Christine Page 17

  With his acne and pimples gone, Arnie looked okay--in fact, he looked more than okay. But there wasn't a girl who had gone to school with him when his face was at its running worst that would go out with him, I guessed. They didn't really see him the way he was now; they saw a memory of him. But Leigh was different. Because she was a transfer, she had no idea of how really gross Arnie had looked his first three years at LHS. Of course she would if she got last year's Libertarian and took a look at the picture of the chess club, but oddly enough, that same Republican tendency would almost surely make her disregard it. What's now is forever--ask any Republican banker and he'll tell you that's just the way the world ought to run.

  High school kids and Republican bankers . . . when you're little you take it for granted that everything changes constantly. When you're a grown-up, you take it for granted that things are going to change no matter how much you try to maintain the status quo (even Republican bankers know that--they may not like it, but they know it). It's only when you're a teenager that you talk about change constantly and believe in your heart that it never really happens.

  I went outside with my gigantic bag lunch in one hand and angled across the parking lot toward the shop building. It is a long, barnlike structure with corrugated metal sides painted blue--not very different in design from Will Darnell's garage, but much neater. It houses the wood shop, the auto shop, and the graphic arts department. Supposedly the smoking area is around at the rear, but on nice days during the lunch break, there are usually shoppies lined up along both sides of the building with their motorcycle boots or their pointy-toed Cuban shitkickers cocked up against the building, smoking and talking to their girlfriends. Or feeling them up.

  Today there was nobody at all along the right side of the building, and that should have told me something was up, but it didn't. I was lost in my own amusing thoughts about Arnie and Leigh and the psychology of the Modern American High School Student.

  The real smoking area--the "designated" smoking area--is in a small cul-de-sac behind the auto shop. And beyond the shops, fifty or sixty yards away, is the football field, dominated with the big electric scoreboard with GO GET THEM TERRIERS emblazoned across the top.

  There was a group of people just beyond the smoking area, twenty or thirty of them in a tight little circle. That pattern usually means a fight or what Arnie likes to call a "pushy-pushy"--two guys who aren't really mad enough to fight sort of shoving each other around and whacking each other on the shoulders and trying to protect their macho reputations.

  I glanced that way, but with no real interest. I didn't want to watch a fight; I wanted to eat my lunch and find out if anything was going on between Arnie and Leigh Cabot. If there was a little something happening there, it might take his mind off his obsession with Christine. One thing was for sure: Leigh Cabot didn't have any rust on her rocker panels.

  Then some girl screamed and someone else yelled, "Hey, no! Put that away, man!" That sounded very much ungood. I changed direction to see what was going on.

  I pushed my way through the crowd and saw Arnie in the circle, standing with his hands held out a little in front of him at chest level. He looked pale and scared, but not quite panicked. A little distance to his left was his lunch-sack, squashed flat. There was a large sneaker-print in the middle of it. Standing opposite him, in jeans and a white Hanes T-shirt that clung to every ripple and bulge of his chest, was Buddy Repperton. He had a switchblade knife in his right hand and he was moving it slowly back and forth in front of his face like a magician making mystic passes.

  He was tall and broad-shouldered. His hair was long and black. He wore it tied back in a ponytail with a hank of rawhide. His face was heavy and stupid and mean-looking. He was smiling just a little. What I felt was an unmanning mixture of dismay and cold fear. He didn't look just stupid and mean; he looked crazy.

  "Told you I was gonna getcha, man," he said softly to Arnie. He tilted the knife and jabbed softly at the air with it in Arnie's direction. Arnie flinched back a little. The switchblade had an ivory handle with a little chrome button to flick out the blade set into it. The blade itself looked to be about eight inches long--it wasn't a knife at all, it was a fucking bayonet.

  "Hey, Buddy, brand 'im!" Don Vandenberg yelled happily, and I felt my mouth go dry.

  I looked around at the kid next to me, some nerdy freshman I didn't know. He looked absolutely hypnotized, all eyes. "Hey," I said, and when he didn't look around I slammed my elbow into his side. "Hey!"

  He jumped and looked around at me in terror.

  "Go get Mr. Casey. He eats his lunch in the wood-shop office. Go get him right now."

  Repperton glanced at me, then glanced at Arnie. "Come on, Cunningham," he said. "What do you say, you want to go for it?"

  "Put down the knife and I will, you shitter," Arnie said. His voice was perfectly calm. Shitter, where had I heard that word before? From George LeBay, hadn't it been? Sure. It had been his brother's word.

  It apparently wasn't a word Repperton cared for. He flushed and stepped closer to Arnie. Arnie circled away. I thought something was going to happen pretty quick--maybe one of those things that call for stitches and leave a scar.

  "You go get Casey now," I told the nerdy-looking freshman, and he went. But I thought everything would probably go down before Mr. Casey got back . . . unless I could maybe slow things down a little.

  "Put down the knife, Repperton," I said.

  His glance came over my way again. "What do you know," he said. "It's Cuntface's friend. You want to make me put it down?"

  "You've got a knife and he doesn't," I said. "In my book that makes you a fucking chicken-shit."

  The flush deepened. Now his concentration was broken. He looked at Arnie, then over at me. Arnie flashed me a glance of pure gratitude-- and moved a little closer to Repperton. I didn't like that.

  "Put it down," someone yelled at Repperton. And then someone else: "Put it down!" They started to chant: "Put it down, put it down, put it down!"

  Repperton didn't like it. He didn't mind being the center of attention, but this was the wrong sort of attention. His glance began to flicker around nervously, first at Arnie, then at me, then at the others. A hank of hair fell across his forehead, and he tossed it back.

  When he looked my way again, I made a move as if to go for him. The knife swivelled in my direction, and Arnie moved--he moved faster than I would have believed. He brought the side of his right hand down in a half-assed but effective karate chop. He hit Repperton's wrist hard and knocked the knife out of his hand. It clattered onto the butt-littered hottop. Repperton bent and grabbed for it. Arnie timed it with a deadly accuracy and when Repperton's hand came all the way to the asphalt, Arnie stamped on it. Hard. Repperton screamed.

  Don Vandenberg moved in then, quickly, hauled Arnie off, and threw him to the ground. Hardly aware that I was going to do it, I stepped into the ring and kicked Vandenberg in the ass just as hard as I could--I brought my foot up rather than pistoning it out; I kicked him as if I were punting a football.

  Vandenberg, a tall, thin guy who was either nineteen or twenty at that time, began to scream and dance around holding his butt. He forgot all about helping Buddy; he ceased to be a factor in things. To me it's amazing that I didn't paralyze him. I never kicked anyone or anything harder, and my friend, it sho did feel fine.

  Just then an arm locked itself around my windpipe and there was a hand between my legs. I realized what was going to happen just a second too late to wholly prevent it. My balls were given a good, firm squeeze that sent sick pain bellowing and raving up from my crotch and into my stomach and down into my legs, unmanning them so that when the arm around my windpipe let go, I simply collapsed in a puddle on the smoking-area tarmac.

  "How did you like that, dickface?" a squarish guy with bad teeth asked me. He was wearing small and rather delicate wire-frame glasses that looked absurd on his wide, blocky face. This was Moochie Welch, another of Buddy's friends.


  Suddenly the circle of watchers began to melt away and I heard a man's voice yelling, "Break it up! Break it up right now! You kids take a walk! Take a walk, dammit!"

  It was Mr. Casey. Finally, Mr. Casey.

  Buddy Repperton snatched his switchblade off the pavement. He retracted the blade and shoved the knife into the hip pocket of his jeans in one quick motion. His hand was scraped and bleeding, and it looked as if it was going to swell. The miserable sonofabitch, I hoped it would swell until it looked like one of those gloves Donald Duck wears in the funnypages.

  Moochie Welch backed away from me, glanced toward the sound of Mr. Casey's voice, and touched the corner of his mouth delicately with his thumb. "Later, dickface," he said.

  Don Vandenberg was dancing more slowly now, but he was still rubbing the affected part. Tears of pain were spilling down his face.

  Then Arnie was beside me, getting an arm around me, helping me up. There was a lot of dirt smeared across his shirt from where Vandenberg had thrown him down. There were cigarette butts squashed into the knees of his jeans.

  "You okay, Dennis? What'd he do to you?"

  "Gave my balls a little squeeze. I'll be all right."

  At least I hoped I would be. If you're a man and you've slammed your nuts a good one at some point (and what man has not), you know.

  If you're a woman, you don't--can't. The initial agony is only the start; it fades, to be replaced by a dull, throbbing feeling of pressure that coils in the pit of the stomach. And what that feeling says is Hi, there! Good to be here, just sitting around in the pit of your stomach and making you feel like you're going to simultaneously blow lunch and shit your pants! I guess I'll just hang around for a while, okay? How does half an hour or so sound? Great! Getting your nuts squeezed is not one of life's great thrills.

  Mr. Casey shoved his way through the loosening knot of spectators and took in the situation. He wasn't a big guy like Coach Puffer; he didn't even look particularly rugged. He was of medium height and age, and going bald. Big horn-rimmed glasses set squarely on his face. He favored plain white shirts--no tie--and he was wearing one of them now. He wasn't a big guy, but Mr. Casey got respect. Nobody fucked around with him, because he wasn't afraid of kids deep down the way so many teachers are. The kids knew it, too. Buddy and Don and Moochie knew it; it was in the sullen way they dropped their eyes and shuffled their feet.

  "Get lost," Mr. Casey said briskly to the few remaining spectators. They started to drift away. Moochie Welch decided to try and drift with them. "Not you, Peter," Mr. Casey said.

  "Aw, Mr. Casey, I ain't been doing nothing," Moochie said.

  "Me neither," Don said. "How come you always pick on us?"

  Mr. Casey came over to where I was still leaning on Arnie for support. "Are you all right, Dennis?"

  I was finally beginning to get over it--I wouldn't have been if one of my thighs hadn't partially blocked Welch's hand. I nodded.

  Mr. Casey walked back to where Buddy Repperton, Moochie Welch, and Don Vandenberg stood in a shuffling, angry line. Don hadn't been joking; he had been speaking for all of them. They really did feel picked on.

  "This is cute, isn't it?" Mr. Casey said finally. "Three on two. That the way you like to do things, Buddy? Those odds don't seem stacked enough for you."

  Buddy looked up, threw Casey a smouldering, ugly glance, and then dropped his eyes again. "They started it. Those guys."

  "That's not true--" Arnie began.

  "Shut up, cuntface," Buddy said. He started to add something, but before he could get it out, Mr. Casey grabbed him and threw him up against the back wall of the shop. There was a tin sign there which read SMOKING HERE ONLY. Mr. Casey began to slam Buddy Repperton against that sign, and every time he did it, the sign jangled, like dramatic punctuation. He handled Repperton the way you or I might have handled a great big ragdoll. I guess he had muscles somewhere, all right.

  "You want to shut your big mouth," he said, and slammed Buddy against the sign. "You want to shut your mouth or clean up your mouth. Because I don't have to listen to that stuff coming from you, Buddy."

  He let go of Repperton's shirt. It had pulled out of his jeans, showing his white, untanned belly. He looked back at Arnie. "What were you saying?"

  "I came past the smoking area on my way out to the bleachers to eat my lunch," Arnie said. "Repperton was smoking with his friends there. He came over and knocked my lunchbag out of my hand and then stepped on it. He squashed it." He seemed about to say something more, struggled with it, and swallowed it again. "That started the fight."

  But I wasn't going to leave it at that. I'm no stoolie or tattletale, not under ordinary circumstances, but Repperton had apparently decided that more than a good beating was required to avenge himself for getting kicked out of Darnell's. He could have punched a hole in Arnie's intestines, maybe killed him.

  "Mr. Casey," I said.

  He looked at me. Behind him, Buddy Repperton's green eyes flashed at me balefully--a warning. Keep your mouth shut, this is between us. Even a year before, some twisted sense of pride might have forced me to go along with him and play the game, but not now.

  "What is it, Dennis?"

  "He's had it in for Arnie since the summer. He's got a knife, and he looked like he was planning to stick it in."

  Arnie was looking at me, his gray eyes opaque and unreadable. I thought about him calling Repperton a shitter--LeBay's word--and felt a prickle of goosebumps on my back.

  "You fucking liar!" Repperton cried dramatically. "I ain't got no knife!"

  Casey looked at him without saying anything. Vandenberg and Welch looked extremely uncomfortable now--scared. Their possible punishment for this little scuffle had progressed beyond detention, which they were used to, and suspension, which they had experienced, toward the outer limits of expulsion.

  I only had to say one more word. I thought about it. I almost didn't. But it had been Arnie, and Arnie was my friend, and inside where it

  mattered, I didn't just think he had meant to stick Arnie with that blade; I knew it. I said the word.

  "It's a switchblade."

  Now Repperton's eyes did not just flash; they blazed, promising hellfire, damnation, and a long period in traction. "That's bullshit, Mr. Casey," he said hoarsely. "He's lying. I swear to God."

  Mr. Casey still said nothing. He looked slowly at Arnie.

  "Cunningham," he said. "Did Repperton here pull a knife on you?"

  Arnie wouldn't answer at first. Then in a low voice that was little more than a sigh, he said, "Yeah."

  Now Repperton's blazing glance was for both of us.

  Casey turned to Moochie Welch and Don Vandenberg. All at once I could see that his method of handling this had changed; he had begun to move slowly and carefully, as if testing the footing beneath carefully each time he moved a step forward. Mr. Casey had already grasped the consequences.

  "Was there a knife involved?" he asked them.

  Moochie and Vandenberg looked at their feet and would not answer. That was answer enough.

  "Turn out your pockets, Buddy," Mr. Casey said.

  "Fuck I will!" Buddy said. His voice went shrill. "You can't make me!"

  "If you mean I don't have the authority, you're wrong," Mr. Casey said. "If you mean I can't turn your pockets out for myself if I decide to try it, that's also wrong. But--"

  "Yeah, try it, try it," Buddy shouted at him. "I'll knock you through that wall, you little bald fuck!"

  My stomach was rolling helplessly. I hated stuff like this, ugly confrontation scenes, and this was the worst one I'd ever been a part of.

  But Mr. Casey had things under control, and he never deviated from his course.

  "But I'm not going to do it," he finished. "You're going to turn out your pockets yourself."

  "Fat fucking chance," Buddy said. He was standing against the back wall of the shop so that the bulge in his hip pocket wouldn't show. His shirttail hung in two wrinkled flaps over the crotch of his jeans. His eyes
darted here and there like the eyes of an animal brought to bay.

  Mr. Casey glanced at Moochie and Don Vandenberg. "You two boys go up to the office and stay there until I come up," he said. "Don't go anywhere else; you've got enough trouble without that."

  They walked away slowly, close together, as if for protection.

  Moochie threw one glance back. In the main building, the bell went off. People started to stream back inside, some of them giving us curious glances. We had missed lunch. It didn't matter. I wasn't hungry anymore.

  Mr. Casey turned his attention back to Buddy.

  "You're on school grounds right now," he said. "You should thank God you are, because if you do have a knife, Buddy, and if you pulled it, that's assault with a deadly weapon. They send you to prison for that."

  "Prove it, prove it!" Buddy shouted. His cheeks were flaming, his breath coming in quick, nervous little gasps.

  "If you don't turn out your pockets right now, I'm going to write a dismissal slip on you. Then I'm going to call the cops, and the minute you step outside the main gate, they'll grab you. You see the bind you're in?" He looked grimly at Buddy. "We keep our own house here," he said. "But if I have to write you a dismissal, Buddy, your ass belongs to them. Of course if you have no knife, you're okay. But if you do and they find it . . ."

  There was a moment of silence. The four of us stood in tableau. I didn't think he was going to do it; he would take his dismissal and try to ditch the knife somewhere quickly. Then he must have realized that the cops would hunt for it and probably find it, because he pulled the knife out of his back pocket and threw it down on the tarmac. It landed on the go-button. The blade popped out and winked wickedly in the afternoon sunlight, eight inches of chromed steel.