Grouper's Laws

by D. Philip Miller

  “You’re right, though. We should do something,” Feller said as they entered the school parking lot. “Let me think about it.”

  The next afternoon, Blondie attended a “try-out” for those interested in being on Fenton High’s 1962 golf team. Only three kids were in the gym when he arrived. That boded well. A golf team required six players.

  Mr. Beasley huffed in, red-faced, his belly hanging out from his too-tight shorts. He stared at them while he caught his breath.

  “Are you guys here for golf?” he asked, as if expecting a different group.

  There was some coughing and looking away. One guy nodded.

  “Hum-m-ph,” Beasley muttered, scrutinizing them.

  “You’re tall,” he said to Blondie.

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “What do you shoot?”

  “Mid-eighties.” Blondie figured there was nothing to gain by over promising.

  Beasley squinted at him.

  The door banged open and two guys entered. They wore identical khaki slacks and Madras shirts. Joe Colleges, Blondie thought.

  “Testerman and Carrington, where’ve you been?”

  Beasley’s voice showed its first strain of excitement.

  “Are we late?” Carrington asked in a deep, manly voice. He was one of those guys whose face was shadowed with whiskers by the end of the day.

  Beasley turned back to the group and announced, “Everyone’s on the team. Be here in two weeks.”

  Beasley hadn’t watched them swing or anything. He was just what Bobby had said — a fat and lazy slob. Blondie didn’t cotton to the idea of Beasley as his coach, but he was ecstatic about making the team.

  “Letter sweater, you’re almost in hand,” he said to himself. That couldn’t fail to make an impression on Tammy.

  At supper, Blondie told his family about his score.

  “That’s wonderful, Bernard,” his mom said.

  “Be sure not to miss any practices,” his dad advised. “Discipline is the key to winning.”

  And that was it for his big news. His mom began to clear the table and his dad jumped up to get ready for the monthly meeting of his military group. He always wore his dress blue uniform and spit-shined shoes.

  On his way out of the house, he looked Blondie in the eye and said, “Never admit defeat on the links. Never.”

  His expression was grave.

  “What are you talking about, Dad?”

  “Defending our way of life begins on the playing fields.”

  That night, Blondie couldn’t get Shakes’ accusation out of his mind. The next day, he waited until everyone but Grouper had left the lunch table.

  “Do you think I treat other people like they’re not real?” he asked him.

  Grouper paused in his consumption of chocolate pudding.

  “Like who?”

  “Like anyone,” Blondie answered.

  “Like me?” Grouper asked, licking the last remnants of brown from his spoon.

  “Not you.” Grouper could be exasperating with all his questions. “Shakes, for example.”

  “Is that what he said?”

  “Could you just answer the question?”

  Grouper looked up, bug-eyed, like a turtle emerging from its shell.

  “Most of us are closet solipsists,” Grouper said. He took a napkin and cleaned his spoon.

  Solipsists? What was he talking about?

  “A solipsist is someone who believes only he exists,” Grouper continued, as if Blondie had spoken aloud. “Everyone else and everything else is only an illusion, a product of his mind.”

  “If that was true, I’d make Barnwell disappear and Tammy fall in love with me,” Blondie commented.

  “I admit the theory has limited practical application.”

  “So what about Shakes?” Blondie asked again.

  “He apparently doesn’t think you take him seriously.”

  “I take him seriously,” Blondie protested. “I just think he’s a little weird.”

  Grouper smiled, his eyes turning from those of a turtle to those of an owl.

  “Everyone’s weird,” he said. “If we could each see into each other’s

  minds …. “

  The thought made Blondie shiver. What if Tammy knew all the bizarre stuff he thought?

  By the time Bucky’s class rolled around the next day, Blondie was consumed with anticipation. With any luck, Mary Cherry would fall into Feller’s trap. As it happened, Feller’s plan worked like a charm. When Bucky asked for volunteers, Mary’s hand shot up on cue.

  “Very well, Mary,” Bucky beamed. “I know you’ll have something thoughtful for us.”

  Mary stood and turned to the class, a vainglorious look upon her face.

  “This is a love story,” she announced.

  Feller turned around and gave Blondie a sly look.

  “Anne had been at college for almost a month,” Mary began, “and was filled with exuberance … ”

  That was one of Bucky’s words.

  “She loved to read books and she became imbued with knowledge. But she yearned to meet the man of her dreams. One fulgent day, she saw him standing across the quad. He held himself so erect. His smegma seemed to permeate the air between them … ”

  Grouper brayed. Mary paused.

  Blondie looked over at Feller. He had his face buried in his hands. His shoulders were heaving.

  “Never had Anne felt anything like this before,” Mary continued. “It was a revelation, like extrasensory perception. She could almost taste his smegma … ”

  Grouper howled and Feller made a choking noise. Blondie was biting on his lips to keep from laughing out loud.

  Mary looked toward the back of the room, perplexed.

  “What’s that word you’re using?” Bucky asked.

  “What word?” Mary asked.

  “That word you’re using in connection with the young man.”

  “Smegma?”

  “Yes, that one. I don’t know that word.”

  Mary stared at her uncomprehendingly.

  “But it’s on your list,” she said. “It means the ‘essence of masculinity.’”

  Feller ducked under his desk, drawing stares from nearby students.

  “Epilepsy,” Blondie explained.

  “That word is definitely not on my list,” Bucky said. “Show me what you’re talking about.”

  Mary pulled a sheet of paper from her notebook and took it up to Bucky. Bucky laid it on the desk beside her list.

  “See,” she told Mary. “It’s not there. I think someone is pulling your leg.”

  Mary whipped around and stared Feller’s way. She appeared stupefied to find his desk empty.

  “Let’s see if there is such a word,” Bucky said pleasantly. She got up and waddled over to the wooden stand that held her huge Webster’s dictionary. She fumbled around for a few minutes, searching for the right page. Then, she stabbed her finger down on the page.

  “Ah, here it is!” she exclaimed.

  Bucky kept her head down for quite some time. When she turned around, her face was white.

  “Well?” Mary asked.

  “Someone is pulling your leg. Someone not very nice.”

  Panic gripped Mary’s face. She sprang to the dictionary. When she found the word, she shrieked.

  Feller was prone on the floor, his chest heaving, his face suffused with color. Blondie felt his face turning purple from the strain of not laughing. He leaned into the aisle to hide his face.

  The rest of the class had grown curious.

  “What’s it mean?” Sarah Quirk asked.

  “It’s not a fit word,” Bucky said.

  Freddy Finster jumped up and ran to the dictionary.

  “Freddy, you sit right back down,” Bucky ordered.

  It was too late. Freddy turned back to the class with his hand over his mouth.

  One of his friends yelled
to him: “What’s it mean?”

  “It’s some stuff that gets on a guy’s dick.”

  “Penis, Freddy, penis,” Bucky shouted.

  The class erupted in gales of laughter.

  “Dismissed!” Bucky yelled.

  Feller rolled out the door. Even Grouper was struggling to maintain his composure. Blondie’s ribs ached. He went over to Feller and held out his hand. They began to roar.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The spine-clenching sound of metal grinding metal shrieked across the night. Sparks showered from the open doorway, where Joe Caldane was working late on a 59 Edsel with a crumpled rear fender, smoothing a jagged edge with a metal sander. He was wearing a black knit cap and heavy goggles to protect his eyes. A container of Bondo and a rubber hammer lay on the ground next to where he knelt.

  Blondie, Feller, Brick and the Grouper huddled behind a shrub at one corner of the post office, thirty feet from the rear bay of Frank’s Auto Repair. Their breaths crystallized in the frigid air and floated before them like tiny clouds. Blondie shivered and rubbed his hands together. He was cold, but mostly nervous. He’d never confronted a grown man before.

  Feller asked if everyone was ready and then he, Blondie and Brick began marching across the lot, their feet scraping against the frosty pavement. Blondie thought of the showdown in the Gunfight at the OK Corral.

  Caldane never moved from his work until Feller tapped him on the shoulder. Then he switched off the sander, stood slowly, and pulled his goggles down around his neck. He was a little taller than Blondie had remembered and more muscular, though quite a bit shorter than he was and not as heavy as Brick. He squinted at them with the eyes of an eel.

  “Mr. Caldane, we’re friends of your son’s,” Feller stated boldly, though Blondie thought he detected a trembling in his voice.

  “So?” His tone was belligerent, as was his posture.

  “Well, uh, we’ve noticed a few times, uh …. ” Feller was having trouble, although he’d already gone over his spiel once with the Club. A thin line of moisture formed above his lips.

  “You’ve noticed what?”

  Caldane was hostile and moving toward ballistic. Blondie watched his shoulders and arms tighten and his hands curl into bludgeons.

  “We think you’re beating him,” Blondie blurted out.

  Caldane turned toward him. His jaw was as hard and square as a steam shovel bucket. His eyes burned like portholes into the Inferno. Blondie retreated a step.

  “Who said that?”

  “It really doesn’t matter who said it …. ” Feller began in his most diplomatic tone. Caldane switched his gaze to him. ” …. what matters is that it stops.”

  Caldane put his whiskered jowl close to Feller’s cheek. Their noses almost touched.

  “Or what?” he said.

  Fear flickered across Feller’s eyes. His jaw moved, but no sound came forth.

  “Or we’re gonna kick your redneck ass,” Brick replied.

  Blondie ignored Brick’s oxymoron. He was relieved to hear something forceful from their side.

  Caldane turned toward Brick. He thumped him in the chest with his thumb.

  “I’m not afraid of you …. ” he said, ” …. or you or you,” he added to Feller and Blondie.

  Now what, Blondie thought. Were the three of them going to duke it out with him?

  “There’s more of us,” Feller said. “Hey, Killer,” he shouted toward the post office.

  An enormous shadow emerged from the shrub. Blondie often forgot how big Grouper was because he knew he was a pacifist — i.e., pussy — but across the lot, he loomed large.

  Caldane’s manner shifted. He unclenched his fists and stepped away from them.

  “What do you want?” he asked less belligerently.

  “We want you to quit beating on Jerry,” Feller demanded.

  “I never said I did.”

  “Well, if we hear that you did or see evidence that you did, we’ll be back,” Feller threatened, “and next time we’ll unleash Killer. Got it?”

  Caldane eyed them for a few seconds, weighing his options.

  “There’s no problem here, okay. I got no quarrel with you boys,” Caldane said with a forced smile.

  Later, in Feller’s dad’s Fairlane, they shared a hoot over their big bluff.

  “Can you imagine?” Feller said, “We backed the prick down by threatening him with the Grouper.”

  “Watch yourself, Feller,” Grouper boomed at him, “or I’ll rearrange your face.”

  That made them laugh all the harder. Blondie was still chuckling when he went to bed. But he knew he was laughing from relief. Mr. Caldane was a scary guy.

  “We gotta get laid, Blondie,” Feller said to Blondie on the way to school one day the next week. “I feel embarrassed being a virgin.”

  “No one knows but me.”

  “I’d be embarrassed if you didn’t know. Christ, I’m seventeen.”

  Why was Feller getting agitated now? They’d existed in the same sorry state of deprivation their whole lives. Maybe it was some biological clock. Maybe if you hadn’t been screwed by a certain age, you began to go nuts.

  “Do you have someone in mind?” Blondie asked.

  “Delores.”

  “Delores Clitoris?”

  “It’s really Delores Humphries.”

  “I thought you had too much respect for your weenie,” Blondie reminded him.

  “I must have been out of my mind. Anyway, I’ll be eighteen in a few weeks. Wouldn’t it be a kick to lose our virginity together. Sorta like blood brothers. What do you say?”

  Blondie thought it was a bizarre notion.

  “Who would I get?” he asked hesitantly.

  “Delores has a friend. Flossie Wilder. Chances are she’ll be as easy as Delores. That’s how girls divide up.”

  “According to who does it?”

  “Yeah. What do you say?”

  Screw a stranger? The idea was even more intimidating to Blondie than screwing someone he knew. But he knew Feller was right. A guy had to get laid sooner or later, even if it wasn’t romantic or even fun.

  “Okay,” he agreed.

  “Great. I’ll set it up.”

  So he wasn’t going to lose his cherry to someone he was nuts about. He’d been hoping it would be Tammy. Realistically, though, what were the odds? It was too much of a long shot to count on. Anyway, girls liked guys to be experienced. Tammy would need someone knowledgeable to initiate her into the mysteries of love.

  When Blondie saw him at lunch, Feller gave him a funny smile.

  “What are you grinning about? Did you set something up with Delores?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I heard something.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Guess who likes you?”

  Blondie’s heart speeded up. Someone liked him. Could it be Tammy? “Who?”

  “Phyllis.”

  “Phyllis?”

  Feller’s grin grew wider.

  No, Blondie told himself. It couldn’t be.

  “Who says so?”

  “Pam Ferris. She hangs out with them. Phyllis told her to keep it a secret, but she told Delores.”

  It wasn’t fair. He didn’t even like Phyllis. He’d only been nice to her to get to Tammy. What a pickle. If Tammy found out Phyllis liked him, she’d never go out with him. That’s the way girls were. On the other hand, if he discouraged Phyllis, she’d be hurt and tell Tammy. Tammy wouldn’t go out with someone who’d hurt one of her girlfriends. That’s the way girls were.

  “Oh, fuck.”

  Feller kept grinning.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “Oh, yes it is,” Feller said.

  Blondie was depressed for three days. His pick-me-up came with the throaty roar of the P-mobile that Saturday night. Blondie hadn’t been in it since before their run-in with Purdy and Barn
well — and Fester. He’d forgotten how attached he’d grown to the chrome-and-steel beast. He found the P-mobile’s luminescent dash lights strangely comforting. They made him feel like he and the others were Captain Nemo and the crew of the Nautilus, denizens of the depths, comrades of the dark.

  The whole club was on hand, including Feller, who’d finally come off his grounding, and Grouper, who’d missed several sorties “squiring Miss Dimsell around,” as he put it.

  “Did your little lady take the ring from your nose tonight?” Brick asked him.

  Feller said he wanted to shoot some pool at Shady Lanes before they got to the main event of the evening, which, as usual, was to be drinking beer and bullshitting in the P-mobile out at the quarry. When they arrived, Purdy’s pickup was hunkered in a corner of the lot.

  “What’s that billy doing here?” Brick asked.

  “Let’s just ignore him,” Feller suggested. “We’ll take care of him some other time.”

  Easier said than done. When they entered, Purdy turned from the counter and said: “Hey Shakes, how’s your face?”

  “Eat sh-shit,” Shakes responded, causing a few adults to look his way. Purdy just laughed.

  “Easy, guys,” Feller said. “We came up here to shoot pool.”

  Mountain Pulaski was knocking balls around by himself in the poolroom. When he saw Dispatch, he smiled.

  “Hey mop-top, how about a game?”

  “Sure.”

  The rest of them paired off. Blondie against Feller. Brick against Shakes. Grouper sat in a tall chair in the corner and watched.

  After a while, Blondie went to the bathroom to relieve himself. While he was there, Mountain stomped in and entered one of the stalls. Blondie heard his belt buckle clank against the floor and then a few grunts.

  Blondie combed his hair and was just leaving when Purdy came in.

  “Well, if it ain’t the giraffe,” he said.

  “Watch yourself,” Blondie said with as much menace as he could muster.

  “Why should I? I saw what happened between you and Buford. He looked at you sideways and you came unglued.”

  Blondie hated hearing it, mainly because it was true. He had backed away from Buford. And now Purdy was messing with him.

  Blondie had a brainstorm.

  “Say Purdy, who was that guy with you and Barnwell that night?”