Man Descending

“I been three times already and nobody rolled in an aisle once.”

“Three times? Three times? Now it all comes out. Three, eh?” He actually hits himself in the forehead with the heel of his palm. Twice. “Jesus Christ Almighty, I’m blessed with a son like this? What’s the matter with you? Why can’t you ever do something I can understand?”

“Like wrecking cars?” This is a swift kick in the old fun sack. Pop’s just getting over Gene’s totalling off the first new car he’s bought in eight years. A 1966 Chevy Impala.

“Shut your smart mouth. Don’t go dragging your brother into this. Anyway, what he done to the car was accidental. But not you. Oh no, you marched into that collection of religious screwballs, holy belly-floppers, and linoleum-beaters under your own steam. On purpose. For God’s sake, Billy, that’s no religion that – it’s exercise. Stay away from them Baptists.”

“Can’t,” I says to him.

“Can’t? Can’t? Why the hell not?”

“Matter of principle.”

They teach us that in school, matters of principle. I swear it’s a plot to get us all slaughtered the day they graduate us out the door. It’s their revenge, see? Here we are reading books in literature class about some banana who’s only got one oar in the water to start with, and then he pops it out worrying about principles. Like that Hamlet, or what’s his name in A Tale of Two Cities. Ever notice how many of those guys are alive at the end of those books they teach us from?

“I’ll principle you,” says the old man.

The only teacher who maybe believes all that crock of stale horseshit about principles is Miss Clark, who’s fresh out of wherever they bake Social Studies teachers. She’s got principles on the brain. For one thing, old Clarkie has pretty nearly wallpapered her room with pictures of that Negro, Martin Luther King, and some character who’s modelling the latest in Wabasso sheets and looks like maybe he’d kill for a hamburger – Gandhi is his name – and that hairy old fart Tolstoy, who wrote the books you need a front-end loader to lift. From what Clarkie tells us, I gather they’re what you call nonviolent shit-disturbers.

Me too. Being a smart-ass runs in the Simpson family. It’s what you call hereditary, like a disease. That’s why all of a sudden, before I even think for chrissakes, I hear myself lecturing the old man in this fruity voice that’s a halfway decent imitation of old Clarkie, and I am using the exact words which I’ve heard her say myself.

“Come, come, surely by this day and age everybody has progressed to the point where we can all agree on the necessity of freedom of worship. If we can’t agree on anything else, at least we can agree on that.”

I got news for her. My old man don’t agree to no such thing. He up and bangs me one to the side of the head. A backhander special. You see, nobody in our house is allowed an opinion until they’re twenty-one.

Of course, I could holler Religious Persecution. Not that it would do any good. But it’s something I happen to know quite a bit about, seeing as Religious Persecution was my assignment in Social Studies that time we studied Man’s Inhumanity to Man. The idea was to write a two-thousand-word report proving how everybody has been a shit to everybody else through the ages, and where did it ever get them? This is supposed to improve us somehow, I guess.

Anyway, as usual anything good went fast. Powbrowski got A. Hitler, Keller put dibs on Ivan the Terrible, Langly asked for Genghis Khan. By the time old Clarkie got around to me there was just a bunch of crap left like No Votes For Women. So I asked, please, could I do a project on Mr. Keeler? Keeler is the dim-witted bat’s fart who’s principal of our school.

For being rude, Miss Clark took away my “privilege” of picking and said I had to do Religious Persecution. Everybody was avoiding that one like the plague.

Actually, I found Religious Persecution quite interesting. It’s got principles too, number one being that whatever you’re doing to some poor son of a bitch – roasting his chestnuts over an open fire, or stretching his pant-leg from a 29-incher to a 36-incher on the rack – why, you’re doing it for his own good. So he’ll start thinking right. Which is more or less what my old man was saying when he told me I can’t go out of the house on Sundays any more. He says to me, “You aren’t setting a foot outside of that door [he actually points at it] of a Sunday until you come to your senses and quit with all the Baptist bullshit.”

Not that that’s any heavy-duty torture. What he don’t know is that these Baptists have something called Prayer, Praise and Healing on Wednesday nights. My old man hasn’t locked me up Wednesday nights yet by no means.

I figure if my old man wants somebody to blame for me becoming a Baptist he ought to take a peek in my older brother Gene’s direction. He started it.

Which sounds awful funny if you know anything about Gene. Because if Gene was smart enough to have ever thought about it, he’d come out pretty strong against religion, since it’s generally opposed to most things he’s in favour of.

Still, nobody thinks the worse of my brother for doing what he likes to do. They make a lot of excuses for you in a dinky mining town that’s the arsehole of the world if you bat.456 and score ninety-eight goals in a thirty-five-game season. Shit, last year they passed the hat around to all the big shots on the recreation board and collected the dough for one of Gene’s liquor fines and give it to him on the q.t.

But I’m trying to explain my brother. If I had to sum him up I’d probably just say he’s the kind of guy doesn’t have to dance. What I mean is, you take your average, normal female: they slobber to dance. The guys that stand around leaning against walls are as popular to them as syphilis. You don’t dance, you’re a pathetic dope – even the ugly ones despise you.

But not Gene. He don’t dance and they all cream. You explain it. Do they figure he’s too superior to be bothered? Because it’s not true. I’m his brother and I know. The dink just can’t dance. That simple. But if I mention this little fact to anybody, they look at me like I been playing out in the sun too long. Everybody around here figures Mr. Wonderful could split the fucking atom with a hammer and a chisel if he put his mind to it.

Well, almost everybody. There’s a born doubter in every crowd. Ernie Powers is one of these. He’s the kind of stupid fuck who’s sure they rig the Stanley Cup and the Oscars and nobody even went up in space. Everything is a hoax to him. Yet he believes professional wrestling is on the up and up. You wonder – was he dropped on his head, or what? Otherwise you got to have a plan to grow up that ignorant.

So it was just like Einstein to bet Gene ten dollars he couldn’t take out Nancy Williams. He did that while we were eating a plate of chips and gravy together in the Rite Spot and listening to Gene going on about who’s been getting the benefit of his poking lately. Powers, who is a very jealous person because he’s going steady with his right hand, says, oh yeah sure, maybe her, but he’d bet ten bucks somebody like Nancy Williams in 11B wouldn’t even go out with Gene.

“Get serious,” says my brother when he hears that. He considers himself irresistible to the opposite sex.

“Ten bucks. She’s strictly off-limits even to you, Mr. Dreamboat. It’s all going to waste. That great little gunga-poochy-snuggy-bum, that great matched set. Us guys in 11B, you know what we call them? The Untouchables. Like on TV.”

“What a fucking sad bunch. Untouchables for you guys, maybe. If any of you queers saw a real live piece of pelt you’d throw your hat over it and run.”

“Talk’s cheap,” says Ernie, real offended. “You don’t know nothing about her. My sister says Miss High-and- Mighty didn’t go out for cheerleading because the outfits was too revealing. My sister says Nancy Williams belongs to some religion doesn’t allow her to dance. Me, I saw her pray over a hard-boiled egg for about a half-hour before she ate it in the school lunch-room. Right out where anybody could see, she prayed. No way somebody like that is going to go out with you, Simpson. If she does I’ll eat my shorts.”

“Start looking for the ten bucks, shitface, and skip dinner, because I’m taking Nancy Williams to the Christmas Dance,” my brother answers him right back. Was Gene all of a sudden hostile or was he hostile? I overheard our hockey coach say one time that my brother Gene’s the kind of guy rises to a challenge. The man’s got a point. I lived with Gene my whole life, which is sixteen years now, and I ought to know. Unless he gets mad he’s useless as tits on a boar.

You better believe Gene was mad. He called her up right away from the pay phone in the Rite Spot. It was a toss-up as to which of those two jerks was the most entertaining. Powers kept saying, “There’s no way she’ll go out with him. No way.” And every time he thought of parting with a ten-spot, a look came over his face like he just pinched a nut or something. The guy’s so christly tight he squeaks when he walks. He was sharing my chips and gravy, if you know what I mean?