Stotan!

  This is my third year as captain of the swim team, so I’ve been on the Council since I was a sophomore. In those three years, up until last week, I don’t remember a time when the Athletic Council wasn’t unanimous on any decision or opinion we made. I think that’s because Mr. Edwards, the football coach, and Mr. Severs, the baseball coach, are big, strong, imposing men who state their opinions, fold their arms and silently dare you to go against them. They don’t do that to be bad guys, it’s just the way they are. Even if you didn’t agree with them, which most of us usually do, you’d have to be a strong believer in the other side to take them on. And you’d lose.

  I bring that up only because the meeting this last week was the first time I ever remember any of us at odds on an issue that didn’t get worked out, Edwards and Severs or no Edwards and Severs. And it was about that stupid Aryan Press. That’s like arguing over an article in the National Enquirer.

  A girl named Molly Ramstead, who’s on the girls’ basketball team, moved that the Council issue a public statement against the stuff in the Aryan Press in case there was the slightest doubt in anybody’s mind that anyone in this school agrees with that crap. There are two black kids on the Council, Roy Biggs from the track team and LaFesha Stills from girls’ softball. They just smiled and looked at the table, shaking their heads. I couldn’t tell what they were thinking, probably that we were ridiculous for even wasting time with it, but I seconded Molly’s motion and added that we should approach the administration about taking disciplinary action against anyone distributing it.

  And that’s what started it. Marty O’Brian, who’s the rep from the baseball team, a catcher whose marvelous athletic talents are surpassed only by his monumental insensitivity, said, “That’s against the Constitution.”

  “What constitution is that?” I asked. I couldn’t believe we’d have trouble passing this.

  “The Constitution of the United States. Freedom of the press. Freedom of speech.”

  I’ve never liked O’Brian much anyway, if for no other reason than he’s an opinionated, arrogant turd-burger who’s always tormenting Nortie about swimming being a sissy sport, and I welcomed the opportunity to take him on. “Who read that to you?” I asked. “You pick that up your second time through Civics?”

  “People are entitled to an opinion,” he said. “The law says so. Just because you don’t agree with it doesn’t mean you can wipe it out. That’s what the commies do.”

  I was getting hot because I didn’t like that peckerwood calling me a commie and because he was winning the argument already and because he makes me sick. I said, “Maybe the law should say people need to keep some opinions to themselves.”

  “Maybe it should, but it doesn’t.” For once in his life O’Brian was making sense and I hated it. I was on thin Constitutional ice and I knew it. I mean, the ACLU is forever sticking up for the Klan and the John Birchers and every other jerk-off organization the bigots of our great land can hide behind. So I decided to see if I could pin old Marty down a little—maybe make him say something racist that the black kids could take back to their friends and get him roughed up a little.

  “So what’s your beef, Marty?” I said. “If we take the part out about disciplinary action against any distributors, you willing to make a unanimous statement against that rag?”

  Marty hesitated too long before saying, “Yeah, sure.” Roy and LaFesha picked up on it too, but they just smiled and looked at the table again. When we finally took the vote on the statement only, O’Brian changed his mind and abstained. He said it was to keep me humble, but I had to ask. “Marty,” I said, “were you the guy that brought those papers in?”

  He wouldn’t say no. He told me it was none of my damn business what he did or what he thought, then he looked to Roy and LaFesha and said, “Nothin’ personal, you guys. I just like to get under Dupree’s skin once in a while.” Both Edwards and Severs told him it was nothing to joke about, but O’Brian just shrugged and said, “Hey, Coach, it’s my vote.”

  Boy, one of these days I’d like to get a shot at O’Brian. I know he can catch a baseball coming down the pipe eighty miles an hour; I wonder if he can catch my foot before it gets to his ear at about that speed. Unfortunately, Max won’t turn me loose with all these killer moves he’s taught me on the karate mat. He told me once, and that was enough, if he ever caught me using them anywhere it wasn’t absolutely necessary, he’d never have anything to do with me again. I believe he means it, and that makes O’Brian absolutely safe from my wrath unless he tries to do me in. There have been many occasions when I think it’s a crying shame.

  I talked to Max the day after the Council meeting, right before his English class—Max is one of those utility teachers who teach in several departments—and unloaded some of my outrage on him. I was secretly hoping he’d be as incensed as I was and free me to kick O’Brian’s head off his body, but he just looked up from his desk and said, “Walker, how do you think issues like this get to be important?”

  I said I didn’t know what he meant.

  He said, “The world is full of fools and crackpots—people who were never given any tools to fill their lives up, and who consequently have made their lives so meaningless the only way they can feel good about themselves is to look around and see who they’re better than. When they can’t find anyone, they create someone. Their ideas are meaningless—right up until we start to fight against them. We’re the ones who give power to bigots. We make their ideas real by opposing them.”

  “Yeah, but, Jeez, Max,” I said, “it makes me want to turn O’Brian inside out.”

  “If you don’t learn anything else before you get out of high school,” Max said, “learn where to make a stand.” He smiled. “Right now make a sit. In your seat. Impossible as the task may seem, it’s time for me to make you literate.” End of discussion. O’Brian has power only if we give O’Brian power. The gospel according to Max.

  You know, it seemed a lot clearer why I was attracted to Devnee when I first started taking her out during the middle of last year. I wonder what happens to true love; where it goes. In the beginning I was always excited about seeing her, and I gave her flowers and candy on special occasions, or on any occasion for that matter, and organized my time around what she wanted to do. But then it started disappearing. Even before I started looking at Elaine as a possible object of my questionable favors, the power of my feelings for Devnee was fading. And I’m such a jerk when that happens. I start creating arguments so she’ll get frustrated and mad at me and not want to be around me—in fact, it feels like I’m trying to get her pissed off so she’ll break up with me and then I won’t have to be the one to do it and feel guilty. It would be one thing if this were the first time, but something close to that has happened every time I’ve had a girlfriend. It seems really selfish and makes me feel like a lowlife, but it’s out of my control. I keep saying I’m going to do it differently, but then I start doing subtle things that I know will irritate them and make them fight with me. They never understand it—which is probably the point—and there’s a lot of hurt. And it takes for-frigging-ever to finally break up. I hate it. So anyway, even though I’m sure nothing will ever happen between me and Elaine, I’m going to try to break things off with Devnee in a way I can be proud of; you know, take responsibility for letting her know what’s going on with me rather than try to make her believe it’s her fault, or that some dark, unknown demon is lurking between us. I sure wish I knew why love goes away. Devnee is pretty and she’s smart and has a really nice body; small, with a tiny waist and great pecs; dark green eyes and short, almost black hair. She’s in the honor society and she plays the piano like a pro. She also likes me a lot, which makes it all the harder. Anybody in their right mind is going to say I’m a lunatic for ending it, though there’ll be plenty of guys who’ll be glad I did. The second I’m gone, her social calendar will be filled up through her first two years of college. And that brings up another thing. Even though I don’t want to be
with her anymore, I’m jealous of anyone else being with her. I can already feel it. God, how do people grow up and get married and live together for the rest of their lives?

  December 1

  Well, I didn’t do such a hot job with Devnee last night. I had it planned to take her out to a nice dinner and find just the right spot to say I didn’t want to continue with the relationship. I had a couple of chances, but she looked so nice and so sweet and so full of everything a guy should want in a girlfriend, I started questioning whether I should stick with it. Actually, what really stopped me was I was scared. So another time, I guess. I’ll look into hypnosis.

  Something more important is pressing and I don’t have any idea what to do about it. It’s Nortie, and I think it’s serious. I mentioned before that he spends time working over at the East Side Childcare Center a couple of nights a week and all day Saturday, unless we work out. He works with the older kids, the first-and second-graders who come after school and on weekends when their parents are working. They’re a tough bunch; it’s a public-funded daycare and most of the kids are from low-or no-income families; but Nortie does a great job with them. It’s the one thing he’s really proud of—way more than his swimming. He even invited me over once to watch him work and I have to admit I was amazed. I stayed three hours watching him do science experiments with them, play board games, work on school skills and play outside. He gets them so jacked up about learning and discovery, mostly because every time one of them figures out a problem or moves to a higher level in something, Nortie’s more excited than the kid. He teaches like he works out—with reckless abandon. If one attack skill doesn’t work, he chucks it and goes on to something else. When a kid’s having a hard time, he says, “Yeah, that was really hard for me too” and keeps working on it, like it’s the most natural thing in the world to have a hard time. Watching him, I was struck by the monumental difference between the way he works with these kids and the way my own daycare and elementary years were. He never puts them down. He just doesn’t do it, and that’s not only with their studies or their quiet time. It’s their whole time with him: playtime, lunch, you name it. That doesn’t mean he has no discipline; it’s that all his discipline is by agreement. He’s already gone over with them what is and isn’t okay and consequences are already set, so there are rarely hard feelings when Nortie activates them. He gets more respect at the East Side Childcare Center than in all the other places in his life combined. The woman who runs the place—her name’s Maybelle Sawyer—says Nortie must have been a big, tough, happy black momma just like her, in his last life.

  But this afternoon it all crumbled for him. He’s worked himself into a paying position, has several groups of kids that he takes without any supervision, has already decided he’s going into elementary education in college—I mean, this is the one thing Nortie is sure about in his whole life—and he comes screaming up to my place in his dad’s car about 3:00 this afternoon, yelling my name. “Walker! Walker! Oh, God, Walker!” He shot across the lawn and into the house without knocking, and on upstairs, where I was lying on the bed listening to some old pre-Christian Bob Dylan albums that my brother turned me on to. He burst into the room and fell face down on the vacant bed and began sobbing and pounding the pillow. “I’m done! It’s all over!” he said again and again, then began convulsing and sobbing even more into the bed. I locked the door, then sat on the bed beside him and put my hand on his back between his shoulder blades. “Nortie,” I said, “what are you talking about? What’s wrong?”

  “I did it!” he sobbed. “I blew it! I blew everything! Oh, God!”

  I said, “Nortie, damn it, what happened? It can’t be this bad.”

  “It is! It is!” and he sobbed some more.

  I let him go for maybe a minute, then rolled him over and grabbed his shoulders. He flinched. “Tell me what happened,” I said. “Just tell me what happened.”

  “I hit a kid, Walk. I hit a little kid. Right on the side of the head.”

  “On purpose?”

  “No,” he said. “I mean, yes. I mean, I didn’t mean to; I didn’t want to…. I got mad.” The sobbing started again.

  I felt the wind go out of me. I don’t know much about modern child-rearing practices, but I know physical punishment is out. I said, “Nortie, just tell me what happened.”

  My mom knocked at the door and asked if everything was all right, and I said yeah, everything was fine, that I’d talk to her later.

  Nortie sat up and leaned against the wall. “There’s this kid named Jamie Crawford; his dad’s a local neighborhood drunk, so Jamie’s at the Center all the time. Anyway, he came in all pissed off because of something that happened with this girl named Kathy Scarpelli. I don’t know what it was because I wasn’t out there with them and neither one would tell me. Anyway, we were getting ready to do a science experiment and Jamie wouldn’t participate; he just sat over at his desk and pouted. He’s a real temperamental kid anyway. I tried to talk him out of it, but he just got madder and madder and I decided to let him work it out for himself. So I was over setting up this experiment with Kathy’s group and he started calling her names; really dirty ones. I was the only worker in the room and I was just getting ready to put him away from the group in the Time Out room when he started calling me names too.”

  He took a deep breath. “I didn’t get mad, Walk. Really I didn’t. I just ordered him to the Time Out room, and when he wouldn’t go, I went over to move him. We do that all the time. He said I was a little faggot and I couldn’t tell him what to do. I started to take his arm and move him, and he broke away and ran over and hit Kathy in the middle of the back as hard as he could and called her ‘dirty nigger,’ then just swept his arm across the table and the experiment went crashing to the floor. I got there and she was screaming and I turned him around to pull him away and he spit in my face.” Nortie’s face dropped and the tears started coming again. “I slapped him three or four times on the side of the face, Walk. Before I even knew what I was doing. I’m just like my dad.” He broke down.

  “Nortie,” I said, “it can’t be as bad as you think. Did any of the other workers come back? Did you talk to anyone?”

  He shook his head. “I just ran,” he said. “I saw what I did and I ran to the car and came here.” He looked to the window, tears still streaming. “I hate my dad, Walk. I thought I loved him, but I hate his guts. I’m just like him.”

  “You’re not like your dad, Nortie. You lost your temper. I’d have thrown the little turd across the room.”

  He shook his head and grimaced. “I’m supposed to be like a teacher there, Walk. Those are little kids. It’s my job to show them the difference. They don’t know it, man. I have to show them.”

  “Look,” I said, “let’s go talk to Maybelle. I can’t believe this can’t be fixed. You’ve put in too much time and work. Let’s go back over and see her.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t go back there now. I couldn’t look those kids in the eye. Or Maybelle either. They trusted me.”

  “Nortie, you’ve got to. You can’t just run away from something like this.”

  “It’s not just them,” he said. “It’s me. I can’t be working with kids if I hit them. Even if they’d let me. I can’t do that.”

  “Nortie, damn it, you don’t hit kids. That was a freak thing. You learned from it. You’re not going to do it again.”

  He shook his head. “It’s just like my dad. Damn it, it’s just like all the books say.”

  I started to stop him, but he held up his hand and told me to just listen for a minute. “You know why I was so good at the Center?”

  I shrugged. “You’re just good, that’s all.”

  “Nope. When everyone started saying that, I let them think it was true, because it felt so good to have everyone believe I was just naturally good at something. But I read books. Man, I read books. When I took Child Development at school, I was the only boy in the class, but I hung right in there. You know w
hy? Because I know if you’re abused as a kid there’s a good chance you’ll grow up and beat on your family. And I’m an abused kid. Boy, you don’t know the half of it. My old man’s been beating on me as long as I can remember. That day you saw him out in the driveway? Remember? That was like a prelim to what he usually does. Did you know I had an older brother who killed himself before we moved here? He was thirteen years old and he killed himself.” Nortie was running full tilt. Tears streamed down his face and snot ran out of his nose and he unloaded. “Thirteen years old and he killed himself. He hung himself in our garage. He took a rope and hung himself. Because he was tired of feeling like hell. He was tired of feeling just like I feel around my dad all the time. And you know what else? I’m classic. You could write a book about me. I still love my dad. I still try to please him. I can’t please him. He doesn’t want to be pleased. He wants to be mad. He wants to hate me. He hates me and I just keep going back.” Nortie’s hands were out, palms up; he was asking for help—from anywhere. “When I hit Jamie, it felt good. I wanted to hurt him. I could feel exactly why my dad hits me.”

  His last words trailed off a little, like he was running down. “Look, Nortie,” I said finally, “that’s what temper feels like. It feels good to everyone to blow up sometimes. That doesn’t mean you’re like your dad. It means you’re like everyone else in the world.” I got my coat out of the closet. “Now listen. You stay here. Lock the door and just stay here. I’ll make sure no one bothers you; even my parents. Just lock yourself in and stay put. I’ll go down and see what the damages are, okay? Just wait here. Somebody needs to tell Maybelle where you are. We’ll figure something out.”