Donuthead (7 page)

“It's your pal Bernie,” she said, squinting into the distance. A broad grin broke across her face. “And my pal Marvin Howerton.” With a jerk of her thumb, she called out, “C'mon.”

Every gene in my risk-averse body told me to proceed calmly toward the fifth-grade classroom, where after-lunch silent reading would already have begun. Then I began the now-familiar “get back” calculation, which was the proportion of Sarah Kervick's anger roughly divided by the number of bones in my body to the square root of my ability to withstand pain.

I followed her out the door.

She had located them in a small corner of the playground supposedly reserved for rousing games of four square. I knew the walls that flanked the playing area intimately. When a smallish person is pushed up against one, it is impossible for Mr. Putman to see from his vantage point in the office.

The recess aides had already filed in with the other kids, and
the yard was strangely still. The immediate sensation of my impending doom kept me from being too concerned about being caught on the playground after recess.

“Give me back my cards,” Bernie was saying. “I need those cards.”

It's a well-known fact that Bernie Lepner makes his own playing cards. The Lepner deck consists of seventy-two cards with pictures from
National Geographic
Mod Podged onto the fronts of real playing cards. I myself have inhaled the fumes while he created them at our kitchen table. Using these cards, players make up stories, based on the hands they are dealt. The game has certain possibilities, particularly when one is dealt pictures of natural catastrophes. The cards travel with Bernie everywhere, carefully secured by a rubber band and stuffed into his back pants pocket.

“What's up, Bernie?” Sarah asked, shouldering her way into the circle created by Bernie, Marvin Howerton, and Bryce Jordan, his best friend and partner in crime. I hung back at a respectful distance.

Despite the cold weather, Bernie's face was damp with sweat, his long bangs plastered over his eyes.

“They took my cards, Sarah.”

“We're gonna make a house of cards,” Marvin said. “After school.”

“Then there's gonna be a house fire,” Bryce added, waving the deck in the air before letting it drop to the ground. His other hand was on Bernie's shoulder, pressing him into the brick.

“That's very interesting,” Sarah Kervick said, rubbing her chin. “But I think there's gonna be a problem with that plan.”

I continued to hang back, desperate to concoct a way to alert the proper authorities.

“Yeah? What's that?” Bryce wanted to know.

Sarah Kervick was taking her time.

“ 'Cause Bernie here is Donuthead's friend, and Donuthead doesn't want you messin' with Bernie. Isn't that right?” she said, looking back at me, then tossing her head at them. It was a silent invitation.

One that I declined.

“Well,” I stammered. “In point of fact, Bernie and I are, officially, neighbors. I'm not sure we qualify … yet … as close personal friends.” My head wagged back and forth between Bryce and Sarah and Marvin, trying to decide who was the most dangerous. They ended in a draw, which was why I kept stammering even after all useful syllables had drained from the part of my brain that controls speech.

It was hopeless to keep all three of them from inflicting bodily harm on me. I knew this, and I now admit, almost shamefully, that I wasn't thinking too much about Bernie or his precious cards.

I had the instincts of the gazelle, all right.

That is, until Bernie said, “It's okay, Franklin, Sarah. You guys go on inside. I can handle this.”

The “go on inside” was uttered in a serious, almost parental tone, as if Bernie wanted us to understand the dangerous nature of his work here. From his position, pinned beneath Bryce's beefy paw, it seemed like a clear-cut case of unjustified optimism to me.

It also made me feel like a lousy worm.

“Yeah, we can handle this,” Bryce said, giving Sarah a push with his free hand. Her shoulder swung back at the pressure, but she held her ground.

“Let me rephrase that,” I said, raising my eyebrows in Sarah's direction. “Bernie
is
my friend, and despite the obvious outcome of this little speech, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to return his cards, or …”

“Or what?” Marvin Howerton now grabbed my shoulder and began applying pressure. I felt faint. I think I swooned.

“Trouble is, we can't fight you fair,” Sarah said. “Me and Bernie and Donuthead here got you outnumbered.”

“Guess we'll have to take our chances,” Marvin replied, squeezing ever harder. In another life, he might have been a boa constrictor.

“Okay then, since you're such a big guy, I'll let you go with Bernie and Donuthead. But Bryce's gotta put those cards on the ledge over there so they're safe. After we fight, winner take all.”

Sarah had both hands on her hips. It was clear she meant business.

Events were moving far too quickly for my liking. After all, we hadn't exhausted negotiations yet, had we?

“That's reasonable,” Marvin said, and nodded to Bryce, who picked up the pack and slid it onto the window ledge. “Why not? It's worth it to see the kid fight.”

Reasonable? We're talking about soft tissues here!
“I haven't seen him take a swing in six years,” Bryce added, his voice tinged with nostalgia.

I could feel my pupils dilating.

Sarah smiled sweetly. “It's a funny thing how you don't
fight fair,” she said to Marvin, “pickin' on little kids and cripples and all. I guess that means I don't have to fight fair, either.”

And before any of us could react, she'd turned sideways and shoved her elbow right into the doughy part of Marvin's stomach. He let go of me with an
oooff
and dropped to his knees, clutching his stomach.

“You act kinda slow to understand that,” she said, looking down at him.

After a moment of stunned silence, Bryce sprang into action, releasing Bernie and reattaching himself to Sarah's hair.

“Let her go!” Bernie screamed dramatically and threw himself onto Bryce's back, pulling on his scalp like a pro wrestler in training. I was doing the tail end of the Virginia reel from the massive push I'd gotten when Marvin went down. I had just reestablished my equilibrium when I heard Sarah cry out.

Whether it was pain or a battle cry, I never did figure out. Marvin had struggled to his feet and made a grab for Sarah. He missed.

At the same time that Bryce smacked her hard on the side of the head, Sarah ground her flimsy little tennis shoe into Marvin's instep. Then Bernie covered Bryce's eyes with his hands, while Sarah recovered enough to deliver another quick elbow, this time to Bryce's stomach. In order to avoid being flattened, Bernie abandoned ship as Bryce went down.

While Marvin clutched his foot, nursing the pain of his fallen arch, I got the chance to witness the famous ground-floor punch. It started somewhere by Sarah Kervick's shin and found its target on Marvin's chin. He sprawled out on the cement, a part of his body in each square of the four square diagram.
Bernie rushed over to Sarah, who had staggered to the wall and was leaning up against it.

And so it was over in mere seconds. Marvin was on the ground, tears in his eyes. Bryce was searching for the hole in his stomach. The episode was too short for me to see active duty, though I did reflexively raise my hands to my face a couple of times.

I am proud to say I held my ground.

“Where I come from, they teach the dirty tricks,” Sarah said, out of breath, to the reclining giants. “I can show you some more if you want. They're kinda like magic tricks. Only they hurt.”

She reached over and picked up Bernie's cards, dusting them off and smoothing out the bent corners.

“Now, Bernie, you go to class and me and Donuthead'll go to class and we'll tell Ms. Linski you boys are with the nurse or somethin'. We'll tell her you don't feel so good.”

Sarah walked away, resisting the urge to touch her cheek, which was already sprouting a goose egg.

“Thanks, Sarah,” Bernie said, giving her the look he usually reserved for my mother.

“You got promise, Bernie. I mean that,” she said.

I knew I should apologize. I was nothing but a liability in playground skirmishes. But I am a pacifist, after all. Your values aren't tested until the going gets rough, right?

“Why?” I asked Sarah once we were back in the building. “Why did you help Bernie like that?”

“Good question, comin' from you,” she said. Then she shrugged. “The kid's my friend.”

“But you just met him the other day.”

“'Cause he's your mom's friend, then, that's how come. And she's my friend.”

We were passing through the lower elementary. Ms. Karwowski, the second-grade teacher, had rows and rows of painted sunflowers displayed outside her room. I looked at Sarah Kervick against the backdrop of all those pretty yellow flowers. There was no other way to explain it. What she did for Bernie was kind.

“Should we get some ice for that?” I asked, pointing to her swollen cheek.

“Nah. I had worse.” She was walking fast ahead of me, the torn pocket of her jeans flipping back and forth with her stride.

She was not a lioness. And she was definitely not a gazelle. As we reached Ms. Linski's classroom, I realized I was going to need a whole new theory now that Sarah Kervick had reached the jungles of Pelican View Elementary.

In emergency situations, total strangers can become best friends. Burning buildings, sinking ships. There's a powerful urge to believe that those who may be sharing your final moments are your nearest and dearest. I admit to having a few soft feelings for Sarah Kervick after she rescued Bernie and his cards from the troglodyte twins. I thought she was noble to go out of her way to see him to safety. With her as my protector, I could envision a future in which my resting pulse rate was the same at school as on a lazy Sunday afternoon. And so the next day, when she began to follow me home, I felt a mixture of affection and sympathy for the way she'd so quickly attached herself to my mother and me.

But apparently Sarah Kervick had not undergone the same transformation. Maybe she did not consider what had happened on the playground a near-death experience. Maybe she did not have normal human feelings. After all, we have already established that she did not feel pain or fear.

She walked the traditional six steps away from me in silence all the way home. When I edged a little closer in order to strike up a conversation, she widened the gap. Upon reaching the house, she did not turn around and wait for me to invite her in; she rang the bell.

“My mother's not home,” I told her. “She works until four on Thursday.”

“Oh,” she said, sitting down on the frozen step. “Okay. I'll wait.”

I thought of what my mother might do to me if she found a half-frozen Sarah Kervick on her doorstep.

“You can wait inside, you know,” I said. “I won't hurt you.”

Sarah nearly leapt off the step. “It's a deal,” she said. “I won't hurt you, either.”

She perched herself on a barstool in the kitchen while I hung up my jacket. Then I began to wash my hands.

“Is it your birthday?” she asked as I dried each finger individually with my extra-absorbent, waffle-weave towel.

“No,” I said. I was about to explain the importance of good hygiene and extended contact with anti-bacterial soap when I realized I was the host here. Shouldn't I offer her something? In my short and uneventful life, I had never willingly invited someone over to my house before. It's true that Bernie came over to watch the Disney Channel, since the Lepners were philosophically opposed to anything beyond basic cable. Did that count?

“Let's see,” I said now, going over in my mind all the snacks my mother had purchased against my advice. “How about some Oreos?”

“Okay.” Sarah didn't seem as hungry as the first couple of times she came over. Carefully, she pulled two from the package and placed them on a plate I'd given her. She ate slowly with her head down.

I think we were both relieved to see my mother's van pull
into the driveway. Sarah jumped off the barstool and flicked at her dress to make sure she was crumb-free. We stood there, both of us fixated on the door, when my mother walked in.

She didn't seem at all surprised to see us in the kitchen together.

“Hey, Sarah,” was what my mother said as she opened the fridge and pulled out a pitcher of iced tea.

“I was just wonderin',” Sarah began, giving me the now-familiar sideways glance that communicated there was no earthly reason—in her mind—why I had been put on the planet. “The thing is, I—”

There was an urgent knock on the storm door. We turned to see Bernie's palms flat up against the glass.

“That you, Franklin?” he shouted, getting his spit all over the door.

My mother put up a finger in Sarah's direction.

“Come on in, Bern,” she called.

He didn't come in, exactly. Bernie stood in the doorway, half in, half out, letting the cold air exchange places with the temperate air in our climate-controlled hallway.

“Franklin,” he said, all breathless. “You better come quick.” Then his eyes fell on Sarah and he seemed to lose all sense of urgency.

“Sarah,” he said, gazing at her with a dreamy smile.

My mother put down the pitcher of iced tea, and we all waited for Bernie to say something more.

He straightened up and smoothed down his bangs. “I just want to say you look exactly like Alice in Wonderland with your hair all pretty like that.”

“Thanks,” Sarah said, looking at the ground. While I wasn't close enough to guarantee this, I think she blushed.

“Bernie, honey,” my mother said to snap him out of his trance. “What were you going to say to Franklin?”

“Oh! Mr. Nillson is painting his garage on a stepladder, Franklin, right near the electrical wires.”

“Wood or metal?”

“Huh?”

“The stepladder.”

“It's metal.” He grabbed my newly sanitized wrist with his grubby hand. “You've got to talk some sense into him!” Bernie pulled me to the door but paused before he plunged into the cold outside air.