The Worst Years of Your Life (14 page)

“You're out of your mind, Anek. That's the thinner talking.”

“Listen, if you won't do it, I'll do it myself,” he said, reaching over me for the throttle.

“Fine,” I said, brushing his hand away. “I'll do it. Just give me a second.”

We slowly gathered speed along the empty highway—thirty-five, forty, forty-five—and after a while, the concrete moving swiftly and steadily below our feet, I was beginning to feel a little more comfortable. Anek put his arms around my waist again, his chin still on my shoulder.

“Good,” he whispered into my ear. “Good, good. You've got it. You're fucking doing it. You're really coasting now, boy. Welcome to the third gear, my little man.

“Now,” he said. “Try fourth.”

I didn't argue this time. I just twisted the accelerator some more, popped the bike into fourth, sliding smoothly off the seat then quickly back on. This time, to my surprise, our course didn't even waver. It was an easy transition. We were cruising comfortably now at sixty, sixty-five, seventy, seventy-five, faster and faster and faster still, the engine singing a high note beneath us as we flew along that straight and empty speedway. We didn't say a word to each other the rest of the way. And nothing seemed lovelier to me than that hot wind howling in my ears, the night blurring around us, the smell of the engine furiously burning gasoline.

I
'
M
P
USH THE BULLY, AND WHAT
I
HATE ARE NEW KIDS AND
sissies, dumb kids and smart, rich kids, poor kids, kids who wear glasses, talk funny, show off, patrol boys and wise guys and kids who pass pencils and water the plants—and cripples,
especially
cripples. I love nobody loved.

One time I was pushing this red-haired kid (I'm a pusher, no hitter, no belter; an aggressor of marginal violence, I hate
real
force) and his mother stuck her head out the window and shouted something I've never forgotten.
“Push,”
she yelled.
“You, Push.
You pick on him because you wish you had his red hair!” It's true; I
did
wish I had his red hair. I wish I were tall, or fat, or thin. I wish I had different eyes, different hands, a mother in the supermarket. I wish I were a man, a small boy, a girl in the choir. I'm a coveter, a Boston Blackie of the heart, casing the world. Endlessly I covet and case. (Do you know what makes me cry? The Declaration of Independence. “All men are created equal.” That's beautiful.)

If you're a bully like me, you use your head. Toughness isn't enough. You beat them up, they report you. Then where are you? I'm not even particularly strong. (I used to be strong. I used to do exercise, work out, but strength implicates you, and often isn't an advantage anyway—read the judo ads. Besides, your big bullies aren't bullies at all—they're
athletes.
With them, beating guys up is a sport.) But what I lose in size and strength I make up in courage. I'm very brave. That's a lie about bullies being cowards underneath. If you're a coward, get out of the business.

I'm best at torment.

A kid has a toy bow, toy arrows. “Let Push look,” I tell him.

He's suspicious, he knows me. “Go way, Push,” he says, this mama-warned Push doubter.

“Come on,” I say, “come on.”

“No, Push. I can't. My mother said I can't.”

I raise my arms, I spread them. I'm a bird—slow, powerful, easy, free. I move my head offering profile like something beaked. I'm the Thunderbird. “In the school where I go I have a teacher who teaches me magic,” I say. “Arnold Salamancy, give Push your arrows. Give him one, he gives back two. Push is the God of the Neighborhood.”

“Go way, Push,” the kid says, uncertain.

“Right,” Push says, himself again. “Right. I'll disappear. First the fingers.” My fingers ball to fists. “My forearms next.” They jackknife into my upper arms. “The arms.” Quick as bird-blink they snap behind my back, fit between the shoulder blades like a small knapsack. (I am double-jointed, protean.) “My head,” I say.

“No, Push,” the kid says, terrified. I shudder and everything comes back, falls into place from the stem of self like a shaken puppet.

“The arrow, the arrow. Two where was one.” He hands me an arrow.

“Trouble, trouble, double rubble!”
I snap it and give back the pieces.

Well, sure. There
is
no magic. If there were I would learn it. I would find out the words, the slow turns and strange passes, drain the bloods and get the herbs, do the fires like a vestal. I would look for the main chants.
Then
I'd change things.
Push
would!

But there's only casuistical trick. Sleight-of-mouth, the bully's poetics.

You know the formulas:

“Did you ever see a match burn twice?” you ask. Strike. Extinguish. Jab his flesh with the hot stub.

“Play ‘Gestapo'?”

“How do you play?”

“What's your name?”

“It's Morton.”

I slap him. “You're lying.”

“Adam and Eve and Pinch Me Hard went down to the lake for a swim. Adam and Eve fell in. Who was left?”

“Pinch Me Hard.”

I do.

Physical puns, conundrums. Push the punisher, the conun-drummer!

But there has to be more than tricks in a bag of tricks.

I don't know what it is. Sometimes I think
I'm
the only new kid. In a room, the school, the playground, the neighborhood, I get the feeling I've just moved in, no one knows me. You know what I like? To stand in crowds. To wait with them at the airport to meet a plane. Someone asks what time it is. I'm the first to answer. Or at the ball park when the vendor comes. He passes the hot dog down the long row. I want
my
hands on it, too. On the dollar going up, the change coming down.

I am ingenious, I am patient.

A kid is going downtown on the elevated train. He's got his little suit on, his shoes are shined, he wears a cap. This is a kid going to the travel bureaus, the foreign tourist offices to get brochures, maps, pictures of the mountains for a unit at his school—a kid looking for extra credit. I follow him. He comes out of the Italian Tourist Information Center. His arms are full. I move from my place at the window. I follow him for two blocks and bump into him as he steps from a curb. It's a
collision
—The pamphlets fall from his arms. Pretending confusion, I walk on his paper Florence. I grind my heel in his Riviera. I climb Vesuvius and sack his Rome and dance on the Isle of Capri.

The Industrial Museum is a good place to find children. I cut somebody's five-or six-year-old kid brother out of the herd of eleven-and twelve-year-olds he's come with.
“Quick,”
I say. I pull him along the corridors, up the stairs, through the halls, down to a mezzanine landing. Breathless, I pause for a minute. “I've got some gum. Do you want a stick?” He nods; I stick him. I rush him into an auditorium and abandon him. He'll be lost for hours.

I sidle up to a kid at the movies. “You smacked my brother,” I tell him. “After the show—I'll be outside.”

I break up games. I hold the ball above my head. “You want it? Take it.”

I go into barber shops. There's a kid waiting. “I'm next,” I tell him, “understand?”

One day Eugene Kraft rang my bell. Eugene is afraid of me, so he helps me. He's fifteen and there's something wrong with his saliva glands and he drools. His chin is always chapped. I tell him he has to drink a lot because he loses so much water.

“Push? Push,” he says. He's wiping his chin with his tissues. “Push, there's this kid—”

“Better get a glass of water, Eugene.”

“No, Push, no fooling, there's this new kid—he just moved in. You've got to see this kid.”

“Eugene, get some water, please. You're drying up. I've never seen you so bad. There are deserts in you, Eugene.”

“All right, Push, but then you've got to see—”

“Swallow, Eugene. You better swallow.”

He gulps hard.

“Push, this is a kid and a half. Wait, you'll see.”

“I'm very concerned about you, Eugene. You're dying of thirst, Eugene. Come into the kitchen with me.”

I push him through the door. He's very excited. I've never seen him so excited. He talks at me over his shoulder, his mouth flooding, his teeth like the little stone pebbles at the bottom of a fishbowl. “He's got this sport coat, with a patch over the heart. Like a king, Push. No kidding.”

“Be careful of the carpet, Eugene.”

I turn on the taps in the sink. I mix in hot water. “Use your tissues, Eugene. Wipe your chin.”

He wipes himself and puts the Kleenex in his pocket. All of Eugene's pockets bulge. He looks, with his bulging pockets, like a clumsy smuggler.

“Wipe, Eugene. Swallow, you're drowning.”

“He's got this funny accent—you could die.” Excited, he tamps at his mouth like a diner, a tubercular.

“Drink some water, Eugene.”

“No, Push. I'm not thirsty—really.”

“Don't be foolish, kid. That's because your mouth's so wet. Inside where it counts you're drying up. It stands to reason. Drink some water.”

“He has this crazy haircut.”

“Drink,”
I command. I shake him.
“Drink!”

“Push, I've got no glass. Give me a glass at least.”

“I can't do that, Eugene. You've got a terrible sickness. How could I let you use our drinking glasses? Lean under the tap and open your mouth.”

He knows he'll have to do it, that I won't listen to him until he does. He bends into the sink.

“Push, it's
hot,
” he complains. The water splashes into his nose, it gets on his glasses and for a moment his eyes are magnified, enormous. He pulls away and scrapes his forehead on the faucet.

“Eugene, you touched it. Watch out, please. You're too close to the tap. Lean your head deeper into the sink.”

“It's
hot,
Push.”

“Warm water evaporates better. With your affliction you've got to evaporate fluids before they get into your glands.”

He feeds again from the tap.

“Do you think that's enough?” I ask after a while.

“I do, Push, I really do,” he says. He is breathless.

“Eugene,” I say seriously, “I think you'd better get yourself a canteen.”

“A canteen, Push?”

“That's right. Then you'll always have water when you need it. Get one of those Boy Scout models. The two-quart kind with a canvas strap.”

“But you hate the Boy Scouts, Push.”

“They make very good canteens, Eugene.
And wear it!
I never want to see you without it. Buy it today.”

“All right, Push.”

“Promise!”

“All right, Push.”

“Say it out.”

He made the formal promise that I like to hear.

“Well, then,” I said, “let's go see this new kid of yours.”

He took me to the schoolyard. “Wait,” he said, “you'll see.” He skipped ahead.

“Eugene,” I said, calling him back. “Let's understand something. No matter what this new kid is like, nothing changes as far as you and I are concerned.”

“Aw, Push,” he said.

“Nothing, Eugene. I mean it. You don't get out from under me.”

“Sure, Push, I know that.”

There were some kids in the far corner of the yard, sitting on the ground, leaning up against the wire fence. Bats and gloves and balls lay scattered around them. (It was where they told dirty jokes. Sometimes I'd come by during the little kids' recess and tell them all about what their daddies do to their mommies.)

“There. See? Do you see him?” Eugene, despite himself, seemed hoarse.

“Be quiet,” I said, checking him, freezing as a hunter might. I stared.

He was a
prince,
I tell you.

He was tall, tall, even sitting down. His long legs comfortable in expensive wool, the trousers of a boy who had been on ships, jets; who owned a horse, perhaps; who knew Latin—what
didn't
he know?—somebody made up, like a kid in a play with a beautiful mother and a handsome father; who took his breakfast from a sideboard, and picked, even at fourteen and fifteen and sixteen, his mail from a silver plate. He would have hobbies—stamps, stars, things lovely dead. He wore a sport coat, brown as wood, thick as heavy bark. The buttons were leather buds. His shoes seemed carved from horses' saddles, gunstocks. His clothes had once grown in nature.
What it must feel like inside those clothes,
I thought.

I looked at his face, his clear skin, and guessed at the bones, white as beached wood. His eyes had skies in them. His yellow hair swirled on his head like a crayoned sun.

“Look, look at him,” Eugene said. “The sissy. Get him, Push.”

He was talking to them and I moved closer to hear his voice. It was clear, beautiful, but faintly foreign—like herb-seasoned meat.

When he saw me he paused, smiling. He waved. The others didn't look at me.

“Hello there,” he called. “Come over if you'd like. I've been telling the boys about tigers.”

“Tigers,” I said.

“Give him the ‘match burn twice,' Push,” Eugene whispered.

“Tigers, is it?” I said. “What do you know about tigers?” My voice was high.

“The ‘match burn twice,' Push.”

“Not so much as a Master
Tugjah.
I was telling the boys. In India there are men of high caste—
Tugjahs,
they're called. I was apprenticed to one once in the Southern Plains and might perhaps have earned my mastership, but the Red Chinese attacked the northern frontier and…well, let's just say I had to leave. At any rate, these
Tugjahs
are as intimate with the tiger as you are with dogs. I don't mean they keep them as pets. The relationship goes deeper. Your dog is a service animal, as is your elephant.”