Grouper's Laws

by D. Philip Miller

  “What’s wrong with that?” the boy shot back. “You should be smart enough to know the issues before you’re allowed to vote.”

  “Perhaps,” Miss Darlington conceded, a trace of a smile on her face. Blondie knew she loved it when she was able to capture the class’s attention. Most of the time they just sat like lumps of coal or horsed around with each other. “But no one is making whites take any tests and many of them couldn’t pass the tests either. Beyond that, most Negroes are intimidated from even taking the tests.”

  “Still, they’re breaking the law,” a girl named Alice said.

  “True, but are the laws fair?”

  “The people in the states passed them,” Alice argued.

  “Yes, but only some of them got to vote.”

  Blondie admired the calm way Miss Darlington listened to everything the class threw at her. He wouldn’t have been so calm.

  Some of the kids talked about Martin Luther King like he was a real threat to the American way of life. Blondie didn’t understand that. Negroes just wanted to vote like anyone else. That was the American way of life, wasn’t it?

  He raised his hand and proclaimed his support for what the marchers were doing. Blondie noted the look of approval on Miss Darlington’s face and felt a jolt of gratification. As he was leaving class, she stopped him and asked if he’d be willing to do a short report on the history of Negro voting in the South for extra credit. Blondie felt as if she’d asked him to take up the cause himself.

  In contrast, Mrs. Buckley’s class was as stultifying as ever. She was reading them To Helen by Edgar Allan Poe, a love poem that struck Blondie as overdone. He noted how Mary Cherry hung on every syllable as if Poe were praising her beauty. He wanted to gag.

  Instead, struck by a sudden inspiration, he grabbed his pencil and began scribbling in his notebook. After a few cross-outs and erasures, he felt he’d engineered his own masterpiece of poesy.

  Snot

  Little green ball rolled to a clot,

  heavenly creature though you’re not,

  nevertheless inhabited you are.

  Fertile green planet, bacterion star!

  Proboscian emerald oft hurled into space, or speedily hid in some darker place, there to remain forever and ever

  or until someone not so clever

  fondles you and your pinnacled mountain, then washes you off at a water fountain.

  It was perfect. He folded the page and passed it to Feller. He read it and nearly split a gut. His muffled cry caused Mary to turn and shoot him a fierce look of disapproval. Water filled Feller’s eyes when he looked back at him. He gave Blondie the A-okay sign.

  “What, what?” Bucky shouted. She glared around the room through her bifocals. Still gazing suspiciously at them, she moved on to another poem equally as offensive.

  Feller slipped his poem to the Grouper. He remained as impassive and Buddha-like as ever. When he was through reading, though, he looked up at Blondie and gave him an appraising look. Blondie was sure he detected a hint of heightened respect in his eyes. He wanted it to be so.

  “Boy, that was one great poem,” Feller said on the way home. “You really should be a writer.”

  Blondie laughed.

  “Do you think it could sell?” Blondie asked.

  “I liked it a lot better than that stuff from Poe.”

  Blondie knew Feller was trying to be supportive. He also knew that he’d have to do a lot better than Snot to be a writer. It was just a knockoff. The hard thing was coming up with something of your own. And making it so good people would pay money for it.

  He wondered if Tammy would be impressed if she read Snot. He suspected not. More likely, she’d be grossed out.

  “You go out on dates, don’t you?” Blondie asked Feller.

  “Sometimes”

  “Anyone special?”

  “Nah.”

  “Not interested in anyone?”

  Blondie couldn’t imagine Feller being afraid to ask anyone out with his looks.

  “I used to go with Ethel Philbin,” Feller said after a while.

  “Ethel Philbin? Bobby Clements’ girl?”

  Feller laughed. “She wasn’t Bobby’s girl then.”

  Blondie was thunderstruck. Ethel was a knockout, a supernova on the high school scene, head cheerleader and the most glamorous girl in school. He was sitting right in the car with someone who’d gone with her.

  “When was that?”

  “Ninth grade.”

  Well, that had been a long time ago. Still, Blondie was impressed.

  “Did you get anywhere with her?” Blondie asked.

  “Just making out. A little petting outside her clothes.”

  “Do you think Bobby …?”

  “I’m sure he’s getting all he wants,” Feller said ruefully.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Everyone’s older now. Besides, I know Bobby.”

  A pensive look clouded Feller’s features. Blondie wondered if he was feeling what Blondie suspected — the sadness of glory days gone by. If so, at least he’d known them once. Blondie wondered if he would ever see any “glory days.”

  “How about the other guys?” he asked. “Do they date?”

  “Well, Dispatch is always in there pitching, I’ll give him credit for that. No one else in the group, really.”

  “Grouper?”

  “Who would date the Grouper?”

  “There are ugly girls, too.”

  “He wouldn’t want them.”

  “But if he’s unattractive himself …. ?”

  “That’s not how it works,” Feller said, ending the discussion.

  Several weeks thereafter — somewhat in wonderment — Blondie realized his days were falling into an almost tolerable routine and that he was gradually shedding his new-kid-at-school feeling, the feeling that every day would throw insurmountable challenges at him. There were challenges all right, but even if they seemed insurmountable, they were avoidable. Like sticking to the crowd whenever he saw Barnwell. Like looking away every time he passed Tammy in the hall. Like never, ever making eye contact with Miss Spalding, Mr. Farber or Mrs. Buckley.

  Friday nights were reserved for football games and beer. Even if the games were out of town, they were usually in the county, so they’d all pile into the P-mobile and take off for Percy or Babbington or Oakdale. The games were the same for Blondie whether Fenton won or lost. They were always about watching her.

  Saturday nights were either spent at the bowling alley playing pool or playing the pinball machines or drinking beer in the P-mobile in some deserted lane, regaling each other with observations or stories about their schoolmates. Only one of them ever held back — the Grouper. He seemed happy enough to be with them, but he seldom offered more than a wry observation, or, on even rarer occasions, one of his laws. Blondie wondered what went on in his head.

  Yet, the first time he was presented with a chance to find out, Blondie nearly passed it up. One week early in November, everyone but he and Grouper had managed to snare a date for Saturday night — even Shakes, who’d struck up a bit of a relationship with the Raznosky girl. Blondie’s inclination was to scrap the evening and stay home. Grouper didn’t shoot pool or play the pinball machines — he boasted of having no interest in, or skills at, any activity requiring the slightest coordination. Since the Grouper had never spoken to him for more than a few minutes, Blondie figured sharing a few beers with him in some out-of-the-way place would be uncomfortable at best.

  “Well, I guess we should bag Saturday, huh?” Blondie said to Grouper after everyone else had revealed their plans.

  Grouper cocked his head and gave Blondie an inscrutable look.

  “Do you believe in fate?” Grouper asked when they were alone.

  “What?”

  “Pick me up at my house at 8:00 Saturday night,” Grouper said as he shambled away.

  The Whipples’ mini-castle w
as lit up like an amusement park when Blondie pulled up in the Dart Saturday night. There were small lights under every shrub and tree, sconces on either side of the garage doors, and floodlights illuminating the front of the house. Their lawn seemed prepped for a championship match of lawn bowling, mowed to a uniform height and devoid of the crabgrass, dandelions, and clover that gave Blondie’s lawn such character.

  “Pretty impressive, huh?” Grouper commented as he eased his large frame onto the bench seat next to Blondie. He was wearing dark slacks and a white cable-knit sweater over a navy turtleneck. “My dad felt we were depriving our neighbors of an opportunity to admire our house at night.”

  His voice was perfectly even, but Blondie could taste the sarcasm.

  “Why don’t we go somewhere different tonight?” Grouper suggested.

  He guided Blondie to a place he called his “overlook.” It was at the top of a small bluff and at the edge of a pasture. Points of light sparkled below — Fenton at night.

  There would be no drinking tonight. Neither of them had summoned the courage to make the buy.

  “My dad’s a lawyer,” had been Grouper’s excuse.

  “I’ve got enough troubles already,” had been his.

  “I come here once in a while when I need to think,” Grouper said to Blondie after a few moments. “No one else knows about it.”

  Blondie was surprised and pleased. Grouper was treating him as someone special.

  “Why me?” he asked.

  “You seem different from the others.”

  Blondie wasn’t sure he liked that. For the past two months, he’d been working at being one of the gang, as much like the others as he could be.

  “How so?”

  “You’re more sensitive … “

  Sensitive? Blondie didn’t want to be viewed that way. It was downright dangerous at Fenton High.

  “I’m just like the others,” Blondie protested.

  Grouper snorted.

  “Why do you think I’m sensitive? Because of my poem?”

  “Hardly,” Grouper answered dryly, “although it showed some talent. What it did show is that you’re a thinker, someone who doesn’t just swallow conventional notions of what’s beautiful or true.”

  “Like what?” Blondie had no idea what he was talking about.

  “I don’t know. About the way we are, I sup-pose.”

  Grouper’s voice faded into the darkness as if his thoughts had turned elsewhere.

  “Like who is?” Blondie asked, frustrated at Grouper’s opacity.

  “No, I think you’re sensitive because of her,” Grouper responded, returning to Blondie’s previous question. “You see more to her than she is. You’ve turned her into an ideal.”

  Blondie winced.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” he said, “It’s more like …. “

  “You don’t have to explain. I’m not making a judgment. I admire you for it.” There was sadness in his voice.

  “Have you ever felt that way about a girl?” Blondie asked. He hoped Grouper would share a similar feeling.

  “Never. But I can imagine your feelings.”

  Blondie felt cheered by that. He looked up at the moon, almost blinding in its radiance. It was so clear, so remote. Sometimes, he wished he could be like the moon, observing what occurred on earth without needing to be a part of it or have any feelings about it.

  “You think I’m wasting my time with Tammy, don’t you?” Blondie asked him.

  Grouper wheezed and coughed a few times, then shifted his body. His big head was now in the moonlight, his face pursed with thought.

  “What I think isn’t important. You have no choice in the matter.”

  “I suppose you’re going to tell me there’s a law at work.”

  Grouper chuckled.

  “All right, what is it?” Blondie asked. ”Nothing hooks the romantic soul like the unattainable,” he said.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  His mother liked Rudy. She deemed him “clean, well-dressed and polite.” Blondie suspected she was contrasting Rudy with him and his friends, although she’d only met Dispatch and Feller. She told Blondie that Dispatch was “surly” and needed a haircut. Her verdict on Feller was that he was “a little too sure of himself.”

  When Rudy came over for help on his trig, he made a point of saying hello to Blondie’s parents and finding some compliment to pay them. That rated big with his mom. And Rudy always seemed genuinely appreciative of the help Blondie gave him. So why, Blondie wondered, did he always feel a trace of resentment toward him? Was it because Rudy was a luminary at Fenton High and he wasn’t? Or because, so far as Blondie could tell, Rudy had done nothing to boost Blondie’s standing there?

  Then again, his reputation was hardly his biggest concern. That was survival. Everyone told him Buford had been laying for him ever since the CYO dance. Blondie feared one day Buford was going to find him alone and beat him to death.

  Perhaps it was fitting that he should die, now that Tammy had receded even farther from his grasp, to that impregnable place beyond the known universe where dazzling girls insulated themselves from the unwanted affections of average guys like him. In his less pessimistic moments, however, Blondie believed there was a remote possibility his life might work out — if he could get out of his predicament with Barnwell.

  He briefly considered the rational approach. Perhaps he could request a moment of Buford’s time and explain to him that there was his hostility was unwarranted. On the other hand, Grouper had just about convinced him billies were impervious to rational debate. But what if he could offer Buford something he wanted? A trade for his life. Hm-m-m, what could it be? Grouper claimed that billies were particularly fond of bad-tasting beer. Club members considered a local beer, Hartz Green Label, the vilest of all brews. He could offer Buford a six-pack of that.

  Blondie had no great confidence in his plan — Buford might punch him out before he had a chance to say anything — but he had no alternative. The hardest part was finding a safe way to present his proposal to Barnwell.

  Opportunity soon presented itself in the Cro-Magnon form of Ralph Purdy. Mid-week, Blondie found him leaning against the lockers, licking his lips and cooing at passing girls. His attention propelled them down the hallway even faster. Blondie heard one whisper, “Gag me.”

  “Hey, Purdy,” Blondie called to him.

  “Up yours, dead man. You don’t talk to me.”

  “You guys misunderstand me,” Blondie said in the most amiable tone he could muster.

  “Let’s see. You were an asshole baby who grew up to be a complete shit. Did I get it right?”

  Purdy stuck his jaw out in an aggressive manner.

  This was going to be harder than he thought. Blondie felt a momentary gust of self-loathing for even speaking to Purdy. Nonetheless, he pressed on.

  “I thought if I bought you and Buford a few beers, you’d realize I wasn’t really your enemy. Maybe we could even be friends.”

  “Who’d want to be friends with you, skunk breath?” Purdy’s moon face screwed into a look of disdain. He squinted his eyes. “What about beer?”

  “Just thought a little beer could make you see things in a new light.”

  “A little beer?”

  “Okay, a fair amount of beer.”

  “Like how much?”

  Jesus, why was Purdy making him negotiate? The whole scene was growing more and more distasteful by the minute.

  “Say a case.”

  Shit, he hadn’t meant to go this far. A case cost money.

  “H-m-m-m-ph. A peace offering, huh? I’ll pass it along to Buford. You better hope I get to him before he sees you. He’s got the sharpest goddamned knuckles I ever felt, I can tell you that.”

  Purdy waddled off.

  On his way to English class, Blondie began to have second thoughts about what he’d done. What if the guys in the Club found out? They’d recognize him for t
he weenie he was. He was just going to have to hope they never found out. After all, survival was more important than saving face.

  After his experience with Purdy, Blondie found the pre-class turmoil of fourth period English a welcome diversion. Shakes and Brick were arguing over something while other kids traded the latest gossip. Mary Cherry was writing Ernest Hemingway’s name on the blackboard while rubber bands and paper airplanes flew through the air, many aimed her way. Only Grouper seemed immune to the uproar. He sat serenely in the back row, his hands folded over his abdomen.

  The bell rang and, with a whoosh, Bucky appeared like a broomless witch. She was carrying a heavy book that said “Anthology” on the side. Bucky smiled at Mary, frowned at Shakes, nodded at Grouper, and gave Blondie a look of mild irritation. She immediately started discussing The Old Man and the Sea, the book she’d assigned the class to read. She asked who’d like to give a critique of it.

  Mary’s hand shot up. Blondie was amazed when Bucky looked past her and dismayed when her eyes fastened on him.

  “Bernard Reimer. It’s been a while since we’ve heard from you.”

  “I didn’t raise my hand,” he objected.

  “Well, have you read the book?”

  “Sure.”

  Actually, he’d only read the cover notes.

  “Then, give us a brief synopsis and tell us what you thought of it.”

  Blondie cleared his throat.

  “It’s about a fish.”

  Someone sniggered.

  “I mean it’s about a guy who catches a fish.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Mrs. Buckley encouraged him. “Go on.”

  “This guy catches a big fish … “What else had been in the short summary? ” … and on his way back to his village, a bunch of sharks eat it, leaving nothing but the skeleton.”

  Blondie was pretty sure that was right.

  “I suppose that that’s the bare bones of the matter,” Bucky said, drawing a few titters from the class.

  “How did you like it?” she asked him.

  “Fine.”

  “Could you elaborate a little? What did you like about it?”