Do You Think This Is Strange? (23 page)

I liked it in there because it was always warm, and always quiet. The window spilled into a narrow back alley. The only sounds outside were the occasional faint honk of a horn, or the rattling of a shopping cart as a homeless man scurried from trash container to trash container.

I liked to sit in the middle of the room and look at the photographs of Jack Sweat and his father. Seeing them, I felt calm. My mind quieted. It was like the early mornings, without threads rattling around in my brain.

The last time I sat in the middle of the floor of Jack Sweat's room, he came in with a new trophy. This was a break in tradition—usually only the Butcher added memorabilia. But this time it was Jack. The trophy was medium-sized. It would go on the middle shelf. Only first-place trophies went on the top shelf, and he didn't win the competition this time.

He nodded to me. I sat cross-legged, still in my boxing shorts, still wearing my hand wraps, my shirt damp with sweat from the day's workout.

He added the trophy to his collection and stood beside me. I stood up.

“What do you think?” he asked.

I didn't think anything. I understood that he wanted to know what I thought about the contents of the room. I requested appropriate answers from my memory, and quickly a list of responses came back.

After a few moments of consideration, I chose the optimum answer.

“This room does not have a chair in it,” I said.

He looked around. Then he smiled. “It could use a chair, couldn't it?” he said.

Then he stepped closer and kissed me on my lips.

Listen
: These are the people who have kissed me in my life.

My mother kissed me frequently. I remember every kiss she gave me, and I remember the final one, on a train platform, the ticking of rain on hot metal, the hiss of air released from the brakes. She kissed me on the forehead and said goodbye.

My father kissed me less frequently, and he stopped when I was seven. That's not right. He kissed me on the top of my head as I lay in the hospital. His last kiss was when he thought I was asleep, but I was in the midlands between sleep and wakefulness, and his kiss seemed to be from far away. His voice, barely audible, echoed through the high country of the place from which I listened and waited.

“I'm sorry,” he whispered. “I'm sorry.”

Ten years ago, Saskia Stiles kissed me on several occasions, at the urging of her parents.

“Say good night to Freddy,” Linda Stiles said, as they put on their coats in our front hall.

“Good night,” she said, looking at the floor.

“Well,
kiss
him, for Chrissake,” urged John Stiles, and my mother laughed loudly and my father frowned.

Three times, before they left our house, or before we left their house, John Stiles shook my hand, but Linda Stiles kissed me on the cheek.

“Good night, Freddy,” she said. “You're a treasure.”

“Yeah,” I replied.

Until I was seventeen, only four people had ever kissed me. Only my mother kissed me on the mouth. But then Jack Sweat kissed me on my lips. His mouth was open, and his tongue pressed against my lips.

My mind raced. I hadn't been kissed in almost ten years. I had no reference point from which to craft an appropriate response.

Only my mother ever kissed me on the lips. Jack Sweat wasn't my mother. No one kissed me before with an open mouth. Jack Sweat slid his tongue over my lips when he kissed me.

His lips held, opening just a little, pressing against my lips, warm and soft. When he pulled away, there was a bit of a pop.

He looked at me. He wasn't smiling. He stood, a few inches from my face, watching me intently. I didn't meet his look. My eyes started to water. My nose started to itch.

“What are you thinking?” he asked, and I grabbed the first relevant reply in my hastily gathered list of possible responses.

“I think you need to step back,” I said to Jack Sweat. I don't think he expected that.

He stepped away from me. We stood, not looking at each other.

A few moments passed.

“Maybe you should go,” he said, his teeth gritted together.

I stepped backward slowly. I turned and walked to the door, then stopped. “I like this room,” I said.

“Just go,” he sighed.

“Goodbye, Jack,” I said. “I'll see you later.”

He didn't answer.

I walked downstairs and out the side door. I think he was sad that the room didn't have a chair just then.

—

Two days later, I went to the gym as per my schedule. I changed and sat down beside Jack, who was wrapping his hands. I began to wrap my own.

“Go away,” he said, without even looking at me.

“I don't want to go away,” I said and began eating my sandwich.

“Sit somewhere else.”

“I want to sit here.”

“Fine,” he muttered and picked up his towel and headgear. “
I'll
sit somewhere else.”

“Is there a problem with you two Nancies?” asked the Butcher.

I said nothing, but I stared at Jack's headgear. After a moment, Jack said, “Nothing, Dad. Nothing.”

“Freddy?” asked the Butcher. “What's up?”

“I just want to sit here.”

“Okay.” He nodded. “Why don't you do that?”

Jack shook his head. “Bloody retard,” he muttered and started walking away.

“But
listen
—”

The Butcher put his hand on my shoulder and stopped me from following Jack.

—

In the ring, Jack was out of control. He swung wildly, dropping his guard in sacrifice. He came at me quickly, throwing punches even as I was coming to the centre of the ring, and he pushed me back. I was momentarily confused, and he connected once, twice, three times and I fell back into the ropes.

“Stop,” ordered the Butcher. He motioned Jack back to his corner. Jack paused, puffing angrily, half turned away from me in contempt. “Freddy, you gotta be aware of your opponent.”

“Yes,” I said.

“You gotta know that they can come at you right away. Don't expect to set up first.”

“Okay.”

We touched gloves and he started swinging almost immediately. I backed away from him, dodging some punches, blocking others. Others clipped me at threatening angles, but none landed with any great force.

Not yet.

I had no idea what to do because this was a style I had never seen before. He gave no thought to his own defence. He focused everything on the attack.

When his left hook misses, his chin is forward. Within reach.

But his right is coming across just after it. Before the left has finished even.

So step to the hook. Let the left go by and follow it with your head.

A left jab sent me back two times. My nose was bleeding. An overhand right tagged me above the eye and I saw stars.

The left hook. It's coming.

His knee dropped. That was the tell. I stepped back and a left hook scythed by. I stepped in and his right grazed the back of my head. My cross didn't miss. It caught Jack square on the jaw where the mandible reaches into the skull, where the power of the blow runs up the jawbone and explodes into the brain at the joint.

Jack's knees wiggled and gave way. He collapsed to the canvas.

I stood over him. “Best two out of three?” I asked.

“Just go away,” he whispered. “Just go away.”

When I went back to the gym on Wednesday, Jack wasn't wrapping his hands. I began to wrap mine, and the Butcher came over. His face seemed angry but it didn't seem angry. It seemed sad but it didn't seem sad. It was an expression I hadn't directly encountered before, and I didn't know what it meant.

“Jack's not in today, Freddy,” he told me as he sat and finished wrapping my hands. “We'll just do pad work today, okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed.

—

On Saturday, Jack wasn't there.

“He's probably not coming back,” the Butcher said. “Not for a while, anyway.”

“Where is he going?”

“He's going to work upstairs.”

I stood up. “I'll go ask him to come downstairs.”

He took my arm. “Sit,” he said. “He doesn't want to come downstairs.”

“Why?”

“He doesn't want to spar for a while.”

“Why?”

The Butcher leaned back and scratched his chin. “He just doesn't, okay? Maybe you should take a break yourself.”

“I don't want to take a break.”

“I know.” He sighed. “Jack is . . . well, Jack has things he has to work out, you know?”

“No.”

“He's got a lot on his mind. Going to college next year.
NCAA
scholarship possibility. His grades.” He shrugged. “You know, a lot of thinking about where he's going.”

He paused. “Who he wants to be, I guess.”

—

That night, the threads were waiting, and I got little sleep as I tumbled the questions in the dryer of my mind. Why did Jack Sweat kiss me when it made him so upset afterwards? I'd never seen him kiss anyone else, nor had I ever seen a boy kissing another boy. This was an unusual event, and I wasn't sure what I had done to enable it. Once again, my action, or lack of it, was possibly responsible for another conversational head-on collision.

I carried the threads through the weekend and then to school. I wandered through the day, not talking to anyone, paying little attention in class. I meandered through lunch, then began to go to my next class, but was unable to because Chad Kennedy had Oscar Tolstoy pressed against my locker door.

“You're gay,” he said to Oscar. “Say it. Come on, say it.”

Objectively speaking, Chad Kennedy was not a good person.

He had few of the characteristics of a good person: he did not treat others with consistent respect, except for those with whom there would be negative consequences otherwise. Those who could not punish him for neglected courtesy were discarded as irrelevant.

Oscar Tolstoy was such a person.

So was I. Until the moment I told him to move away from my locker.

“You're in my way,” I said to the back of Chad. There were several people standing around, and they stepped away, forming a ring.

I stepped into that ring.

Chad didn't answer me. I assumed it was because he didn't hear me.

“You're in front of my locker,” I said again, a little louder. When I said it, the hall fell silent.

He turned and glared at me, frowning, the same frown he used when he was about to do something to someone.

“What are you looking at?” he demanded.

“What are
you
looking at,” I said back to him.

He pushed me and I pushed him back. He pushed me again. I pushed him back again and he grabbed my shirt. I looped my arm under his and bent my elbow. With a rotation, I wrapped around his arm and pulled down. His arm dropped, but he didn't let go, and it dragged him closer, bending him down with the pull of my arm.

I punched him as hard as I could and his knees wobbled. He stepped back defensively, brought his arms up, and swung at me.

He missed. I didn't.

I didn't miss the three times I struck him in rapid succession, and his knees gave out. He leaned forward into me. With all my might, I pushed him back; he stepped on his own shoelace and fell back into the glass case across the hall. The shelves collapsed on him. Trophies tumbled down, striking him on the top of the head. He sank to the floor.

He didn't get back up. His head began to bleed. He closed his eyes.

“Crap,” someone said. “He's our quarterback!”

when are you coming

Tonight.

—

I opened my eyes.
It was time to go see Saskia. I stood at the kitchen door, staring at my father. He sat at the table, a can of beer in front of him.

“What?” he barked.

“We're out of milk.”

“And you think I should just go get some so you can have your precious goddamn milk?”

“Yes.”

“You want milk?” he said, taking a drink of beer. “Get it your goddamn self.”

He turned to stare out the window. I didn't move. After a moment, he turned and glared at me, then took another drink.

“Okay,” I said. I took my coat from the hall closet and slipped out the front door.

—

I remember the first time I realized someone was lying to me, which means that I remember a time when I believed everything I was told.

I remember when I told my first lie, which means I remember a time when I only told the truth.

I rarely lie, because I am not good at it. I have a good poker face, but my lies crumble under prolonged questioning.

Listen
: If I had told my father I was going to the store, the conversation may have gone in an entirely different direction.

“I'm going to the store,” I said to my father in the scenario envisioned in my head.

“The bloody hell you are,” he growled. “Go back to your room.”

Or if I tried a different approach.

“Can I go to the store?” I asked my father. “We're out of milk.”

“I don't give a shit,” he said in this scenario. “Get the hell back in your room.”

“I need to go to the store,” I told my father in the third scenario.

“What for?”

“I need baking soda.”

“What the hell do you need baking soda for?”

“A science project.”

“For what class?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“No, Freddy,” he said. “Which class has a science project?”

“I don't have a science project in any of my classes.”

“So why do you need baking soda?”

“I don't,” I replied.

“Bloody well get back to your room, then.”