Land Of The Blind

seventh and eighth graders, though, and he seemed to get a pass from Decker and Woodbridge, I guess because he supplied them with dope.

'Where do you get the papers?' I asked.

'Stepdad's stash,' he answered as quickly as possible so he could get back to his song and his job.

'How much does that stuff cost?'

'Ten a lid.'

'How much is a lid?'

He looked right at me and just kept humming. 'Nobody knows for sure. That's the cool thing.'

It seemed okay with Pete that I sat with Everson and one day I even held out one of my dad's Pall Malls to give to my new friend. He looked at it and made a face. 'I hope you don't smoke those,' Everson said.

'What do you mean?'

'Cigarettes? Disgusting. Filthy habit.' And he flipped his blond hair and went back to rolling joints.

I didn't ride the regular bus home in the afternoons. In the fall I played flag football, and in the winter basketball. Except for the great prematurely bearded quarterback Kenny Dale, I was the only guy from my neighborhood who played sports, and so the only people on the activities bus to Empire were me and Everson, who told the teachers he was staying after school for drama and the school paper, but who actually sold the last of his dope to the football team. The bus would cruise past the high school, then the junior high, then come pick up us elementary school kids, and I'd sit in the seat in front of Everson, who never hummed or had anything to say in the afternoons, since his joints were all rolled and sold. He just stared out the window, like Eli.

So I never had to see what Eli endured in the afternoon bus rides, only in the mornings. And in those mornings, while it may sound unlikely and defensive, I began to try to protect him from Pete Decker. Sometimes I saved my cigarettes until Eli arrived at the bus stop, hoping I could distract Pete. Other times I picked up a rock and threw it at a passing car, hoping I could interest Pete in some cruelty that didn't involve knocking Eli down or wedging his briefs in his shithole. But Pete was relentless; he continued to torment Eli, dropping burning cigarettes in his backpack, flicking his ears, and, at least once a week, giving him a wedgie. One day in the winter, Pete reached in Eli's pants to yank on his underwear and immediately withdrew his hand. 'Oh, that's sick!' he yelled, and he hauled off and decked Eli, knocking his glasses off and dropping him to the ground. 'He isn't wearing any underwear!' On the bus that day, I watched Eli's reflection in the window and I swear I saw him smile a little bit.

I think it was the underwear thing mat upped the ante for Pete. He actually began walking up the block to meet Eli, taking the backpack off his shoulder and spreading all the books and papers as he walked back to the bus stop, Eli bent at that crooked waist in his flannel shirt, picking up his things and limping along toward the bus stop in his corrective shoes, pausing to push his glasses back up on his nose.

In the spring I turned out for baseball, but on the first day I forgot to wear a cup and a line drive short hopped me in the nutsack and I had to go to emergency, where the doctor told my mom I had a twisted testicle and would have to take the baseball season off, or at least until my right nut reacquired its flesh color. So I started wearing special underwear and riding the bus home right after school, where I got to see the second half of Eli Boyle's nightmare. Pete treated him the same way at 3:00 P.M. that he had at 7:20 in the morning, calling him names, making fun of his clothes, knocking him down. It was about that time, in the spring, that Pete Decker decided he was tired of beating Eli up and that someone else needed to beat up Eli. Me.

He talked about it for a couple of days, telling me things that Eli had allegedly said about me, that I was a fairy and a fruitcake and that I had humped my own grandma. I remember wondering, if I were a fairy, would I want to hump my grandma?

I managed to avoid fighting those first days, saying that Eli wasn't worth it, or I didn't want to get snot on my fists, stuff like that. But Pete kept bringing it up, saying that if I didn't fight Eli people would assume it was because I was his boyfriend. Still, I avoided it. And every day Pete would hover over me. 'When are you gonna fight that punk? He's making you look stupid.'

One morning, sitting next to Everson, I leaned over and asked what he would do.

'I don't fight,' he said, without looking up from the joint in his lap.

'Why not?'

'No one expects me to.'

'Why?'

He shrugged. 'Against my nature.'

'If I don't beat up Eli, then Pete's gonna kill me.'

'Yeah,' he said. 'It works that way.'

At recess, I sought out the lovely Dana Brett, who had impressed me with her courage and humanity when she didn't scoot her desk away from Eli's that day. I explained to her my dilemma, without looking up into her angelic face, her Nestle's brown eyes. She listened patiently, while a few feet away the other girls in our class asked questions of romance to a Magic Eight Ball. She would always be unlike those other girls, more measured and rational.

'Are you afraid of him?' Dana asked when I'd explained my problem.

'Eli? Of course not.'

'Well,' she said, the long lashes flashing down once on those big, round eyes, 'then you better fight. If you don't, they're gonna say you're a puss.'

I think we are capable of fooling ourselves in a lot of different ways. People talk about what makes a child an adult, as if there is some physical or emotional or mental threshold we cross, but I tell you this, and if you are honest with yourself you will know it is true: the thing that makes us adult is our ability to delude ourselves. That's all. Children know what they are. Try telling a fat kid he looks good, or a child who is a bad athlete that he just needs to try harder. He knows better. But as adults, we start to believe the bullshit. We tell ourselves that cheating on our taxes isn't really stealing and that the job candidate with long legs is really a better fit for the company. We look at our lives and pretend that we aren't money hungry and consumed by status, that we have kept the morals and ethics of our college years, that we are healthy and not fat, distinguished and not old, that gray looks sophisticated in our hair, that it doesn't hurt her if she doesn't know, that it's not really lying if he doesn't find out, that we deserve a break now and then, that we had no choice, meant no harm, didn't know what would happen, would take it back if we could, that we are still liberal and open minded and easygoing and not afraid. We come up with rationalizations and justifications after the fact, and then we convince ourselves that these things are true. We pretend we are doing the best we can.

But every man dies the death of his own making.

Me? I took a step toward being an adult that day. I told myself that if I didn't beat Eli up, Pete Decker would pound us both. I told myself that I would go easy on Eli, that I'd pull my punches. I told myself that we would make eye contact and he would see that I didn't really mean this, that I could do this and not actually do it, that I wasn't beating him up, not like Pete Decker and Matt Woodbridge did, that I was different from them. That I was different. That is the biggest lie – that we are different than they are.

The brakes squealed on the bus and Pete was up behind me, rubbing my shoulders, extolling me, whispering random combinations of guttural words in my ear.

'Fuck up that fat dickbreath cockbite fuckball!'

'Kick that smelly fag dipshit's ass!'

We moved along the aisle. Below our feet, the floor of the bus was lined with a grooved rubber strip and my tennis shoes squeaked as I moved to the front of the bus. Pete hovered behind, inches from my ear: 'Break his fuckin' four-eyed, pig-nosed face!'

Such trouble has a way of congealing the passengers of a school bus, and I felt their oozy, collective eyes on me as I moved down the aisle. I was about to beat up the most pitiful kid in twelve grades. I, the kid who offered cigarettes in fealty to Pete Decker, was about to join his ranks. In their eyes, how could I be any different?

Eli was the first off, of course, and he'd begun moving in his quick crooked shuffle, bent at the waist, trying to hide in his own clothes.

'Boyle!' Pete yelled from behind me. 'Hey, Boyle!' I felt Pete gently take my book bag and set it on the ground. Eli just kept moving, and Pete dispatched his two goons to run after him and drag him back. I stood under the willow tree, my mouth dry. The bus pulled away and I watched it go, the faces pressed up against the back window, kids having flooded to Pete Decker's seat, hoping to see the first moments of our fight before the bus pulled away.