he died there wasn’t anything for her to want to see anymore.”
He had to jerk the steering wheel real hard then, because he’d practically driven off the road when he heard that.
“Jesus.”
I thought he was going to cry, he sounded so sad.
“The doctors hope someday she might be able to see again,” I told him. “If she can ever get over my father’s dying.”
He let me off in front of the elementary school. It was snowing to beat the band, I felt cold as soon as I opened the door.
This car coat of mine just doesn’t do the job, not when it’s snowing and freezing like this.
“Thanks for the ride, sir,” I told him politely. I actually did appreciate it, I could still be standing in Annapolis with my thumb out, freezing my cookies off.
“That’s okay, kid.”
A sudden gust of wind blew under my jacket, making me shiver. I pulled it tight. My mom had wanted to get me a decent jacket at the beginning of the school year but my old man nixed it, next year would be soon enough, he’d said, times are tough and money doesn’t grow on trees, he’s always saying stupid shit like that, plus of course I’d lost my other jacket. “He’s a regular absent-minded professor,” he’ll say, “except he ain’t no professor, not with his piss-poor grades.” Then he’ll go on about how after the bare necessities, like the house payment, there’s never anything left, which is a crock of shit, he has a steady job at the Government Printing Office and makes good money. “There’s always money for Four Roses,” my mother rags on him. Her voice is hoarse, deep as a man’s, more from the constant ragging on him she does than the two packs of Kents she smokes a day, “there’s always money for Jim Beam, how come there’s always money for whatever you can pour down your goddamned throat but the kids got to walk around looking like we’re on tobacco road.” That’s an exaggeration, of course, there’s plenty of kids in my school who actually are from tobacco road and we don’t look anything like them. My parents fight all the time, he’ll knock her upside her head and she’ll throw a frying pan or something at him and then she’ll start crying. She hates looking poor. My old man doesn’t give a shit, though, he’ll tell her if she don’t like it she can lump it. That’s one of his favorite expressions—it’s about the best he can do, he doesn’t have a real good vocabulary, I know twice as much as he does already and I’m only in the ninth grade.
