Battle Fatigue Page 6

  The swing Tony Scaratini wants to take back is the one at the end of last season when he missed my head. He is never going to forget the varsity letter that I got and he didn’t. All fall he stares at me in silence. He seems to be angrily confirming that my head is intact. He is dreaming of taking one more swing and this time connecting.

  Leaving homeroom, he walks up to me and says, “I’m going to see you after school.” That is all he says after seven months of thinking about it but everybody knows what he means. My only question is whether he is talking about fists or if he will be waiting for me with a baseball bat.

  I don’t look forward to fighting Tony. First of all, because he is certain to fight dirty. Also, because he is bigger than me and meaner than me. What makes it even worse is that the weather has just turned cold. It is too cold to be standing outside hitting each other.

  I am on my way into science class and I see Tony. “Listen, Tony,” I say, “it’s really cold outside. Why don’t we put this off until spring? Baseball season.”

  Scaratini’s lip curls when he sneers. It is the sort of thing you can’t fake. Only genuinely mean people can curl their lips like that. All he says is, “Be there. Don’t make me come looking for you.”

  There is no backing out. By this point, everyone knows that we are fighting after school. I’ve never understood how it works, but news of a fight travels very quickly. Already several people have come up to me to offer support. Donnie says, “Show him what you’ve got, Joel.” Nobody really likes Tony. Maybe that’s what makes him so mean. Besides, most of the kids are certain that, as the saying goes, I can take him. I may be the only one who doubts it. And Tony, I guess. Everyone else reasons that I am now the better baseball player, a varsity-letter winner, so I can take him. That is the whole problem: I got the letter instead of him. In fact, I realize now that I may have provoked this whole thing by wearing my letter. My parents had bought me the cream-colored cardigan, the stadium sweater that all letter holders wear, for my birthday, and my mother sewed the letter on and I had worn it to school for the first time the day before. Was that what provoked him?

  Whatever the consequences of fighting him, they would be better than the consequences of not fighting him. With the whole school knowing about the fight, there is no way out. Even if a few people don’t know, as soon as the two fighters face each other on the field, kids will run through the school yard shouting, “Fight! Fight!” Most of the boys stand around in a circle, cheering. Kids like to see a good fight.

  The girls, of course, don’t come, and I don’t know what they think about fighting. It is one of the mysteries about girls. They often express contempt for boys fighting. But if you don’t fight, if you back away from a fight, there is probably not one girl in the whole school who will ever talk to you again.

  No, whatever happens, it will be better than not fighting.

  Rocco Pizzutti comes up to me in science lab and whispers, “Let me take the jerk for you, Joel.”

  Rocco owes me because I decerebrated his frog for him. This is a really weird thing. It is supposed to teach you how the brain works. You place a scissors blade inside the mouth of a live frog and cut, snipping off part of the frog’s head. Then you watch the thing hop around with its head chopped to note how differently it acts with a piece of its brain, the cerebrum, missing. Who wouldn’t act differently?

  Weird! Who thought up that one? Tony Scaratini?

  Anyway, Rocco Pizzutti, for all his toughness, can’t do it. He holds the frog firmly so that it can’t jump around, placing the scissors blade sideways in the frog’s mouth. He starts to squeeze the scissors and he feels the little body in his hand tense up. He can’t do it. It’s because he doesn’t do it quickly enough.

  And you have to do it. Mrs. George, who has long, bright red fingernails that look like she has been using them for decerebrations, makes it clear that “everyone must decerebrate” at least one frog. So I do Rocco’s and quickly hand it to him and he stands there holding the animal with the chopped head, looking sick.

  “Put it down, Rocky,” says Mrs. George, who knows her science but can never get Rocco’s name right. “See if it will jump.”

  “It’s too late for that,” says Rocco sadly.

  He is grateful that I have done it. But I can’t let him fight Tony for me, much as I would love to see Scaratini trying to sidestep Rocco’s murderous left.

  “No thanks, Rocco,” I whisper. “If I did that, every bully in the school would challenge me just to see me back down so he could feel big.”

  “I’d take them on too. I’ll be your protector. Anyone wants to take you on, he has to answer to me. There won’t be many.”

  “Thanks, Rocco. It won’t work.”

  “Well, you can get him.”

  “Thanks, Rocco.”

  “Yeah. How are you and Angela getting along?”

  Since the Kennedy assassination, every time I see Angela, she starts talking about Kennedy, about how it was a plot. It seems obvious to most of us that something odd was going on. They arrested this strange man named Lee Harvey Oswald. We all wonder who he was and why he wanted to kill President Kennedy. But before we could find anything out, this guy named Jack Ruby, who knew a lot of criminals and was dying of cancer anyway, walked up to Oswald and shot him right on TV.

  I don’t know what the adults are thinking but every kid can see that the criminals hired Ruby to kill Oswald before he could talk about how he didn’t shoot Kennedy. Maybe he would have even said who did. But Jack Ruby made sure he couldn’t talk. We can all see this, but Angela has gone far beyond that and she can’t stop talking about it. If I see her and say, “Hi, Angela,” she will grab my hand and say something like “Campisi—ever hear of the Campisis? One of them visited Ruby in jail.” She whispers this to me as though it is a secret I am not to repeat.

  I am finding it very hard to be around Angela. But this is not a good time to point this out to her brother. Fortunately, before I can answer Rocco’s question about getting along with Angela, Mrs. George raises one of her flame-red dagger nails in the air and says, “No talking.” No one argues with those nails.

  As the day goes by it becomes increasingly certain that there is no way around this showdown with Tony Scaratini. When the final school bell rings, I walk to my locker, resigned to my fate. Donna Belini comes up to me so serious and sincere that I can barely stand it. She gives me a hug, as if saying good-bye.

  While I am at my locker putting on my coat and looking for my gloves to protect my hands, Susan Weller comes up behind me and pats me on the back. I jump and knock into the corner of the locker door, which bruises my cheek. Marked before it even starts.

  Chapter Twelve

  Off-Season Hero

  With my coat on and my gloves pulled tightly over my hands I walk outside, the same way I do every day. Only this time a crowd of kids follows me out as if they are accompanying a boxer into the arena. First comes Stanley Wiszcinski, looking very serious. All of them look serious, in fact. Fighting is a serious business at my school and you don’t joke around about it. Rocco Pizzutti comes up from behind and smacks me on the back and whispers, “Listen, Scaratini is a moron. All he is going to think of is hitting. He has no intellect for counterpunching. He will take his shot and then, when he’s off balance and exposed, you can just pop him.”

  The air is so cold that it burns my face. My cheeks sting and my eyes are tearing. I probably look like I am crying. The more I try to wipe my face with my coat sleeve, the worse I must look.

  Stanley seems very excited about the fight, like it is a sports event he has been looking forward to. He wants to click green stones and seems disappointed that I am not carrying mine into battle. We are fifteen years old and Stanley is the only one of the Musketeers to still carry his piece of jade. He leads me through a big crowd of kids. In the center is Tony Scaratini, with the curl in his lip, wearing a big green corduroy coat lined with thick fluffy off-white wool. It is a good coat, a warm coat, b
ut not a coat to fight in. You can’t move in it. But Rocco is probably right that Tony is too dumb to think of moving. I, on the other hand, am wearing my fatigues, the olive-drab army field jacket that my uncle was issued for the Battle of the Bulge, a jacket designed for moving fast in one of the coldest winters in history. It is still a little baggy on me but it fits better than it used to.

  Stanley starts running around the yard shouting, “Fight! Fight!” The crowd is getting even bigger. Tony Scaratini is a person who did not hesitate to club someone with a baseball bat so it is probably good to have lots of witness when you fight him.

  He is glaring at me, which is how you are supposed to begin. Then he smiles, more a kind of smirk. “You look scared,” he says.

  “I’m just cold,” I protest.

  “Come on,” he says. And the crowd starts shouting.

  “Show him what you can do, Joel,” Rocco hollers.

  Tony throws the first blow, a big round stupid pendulum swing just like Rocco predicted. I try to step out of the way but my legs are stiff from the cold and I trip and fall on one knee and tear my pants, my new chino pants that my mother just bought me.

  Now I am angry. Why do I have to be standing out here in the cold, tearing my brand-new pants, because some moron wants to trade punches? He wanted it, I didn’t. Why do I have to be here?

  I stand up and wait and, sure enough, he throws the exact same punch again. This time I neatly sidestep the blow and let fly with a hard right straight to Scaratini’s mouth. Serves the imbecile right.

  The next thing I know, I am in the worst pain I have ever experienced—that woozy kind of pain that makes you feel sick. It’s my hand, my frozen hand. I had hit him really hard. Tony is on the cold ground spitting blood from his mouth. Have I really hurt him? He seems to spit out a piece of a tooth. I broke his tooth? “Tony, are you all right?”

  But now the crowd moves and pulls me along. I am the victor and everyone loves a winner. I may be more popular at that moment than after any of my home run games. All the girls smile at me and all the boys want to be my friend.

  Well, not all of them. There are a few boys, the biggest, toughest ones, who make it clear that they want to “take me.” When you have something good, people want it, and every bully in school wants the friends and admiration I have because I won a fight. They imagine how much they will be admired after they have beaten the hero.

  The next day Brian Sorenstag, who never talks to me, is waiting outside French class and says, “I want to talk to you.” Brian is the star of the basketball team. He is tall and blond and has the confidence of a champion. This is not as true during baseball season, but now it is winter and in the wintertime he is the untouchable champion in a sport I could never master. I had a hoop on the garage and I practiced over and over again until I could make thirty-seven out of fifty free throws. Real swishes right through the net. The problem is that this one shot is all I can do—no hook shot, jump shot, or dribbling. I made the team but was rarely put in a game. So Sorenstag sees me as a loser who sits on the bench. Only now, in his season, everyone is talking about me as some kind of champion because of the way I hit poor Tony Scaratini, who no longer speaks to me, not that he ever had anything to say. Scaratini the bully simply vanishes. It shows how sometimes fighting really works. Just like the way the Germans and the Japanese were stopped.

  But now I have to fight Brian Sorenstag—also Jimmy Kelly, Tom Davis, and Ronnie Decker. They have all asked for their turns in the school yard. I tell Sorenstag that my hand is too sore from hitting Tony. He is always worried about his hands during basketball season, so maybe if I remind him that he could hurt his hand he will be less eager to fight. But he just says, “I’ll give you a week.” I tell the others that they will have to wait until after I finish with Sorenstag.

  What am I going to do? There is no end to this and I hate it. What is the point? Either you lose with a sore mouth or win with a sore hand. I’m not even sure which is better. Isn’t Tony Scaratini better off than me? Maybe I should make sure I lose the next fight so that I won’t have to fight again. But you don’t just lose the fight, you lose everyone’s respect. And where I go to school, losing respect can be a dangerous thing.

  I ask my father what he thinks I should do.

  “Joel, let’s get some tuna,” is his answer.

  Down in the shelter he says, “It’s not good to fight.” He thumbs the cans as though just discovering their shape. “No one wants to fight. But sometimes you just have to.”

  “Dad, didn’t you hear me? No one wants to fight? There are a lot of kids who want to fight. And they are all lining up for their turns!”

  “Just make sure you don’t start it,” Dad says.

  I guess he wants to help, but he doesn’t seem able to understand the situation I’m in.

  I ask the baseball coach, “Mr. Bradley, can I talk to you about something private?”

  “Sure, what’s on your mind?” he says.

  “I got in a fight with Tony Scaratini.”

  “I heard!” Mr. Bradley says with great excitement.

  “You did?”

  “I heard you laid him out in the first round. Tough kid too. It was about time.”

  “Yeah, but now the problem is that a lot of other kids want to fight me.”

  “Well, you took care of Scaratini. You’ll do fine.”

  The last thing I want to do is disappoint the baseball coach, so I just leave. He pats me on the back as I walk out the door.

  In desperation, I decide to try Mr. Walter.

  I explain my predicament to him and he says, “Oh, man, what a drag. Are you going to fight all these cats?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Okay, dig on this, man. This can be a major moment in your life. Like, all your life, cats have been telling you that you have to do what you are told. Do you know what that gets you, man? That gets you Germany.”

  I think about Karl.

  “Oh, man. You can do whatever you want. You don’t want to fight, don’t fight.”

  “But how do I do that?”

  “It’s your show, baby.”

  I like the way he talks even though I’m not always sure what he is trying to say. One thing seems certain. If I keep fighting, there will be one after another after another.

  I tell Brian Sorenstag that I am ready to fight him. “Found the courage, huh?” he says contemptuously. That makes me want to show him. For an instant I dream of the glory I would bask in after I destroyed Brian Sorenstag. And I think I might be able to do it. He is bigger than me but he is gangly with long arms and if I went inside he would be lost.

  I enjoy the dream briefly and then I remember what happened when I beat Tony Scaratini. They were all waiting to try to “take me.” After this it will be even worse. I know what I have to do.

  “Fight! Fight!” Stanley Wiszcinski starts shouting around the school yard like a town crier. He doesn’t need to. This is a showdown between the guy who took Tony Scaratini and the star of the basketball team. Everyone wants to see it.

  Out on the field with the crowd surrounding us, steam coming out of his nose into the cold air like the pink, steaming nose of a cow in a winter field, Brian looks a little taller, a little meaner, his arms a little longer. But his arms will tie him up. I’m sure of it.

  He throws a long right hook, a perfect shot for me to get inside him on. But instead I stand there, flat-footed, and throw off the blow with a flick of my right arm. It doesn’t feel like much of a punch. He throws the same one again and I do the same thing. He tries a right and I push it away with my left.

  “Come on,” he demands.

  “I’m not going to hit you,” I say.

  “What are you afraid of, Bloom?”

  “It’s stupid and I don’t want to do it. I don’t have a problem with you.”

  “Oh, you are chicken.” He throws another right. To show my contempt I don’t even try to block it. It lands on the side of my head and doesn’t hu
rt. There is nothing in his punches. I put down both my arms and let him swing—right, left, right, right. He is breathing heavily—clouds are billowing out of his mouth. I have him. It is working. And then, disaster.

  Rocco Pizzutti impatiently shoves his way into the middle of the circle and unleashes his left, sending Brian sprawling on the frozen ground.

  “Jeez, Rocco, why’d you do that?” Brian is almost crying.

  “You want to hit someone, hit me!”

  “I don’t want to hit you, Rocco.”

  So why, I wonder, does he want to hit me? I am standing there in the center of the circle but no longer a part of the scene, feeling sorry for Brian Sorenstag. Also feeling sorry for me.

  Later I say to Rocco, “Why’d you have to interfere?”

  “I wasn’t going to stand there and let him hit you.”

  “Why not? I was winning. Didn’t you see that?”

  “Winning,” he says, rolling his eyes. “The guy was using you for a punching bag.”

  “And he was all punched out.”

  Rocco’s face suddenly breaks into a smile. “Then you were going to nail him down?”

  “No. Then I was going to walk away.”

  “That’s why I hit him.”

  “Who asked you to interfere?”

  Thanks to Rocco, I now have a fight a day. They all want to see if it is true that I won’t fight. It is true. Once it becomes clear that Rocco Pizzutti is not going to interfere again, I start drawing kids who are looking for a safe chance to win a fight. They are no good at all. I stand there with my arms down and they swing away, timidly at first, and then more freely once they feel reassured that nothing is going to happen to them. But they don’t know how to hit and nothing hurts me and there is no glory in hitting someone who just stands there and doesn’t fight back. Soon everyone gives up on fighting me.