"Knowing that won't help you become a better writer, and you'll never use that item of academic knowledge," he had said. "However, it's not so hard to understand, and you're not a moron, no matter what your other teachers say. I'm not going to pass you until knowledge of the difference is embedded in your bones. Now, I'm not current with the latest discoveries in physics. What the hell is a dangling particle?"
After biology class, Jim and Sam headed for the rest room. They went past the elderly guard outside the room and entered. The place was busy, noisy, and stinking. There, leaning against the wall by the washbowls were Freehoffer, "The Blob," and his buddies, Dolkin and Skarga. They were passing around a roach as if they didn't give a damn if the guard caught them, and they didn't. Freehoffer was huge, six feet four, close to three hundred pounds, double-chinned, balloon-bellied, pig-nosed, and weasel-eyed. His blue-black facial hair should have been shaved three days ago. A ponytail bound his black greasy hair. Egg yolk stained his red-and-black striped shirt.
Dolkin and Skarga were both short but very wide, and their yellow-brown hair looked like viper nests.
Freehoffer and his buddies would have been shaking down his victims, mostly scared freshmen or nerds, if the room hadn't been so crowded. Jim had been forced to give them money at least a dozen times during his four years at Central. But this year he had never been caught alone in the rest room by them, and the last time he had coughed up his change for them, he had told Freehoffer, "Never again!"
Having eased themselves at the urinals, Jim and Sam started to leave the room. Freehoffer stuck a foot out and tripped Jim, who fell forward and banged his head against the exit door. The pain was a hammer blow on a detonator. Jim yelped and, cursing, straightened up, turned around, and swung with his right fist. He did not think about what he was doing; he was scarcely aware that he was doing it. His fist sank into the big belly. Freehoffer's laughter became a deep grunt, and he doubled over.
A surfer of rage carried on by a red wave, Jim brought his knee up against The Blob's chin. The Blob fell on the tiled floor, but he got up on all fours. Jim snarled, "Don't ever touch me again, Pus-Face!"
Sam said, "Let's get going, Jim!"
Freehoffer got to his feet. "You won't get away with this, shithead!"
Dolkin and Skarga started to move in. Sam tugged on Jim's arm. "For Christ's sake, let's get outa here!"
"This ain't the place!" Freehoffer bellowed. "But if you're a real man, Grimson, you'll meet me back of Pravit's after school's over! You won't get no chance to hit me when I ain't looking! I'll beat you to a bloody pulp if you got the guts to stand up to me, and I don't think you got 'em!"
Jim started to shake, but he said, "Fair fight? Man to man? Fists only?"
"Yeah! Fair fight! Fists only! I don't need nothing except my fists to stretch you out, you spindly little fruitcake!"
"I don't like to dirty my hands on you, but I'll do it, you heap of shit," Jim said. With Sam behind him, he swaggered out of the rest room.
"Jesus Christ, man!" Sam said. "What got into you?"
"I just won't take any more of his shit!"
"You must be mad at everybody and everything," Sam said. "You ain't thinking straight. You know he ain't going to fight fair, and Dolkin and Skarga'll be there to jump on you, too."
"What'd you do if you were in my place?" Jim snarled.
"Me? I wouldn't show, no way. I'm not crazy!"
"You gonna be there, or you gonna let me take them on by myself?"
"Oh, I'll be there," Sam said. "I won't let you down, old buddy. But I better tell Bob and the others about this. The more the better. You'll need backup. I'll bring a brick, too. But this is crazy!"
By the time that school was out, the entire student body seemed to know about the scheduled fight. Jim was still mad but not so much that he was not also scared. Sam's advice to stand The Blob up instead of standing up to him was making more sense. But he was not going to back out now. Everybody would think he had a yellow streak down his back.
Pravit's Confectionery and Drugstore was a block away from the high school. Trailed and preceded by students, Jim went down the alley along the side of the store and then went a few paces along the alley behind the old redbrick building. With him were Wyzak, Pellegrino, and Larsen. Jim had hoped that Freehoffer would be a no-show. No. There was The Blob, leaning against the wall near the back door, a toothpick in his blubber lips, seeming most nonchalant. By his side stood Dolkin and Skarga.
"There's the rest-room mugger, the bully of the crapper!" Jim called out. His voice started out loud and firm enough, but it cracked near the end of his sentence. He stopped a dozen feet from Freehoffer while the crowd shifted around to form a semicircle. Jim's three cronies stood just behind him.
The Blob sneered. He said, "Sticks and stones, big mouth." He continued to lean against the wall.
Jim dropped his book bag, screamed, and ran forward. Freehoffer straightened up, his eyes wide. Jim ran and then launched himself. He had seen karate fighting in many movies but had never practiced any. This was a first-time, all-or-nothing effort, do or die. His body came close to leveling out as he slammed the bottom of his shoe into Freehoffer's nose. He had tried for the chin, but his aim was off. Not so bad, though. The Blob's head snapped back, and he staggered against the wall. Blood gushed from his nostrils.
Then Jim fell straight backward, tried to twist, but fell heavily on his side. Pain shot through his shoulder. The wind was knocked out of him. Despite this, he was up on his feet and charged Freehoffer with his head down. He drove it into the big belly. More pain lanced through him, but down his neck this time.
Freehoffer gasped. Blood ran down his face, and he bent over, clutching his belly. The attack had caught both him and his buddies by surprise. Dolkin and Skarga, however, unfroze and jumped on Jim, who still had not gotten his wind back. Sam Wyzak, though fight-shy, did not hold back once he got into a battle. He brought out from under his jacket a brick. He slammed it against the side of Dolkin's head. Dolkin went down onto his knees, a hand clamped to the injured part. Skarga brought his fist out of the pocket of his jacket. Brass knuckles gleamed as he pulled his arm back to drive them into Jim's ribs. Bob Pellegrino stepped in and slammed a fist against the side of Skarga's jaw. Sam hit Skarga on his shoulder with the brick. Skarga went down, yelling with pain, then tried to crawl away into the crowd. Pellegrino kicked him hard in the butt. Steve Larsen jumped on Skarga and bore him all the way to the ground.
The Blob had a lot of flesh to absorb the damage done to him. He was far from being out of the fight. Bellowing, he lunged forward, drove into Jim, locked his arms around him, and carried him down to the hard black pavement. Since Jim had his arms free, he was able to strike Freehoffer as they rolled around, though not effectively. When The Blob bit him in his stomach, Jim cried out, but the pain gave him strength to tear himself loose. He was still on his back when Freehoffer rose to his feet and drew a foot back to kick Jim.
Jim kicked first. His foot slammed into The Blob's crotch. Yelling, holding his testicles, Freehoffer fell forward. Before he hit the ground, he gushed yellow vomit. Jim rolled away and escaped the crushing weight of the near three hundred pounds. But the puke showered his hair and the left side of his face and body.
He got to his feet. Then the stench and the feel of the stuff sticking to him and the thought that it came from The Blob's belly made him retch. Bent over Freehoffer, he sprayed him in the face with his own vomit.
Some of the spectators were delighted. Others got nauseated, and a small number of these threw up. Their example caused more to puke. But neither the enjoyers nor the loathers had much time to express their reactions. Nearby sirens announced the coming of the cops. Most of the crowd hurriedly left the scene.
Chapter 9
A BLACK-AND-WHITE squad car pulled into the alley, Freehoffer croaked out his threats between sobs and long drawn-in breaths.
"I'm going to get you! I'll use the old man's shotgun, Piss-Face! I'll
blow out your crazy queer brains, then I'll jam the Polack's brick up his ass before I blow off his head, too!"
Dolkin and Skarga had fled. Bob Pellegrino and Steve Larsen had reluctantly left after Jim had told them it made no sense for them to stay to face the music. Sam, however, had refused to desert Jim.
"Bullshit!" Jim said. He was breathless, too, though not nearly as much as Freehoffer. "You've had it, puke-face! Your reign of terror is over! Anytime I see you extorting money from some scared kid, I'm going to jump you, right then and there! I'll beat the piss out of you!"
He was shaking so much that his muscles seemed to be trying to tear themselves loose from his bones. Yet he still felt as if he were riding a gigantic surf wave. It was lifting him up and up, and when he reached the crest, he would soar off into the wild blue yonder. The fight had spurted out much of the rage and the urge to do violence that had possessed him all day.
The cops came then, strolling up slowly, looking around but grinning. They were relieved that they did not have to handle a riot. Jim thought that whoever had reported the fight had exaggerated. Old man Pravit? Maybe. In any case, the police department was understaffed and overworked, like every other department in money-poor Belmont City. It was a wonder that any police car had shown up.
It was good that Sam had not gone with the others. The cops recognized his name. One of them knew that Sam was the nephew of Stanislaw Wyzak, a night court judge, and of John Krasinski, an alderman. The two patrolmen treated the whole incident as just a heated argument among high school kids.
Normally, the cops would have spread-eagled them against the wall and frisked them. But they did not want to get the stinking mess on their hands or, indeed, come any closer to Grimson and Freehoffer than they had to. Nor could they get out of the youths the true story of what had caused the brouhaha. Jim refrained from telling them about Freehoffer's extortions and his threats to kill him and Sam. The Blob evidently wanted to accuse Jim of all sorts of things, but he, too, abided by the unwritten law: Don't tell the fuzz nothing about nobody. Though the cops knew that they were being lied to, they did not care. If they let the three go with a warning, they would avoid paperwork and getting in Dutch with Judge Wyzak and Alderman Krasinski. However, they added, this incident would have to be reported to the boys' parents.
In effect: Go, children, and sin no more. And for Christ's sake wash your clothes and take a bath. Haw! haw!
Just before the cops left, one of them scowled and said, "Grimson? Where've I heard. . . oh, yeah. . . I think I hauled your old man in one night on a drunk and disorderly. But there's something else. Oh, yeah! Didn't I read a couple of years ago about you? Something to do with some strange visions and you bleeding in your palms and forehead. It made quite a to-do, didn't it? Some people thought maybe you was a saint, and others thought you was touched in the head."
"That was years ago. I was just a kid then," Jim said sourly. "Everything's cleared up since then. Anyway, it didn't mean much. The paper exaggerated. Anything to get news."
He had a flash of the doctor who'd examined him after the stigmata came. Old Doc Goodbone, believe that name or not. "It's just his overactive imagination coupled with a tendency to hysteria," the physician had told his mother. "The weird things he saw, the stigmata, they're explainable, and not by the introduction of supernatural elements. Not common, these cases, but there have been many such reported in medical journals. It's all psychological. The mind can do strange things. Even the bleeding, which seems purely physical, can be produced by the mind. Especially by the minds of children and adolescents and hysterical women. Little Jim will probably get over this, be quite normal. We'll just have to keep an eye on him. Don't worry."
His mother should have been relieved and probably was. But she was also disappointed. She had been convinced that the visions and the stigmata were God's signals that he was destined to be a saint.
The cop made them promise that they would not start fighting again and that they would go home immediately. A call came in, and the fuzz left hurriedly. Freehoffer looked as if he would like to keep threatening Jim and Sam, but he shambled away down the alley. Jim looked for his book bag. It was gone.
"For God's sake, what next?" he cried. "Someone stole it! The books. . . I'll have to buy new ones!"
That was going to make his father even madder. It had been hard enough to get the money for the textbooks at the beginning of the semester. Eric Grimson would have more to raise hell about than just the fight. And Eva Grimson would have to take the purchase money out of what she brought home from her cleaning job. No. His father would insist that his son pay for it. Where would he get the cash?
Did bad things never end?
Jim's mother was still working up on Gold Hill when Jim arrived home. But his father was waiting for him. He began yelling at him to get his clothes into the washer in the basement and to take a shower. Right now. The shock of the shower might kill him, but Jim and the world would be better off then. Jim tried to tell him why he got into the fight. Eric Grimson paid no attention to his explanation. He stood at the top of the basement stairs while Jim shucked off his clothes and put them in the old washer.
"That'll take extra soap and water and gas heat and run up the bills, and they're high enough now, though I can't say you generally raise the water bill much," Eric said. "Maybe I should look at this as a God-given chance to force you to take a shower."
Jim waited until he had put on clean clothes before he decided to tell his father about the stolen books. But, when he reluctantly left his room, he found that his father was not around. Eric Grimson had gone some place, probably five blocks away to Tex's Tavern. He'd be spending the money on booze that he could have used to buy the schoolbooks. That reminded Jim that he had forgotten to call in to the fast-food place where he worked. If he told the manager he was sick -- which he had done too many times -- he would probably be fired.
Well, so what?
It wouldn't be easy finding another job, that's what.
But he had promised Sam that he would go Halloweening tonight, and he did not want to miss out on the fun.
If he could get his mother to one side, away from his father, he might get pocket change from her. She'd dredge it up from some place; she almost always did. However, he knew how hard it was for her to do that. Though she would not complain, her big sad eyes, her air of suppressed reproach, disappointment, and defeat would make him feel like a bum, a parasite, a bloodsucker, a failure, and a really rotten son.
Her silence and her quiet manner made him feel far worse than his father's ravings and rantings. At least he could blow off steam when he argued with his father. But her unwillingness to fight frustrated and wore him out. A termite must feel that way when it was chewing merrily along in wood and then ran slam-bang into iron.
The house was quiet except for a slight groan or a very faint murmur now and then. Those could be the voices of small shiftings of earth in the tunnels and shafts below. They were warning the heedless humans above of the coming big collapses. Or were they, as in the poem "Kubla Khan" by Coleridge, "ancestral voices warning of war"? Or trolls working away in the abandoned coal mines so they could hasten the ruin of Belmont City's houses?
Man, I'm a case, Jim thought. My brain is like a bullet that missed its target. It ricochets all over the place, envisions a hundred scenarios where only one could be real. I'm cut out to be a writer or a poet, not a garage mechanic.
He sat in a chair in the living room. He faced the fake fireplace and the mantel, which held two glass balls with Christmas scenes inside (turn the balls upside down and then right side up and snow fell on the little houses and people therein), statuettes of the Virgin Mary and St. Stephan, two incense candles, a can of furniture polish spray, an ashtray with a pile of cigarette stubs, and a music box on top of which was a circle of white-clad but nicotine-stained ballet dancers.
On the wall above the mantel was a large photograph of Ragnar Fjalar Grimsson, Jim's dearly beloved g
randfather, dead for eight years now. Though Ragnar was smiling, he looked as fierce as his namesake, the legendary Viking king, Ragnar Hairy Breeches, whom he claimed to be descended from. His white and bushy beard fell to below his chest. His white eyebrows were as thick and as splendid as God's must be (if there was a God), and the blue eyes were as penetrating as the edge of a Norse pirate's war ax. When the old man had died, his son, Eric, had taken down the big painting of Jesus, despite his wife's pale protests, and had put up the picture of his father.
It was, Jim had thought, a satisfactory substitute.
The old Norwegian was a real man. A far voyager on sea and on land, an adventurer, tough, no complainer, a go-getter, largely self-educated, a wide reader, afraid of nobody and of no thing, a quoter of Shakespeare and Milton and of the old Scandinavian sagas, yet one who enjoyed the cartoon strips and who had read them to Jim before Jim could read, stubborn, convinced that his way was the only way but with a sense of humor and wit, and also convinced that most of the present generation were degenerates.
It was a good thing old Ragnar had died. He'd be deeply disgusted with his son and even more so with his grandson. As for Ragnar's daughter-in-law, Eva, he'd never liked her, though he had always treated her politely. She was scared of him, and he scorned people he could scare.
His grandfather had at first been disturbed by Jim's visions and dreams and stigmata. After a while, he had decided that these were not necessarily signs that Jim was mentally sick. Jim had been touched by the Fates, who gave him second sight, a gift the Scotch called "fey." Jim could see things invisible to others. Though the old man was an atheist, he did believe, or professed to believe, in the Noms, the three Fates of pagan Scandinavia. "Even today, out in the rural and forest areas, you'll find Norwegians who believe in destiny more than they do in their Lutheran God."