Mick (8 page)

“I’m fine, officer,” the woman said. “I was being harassed by some hoodlum in a truck, but fortunately this decent young gentleman happened by.”

Decent young gentleman?
I hadn’t exactly been swimming in
that
stuff lately. This I could like. And she didn’t even know I was in the truck with Terry.

“Good work, son,” the cop said, then looked quizzical. He leaned a little closer to sniff me.

I pulled away, turned my face from him. The last thing I needed was for the officer to smell what really made the hero brave. So much for basking in my new goodness. “You okay now?” I asked the woman, and when she said she was I took off. “Can’t be late for school,” I said in a rushed voice, like I cared.

I was very late for school, which earned me detention, so I could be very late after school too. But I felt good. I had done something okay. My brother wasn’t going to slit my throat for another nine hours or so, so that was cool. This was already a good day by recent standards.

But there was nobody to tell it to. I was at school.

Well, there was one somebody I’d have loved to tell, except she’d never listen. Her name was Evelyn. Evelyn was special. She was in the avant garde of hating me, having hated me long before I was on TV. I asked her to go to a dance with me one time and she ripped three buttons off my shirt without even saying no. She was so cold to me, it was thrilling.

And if there was an opposite of me, an anti-me, it would be Evelyn. She was a poet. She was Cuban. She also said she was part Narragansett Indian and part Russian. She had long silky black hair that came down to her waist some days and disappeared completely under a hat on other days. Nobody ever knew how much of what she said was true, because in fact she was weird like you’d figure a poet would be. But some days she did look like a real Indian, and some days like a real Russian. What she always managed, though, was to look like nobody else in this brain-dead school. Being so different meant she was largely considered to be out of her mind, thus she had almost as many friends around here as I did. So now and then I figured I had a shot with her.

Evelyn was in detention with me that day because instead of the essay on Oscar Wilde she was supposed to do, she handed in a poem: “All in the gutter/some look at stars/while others try to lure/students into their cars.” As usual nobody knew what she meant, but the English teacher, Mr. Wolman, seemed to take it rather personally, getting all red-faced and tearing the paper into fifty million pieces.

So Evelyn was down there in the gutter with me, sitting right next to me, and I was feeling a little bit of okay with myself, enough to give her a try.

I pulled my mini magnetic backgammon set out of my inside jacket pocket. “Wanna play?” I asked.

She turned a fish eye on me. “Roses are red/violets are blue/... screw,” she said.

“Why are you so mean to me?” I asked.

“Because you’re a pig.”

“I am not a pig.”

“Yes you are. Stop talkin’ to her.” The voice came from the other side of the room.

“What’s your problem, man?” I asked.

“Just leave her alone or I’m gonna kick your ass.”

Here we go round the goddamn mulberry bush. Again. “Eat shit,” I said, but I didn’t enjoy saying it as much as I used to. I was getting like one of them oldies acts that sing the same songs, do the same dances a million times until it’s all meaningless. You know the tune by now.

“Oh ya?”

“Ya.”

“Lick my pinga.”

“Lick your...? Well, lick mine too.”

“Outside?”

“Damn right outside.”

And it was a date. Evelyn showed up to watch, bless her frigid soul. So did four of the eight other detainees. And, of course, me and Ruben Cruz.

“Your breath stinks, you Irish mick stupid drunk bastard.”

It was probably true, since he said it from three feet away.

“Stay away from my sister,” he said, walking toward me.

“Okay,” I said. “How ’bout your mother?”

I was lying on my back, listening to the cheers before I could even raise a fist. “Hit him, Cruz, man, hit him!” Cruz obliged, dropping crisp shots to my chin and temple before I managed to roll him over. When I was sitting on his chest, I returned the favor, holding his collar bunched in my right hand and pounding him in the mouth, smack, smack, smack, three times, all mouth, shake those teeth loose, show a lot of blood, always the way.

I was hitting him almost at will,
winning
, as I do in about twenty-five percent of my fights. But it didn’t feel good. Even as we both scrambled to our feet and went on punching—I snuck up a nice fiery breadbasket uppercut that made him suck out loud, he popped an overhand square into my cheekbone—the cheering went on. “Hit him, Cruz! Drop him! Kill him.” And I listened to it. I didn’t used to listen to it. It was always just noise before, same for everybody who fought. Just noise.

But this time I heard it, and I couldn’t hold up anymore. I passed up a clean shot at Cruz’s face, grabbed him by the hair, and threw him down. I didn’t jump on him. I backed away. I was through.

Cruz got up and came after me. Drilled me with a straight right to the jaw. He waited for my reaction with his fists raised. There was no reaction. “Pig,” he said, and punched me again, in the mouth, making those bottom teeth wiggle.

First there was a gasp from the spectators, then nothing. Cruz was perplexed, looking at everybody else for some sign, but there were no more calls for my head, then back at me. “Freakin’ pig,” he spat, then turned and walked away. He wasn’t talking about my interest in Evelyn, because he didn’t care. He didn’t even look at her before stalking off.

She came up to me as the crowd slithered away. She smiled, a friendly small smile I hadn’t seen before. “That was stupid,” she said.

“He’s your brother?” I asked as I blotted my lip with a Kleenex. “I’ve never even seen you talk to each other.”

“He doesn’t like me very much. He’s just been waiting for a reason to beat on you.” She shrugged, waved, and left.

So there it was, back again, my great day. I felt so good, watching Evelyn walk away with those long graceful strides that seemed to make her float rather than step, her shiny braid wagging at me like a big playful monkey finger, come here, it was telling me, or no, no, no, but either way it was sweet play.

I made up my mind I wasn’t going to fight anyone, ever, over anything, again.

As I walked through the door at home, Terry brained me with a kitchen chair, knocking me cold.

“I’LL PLAY WITH YOU.
”

The guy was answering a question I’d asked four days ago. A question I’d asked somebody
else
. He was that kind of guy.

“Huh?”

“I said I’ll play with you if she won’t. I love backgammon.”

His name was Toy. He was in detention when I was. He was also in detention when I wasn’t. He was always in detention. Not because he was a bad guy; there wasn’t a disagreeable thing about him. But for being a little on the loony side. That stuff, oddness, pe
cul
iarity they call it, that’s what drives ’em mad around here and the loons are always winding up in the jug for mostly nothing. They used to lock Toy up all the time for his hat. He wore this kind of straw Georgia cowboy hat with the sides scooped up and the front brim bent way low over his face. The no-eye guy, people called him, and you had to crouch low, crane your neck, look straight up at him if you wanted to look him in the eye. He’d let you contort yourself up like that too, rather than tip his head back to let you see him.

He still wore the hat almost all the time, even in gym which could be pretty funny with his sweats on and running around trying to decapitate somebody in dodge ball. But the teachers got used to the hat or just quit because they didn’t jug him for it anymore. They just jugged him for every other damn thing.

“You still have it on you? The backgammon game?”

“Ya, I got it,” I said, still in shock over being spoken to on school property by somebody without his hands around my neck.

“Well, whip it out then.”

We were in study period, in the library. All I was doing was all I ever did during study, which was stare at Evelyn as she read big volumes of poetry, slammed the book shut, stared at the ceiling, sighed, sometimes cried, went and got another book. I found myself, like when you’re watching a fight or a basketball game on TV and you can’t help ducking and juking along, pantomiming the action—doing the things she did, staring up to the ceiling, sighing, folding my hands prayerlike the way she did. When she cried... well, okay, I didn’t cry, but I did feel bad for her.

“Sure, why not,” I said, opening the game.

“Ya, why not,” Toy said, “It’s not like she’s ever going to acknowledge you or anything. After the game you can go back to mooning and moping.”

“Shut up,” I said, but I laughed anyway. “And she
did
finally talk to me. After the fight.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. What did she say?”

“She said I was stupid. Then she left.”

“Well, say now, that’s a whole nother thing I didn’t know. You got a
relationship
.”

“I’m getting there,” I said.

“No you’re not,” he said as he set up the board.

“And why not?”

“Because you’re a well-known pig, that’s why not. And that young lady is a person of principles.
And
,” he shook the dice and tumbled them out, “she’s not a Caucasian.” He looked up at me, but not all the way up. His hat stared at me.

“I’m not a pig,” I snapped, drawing looks from all over the library. “And you better shut up.”

The hat laughed at me. “I’ve seen you in action. I’m not worried. Roll the dice.”

“Well, if I’m such a pig, what are you doing talking to me?”

“Because I think there’s more to it. I know that, while you certainly have strong piggish qualities, you’re not really a total pig. You don’t have the heart for it.”

“Gee, thanks. I feel so much better about myself now.” I rolled the dice, got a two and a one.

Toy rolled double sixes. Rolled again, got a three and a one, started blocking my guys in. “And despite what the whole world seems to know about you, I kind of think they might have the story wrong.”

He looked so sure of himself, so sly, smiling without looking up from the board.

It hit me. “You know!” I said. “You know. How do you know?”

“I’m smart.”

“You’re not
that
smart.”

“I saw where the first egg landed.”

“You were there!”

“And I saw that guy chewing on the side of your head, whispering the sweet somethings in your ear. And I saw you walking toward the lady you hit.”

I started shaking Toy’s hand furiously. I felt like I’d been rescued from a shipwreck. Somebody in the outside world knew, or at least suspected, that I wasn’t an animal like my brother. “Thank god,” I said. “Thank god. Sanity.”

The word struck him funny. He pointed at himself. “Sanity?” he said.

“Wait now. What were you doing at the St. Pat’s parade? You ain’t Irish.”

“That I ain’t,” he said. “Actually, I’m Cambodian.”

I hesitated, even though I was stunned. Until I realized he had to be kidding me. “Funny, you don’t look Cambodian,” I said.

“Goes to show,” he said, smirking. “You just never can tell.”

“Oh, I don’t know about—”

“Game’s over,” Toy cut in.

I looked at the board. It was a total devastation. I never made it across the fifty-yard line.

“You have some kind of unslakable thirst for absorbing beatings, huh?”

“Apparently I do,” I said.

Monday morning Sully returned from the mono. “So what happened while I was away?” The fat lip Cruz gave me was gone, but the lump I got from Terry and the chair, long and thick like a finger running between the skin and bone on my forehead, was still prominent.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Cool. For you, I’d say nothing happening was a good thing.”

“Oh, wait a minute. Now that you mention it, a couple of things did happen. I got beat up by five Asian guys, one Cuban, and one psychotic brother. I rescued an old black lady from the foaming jaws of Terry. I fell in love. And I made a new friend at school.”

Sully looked at me for a few long suspicious seconds. “Bullshit,” he said. “You didn’t make no friends.”

“I did. I’ll show you.”

Loitering in front of the corner store across from the school was Toy. He was sitting on a plastic milk crate, a long skinny cherry-smelling cigar sticking out from under the hat. There was about an inch between the brim and the ash.

“Hey, pig, how ya doin’, man?” Toy asked. I loved it.

“Him?” Sully said, gesturing with his thumb. “You made one damn friend, and it’s
him
?”

“So what’s wrong with me?” Toy said, all cool, letting the cigar smoke just eke out of his nostrils, gather under the brim of his hat, then roll up over the edges.

“You’re a bigger loser than
he
is, that’s what,” Sully said, turning the big thumb on me now.

“Thanks, Sul,” I said.

“Listen, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean you weren’t fine guys. It’s just that, well, you’re like zits, probably harmless but who the hell wants to be seen with ya.”

Toy went into aggressive ignore-Sully mode. He stuck the cigar into his mouth and let it hang while he talked around it.

“I’ve been thinking about your lady problem over the weekend. The way to Evelyn is—”

“Whoa, whoa,” Sully jumped in. “Evelyn, Mick? Did I have mono, or friggin’ malaria? Evelyn is the great love you fell into?”

“Ya, what about it?”

“About it is this. Of all the many thousands of people who hate your guts, there is nobody who hates them more profoundly than Evelyn does. So unless I’m confused on exactly what the purpose of loving a girl is...”

“She’s softening.”

“She’s
softening
, is she? You use a blowtorch, did ya?”

I turned to Toy. I had allowed myself to forget how futile this was. Sully was back to remind me. “I don’t know what I’m tryin’ to prove. Sully’s right, I don’t have a prayer.”

“Of course I’m right,” Sully said, satisfied. “Don’t waste your time. Go out and find a chick who lives a hundred miles away and don’t know anything about you. Then you got a shot. Evelyn, she ain’t your type anyway.”