Ironman (4 page)

Wyrack kisses his knuckles as Bo drags himself from the water. “You're meat, Ironman.”

“I'll assume you're dogging any repeat Brewster wins,” Lion says, his eyes following the second hand on the giant workout clock above Lane Four as it drifts toward twelve. He moves behind Bo five seconds before the start whistle. “A true Ironman would take that as a challenge,” he says in a low voice. “See how long you can keep these guys in the water. I'll let you out a few minutes early to get to Mr. Nak's group. You'll be gone before Wyrack has dried off.” He blasts the whistle.

Sixteen hundred-yard sprints later, Wyrack finally touches the wall a tenth of a second ahead of Bo for the eighth time to end that workout segment. He is without sufficient oxygen to predict Bo's short lifespan aloud,
but draped over the lane divider, sucking air like a tropical depression, he points a finger at Bo's heart.

At the same moment Lion glances at his wristwatch. “Brewster, you're outta here, man. Gonna be late to your early morning class. Thanks for giving us a push.”

Bo hauls himself once more out of the water, refusing to look back in the direction of the groans.

 

Don Sheridan, the head janitor, bangs down the panic bar with his broom handle from the inside on the side entrance door, allowing Bo to enter the school building. “Bad boys is down in thirty-two,” he says, pushing his sweaty Notre Dame baseball cap back on his crown. “Best hurry if you want a good seat.”

Bo thanks him and starts down the long, unlighted hallway.

“How'd you get yesef in with that bunch?”

Bo turns. “Just lucky, I guess.”

“Well,” Don says, “that kinda luck, I wouldn't spend my allowance on lottery tickets. I know you—Brewster, right?—an' you're trouble, but you ain't that kind of trouble.”

“Tell Mr. Redmond that.”

A look of acknowledgement crosses Don's face, and he laughs. “Naw, that's okay. Redmond's a prick. First
few years I done this job, had this little rat-lookin' dog I couldn't get housebroke. Used to leave him in Redmond's room while I cleaned the rest of the school. I'd still be doin' that if Redmond wouldn't a' started blamin' the kids. Bunch of 'em he thought done it got a three-day vacation. Hell, I ain't said a word to him since I dropped outta tenth grade. That there's a philosophy you might wanna adopt.”

Bo doesn't argue. Don's been head janitor almost fifteen years and most of the students like him, though they have dubbed that portion of his ample posterior that peeks over the back belt loops of his low-slung jeans “the crack of Don.” Don has seen a lot at Clark Fork High over the years that he has kept to himself, as if he knows the kids need at least one person over twenty-one on their side.

Bo gazes into room thirty-two with great apprehension. It is too much like his dream. Mr. Nak sits cross-legged atop the teacher's desk, with more than a dozen students, ranging in age from fourteen to nineteen, seated in a circle. Anger seems heavily male, as there is only one girl—the one he saw working out in the university weight room. Small world. All eyes fall on him in the doorway.

“Aha,” Mr. Nak says in his slow Texas drawl,
“everbody present and accounted for.” He motions Bo to the one empty chair in the circle.

Bo breathes deep, and moves slowly toward the seat.

OCTOBER 11

My dearest Larry,

I think anyone who wants to get his temperament firmly under control should stand in the doorway to Mr. Nakatani's anger management group for about sixty seconds or so, and let the member felons cast their gaze upon him. What you say to yourself at that moment goes something like this: Dear God, I will never again raise my voice in anger against anything—living or dead—on your sacred planet, I will besmirch not one of your creatures no matter how disgusting, not even my brother or his puppy-mill cocker spaniel who watches television seven hours a day and gets so excited when he snatches food off your unattended plate that he pees all over the floor; and I will eat leafy green vegetables as the main course of every meal with a smile on my face if you will please, oh please, just turn back the hand of time to the moment I did whatever I did to get me here and make me be a good boy.

It seems God doesn't answer your prayers without first taking them under lengthy advisement, and I didn't have
time for that because Mr. Nak motioned me to my place among the thieves and murderers.

He said I must be Bo Brewster.

I said, “Yes sir.”

Two or three of the inmates snickered, and Mr. Nak said that was because they hadn't heard anyone called “sir” since they were last in juvenile detention.

Mr. Nak said the group was a little short on manners, as I could probably tell, but that everyone would introduce themselves shortly. “Shuja,” he said, nodding toward the only black kid, “why don't you tell Bo how things work in the early mornin' here on the ranch?”

“Why, I'd be right proud to,” Shuja said. He's a big, strong, good-looking kid with a wide-open face that looks like he never gets mad. “First, some teacher who don't like your black ass just 'cause it's black tells you you got a 'tude, and you best be gettin' here to Mr. Nak's early mornin' ‘tude-fixin' class or you won't be comin' back to school, in which case you won't never get no diploma, in which case you won't never get no job, in which case you're gonna end up in prison like your older brother done. Then, since you can't be lettin' no midget shiny-head algebra teacher be your fortune-teller, you say, ‘Hey nigger, don' be predictin'
my
life 'til you got one a' your own,' and then they haul you away, and you show up here 'cause you
wanna grow up to be a productive citizen of this here raggedy United States.” He looked at Mr. Nak and smiled. Most everyone else laughed.

Mr. Nak said, “That's pretty good, Shu, but I was hopin' for somethin' a little more general.” He turned to this kid named Elvis, who everyone in school knows out of self-defense. Elvis is one of those guys who started shaving in junior high, and then started using the straight razor he shaved with to take everybody's lunch money. He's a big guy, runs about two-thirty, I'd say; kind of fat, but with plenty of muscle underneath, homemade tattoos on all the parts of his body he could reach, and the permanent expression of a pit bull about fifteen seconds before a fight. “Elvis,” Mr. Nak said, “you wanna take a shot at it?”

Elvis just glared, trying to stare a hole in Mr. Nak.

“Guess not,” Mr. Nak said, and turned back to me. “Me an' Elvis are learnin' each other's body language,” he said. “Don't worry, Brewster, I'll find
somebody
who knows what's goin' on here.” He glanced around the room, his gaze falling on the girl from the weight room. “Shelly,” he said. “Maybe you can pull me outta the mud here.” But Shelly said, “I don't feel like talking today, Mr. Nak. Could you ask someone else?”

Mr. Nak said, “Anybody want to go for it?” and everybody studied the floor. He smiled and looked back at
me. “Don't write my letter of recommendation just yet. Only been at this a short while. I'll give you the lowdown.” He clasped his fingers around one knee and rocked back on the desktop. “Everbody here is pissed off about somethin', and everbody's done something while they were pissed off that got 'em here. Now, what it is that everbody's pissed off about is a secret. My job is to find that secret. Any questions?”

I said nope.

“So make my job easy. What're you pissed off about, Brewster?”

He caught me by surprise, so I said, “I'm not pissed off about anything.”

“Really? You takin' this course for credit?”

“Well, no.”

“So how'd you get here?”

Shuja laughed and whispered loud behind his hand, “Tell 'em you come in a limo.”

I laughed back, kind of nervous like, and said, “I got into trouble with Mr. Redmond.”

“What did you do?”

I hesitated, glancing around the room. Then, “I called him an asshole.”

Spontaneous applause broke out, Lar, no kidding. Mr. Nak smiled. “Sounds like maybe you spoke for the masses.
I think you're gonna fit right in here.”

Everyone stopped clapping except this really weird-looking kid with long hair and a headband, wearing a University of Washington T-shirt so dirty it looked like a year-old dust rag, and bell-bottom pants. He just shook his head and chuckled and slapped his hands together like none of the rest of us was even there. “Called Redmond an asshole,” he said, over and over. “Called Redmond an asshole. Whooeee. Called Redmond an asshole.”

Mr. Nak said, “Okay, Hudgie, we heard him,” and the kid jerked like somebody had slapped him back to consciousness, looked around kind of sheepishly, and said, “Called Redmond an asshole. That's a good one. Life sentence. No possibility of parole. That asshole Redmond will make sure of it.” Hudgie didn't look like he needed anger management, Lar. He looked like he needed the space aliens who sucked his brains out to give them back.

“Tell you what,” Mr. Nak said directly to me, “we'll get back to you. Why don't you just listen awhile, and see what you think?”

That sounded good to me. I'd had about all the attention I needed, because old Elvis never took his eyes off me once, and I got the feeling he'd soon be steppin' all over my blue suede shoes.

Mr. Nak turned to the rest of the group. “Anybody got
anything they want to talk about?”

A kid named Joey raised his hand. He's one of the few regular-looking guys in the group—nice clothes, dark, kind of slicked-back hair, would be pretty good-looking if you could ignore the permanent scowl on his face. The guy looks like an Italian Mr. Yuk sticker. He said, “I got somethin'.”

Mr. Nak said, “Go.”

“We got a skunk in our house.”

Mr. Nak said, “I'm assumin' you're not talkin' about your pappy,” which got a few laughs.

“No, man, a real skunk. Comes in through the cat door.”

Mr. Nak said, “That's interestin', but I was lookin' for an anger issue.”

“Hey, man, this skunk pisses me off.”

Mr. Nak shrugged. “Okay, so has he done his dirty deed in your house?”

“Not yet.”

“What does he do?”

“He eats.”

“That all?”

“Yeah, that's all.”

“So why do you get all riled?”

“He's a
skunk
, man.”

Mr. Nak looked at me. “Joey likes smoke and mirrors, likes to keep me off any subject that might get close to home.” He patted his chest to indicate where home was, then turned back to Joey. “You got a plan?”

“Gonna shoot his ass. Got my old man's .22 and some buckshot load, and I'm gonna wait till I catch him outside and blow his ass to smithereens.” He leveled an imaginary rifle at an imaginary skunk and said, “Bloooom!”

Mr. Nak rocked forward and smiled. “Yesterday, in one of his rare public outbursts, Elvis here demanded, “How does anybody get out of this chicken-shit group?' I said ‘anybody' needs to participate real regular in discussions, let the rest of us in on the parts of his life he—or she—don't want us in on, and respond to a few concrete assignments. You, Mr. Joe, get the first concrete assignment of the year.”

“Yeah? What's that?”

“Leave the skunk alone.”

Joey sat up straight. “You out of your mind?”

“That's been wondered more than once.”

A titter ran through the group about then, Lar, and I remember thinking Mr. Nak sure is every bit as crazy as everybody says. I mean, he wants this poor jerk to invite a skunk to dinner.

Then Mr. Nak said, “Look, Joey, why is it you think the skunk ain't sprayed?”

“Nobody's pissed him off.”

Mr. Nak said, “Hit 'er right on the head, pardner. An' accordin' to ever rap sheet I got on you—and there's one for ever week for ever teacher—you like to piss people off. For the next week, Mr. Skunk is goin' to represent Everteacher. It'll be your job to keep him all nice an' calm. Mess up an' you'll know it right quick.”

Joey said, “Oh, man, are you kidding me?” Then he paused. “What about my old man or my old lady? What if they piss him off?”

“From what you said the other day, your parents could use a little work on their restraint, too. Tell 'em this is a family project. Kind of a Be Nice to Mr. Skunk Week.”

“They ain't gonna like this.”

“Tell 'em it'll get you through Anger Management quicker. An' it'll keep you all out of the principal's office.”

“You might be getting a telephone call.”

“Dial 1–800-MR-NAK.”

You might think that cohabitation with a skunk is a bit of a strange assignment for anger management, Lar. I sure did, but hey, I'm new to this business. And I'm stuck with it because Redmond ain't budging. That's not without its irony, either, because it's pretty hard to imagine Redmond and Mr. Nak on the same planet, much less in the same school.

Gotta get a late-night run in, so I'm signing off. Don't worry, if things get too strange, I'll tone them down for the novel. We don't want any of that truth that's stranger than fiction in here, do we? I mean, is this a mainstream epic, or what? Play your cards right and you can make me fabulously wealthy.

Ever your loyal fan,
The Brew

Lion pushes through the side door to the Industrial Arts wing of Clark Fork High School fifteen minutes before the bell signals the beginning of first period, to find Noboru Nakatani nearly disappeared beneath the hood of a 1964 Mustang. He resists the urge to announce his presence with a blast of the horn and gently drums the hood with his fingernails instead. “Hey, cowboy, what's happening?”

Nak backs out from under the hood, stepping down from the front bumper, wiping his hands with a grease rag. “Shoe Fairy had to give these boys a little hep with this engine,” he drawls. “They like to tore it up yesterday, got so frustrated. I swear the young'uns in this class think ever tool's a potential hammer.” Nak places his foot on the front bumper. “What's on your mind this
mornin', Lion man?”

“Brewster show up?”

“Oh, yeah, he showed.”

“What'd you think?”

Nak smiled. “I think he figured he come face-to-face with the Hole in the Wall Gang when he walked in the room, but he'll do all right.”

“Think so? You think he belongs there?”

“You think he don't? Those kids ain't a whole lot different from any who've been roughed up pretty good. They're a little raw, but I'm bettin' they got all the same workin' parts as the fancier models.”

“So you think Bo will make it okay?”

“I think he'll make it just fine. What is it you're worried about?”

Lion shrugs. “You know how some kids just get under your skin? He seems hungry for something I've got, but I don't know what it is for sure.”

“Best be findin' out,” Nak says back. “You might have to step up.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean most kids ain't good at tellin' what they need because they don't know. Whenever we see it, that's the time to act.”

Lion thanks him and disappears through the doorway leading down the long breezeway toward the main building: Best be findin' out. You might have to step up.

Nak sneaks back under the hood of the Mustang, humming “Tumbling Tumbleweeds.”

OCTOBER 24

Dear Larry,

Getting a little testy there this morning, weren't you, Lar? Especially with the guy who said anyone who intentionally desecrates an American flag is a traitor to his country and ought to be treated the same as a person giving away national secrets in wartime. Your “freedom of expression” argument was good, and I liked your idea that people who
really
believe in the Constitution know that everybody's rights are protected, not just those who agree with us. What I'd really like to have in my own life, though, is that little button you push just before you say “Rest well,” to end it for any caller who gets too stupid or belligerent for even your tolerance level. I would have called in, but by four-thirty in the morning “Larry King Live” isn't live anymore; it's repeated from yesterday. If I could have called, I'd have asked if you thought those rights of expression were for everybody, and I'm betting you would have said yes. Then I
would have told you I'm a seventeen-year-old high-school kid and asked if you thought the Constitution held up for me, too. I'm kind of glad I couldn't really get to you, because I'm afraid you might have said what most adults say: that teenagers aren't quite
done
yet, that we're impulsive and adults intervene because we aren't ready to manage our lives. But in my four-thirty
A.M
. fantasy you gave a different answer that lent weight to my powerful need to express a thing or two to guys like Redmond and my dad. Who knows, maybe you would.

Thought I'd bring you up to date on the Nak Pack, because what's been going on the last few days messes with my head. After Mr. Nak told Joey to invite a skunk into the family fold, I figured the best way through was to be polite and keep my mouth shut. Then, about three or four months down the road, I would just tell Mr. Nak I never seem to get mad anymore, could he please tell Redmond I'm cured, and that would be that. But I don't think it's going to be that easy. See, Mr. Nak'll be talking about how anger comes creeping up, hoping you're not paying attention so it can trick you into something really embarrassing or degrading, and before you know it he's got you thinking about your life, or worse,
talking
about it. He keeps asking what seem like harmless questions, and it almost seems safe to
answer them. Next thing you know you're ready to say something you thought you'd never tell anybody.

The other day he gave us this hypothetical problem. He said, “Okay, close your eyes an' pertend you're five years old.” (Excuse the grammar and spelling here, Lar, but in case you haven't noticed, I write it the way Mr. Nak says it. Maybe it's a sign of prejudice, but listening to this long tall cowboy talk, coming out of a five-and-a-half-foot-tall Asian guy, is a kick.) Anyway, Shuja put up a stink when Mr. Nak said that, because in his world you close your eyes for
nobody
. What Hudgie sees when he closes his eyes can only be imagined, because the minicam in that guy's head is operated from a remote control long, long ago on a planet far, far away. So Mr. Nak said just do our best an' if things got too uncomfortable, it was okay to peek. He finally got us zeroed in on ourselves at our first day in kindergarten. Shuja felt obligated to tell us who-all's ass he had to kick just to start off even, because there's bigots everywhere, even in kindergarten, but Mr. Nak just nodded and went on. “Now imagine the person you been trustin' all your life, your momma or your daddy or whoever, has told you from the git-go that this color”—and he pointed to his green shirt—“is red. For five years nobody told you nothin' different about green an' red, so you start out your first day
in school thinkin' this”—and he pointed to his shirt again—“is red.”

Shuja laughed out loud and said, “Oooh, you gonna be scrappin' with all them homeboys tellin' you different than what your daddy tol' you,” and I figured that was probably the point, and I peeked and saw Mr. Nak smile.

Then he said, “Let's drive our Jeep a bit farther down that rocky road. Let's say that same person you grew up with, who told you green was red, also told you that when you cross the street you best be lookin' out for all the forks and spoons speedin' by, because if you don't, they'll flatten you out like a dime on a railroad track.”

Shuja said, “Oooh, shit” again, but Mr. Nak talked right on through him. “An' that same person, who you grew up with, an' who told you red was green an' cars an' trucks was forks an' spoons, told you anytime somebody asks your name, what they're really lookin' for is trouble, an' you best nail 'em before they nail you.”

Even Elvis snorted a bit at that.

“What do you think your first day at kindergarten's gonna be like?”

Shuja said, “Gonna be a buncha ass whuppin'.”

“Why?”

“Because ever time you open your mouth, you gonna be lookin' the fool, plus you're gonna light some kid up jus'
'cause he wanna know your name. Maybe even the teacher.”

“Who you gonna be mad at?”

“Ever homey in the place.”

Mr. Nak sat back. “Now why you wanna get all burned up at them? They're
right
.”

“Yeah,” Shuja said, “but they messin' with you.”

“Are they messin' with you, or jus' tryin' to tell you the truth?”

Shuja snorted. “Tryin' to tell you the truth? You five years old, man. They be laughin' an' pointin'. Tha's the way with little kids. They won't be carin' 'bout no truth.”

“Laughin' an' pointin'. Makin' you feel how?” Mr. Nak asked.

An unmistakable voice boomed here, Lar; for the first time in two weeks, Elvis speaks: “Like an asshole. So what?”

Mr. Nak pointed his six-shooter finger at Elvis's chest. “Right you are, pardner. Right you are. Just exactly like an asshole. An' that is my point. Twenty-five freshly scrubbed rug rats, wearin' brand-new sneakers an' got their hair all slicked down wet and flat against their heads, an' twenty-four of 'em know the right names for things. But not you. You gonna feel real smart? Don't think so. Gonna feel worth a damn—like bein' sociable? Un-dern-likely. Why? Because you're feelin' lower 'n a snake's belly in a wagon wheel rut,
that's why.” He pointed at me. “An' who you gonna be mad at, Beauregard, my boy?”

I said, “I guess I'd be mad at just about everybody.”

“You're gonna be mad at yourself,” he said quietly. “Mad at yourself for feelin' the fool, as Shu puts it; mad at yourself for
bein
' the fool. To keep that fact in hidin' you
act
mad at everbody else, because you got to hide the truth. You're mad at yourself for bein' somethin' less than ever other person in that room. You don't know why, but you are. An' I'll tell you somethin' else: The more of them thirty-five pounders you coldcock, the madder you'll be, because no matter how many of 'em you knock out, you're still the dumb one. The humiliated one. The out-of-control one.”

Now that doesn't seem like it should be right, Larry, but it sure
felt
right.

Shelly, who I am fast falling in love with even though I'm meeting her in the next closest thing to a maximum-security prison, raised her hand.

“You don't have to raise your hand in here, Shelly. Everbody's got the same right to talk as everbody else.”

“Mr. Nak, nobody told any of us red was green. At least they didn't tell me that. And nobody told me traffic was silverware.”

“An' a lucky girl you are,” Mr. Nak said. “But what about other things that were misnamed for you?”

“Like what?”

“Anybody ever tell you everthing's really okay when you're feelin' low enough to sniff whale dung? You think ‘low' is one thing, they tell you it's another? Ever have somebody say you didn't really feel awful when you did? That you
shouldn't
feel bad when you were eatin' dirt? You think ‘awful' is one thing, they tell you it's another? Ever have somebody tell you they were whackin' on you because they
loved
you?”

“Sure, that happens to everybody.”

“Does that sound like the right meanin' for ‘love'? How do you like it when that happens?”

“I hate it,” Shelly said. “So what?”

“Why do you hate it?”

“I just do.”

“Well let me tell you why
I
hate it,” Mr. Nak said. “I hate it because I hate people tellin' me how I feel or how I'm supposed to feel; tellin' me what's inside me ain't real, because it makes the truth feel wrong, an' I gotta feel like a dumbshit for bein' wrong all the time.” He pounded his chest. “This is
me
inside here. An' nobody but this Japanese cowboy gets to name that or put
meanin' to it. An' I hated it a lot more when I was a kid because
now
I know why they're tellin' me that, but
then
I thought if I was supposed to feel one way an' I felt another, then somethin' was wrong with me. An' I hated takin' what was wrong with me out on the road for ever one to see.”

Now he sat forward, like he was somehow looking each of us in the heart, and said, “An' like Shuja or Elvis, when somebody'd catch a glimpse of that weak part of me, I kicked his ass, or at least I tried real hard, because it made me hate myself an' that's the worst feelin' of all.” He leaned even farther forward. “Y'all remember that. Self-hate is the
worst feelin' of them all
.” He backed off a bit. “Feelins are real, folks. An' nobody gets to identify yours but you. Now what you
do
with those feelins is another thing, an' that's why we're here.”

A lot of what he said rang true to how I felt while Redmond mimicked my name the day he booted me, Lar, almost as if he were trying to make me ashamed of who I was: I'm going to be enough of a friend,
Beau-re-gard
, to tell you that if you keep heading in the direction you're heading, blah, blah, blah. Is it not true,
Beau-re-gard
, that the day you missed my assignment, blah, blah, blah. I mean, the guy was trashing me, and it worked. I hated
myself for not being smart enough to stay out of his way. I felt like my
name
was stupid, which should have had nothing to do with the original problem: that I hadn't done my homework.

I actually started to say that, but I'm not real comfortable in the group yet—part of me still thinks I don't really belong there—and besides, Hudgie started spinning out. “Worst feeling of all,” he says, talking to whoever bounced up behind his eyelids. “Worst feeling of all. ‘Hudge, you damn well know better! Gonna hafta do this for your own good. Doin' it for your own good.' Ssssss! Ssssss! ‘Doin' this for your own good, Hudge.' Ssssss! Worst feeling of all. That's right, baby, worst feeling.”

Usually everyone laughs when Hudge gets on a roll, but nobody laughed now. None of us even knew what he was talking about, but tears squirted between his clenched eyelids like water out the back of an ancient washing machine wringer. Shuja whispered, “Oooh, man! Homey's feelin' some
weak
shit.” Then he looked up at Mr. Nak and said, “You best be bringin' him outta that, Mr. Nak,” and Mr. Nak said, “Makes you uneasy, don' it, Shu?”

“
Damn
uneasy. Now come on, Mr. Nak, bring him on out.”

Mr. Nak stood up and walked around behind Shuja
and laid his hand real easy on Shuja's shoulder and said, “It's okay, Shu. I think ol' Hudge needs to dump off a few of them tears. Might jus' choke 'im to death if he don't.”

But Shuja couldn't take it, and he leaped up and said, “Hey, man, I got to go to the bathroom, man, no shit, it jus' come up on me.” Mr. Nak took his hand away and Shuja was
gone
. Left his shoes right there by his chair. Hudge hadn't heard a word, just kept making that ssssss! sound and feeling the worst feeling of them all. Mr. Nak walked behind him and began massaging his shoulders, and when Hudgie finally opened his eyes, he looked surprised and disoriented to see us there. Mr. Nak dismissed us then, but he stayed there with Hudge, rubbing his shoulders and talking in that slow, easy voice.