by Betsy Byars
“I don’t know.”
“You must want trouble,” Ezzie said. “Like my grandfather. He’s always provoking people. The bus driver won’t even pick him up anymore.”
“No, I don’t want trouble.”
“Then, why did you—”
“I don’t know.” Then he sagged again and said, “I didn’t even know I had done it really until I’d finished. I just looked at the picture of Neanderthal man and thought of Hammerman. It does look like him, Ezzie, the sloping face and the shoulders.”
“Maybe Hammerman doesn’t know you did it though,” Ezzie said. “Did you ever think of that? I mean, who’s going to go up to Hammerman and tell him his name is on the prehistoric man chart?” Ezzie leaned forward. “Hey, Hammerman,” he said, imitating the imaginary fool, “I saw a funny thing about you on the prehistoric man chart! Now, who in their right mind is going to—”
“He was right behind me when I did it,” Mouse said.
“What?”
“He was right behind me,” Mouse said stiffly. He could remember turning and looking into Hammerman’s eyes. It was such a strange, troubling moment that Mouse was unable to think about it.
Ezzie’s mouth formed the O, made the sympathetic sigh. Then he said, “And you don’t even know what you did it for?”
“No.”
Ezzie sank down on the steps beside Mouse. He leaned over his knees and said, “You ought to get out of that habit, that writing names and drawing arrows, you know that? I see those arrows everywhere. I’ll be walking down the street and I’ll look on a building and I’ll see the word DOOR written in little letters and there’ll be an arrow pointing to the door and I know you did it. It’s crazy, labeling stuff like that.”
“I never did that, Ez, not to a door.”
“Better to a door, if you ask me,” Ezzie said, shaking his head. He paused for a moment, then asked in a lower voice, “You ever been hit before, Mouse? I mean, hard?”
Mouse sighed. The conversation had now passed beyond the question of whether Hammerman would attack. It was now a matter of whether he, Mouse Fawley, could survive the attack. He said thickly, remembering, “Four times.”
“Four times in one fight? I mean, you stood up for four hits, Mouse?” There was grudging admiration in his voice.
Mouse shook his head. “Four hits—four fights.”
“You went right down each time? I mean, POW and you went down, POW and you went down, POW and you went—”
“Yes!”
“Where did you take these hits?” Ezzie asked, straightening suddenly. Ezzie had never taken a single direct blow in his life because he was a good dodger. Sometimes his mother chased him through the apartment striking at him while he dodged and ducked, crying, “Look out, Mom, look out now! You’re going to hit me!”
He asked again, “Where were you hit?”
Mouse said, “In the stomach.”
“All four times?”
“Yeah.” Mouse suddenly thought of his stomach as having a big red circular target on it with HIT HERE printed in the center. “Who hit you?”
“Two boys in Cincinnati when I was on vacation, and a boy named Mickey Swearinger, and somebody else I don’t remember.” He lowered his head because he remembered the fourth person all right, but he didn’t want to tell Ezzie about it. If he had added the name of Viola Angotti to the list of those who had hit him in the stomach, Ezzie’s face would have screwed up with laughter. “Viola Angotti hit you? No fooling, Viola Angotti?” It was the sort of thing Ezzie could carry on about for hours. “Viola Angotti. The Viola Angotti?”
And Mouse would have had to keep sitting there saying over and over, “Yes, Viola Angotti hit me in the stomach. Yes, the Viola Angotti.” And then he would have to tell Ezzie all about it, every detail, how one recess long ago the boys had decided to put some girls in the school trash cans. It had been one of those suggestions that stuns everyone with its rightness. Someone had said, “Hey, let’s put those girls over there in the trash cans!” and the plan won immediate acceptance. Nothing could have been more appropriate. The trash cans were big and had just been emptied, and in an instant the boys were off chasing the girls and yelling at the top of their lungs.
It had been wonderful at first, Mouse remembered. Primitive blood had raced through his body. The desire to capture had driven him like a wild man through the school yard, up the sidewalk, everywhere. He understood what had driven the cave man and the barbarian, because this same passion was driving him. Putting the girls in the trash cans was the most important challenge of his life. His long screaming charge ended with him red-faced, gasping for breath—and with Viola Angotti pinned against the garbage cans.
His moment of triumph was short. It lasted about two seconds. Then it began to dim as he realized, first, that it was Viola Angotti, and, second, that he was not going to be able to get her into the garbage can without a great deal of help.
He cried, “Hey, you guys, come on, I’ve got one,” but behind him the school yard was silent. Where was everybody? he had wondered uneasily. As it turned out, the principal had caught the other boys, and they were all being marched back in the front door of the school, but Mouse didn’t know this.
He called again, “Come on, you guys, get the lid off this garbage can, will you?”
And then, when he said that, Viola Angotti had taken two steps forward. She said, “Nobody’s putting me in no garbage can.” He could still remember how she had looked standing there. She had recently taken the part of the Statue of Liberty in a class play, and somehow she seemed taller and stronger at this moment than when she had been in costume.
He cried, “Hey, you guys!” It was a plea. “Where are you?”
And then Viola Angotti had taken one more step, and with a faint sigh she had socked him in the stomach so hard that he had doubled over and lost his lunch. He hadn’t known it was possible to be hit like that outside of a boxing ring. It was the hardest blow he had ever taken. Viola Angotti could be heavyweight champion of the world.
As she walked past his crumpled body she had said again, “Nobody’s putting me in no garbage can.” It had sounded like one of the world’s basic truths. The sun will rise. The tides will flow. Nobody’s putting Viola Angotti in no garbage can.
Later, when he thought about it, he realized that he had been lucky. If she had wanted to, Viola Angotti could have capped her victory by tossing his rag-doll body into the garbage can and slamming down the lid. Then, when the principal came out onto the playground calling, “Benjamin Fawley! Has anybody seen Benjamin Fawley?” he would have had to moan, “I’m in here.” He would have had to climb out of the garbage can in front of the whole school. His shame would have followed him for life. When he was a grown man, people would still be pointing him out to their children. “That’s the man that Viola Angotti stuffed into the garbage can.”
Now he thought that Marv Hammerman could make Viola Angotti’s blow seem like a baby’s pat. He wanted to double over on the steps.
Ezzie said. “You ought to watch out for your stomach like a fighter, protect your body. There’s a lot of valuable stuff in there.”
“I know.”
“The trick of it,” Ezzie said, “is moving quickly, ducking, getting out of the way.” Ezzie did a few quick steps, his feet flashing on the sidewalk. “You dance, Mouse, like this.” Mouse suddenly remembered that Ezzie had once told him that if you were ever bitten by a tarantula (Emergency Six) you had to start dancing immediately. Ezzie said you were supposed to do this special Italian folk dance, but any quick lively steps would probably do.
Mouse had a picture of himself doing this lively dance in front of Hammerman. Hammerman would watch for a moment. There would be no expression on his face. The dance would reach a peak. Mouse’s arms and legs would be a blur of motion. And then Hammerman would reach down, a sort of slow graceful movement like he was bowling, and come up effortlessly right into Mouse’s stomach.
Mouse leaned forwar
d, shielding his body with his arms. He cleared his throat. “Did anybody ever hit you, Ezzie?”
Ezzie stopped dancing. “Sure.”
“Who?”
“Well, relatives mostly. You can’t hardly walk through my living room without somebody trying to hit you—for any little thing. I accidentally step on my sister’s feet—she’s got long feet, Mouse, she can’t hardly buy ordinary shoes, and she takes it as an insult if you step on one of them. She’s fast too, Mouse. That’s how I learned about getting out of the way.”
“But nobody like Hammerman ever hit you?”
“No.” He sounded apologetic.
Mouse sighed. Above him his mother called, “Benjie, come up now. I want you to do something for me.”
“I got to go.” Mouse still sat there. He hated to leave the warmth of Ezzie’s understanding. Ezzie didn’t want to leave either. Mouse had taken on a fine tragic dimension in his eyes, and there was something about being with a person like that that made him feel good.
Ezzie had felt the same way about their teacher last fall when he had told them he had to go to the hospital. For the first time, Mr. Stein in his baggy suit had seemed a fine tragic figure, bigger than life. Ezzie would have done anything for Mr. Stein that day. But then, when Mr. Stein came limping back the next week—it turned out he had had some bone spurs removed from his heels—he had been his normal size.
“Benjie, come up now,” his mother called again.
“I’m coming.”
“Did you tell your mom about Hammerman being after you?” Ezzie asked.
“Yeah.”
“What’d she say?”
He tried to think of the most impossible statement his mother had made. “She said I’ll laugh about it in a week or two.”
“Laugh about it?”
“Yeah, through my bandages.”
Ezzie’s face twisted into a little smile. “Hey, remember Al Armsby when he had those broken ribs? Remember how he would beg us not to make him laugh? And I had this one joke about a monkey and I would keep telling it and keep telling it and he was practically on his knees begging for mercy and—”
Mouse got slowly to his feet. “Well, I better go,” he said.
Ezzie stopped smiling. “Hey, wait a minute. Listen, I just remembered something. I know a boy that Hammerman beat up, and he said it wasn’t so bad.”
“Who?”
“A friend of my brother’s. I’ll find out about it and let you know.”
“All right,” Mouse said. He did not allow himself to believe it was true. Sometimes Ezzie lied like this out of sympathy. If you said, “My stomach hurts and I think I’m going to die,” and if Ezzie really liked you, he would say, “I know a boy whose stomach hurt worse than that and he didn’t die!” And if you said, “Who?” Ezzie would say, “A friend of my brother’s.” Ezzie’s brother only had one friend that Mouse knew about, and this friend would have had to have daily brushes with death to fulfill all of Ezzie’s statements.
Still, it made Mouse want to cry for a moment that Ezzie would lie to spare him. Or maybe he wanted to cry because Hammerman was going to kill him. He didn’t know. He said, “Thanks, Ez,” in a choked voice. He turned and walked quickly into the apartment building.
MOUSE WAS JUST STARTING up the stairs when his mother and Mrs. Casino from across the hall came out of the apartment. “Wait a minute, Benjie,” his mother said. “Mrs. Casino wants to know if you’ll walk up to Margy’s and get Mr. Casino. She’d do it but she’s keeping the baby for Agnes tonight.”
Mrs. Casino’s round face was worried. She was holding her apron up in both hands. She said, “You mind, Benjie?”
He minded and he wanted them to know it. He sighed and looked down at his feet, at the vent hole in the toe of his shoe. Then he glanced up at the wall. There was a long crack in the plaster, and two months ago Mouse had written TO OPEN BUILDING TEAR ALONG THIS LINE and drawn an arrow to the crack. He turned his head away. He thought suddenly that Ezzie was right. He shouldn’t draw those arrows everywhere.
“Well?” his mother said.
“Oh, all right.” Mouse turned and started down the stairs, his shoulders hanging. He knew this gave him a dejected look because his mother was always telling him in such a stern way to hold up his shoulders.
“You’re a good boy, Benjie,” Mrs. Casino called, then she said loudly to his mother. “You got a good boy there. That’s one boy we don’t have to worry about in this world.”
His mother called, “Just go right straight there and back, Benjie.”
“All right.”
“And don’t rush Mr. Casino.”
“He won’t rush him,” Mrs. Casino said confidently.
Mouse went out the door, slamming it behind him, and started up the street. The sun had disappeared in the few minutes he had been inside, and now the street was darker, colder. Pigeons were going to roost over the grocery store, their wings pale against the dark brick. Mouse zipped up his jacket.
A block ahead he could see Ezzie running. Ezzie and his five sisters and brother had to be there when Ezzie’s father got home from work. It didn’t matter what they did during the day as long as all seven of them were there waiting at the day’s end.
Mouse called, “Hey, Ez! Ezzie!” Ezzie turned and Mouse said, “Wait up.”
Ezzie pointed to his arm where a watch would have been if he had had one. Mouse nodded and waved him on and then walked slowly up the street.
He started thinking again about Marv Hammerman. In his mind he could see Hammerman exactly as he had looked after school that afternoon. Mouse hadn’t gotten around to telling Ezzie about that.
Mouse had come out of school so fast he had almost pushed two girls down the steps. He wanted only to get home before Hammerman saw him.
“Way to go, Benjie,” the biggest girl, Rebecca, had said, straightening angrily.
He had muttered, “Sorry,” and had run ahead of them a few steps. Then he came to a halt. At the bottom of the steps was Marv Hammerman, waiting.
There was something animal-like about Hammerman with his long limbs and careless grace, his clothes that fit as if they were an extra skin, the shaggy hair that appeared never to have known the pull of a comb. Hammerman had been watching for Mouse, and his eyes got a little brighter when he saw him.
“I thought you were in such a big hurry,” Rebecca said scornfully, nudging him in the back with her books as she passed. Mouse hardly noticed.
Hammerman’s face was already the way it would be when he was a man. When Mouse read of boys having to go to work in the coal mines and cotton mills at age twelve and thirteen in the old days, it did not seem possible until he had seen Marv Hammerman.
Hammerman’s face did not change expression when he saw Mouse, just sharpened a little. Mouse thought his own face might have been made of thin rubber, it was changing expression so rapidly. His face twisted into shock as he saw Hammerman, then into fear. Then, quickly, awkwardly, Mouse pantomimed that he had forgotten something. He turned and ran back into the school. Once inside, he had run through the halls, down the back stairs, out the side exit and twenty-five blocks out of his way to get home.
To take his mind off Hammerman, he tried to think of another of Ezzie’s emergencies. These emergencies were the only things that could make him feel better.
Emergency Seven—Seizure by Gorilla. If this happens, you relax completely and make soothing noises deep in your throat. Ezzie claimed this was foolproof, but Mouse had never been convinced.
“I tell you it’s a sure thing, Mouse,” Ezzie had said. “You make the soothing noises, and he lets you go.”
“I still don’t think it would work.”
“All right,” Ezzie had said, “when a gorilla gets you, you scream and kick and holler. When one gets me, I’m making soothing noises.” Ezzie had been sensitive about the success of his emergency methods.
Emergency Eight—Attack by Killer Whale. This is one of life’s most serious emergencies. Whe
n this happens, you swim away from the whale as rapidly as possible. Do not try to get swallowed because, Ezzie said, there isn’t as much air in those whales as you’d think. If you do get swallowed by accident, take small measured breaths and try to get coughed out. Then you start swimming away rapidly again.
Mouse passed Margy’s apartment he was so busy thinking about the killer whale. Then he turned around. He went up the stairs, entered the apartment and knocked at the first door. When Margy, Mrs. Casino’s daughter, opened it, he said, “I came for Mr. Casino.”
“Oh, yes.” She turned. “Papa, the Fawley boy’s here for you.” She went over and said, “Papa, you ready to go home?”
Mr. Casino was staring at the television with eyes that seemed to have pulled back into his head a little. He did not look up. She touched his shoulder.
“Papa, you ready to go?” She got him to his feet. He had once been an enormous man but was bent over now so that she could put his overcoat on and button it with ease. “He’s ready, Benjie.”
Mouse was waiting at the door, and she brought Mr. Casino over. She put his hand on Mouse’s shoulder, and the two of them went outside and down the stairs. Mr. Casino moved slowly, shifting his weight noticeably with each step, favoring his left leg, rocking back and forth.
Mr. Casino had been like this for as long as Mouse could remember, but Mrs. Casino was always talking about the time, before his illness, when he had been the strongest man in the town. He was so strong, she said, that the cry, “Get Mr. Casino!” would bring everyone in the neighborhood running to see what feat of strength he would do this time. His skill as a furniture mover had been such a legend, she said, that people would stand on the sidewalk like it was a parade to watch Mr. Casino lift armchairs over his head as if they were basketballs.
Then came the stroke that would have killed another man. Mr. Casino had lived, but all that was left of his strength was the iron jaw which jutted out from his face. Mouse walked along beside Mr. Casino, keeping his steps in rhythm. He said, “Mr. Casino, some boys are going to kill me.”
There was no reaction. Mr. Casino’s huge hand on Mouse’s shoulder did not even tighten in sympathy. It made Mouse sad because he wanted a great reaction. He wanted Mr. Casino’s old strength to return, Samson-like. He wanted Mr. Casino to roar with rage, to stretch out his long arms and threaten to pull down whole buildings if those boys were not brought before him.
