"Hit "em, Ben," Mary Anne cried out. She was directly behind Ben.
"Who"s your fat friend, Twinkie?"
"That"s my sister, you red-headed fart, and you say anything about her they"re gonna have to clean you up off this breezeway."
"Whip his a.s.s, Red," someone called. By this time, Red had released Sammy and turned to concentrate his full attention on Ben. Sammy slipped out of Red"s grip and disappeared, leaving Ben to face the menacing crowd alone. Red and his friends began to close in on Ben. Mary Anne was pushed back deeper into the group of spectators. Someone pushed Ben from behind. He turned and pushed his a.s.sailant back. When he did, Red reached into his dungarees and pulled a switchblade from his back pocket. When Ben turned around, the blade of the knife was up against his throat.
Lillian had provided Ben with an inestimable theory that leapt to his brain as soon as he felt the knife point near his larynx. "If a southern boy ever pulls a knife on you, Ben, it is because he knows how to use it." "Red," Ben said. "Red, ol" buddy, you have just won this fight." Adrenaline burned through his stomach like two tributaries pouring into a river. Someone had grabbed him from behind, pinning his arms.
"No, I"ve just started to win it, Twinkie. You"ve p.i.s.sed me off real bad and you"re gonna spend a long time paying for it. Now, I want you to say real loud, "I got a fat, ugly sister." "
"No!" Ben said.
Then a voice in the crowd began to scream, "Teacher, Teacher." It was Mary Anne"s voice. The knife disappeared in an instant. Ben"s arms were freed. Ben whirled and sprinted through the crowd.
"There ain"t no teacher," a voice behind Ben called.
Red, realizing he had been duped, started through the crowd, which now was milling about in an agitated state with some people pressing forward toward the action and others fleeing from it. Ben reached Mary Anne, who was waiting for him in the gra.s.sy quadrangle off the breezeway. "You"ve got to beat him up, Ben. Dad will kill you if he finds out someone pulled a knife on you and you didn"t do anything."
"Yeah, I know, Mary Anne. And the next time you get me into anything like this..."
"He"s coming," Mary Anne shouted. Ben grabbed for a history book Mary Anne was taking to her first afternoon cla.s.s. As Ben turned to face his opponent, he saw Red ominously reaching for his knife again. Without hesitation and with a quickness that caught Red off guard, he slammed the history book against the boy"s head with a stunning shot that echoed the length of the breezeway. A tall, thick-lipped boy who had trailed Red in pursuit of Ben caught the history book full in the face, his nose splitting like an overripe piece of fruit, blood spouting down his face. A fist hit Ben on the side of his face just below the ear. Ben staggered against a steel post that supported the overhang to the breezeway. The boy who had hit him was charging forward but was tackled from behind by a screaming Sammy, who mounted the boy"s back and was punching him in the back of the head. Mary Anne scratched Red"s face as he tried to rise and re-enter the fray, but Red shoved her down as he rose to his knees, stunned and uncomprehending. Ben saw his sister fall into a hedge that bordered the cla.s.sroom window. He came straight down on Red"s skull from a high, splendid angle and this second blow sent Red"s face crashing into the cement walk. It was Red"s last violent moment of the morning. Though Mary Anne rushed up to kick Red in the ribcage before Ben could calm her, no one else sallied forth to take up Red"s gauntlet.
Suddenly, the breezeway thronged with teachers who began moving groups of kids in different directions, getting the flow of bodies aimed again in the natural pattern of traffic. When Mrs. Troutman spied Ben he heard her wail, "Oh no, not one of my 4B boys." A pair of formidable arms grabbed Ben from behind. Male teachers whose faces were unfamiliar to Ben helped Red up from the cement. One pulled Sammy from the back of the boy who had connected with Ben"s face.
Finally, a voice behind him asked Ben, "Who are you, son?"
"My name"s Ben Meecham, sir. I"m new here."
"That"s nice, Mr. Meecham. I"m your princ.i.p.al," the voice whispered in his ear.
The princ.i.p.al"s office was a cramped, achromatic cubicle separated from the library door by a gla.s.s trophy case that overflowed with the gilded booty of athletics earned over the past thirty years. Its walls were painted with a postwar bureaucratic gray. The wall behind the princ.i.p.al"s desk was covered with photographs of a tall slender man with fluid, long muscles and sandy hair frozen into graceful poses while partic.i.p.ating in a variety of sports. In one, he was throwing a football. In another, he was shooting a one-hand set shot. But in most of the photographs, he peered out from behind two sixteen-ounce boxing gloves, crouched low in a boxer"s stance, his arms poised and coiled like snakes. Ben was sitting on a chair facing the princ.i.p.al"s desk. It was the first time in his life he had been summoned to a princ.i.p.al"s office for disciplinary reasons and he did not find the circ.u.mstances prepossessing in any way. Running through his mind were lies or excuses he could offer his father for his involvement in the fight. Bull would not mind that there was a fight, only that Ben had lacked the stealth not to get caught. Ben cheered his spirits somewhat by dreaming of strangling Mary Anne with barbed wire or cutting her heart out like an Aztec and eating it before her eyes in her last moments of consciousness.
These images of revenge vanished when the princ.i.p.al, John Dacus, walked through the door and sat down at his desk. The princ.i.p.al had a blond natural grace that made him look younger than he actually was. His voice had a soothing gravity and his smile was disarmingly gentle. He was an older, more formidable version of the man in the photographs. A quiet strength and subterranean power exuded from his body with understated insistence. It was readily apparent to Ben that Dacus was a man of awesome strength. He was looking over Ben"s transcript, which a short, bloodless woman had brought from Guidance.
"You"re an athlete, Mr. Meecham," Mr. Dacus said, studying the transcript.
"Yes, sir," Ben answered.
The telephone rang. Mr. Dacus picked it up, grunted monosyllables of a.s.sent and negation, then hung up.
"That was the doctor, Mr. Meecham. You gave Lee Wicks a broken nose. Doc thinks Red will be O.K. but he has to wait for some X-rays to come through before he can tell for sure. Now we don"t like and we don"t allow fighting in this school. You just tangled with some upriver boys and they"re about the roughest group of white boys in the county. They"ve given me a hard time ever since they were in the ninth grade. You swing a mighty mean history book, son. Now one important question. Red told me you picked the fight with him. Is that true?"
"Not exactly, sir."
"I started it, Mr. Dacus," a voice called from outside the door. Mary Anne stepped into the room. "I made Ben jump in and help that boy."
"Who are you, young lady?" the princ.i.p.al asked, amused by the intrusion.
"Mary Anne Meecham, sir. I"m Ben"s sister and if anyone should be punished for what happened it should be me because I told Ben if he didn"t help that poor boy I was going to help him and Ben knew Dad would kill him if he ever heard that I got into a fight to help someone and Ben chickened out. But if you ask me, neither one of us should get in trouble because those tacky, nasty boys deserved everything they got. But it was me that started it. I made Ben do it."
"Oh," the princ.i.p.al said. "You mean it"s that simple."
Leaning back in his chair, propping his feet up on the desk, Mr. Dacus picked up the telephone, dialed a single digit, and when a voice answered, said, "Mrs. Whitlock, send me the transcript of Mary Anne Meecham, please." He held his hand over the receiver and asked, "What grade are you in, Miss Meecham?"
"Eleventh, sir."
"She"s in the eleventh grade, Mrs. Whitlock. Thank you for your trouble," he said, replacing the phone on the receiver. "It appears to me that the Meechams are an extraordinary family ..."
Before he could finish there was a determined knock on the door. It was Sammy. "Sammy, what can I do for you, my friend?" the princ.i.p.al said.
"Mr. Dacus, I came to tell you that this boy fought Red because of me. Red was pulling the ol" Hitler routine again and this boy stopped him. Now, of course, you and I know, Mr. Dacus, that if I had gone wild, which I was about to do, I would have torn Red and his pals apart."
"Red was sure lucky you didn"t go wild, Sammy. By the way, you ought to convert to Christianity. No religion"s worth all the c.r.a.p you take," Mr. Dacus joked.
Sammy smiled and said, "Yeah, my name sounds real Christian. Sammy Wertzberger. I"d fool a lot of goys like that."
Mr. Dacus turned his gaze back on Ben. "Where did you learn to fight with a history book, Mr. Meecham? Do you have something against fists?"
"I"d have used my fists, sir, but he pulled a knife."
"Are you sure?" the princ.i.p.al asked, displaying anger for the first time.
"Yes, sir. He stuck it up to my throat."
"You"re lucky he didn"t use it on you too. Red Pettus is as mean as anybody in this school," Sammy said to Ben.
"That sorry d.a.m.n p.i.s.sant," Mr. Dacus said. "I warned him not to pull a knife on anybody at my school again. Were there any other knives pulled or was that the only one? Did Wicks pull one?"
"No, sir," Ben answered. "Just Red."
"Well, that does it for him. He"s out for the year."
"No sir, don"t do that," Ben pleaded. "He was just showing off. I don"t think he"d have cut me."
"You don"t," the princ.i.p.al said. "Well ol" Red cut a boy"s face real bad at this school two years ago. He was in a reformatory for six months. The one thing you"ve got to learn in this town, Mr. Meecham, is to avoid fighting with anybody named Pettus. The Pettus family is the meanest upriver family of all. I feel sorry for any child stuck with that name because that means he"s gone through the sorriest kind of upbringing possible, but I can"t let him go around cutting up the other students. No, that"s the end of the line for Mr. Red Pettus."
"It"s dangerous to mess with a Pettus," Sammy said to Ben and Mary Anne. "But it"s even more dangerous to mess with Fightin" Sammy Wertzberger. Did you see me on top of that Heisley jerk, pounding his head without mercy, the crowd cheering me on, "amazed at my strength"?"
Everyone in the room laughed. It was the first time Ben had truly relaxed since he came in the door. He was beginning to feel confident in Mr. Dacus"s intrinsic sense of justice and fair play; his fine, relaxed humor prescribed the mood in the room.
Then the princ.i.p.al said, "You are suspended, Mr. Meecham. And so are you, Miss Meecham. And so are you, Mr. Wertzberger."
The three of them formed an astonished trinity as they stared at Mr. Dacus with disbelief. The image of his father flashed in Ben"s mind.
"Sir," Ben said. "Could you think of another punishment for my sister and me?"
"Like throwing us into a pool of piranhas or ripping our fingernails out?" Mary Anne suggested.
"It"s only going to be for one day. I want a chance to talk to Red"s little gang before you come back to school. I don"t want them jumping you tomorrow. And I want all of you to be careful after school today. I know how those boys think," Mr. Dacus said seriously.
"How do you know how they think, Mr. Dacus?" Mary Anne asked.
"Because, honey," Mr. Dacus answered, "my mother was a Pettus. Ol" Red is a distant cousin of mine."
Ben said, "We"re worried about our father, sir. If he finds out we"re suspended I could tell him I had a fistfight with Judas Iscariot and it wouldn"t make any difference."
"I"ll call your father and explain. He"ll understand after I tell him the whole story. Leave him to me. Y"all just be careful after school. Now get on to cla.s.s and don"t worry about your father. I"ll tell him about the knife."
"I"ll name my first child after you, Mr. Dacus," Mary Anne said.
"I"m naming my first child after Judas Iscariot," Sammy said.
"Thanks, Mr. Dacus," said Ben, rising to leave.
"Welcome to Calhoun High School, brother and sister Meecham," the princ.i.p.al said, getting up and punching Ben on the shoulder in an amicable gesture. Ben"s shoulder hurt until the bell rang at three o"clock releasing the students like a pistol at the starting blocks. From two-thirty to three, at Calhoun High School, and every school he had attended, Ben"s mind wandered far away from the teacher"s voice and concentrated on the energy of escape that poured out of each student like light, then became something tangible, almost nuclear, something to be reckoned with in the half-hour before reprieve.
They took their time going home that day, reliving the fight again and again, proud now of their partic.i.p.ation and of their decision to help Sammy. Walking down River Street, they stopped at every window and planned exorbitant purchases when they made their first million dollars.
"I want a diamond to put in my navel," Mary Anne said in front of Liebman"s Jewelers.
"It"d have to be the size of a volleyball. Your navel is huge. I saw Okra walk across your stomach one time and disappear from sight when he hit your bellyb.u.t.ton."
"Very funny, feces face."
Past the Palmetto Theater where they studied the stills of coming attractions, past Sarah Poston"s dress shop, past the bookstore which contained almost no books, and the barbershop which was really a pool hall, and the bank, which was an old refurbished mansion, they walked toward home. When they reached "The Lawn," a large greensward that lent its name to their neighborhood, with its columned white houses arranged around it, Ben was the first one to hear the car doors slam behind them. As he looked around he saw four boys spilling out of a 1955 Ford. One of them was Red Pettus.
"Run, Mary Anne," Ben said, looking toward his house and seeing his father"s car in the driveway. "Get Dad, quick."
Mary Anne dropped her books and ran with surprising speed for their house which was situated at the far corner of the rectangle formed by the Lawn. Dropping his books, Ben turned to face the four antagonists who now bore down on him.
"Don"t drop those books, Twinkie. "Cause that"s the only way you can fight," Red snarled. "I thought you were gonna stop me with a speller this afternoon."
"Red, I don"t have any bone to pick with you."
"Is this the one, little brother?" a heavy, narrow-eyed boy said, appraising Ben carefully and moving around to his left with an impatient caution. He was in his early twenties and his hands were calloused and hard from labor. He also had red hair, but of a deeper, less offensive color than Red"s.
"Yeah, Mac. This is the Twinkie, O.K. I guess you don"t have any bone to pick with me. I sure got a big one to pick with you," Red said, going for his knife again. "You got me kicked out of school for a whole year, Twinkie."
"Put that knife up, Red. Use your fists or nothin" at all," his brother warned. Red slipped the knife into his back pocket and advanced toward Ben. The other two boys, who had remained silent, moved behind Ben and waited for Red or his brother to make the first move.
"You need three guys to whip me, Red. You chicken s.h.i.t," Ben said.
"I could tear you in half, Twinkie."
"Why don"t you prove it, you carrot-topped b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Your hair is sure ugly. It looks like someone s.h.i.t on the top of your head."
"Let"s get him fast, boys, and get the h.e.l.l out of here," Red"s brother said. "That girl"s probably got the cops coming already."
A fist burned into Ben"s kidney from behind, dropping him down on his knees. Another blow caught him flush on the cheekbone. He dove at Red"s legs and succeeded in bringing him to the ground. Ben began to swing and kick at everything until he himself was kicked in the solar plexus and he lay gasping for breath, tears rolling down his cheeks.
The station wagon backed out of the Meecham driveway, came down Eliot Street at an un.o.btrusive pace, then accelerated across the Lawn at fifty miles an hour, stopping between the combatants and the "55 Ford parked in the road. Two men wearing flight jackets jumped from the car, removing their jackets as they did so and slinging them behind them as they advanced forward toward Ben who had quit fighting and had rolled into a defensive crouch to minimize the damage inflicted by the fists and kicks.
Ben heard his father say, "Which two do you want, Virgil?"
"s.h.i.t, Bull, let me kill all four of them by myself. You go back to the house and fix a couple of drinks. I might even break out into a sweat."
"No, Virge, that wouldn"t be fair. I don"t want you to have all the fun. I want to kill at least one of them."
The four boys were looking for possible routes of escape when Red"s brother decided that in arbitration lay his salvation from this swiftly retrograding dilemma. He proffered his hand to Bull and with a sincere but uncertain smile he said, "I"ve no quarrel with the Marine Corps. No sir. I"ve always admired and respected the Marine Corps."
"That"s mighty nice of you, sir," Bull said, taking the boy"s hand. "And I"ve got a real feeling your respect for the Corps is going to skyrocket in just a few minutes." Bull began to squeeze the boy"s hand in a pincerlike grip until the boy attempted to pull away. Soon Bull began to work the bones of the boy"s right hand against each other, applying more and more pressure, until the boy began to scream for his friends to pull Bull off. Then, without haste, Bull waited for the right opening and hit him with a left cross that jerked the boy backward as though he had been shot. He would have fallen but Bull had not released his hand.
His breath coming back to him, each new lungful of air a gift of infinite price, Ben rose to one knee and watched the fight with eyes that were clouded with pain. He saw Colonel Hedgepath crouched in a boxing stance weaving toward the two boys who had attacked Ben from behind. One of them began to swing wildly at the colonel, who stepped back and aimed a kick that landed solidly in the boy"s s.c.r.o.t.u.m. Then, with careful deliberation and without a wasted movement, he punched the other boy to the ground with two punches to the stomach and two to the face.
Red circled behind Bull, coming at his back carefully. Reaching for his knife but thinking better of it, he threw himself against the colonel"s legs. Bull stumbled but did not hit the ground. Instead, he lifted his leg and brought his shoe down hard on Red"s wrist. By this time Ben was up and game again, his sore places numb and his temper deepening into a white heat manifested by a low, animal whine emitted as he charged the p.r.o.ne figure of Red. He left his feet and came down on Red"s back with his knees, the air rushing out of his lungs as though he were a beach toy. All four of Ben"s a.s.sailants were stretched out in the gra.s.s in various postures of defeat and pain. Dancing like schoolboys, Bull and Virgil went from one boy to the other as though touching bases, pleading with them to rise and fight again. Then Bull, seeing their car parked on the road behind his, sprinted toward it and mounted the front of the car with a single leap. He began to leap up and down on the car"s hood, caving it in to the loud accompaniment of crumpling steel and Virgil"s hurrahs. Then, he danced on the Ford"s roof, leaving footprints of steel in his truculent clog across the top of the car. As a final signature, he leaped from the roof to the trunk and finally back to the ground, then, still seized with a demonic energy released by the fight, began pulling Red and his friends off the ground and kicked them toward the car.
"If you punks ever mess with my boy again," Bull screamed, "they"ll find pieces of you all over town."
That night after dinner Ben came downstairs with Mary Anne to say good night to the adults.
"How"s my G.o.dson?" Virgil Hedgepath said.
"He"s sore, Colonel," Ben answered.
"I"ll tell you one thing, Virgil. I didn"t know Mary Anne could move so fast," Bull said. "She ran that hundred yards from Ben to the house in just under three minutes."
"You will notice, p.o.o.psy, that I am not even vaguely amused by your juvenile sense of humor. I look on myself as the heroine of the entire episode. You were the minutemen. I was Paul Revere."
"Well, Mary Anne, I have you to thank then for one of the most enjoyable afternoons I have spent in many a year. That reminded me, Bull, of the first time we got liberty when our carrier docked in San Francisco after the war," Virgil said.
"We must have fought with half the Pacific fleet during that week and a half," Bull said.
"It looks like my G.o.dson, old Marine Junior here, can use his fists when it"s necessary."
"I got a phone call from your princ.i.p.al, Mr. Dacus, today, Ben. He told me about the Jew you and Mary Anne helped out. I was right proud of both of you. I bet the reputation is going to spread around that school real fast that s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with Meechams is like playing with fire."
Lillian and Paige Hedgepath joined their husbands in the den. Lillian served coffee to Bull and Virgil, putting a shot of Irish whiskey in each cup.
"I was just trying to talk Paige into coming to the tea I"m going to give for the senior officers" wives in December, Virge. You work on her at home and I"ll make a novena once a month."
"Honey," Paige said, "it would take a lot more than G.o.d and Virgil Hedgepath to get me to one of those G.o.dawful boring teas where those dumb wives sit around counting each other"s wrinkles."
"Behind every successful Marine officer stands his loyal and uncomplaining wife," Virgil joked.
"My tea will be stimulating, Paige. That"s why I want you to be there so much."
"I"ve always admired you for not going to those silly things, Mrs. Hedgepath," Mary Anne said.