The War Against the Assholes (11 page)

14

T
he rest of break: less remarkable. Christmas came and went. As did my grandmother. My father's mother. My mother's parents died the year I was born. My father did not hide the liquor. My grandmother got slurring drunk and started to denounce at the end of the meal blacks and Hispanics. A tradition, with her. We all sat in frozen silence around the goose. Its skin rich looking, almost red. “I'm not saying anything that isn't backed up by the facts of the matter,” said my grandmother. “Spirit of the season,” said my father. “Tommy, you can debate all you like but just look what happened to the street you grew up on,” she said. “I think you're exaggerating, Ma,” said my father. “I never once in my life have exaggerated,” said my grandmother. Not true. We all exaggerate and we all lie. It's human nature. You can't argue with your elders. No matter how incisive or brilliant your attack. They win by default. Simply by having survived longer than you. End of story. Her denunciations didn't last long. “They're all good people, just confused,” she said. She said this every year. She gave me a savings bond: fifty dollars. To mature when I was thirty-three. I kissed her slack cheek. My parents gave me a set of weights and told me I no longer had a curfew. I was stunned and touched. I assumed all my recent late nights would have made them assert their authority. People surprise you. They grant you more freedom than you'd expect. “Don't make me regret this,” said my mother. “You know what your responsibilities are,” said my father, “so no buffoonery, please.”

I did a lot of reading. By which I mean read and reread sections of the
Calendar
. I imagined Alfons Froch as Mr. Stone had described him, fleeing Hitler and Sebottendorf, sick with syphilis and poor, cold in the Berlin winter and ultimately victorious. If you die a free man, you win. No matter how sordid your death. I also learned
THE FOUR WINDS
, although I discovered Hob had cheated to perform one of the flourishes. I checked in with him every day, to see how he was carrying it. He sounded sick. I told him over and over Quinn was probably not dead. I had at that point inflicted serious physical harm on five people: Greg Gilder; the Barry brothers from Cardinal Corrigan, who jumped me after a football game; a kid at one of Simon Canary's parties in ninth grade, whose name I to this day have never managed to learn; and Robert Gmielko. Gmielko groped me—he grabbed my cock in the showers when I was a freshman and he was a senior. I punched him in the throat, and then, when he'd collapsed, kicked him in the balls. He cried in front of me, from the pain. I nurture a dim hope that he in his post–high school years managed to avoid a criminal sexual conviction. The kid at Simon Canary's party I coldcocked for looking at me funny. The Barry brothers: Desmond suffered a dislocated right shoulder and James a dislocated left. Gilder I've explained. You have to have gone through it. Otherwise it seems wrong. When in fact it's merely another form of human expression. Or so I've decided. At the time I did not think about it at all. Merely acted. I did a lot of running, too, when I wasn't talking to Hob. Coach Madigan recommended it when we didn't have practice. To stay lean and mean: his words. I would have done it anyway. I love running. I like walking but I love running. Point A to point B. As fast as possible. With no reason.

Crows followed me. At first I didn't want to admit it. They'd glide from tree to tree in the park. They'd be hopping around ahead of me on the path and would only take flight when I got near them, ignoring the other runners. They perched on the points of the iron fence around the reservoir. Croaking their glad, hoarse croaks. If they were going to watch me, there was nothing I could do about it. An obnoxious one I tried and failed to kill. It was early in the morning, six or seven. I'd been running since dawn, when having to urinate woke me. I was gasping and footsore. This crow followed me for the duration of my run, treetop to treetop, bench to dry water fountain. Now, as I caught my breath, it perched on a branch and looked at me and laughed. Dry and raucous. “Too far, pal,” I said as I checked the path: no one. No other joggers, no park service employees in their leaf-emblemed golf carts, no cops, nothing. So I cleared my mind and stared at the crow. It stared back. “Turn to stone,” I said. My teeth locked. The words came out choked and sibilant. The crow did not turn to stone. Its feathers turned ash gray. From the talons up. Meager haunches, breast, wings, and glossy head and eyes: all went gray. When the transformation reached the top of its head, it leaped from the branch and winged off. Harder to spot than before, in fact, against the stony winter sky. Laughing its raucous laugh. My nose bled, a dense trickle. I wiped it away with my wrist. “Can't fight city hall,” I murmured.

Failure. Failure at minor things. I got the cigarette-lighting man­euver down. Modern technology had rendered the exercise obsolete. Or hyper-refined Stone Age technology. Depending on how you look at it. No card impossibilities. No mirrors. I didn't want to risk another fiasco. Even the niggling, useless things I did caused pain. Cigarettes. Making a pencil change from yellow to bright green. I got more nosebleeds. My lungs and spine ached. Once I suffered a crippling bout of diarrhea. From trying to fly, as I had done at the construction site. The valley of bones. Nothing dramatic. Just straining to levitate from the floor of my room. Two inches. Three. A foot at my peak. Then total collapse. A run to the bathroom. My father knocked, I was in there so long. If you desire struggle, you'll struggle. If you worry, you will suffer. If you act, you conquer. The motto of an adolescent. Football inflicted worse pain. Football had no benefits I could discern, other than raising my various physical thresholds. Hob, short and frail: I wondered what it cost him. He masked it. My ache had gone underground: bones, the nerves behind my eyes. I was not sick. I was not tired. I needed less sleep. I had vivid dreams I could not recall on waking. I half-remembered having them before. Unknown stars and trees, unknown scent of unknown grasses. A woman's face. A scar. A crow. I ate with twice as much vigor as usual. I consumed in one sitting five or six leftover pounds of Christmas goose. My mother asked where it had gone. “I wish sometimes we'd had a girl,” she said when I told her, stroking her forehead and arranging her hair, and pushing her glasses back onto the bridge of her nose.
The expert's art requires silence, concentration—and gratitude.
That's Erzmund also, from the prefatory remarks to his explanation of bottom dealing.

So I won't call it suffering. Yet the pain never left me. I woke early every day of Christmas break. Open-eyed and ready. Mornings I ran, late mornings I read, in the afternoons I practiced with cards and after that with no instrument other than my will. I would go for long walks at night. Terminating at Karasarkissian's. Or east to the frigid esplanade. Hob joined me. Vincent once, Alabama more than once. We avoided talking about Quinn Klayman. Crows followed us. We let them live. None displayed the same presumption the crow in the park had. When I told Alabama and Hob about this, they both applauded the idea. Even though I'd failed. “Seriously, they need to like have a bird Holocaust,” said Hob. His ear had healed. A faint, thumb-shaped scar decorated the formerly torn flesh. You would never imagine that a future van rapist had torn a sail-shaped chunk from the cartilage and skin with his teeth. Alabama, however, did not joke about it. So I also refrained. The scar Vincent refused to eradicate. “You need a reminder,” he said, according to Hob, who had finessed him. Kept the important events of the night to himself. Told him he'd gotten into a fight. Told him Quinn had bitten him in a drug-induced frenzy. The words he used:
drug-induced frenzy
. A newscaster phrase.

Alabama kept the wand. We studied it thoroughly one night, in the basement. When Vincent was out at another appointment. Hob couldn't clarify what these were. The wand smooth and black. Carved from a single piece of wood: no seams, and you could detect the grain. “I've never seen one this close before,” said Hob. “It looks kind of shitty, to be honest,” I said. “Typically useful analysis,” said Alabama. She pointed it at the wall and closed her eyes. “Anything,” she said after several seconds. “Nothing,” said Hob. “Maybe it's keyed to the owner,” I said. “Now, that actually sounds possible,” said Alabama. Cold and heavy. The wand, I mean. “So they all get issued these,” I asked. “I have no idea,” said Hob, “maybe. I'm not exactly an expert, remember?” “We could show it to Charthouse. I bet he knows,” I said. I realized how stupid this idea was before I'd finished forming the last word of my sentence. Alabama didn't respond. Hob aimed the wand at one of the whiskey carboys. The eels went apeshit. Shooting around in the amber liquid. Spiraling, writhing. Alabama took the wand and examined it again. “No point in being delicate,” she said. Broke it between her slim, hard-looking hands.

I was expecting green sparks. Pyrotechnics. Nothing. Just a dull snap. Just a dead dowel of black-brown wood. The eels calmed down. “I know you think it's wrong,” I said, “to use it to get by.” “She's a purist, though. It's not wrong,” said Hob, “
wrong
's the wrong word.” “If you want to lie about everything that matters,” said Alabama, “to yourself above all, that's on you.” She was still holding Quinn's broken wand. One half in either hand. “Would you,” she said, “do the honors?” Hob took the halves. Said: “Abracadabra, bitches.” Each jagged end lit up. Blazing white jets. Summer sparklers. The heat bent the air around his face. “Sterling,” I said. And I saw it in his eyes: the bone-deep, persistent, dizzying pain.

15

A
re you awake, Mr. Wood,” said Sister Immaculata, “or are you dreaming?” I'd half-heard her question. She was asking the class about the origins of German nationalism.
They're assholes
, I almost said,
that's the origin of their nationalism
. I'd been toying with the pictures in my textbook: making the stiff generals and adjutants in the overdone paintings dance and wave their swords. They smiled louchely up at me. One of them waggled a gray mustache and winked. My head ached. My nostrils hurt. I did not mind. “Sorry, sister,” I said instead. I meant it.

And then I shouted a single, stupid syllable. No form or meaning. When I lifted my eyes to apologize, when I raised them from the slowing images in my textbook, I saw sitting on the windowsill a woman dressed in a black business suit and a white shirt. She placed her right index finger athwart her purplish lips: the gesture for silence. A broad, forking, pork-hued scar crossed her white throat. Her hair snow colored. Her eyebrows snow colored. Her irises crimson. On her shoulder a massive raven. Settling its wings and clacking its beak. “Mr. Wood, please control yourself,” said Sister Immaculata. Hob glanced at me and wagged his head at the white woman. At least it was not an episode of insanity. The white woman grinned and slid fluently down to the floor. The knife points of her heels made two discrete clicks.

“Since Mr. Wood has proven so incapable of answering what seems to me a very simple question,” said Sister Immaculata, “perhaps someone else would like to hazard a guess about the origins of German nationalism. Mr. Canary.” The raven shifted its wings. Obsidian: shanks, talons, beak, eyes. Two broad and irregular bracelets surrounded the white woman's wrists. “Mr. Gilder.” Extruded, cancerous rings of iron. They rustled against her sleeves as she walked between the columns of desks. Pressing her palms together and parting her lips. “Mr. Malinowski.” She was strutting. No other word for it. This dead-white woman clad in black. A hip-shot stride. Past Simon Canary, who was digging in his left ear with his pinky, past Gilder and Wilton Opuwei and Matt Malinowski, who had a glass eye he used to remove and drop in girls' drinks at parties. None of them noticed this woman. She was still grinning as she reached me. Her black heels clicking against the broad, lacquered planks of the floor. I wanted to leap backward. I wanted to run. But I did not want to look any more insane. So I locked my molars and tensed my thighs. Posture of courage, no? Hob stared. His mouth half-gaping. The white woman bent toward me. Lips parted. Half-smiling. Her teeth flawless and her tongue vibrant pink. She was going to kiss me. I didn't flinch. I closed my eyes. The raven shifted again. Whicker of its feathers. Her hair grazed mine. Her breath brushed my cheek and ear. Frigid. Wet slate. One finger stroked the line of my jawbone and lifted my chin. When I opened my eyes the white woman was no longer standing there. Sister Immaculata continued to drone.

“That was unexpected,” Hob said during lunch. We were sitting on the steps of Old Egypt. Smell of sweat and ozone. “Yes,” I said. “Do you think it's like retribution,” Hob said. “I literally have no idea how the rules work on this,” I said. “Well,” said Hob, “if they're going to get back at us, at least they sent someone you think is hot, right? Being an older lady and all.” “Fuck you,” I said. “It's not a crime to like someone who doesn't reciprocate, Michael,” Hob said. “Except it basically is,” I said, “not that I grant your first point.” “You have a unique moral system,” said Hob. The white woman's cold, firm fingers against my chin. The odd scent of her breath. I kept recalling them. I had a massive hard-on. Fear can do that, they say. Or shock. Or the presence of death. Luckily, I was seated. I don't think Hob noticed. “And she even had that crow,” he said.

“It was a raven,” I said, “yes it's a corvid, it's the same family, but the big ones are ravens, the medium ones are crows, and the little ones are daws.” More expertise I garnered from my parents' nature-show addiction. “Did she kiss you,” Hob said. “Came close,” I said, “sort of presumptuous.” “I didn't know you were such an expert, anyway,” said Hob, “in bird taxonomy.” He scrambled up. I waved good-bye. My cock was still stone-hard and I did not want to stand up. I had a fetish for menacing, raven-owning women. Psychological news to me. She wasn't bad-looking. Just odd. That white hair and that scar across her larynx. “I hope you'll agree,” said Hob, “no matter what comes next, that Quinn deserved it.” “Should we run,” I said. “Not much point,” said Hob, “seems like.” I had to agree. The white woman had just waltzed in. He caressed his healed ear. “It was hurting this morning,” he said, “I wonder if it's now like a bum knee before it rains.” “You're not an old geezer,” I said, “don't worry so much about your bodily ills.”

He ran off. Late for chemistry. I had a study hall to kill. I ambled there. Through the pious winter light. Whoever designed Saint Cyprian's knew what he was doing. The church is big on that: reverence through architecture. High, vaulted ceilings; stone floors; and silence. Like being hit with a baseball bat made of nothing. If they came for us here, I could stand and fight. I knew the terrain. I was calm. I was surprised at how calm I was. Then again, it's easy in school to be at peace. You know where you are supposed to be and what you are supposed to be doing. A luxury not afforded you when you leave. And if a dark bird flashed past the window I sat under in study hall, what of it? Sister Michael didn't care. I didn't care. I was reading Erzmund on mechanical methods for the concealment and production of cards. He called these devices
hold-outs
. He spoke of them not with scorn. With fondness. As you might remember the follies and weakness of your youth. In English, Sister Faith Hope announced that we would begin studying the poetry of John Keats. “One of the greatest, one of the very greatest,” she said, “English poets.” I had never heard of him. I do not come from a poetic family. “Pages four fifty-five to four fifty-nine in the anthology,” she said. I flipped through the assignment. A line leaped up:
And no birds sing.
Coach Madigan complimented my ferocity during gym. He had set up a crude boxing ring, blue tape outlining a square on the gym floor, and had paired us up according to “weight class,” as he called it. Proof of his essential fair-mindedness. A lesser coach and gym teacher would have made his biggest students fight his smallest ones, on the principle that the weak and frail deserve only humiliation. This is the principle governing the actual world. As even a brief glance at it will show you. I commend those who resist it without giving in to their sentimentality.

I had been assigned to box Gilder. Boring and dispiriting. He didn't try. He didn't say anything to Coach Madigan. He didn't say anything to me. He stood in the center of the blue-tape ring with his arms limp. So I shuffled around and landed a shot to his temple, his jaw. Padded in red neoprene. The mouth guard distorted his lips and made him resemble an ape. “Get those dukes up, Gilder,” said Coach Madigan. He tore gently at his own red hair. Gilder did not listen. I punched him anyway. Hob whistled when I struck him. Two fingers in his mouth. The kind of whistle you envy because you can never imitate it. “If you want to editorialize, Callahan, I'm afraid you'll have to participate.” I hit Gilder in the ribs, thumped his sternum, dodged back, landed two more blows on his curdled, neutral face. Hob's hands looked empty without his book. He looked naked. Exposed. I punched Gilder again and he didn't react. His eyes bulging out and his arms limp. “You all right, Gilder,” said Coach Madigan. No reply. He wasn't paying attention. Listening to a distant voice: his face was that slack. “Gilder,” I said under my breath, getting up close, “Gilder, listen.” An apology at the ready: possibly. I'll never know. He lurched to life. Punched me. A solid shot. A left hook to my jaw. I stumble-stepped back, two looping hops, and regained my footing. Kids booed. Hob catcalled: “For shame.” I did not lose my temper. Coach Madigan had missed Gilder's shot. Too bad for Gilder. He'd timed it well.

Then again, there's never an audience for your best acts. Your most precise blows. I was getting back into my stance and taking aim at his slow, bluish right eye when the gym doors banged open. The hair on my nape rose. The way it had when the white woman appeared in world history class. Whoever was walking in now did not pass unnoticed. Coach Madigan ran past me and said, “We're in the middle of a bout here. What can I do for you.” He stopped. So abruptly his soles squeaked. Hob was already on his feet, darting his eyes: wall, window, wall. For an escape route, I realized. I turned to examine the door banger. It was not, as I'd feared or hoped, the white woman. It was a man, middle-aged. Short. Hob's height.

“A moment of your time, good sir,” he said. To whom, it was unclear. Big-bellied, slope-shouldered, an oval, sly, balding head and a neatly pointed brown beard. The dark eyes sleepy, the flesh around them fat or inflamed. He spoke with an eroded Brooklyn accent. I recognized it from my father's voice. “You can't come in here,” said Coach Madigan, “I don't know who let you in but you need an escort. This is a school. Private property. Once you check in I can help you.” The fat man chuckled: soft clucks. “The peanut gallery,” he said. “What did you say your name was,” said Coach Madigan.” The other kids had gone dead silent. Gilder's heavy breathing echoed. I think his nose had healed badly. “The grief I'm getting over what you've done,” said the fat man, “has put me off my feed.” “If you think,” said Hob, “if you think this is a showdown.” “You have something of mine,” said the fat man. Not to Coach Madigan. To Hob. “The fuck I do,” said Hob. “Callahan, you're dangerously close to detention here,” said Coach Madigan. The fat man gestured with one pudgy arm: he was now holding a wand. Like Quinn's. Lighter in color, blonder, inlaid with threads of gold and tipped with a golden point, a golden claw. He spoke a phrase, a scrap of what I thought was Greek. I caught the word
dunatos
, which means strong. He traced a tight, convoluted pattern in the air with the wand's golden tip. Now blazing. Not alight or aflame. Inwardly blazing. A warm, gentle, invisible blow struck my forehead. Coach Madigan, Gilder, and all the rest of our class (except Hob) stopped speaking and moving.

I just lost a breath or two, and my balance. Less of a blow than the one Gilder landed. “We already broke the wand,” I said after I'd recovered, “the black one.” “He speaks,” said the fat man. I spat out my mouth guard. A rope of saliva stretched and broke. I pulled off my gloves. My knuckles cracked. I removed my head protector and looked and looked. The fat man's effort with the wooden wand had not exhausted him at all. No nosebleeds, no sweat sheening his brow, no glaze of pain in his eyes. “The black wand,” I said, “it's done.” “You're tougher than you look, Mr. Wood,” said the fat man, “and you've already met my associate. She liked you very much. Very much indeed. But she's impolite when called upon to be so, as I'm sure your instincts informed you. Don't interfere.” My instincts had other ideas regarding the white woman than fear. I didn't tell the fat man that. It seemed wrong.

“You heard him,” yelled Hob, “it's broken, it's destroyed. No need for repetition.” He had nowhere to go: stranded on the top seat of the bleachers. “I don't give a good goddamn about the wand, Mr. Callahan. Or about the owl. Or my nephew. Don't play coy. You know what you took. And you need, laddy buck, like many young people, to learn the difference between yours and mine.” I surveyed my fellow student-statues. Simon Canary: caught drawing on a boxing glove. Errol Coward: cupping his balls through his blue shorts. Errol was a veteran fondler of his balls. Coach Madigan had one justice-seeking finger extended toward the fat man. Who had now moved out of its line. I pulled off my gloves and touched Coach Madigan's arm: warm and totally immobile. “You fat coward,” said Hob. “We've proceeded to the stage of tender endearments already, I see,” said the fat man. He wore a purple suit. Rich, soft-looking cloth, shining in the warm light of the gym. His shirt glare-white, his cuffs cleanly enormous, closed with gold-and-onyx links. His necktie pollen colored. His fringe of brown hair cropped and combed. A thick ring set with a hunk of agate—cat's-eye, my mother called it—gleamed on his left ring finger. A silver chain encircled his fleshy neck, and from it hung a brilliant chip of bone. He looked like a fucking magician. I went for him anyway.

I never got close. Two steps. Three. The fat man turned and smiled. One gold incisor. As opulent as his ring and wand. The white woman reappeared: from nowhere. A shadow moved, boiled up in the bright light of the gym; a breeze kicked my hair; and there she stood. Before I could think, I launched a punch. Aiming for her chin. To snap her head back. That's the quickest way to knock your opponent out. My heartbeat slowed. The world seemed to slow with it. Light thickened. The white woman's hair fluttered as if moving underwater. My fist struck her skin. It was like punching a marble carving. My hand sang. But her head did rock on her long neck, and she staggered back.
At least she's real
, I thought,
though now you're a shitbag who hits women
. I stepped up to hit her again. She was already smiling. Already moving. Her raven took wing with a knowing shriek. Her fist struck my chest. In the hollow under the sternum. Pure white filled my eyes. Blind and blinding pain. Rushing ocean noise in my ears. My limbs and torso: stony cold. As though I were submerged in icy water. The center of the pain my solar plexus. My vision cleared. Gym ceiling and light fixtures swinging on their blackened chains. I was on my back. I could feel the waxy floor against my nape. I tried to focus. My vision blurred. Cleared. Blurred. Her pale, sharp face above me. Her cruel scar, her kind smile, and her crimson eyes. Saliva ran from my slack mouth. “Hob,” I tried to say. A dry groan all I could manage. The white woman put her finger to her lips.