“How did you like that, dickface?” a squarish guy with bad teeth asked me. He was wearing small and rather delicate wire-frame glasses that looked absurd on his wide, blocky face. This was Moochie Welch, another of Buddy’s friends.
Suddenly the circle of watchers began to melt away and I heard a man’s voice yelling, “Break it up! Break it up right now! You kids take a walk! Take a walk, dammit!”
It was Mr Casey. Finally, Mr Casey.
Buddy Repperton snatched his switchblade off the pavement. He retracted the blade and shoved the knife into the hip pocket of his jeans in one quick motion. His hand was scraped and bleeding, and it looked as if it was going to swell. The miserable sonofabitch, I hoped it would swell,until it looked like one of those gloves Donald Duck wears in the funnypages.
Moochie Welch backed away from me, glanced toward the sound of Mr Casey’s voice, and touched the corner of his mouth delicately with his thumb. “Later, dickface,” he said.
Don Vandenberg was dancing more slowly now, but he was still rubbing the affected part. Tears of pain were spilling down his face
Then Arnie was beside me, getting an arm around me, helping me up. There was a lot of dirt smeared across his shirt from where Vandenberg had thrown him down. There were cigarette butts squashed into the knees of his jeans.
“You okay, Dennis? What’d he do to you?”
“Gave my balls a little squeeze. I’ll be all right.”
At least I hoped I would be. If you’re a man and you’ve slammed your nuts a good one at some point (and what man has not), you know. If you’re a woman, you don’t—can’t. The initial agony is only the start; it fades, to be replaced by a dull, throbbing feeling of pressure that coils in the pit of the stomach. And what that feeling says is Hi, there! Good to be here, just sitting around in the pit of your stomach and making you feel like you’re going to simultaneously blow lunch and shit your pants! I guess I’ll just hang around for a while, okay? How does half an hour or so sound? Great! Getting your nuts squeezed is not one of life’s great thrills.
Mr Casey shoved his wav through the loosening knot of spectators and took in the situation. He wasn’t a big guy like Coach Puffer; he didn’t even look particularly rugged. He was of medium height and age, and going bald. Big horn-rimmed glasses sat squarely on his face. He favoured plain white shirts—no tie—and he was wearing one of them now. He wasn’t a big guy, but Mr Casey got respect. Nobody fucked around with him, because he wasn’t afraid of kids deep down the way so many teachers are. The kids knew it, too. Buddy and Don and Moochie knew it; it was in the sullen way they dropped their eyes and shuffled their feet.
“Get lost,” Mr Casey said briskly to the few remaining spectators. They started to drift away. Moochie Welch decided to try and drift with them. “Not you, Peter,” Mr Casey said.
“Aw, Mr Casey, I ain’t been doing nothing,” Moochie said.
“Me neither,” Don said. “How come you always pick on, us?”
Mr Casey came over to where I was still leaning on Arnie” for support. “Are you all right, Dennis?”
I was finally beginning to get over it—I wouldn’t have been if one of my thighs hadn’t partially blocked Welch’s hand. I nodded.
Mr Casey walked back to where Buddy Repperton, Moochie Welch, and Don Vandenberg stood in a shuffling, angry line. Don hadn’t been joking; he had been speaking for all of them. They really did feel picked on.
“This is cute, isn’t it?” Mr Casey said finally. “Three on two. That the way you like to do things, Buddy? Those odds don’t seem stacked enough for you.”
Buddy looked up, threw Casey a smouldering, ugly glance, and then dropped his eyes again. “They started it. Those guys.”
“That’s not true—'Arnie began.
“Shut up, cuntface,” Buddy said. He started to add something, but before he could get it out, Mr Casey grabbed him and threw him up against the back wall of the shop. There was a tin sign there which read SMOKING HERE ONLY. Mr Casey began to slam Buddy Repperton against that sign, and every time he did it, the sign jangled, like dramatic punctuation. He handled Repperton the way you or I might have handled a great big ragdoll. I guess he had muscles somewhere, all right.
“You want to shut your big mouth,” he said, and slammed Buddy against the sign. “You want to shut your mouth or clean up your mouth. Because I don’t have to listen to that stuff coming from you, Buddy.”
He let go of Repperton’s shirt. It had pulled out of his jeans, showing his white, untanned belly. He looked back at Arnie. “What were you saying?”
“I came past the smoking area on my way out to the bleachers to eat my lunch,” Arnie said. “Repperton was smoking with his friends there. He came over and knocked my lunchbag out of my hand and then stepped on it. He squashed it.” He seemed about to say something more, struggled with it, and swallowed it again. “That started the fight.”
But I wasn’t going to leave it at that. I’m no stoolie or tattletale, not under ordinary circumstances, but Repperton had apparently decided that more than a good beating was required to avenge himself for getting kicked out of Darnell’s. He could have punched a hole in Arnie’s intestines, maybe killed him.
“Mr Casey,” I said.
He looked at me. Behind him, Buddy Repperton’s green eyes flashed at me balefully—a warning. Keep your mouth shut, this is between us. Even a year before, some twisted sense of pride might have forced me to go along with him and play the game, but not now.
“What is it, Dennis?”
“He’s had it in for Arnie since the summmer. He’s got a knife, and he looked like he was planning to stick it in.”
Arnie was looking at me, his grey eyes opaque and unreadable. I thought about him calling Repperton a shitter—LeBay’s word—and felt a prickle of goosebumps on my back.
“You fucking liar!” Repperton cried dramatically. “I ain’t got no knife!”
Casey looked at him without saying anything. Vandenberg and Welch looked extremely uncomfortable now—scared. Their possible punishment for this little scuffle had progressed beyond detention, which they were used to, and suspension, which they had experienced, toward the outer limits of expulsion.
I only had to say one more word. I thought about it. I almost didn’t. But it had been Arnie, and Arnie was my friend, and inside where it mattered, I didn’t just think he had meant to stick Arnie with that blade; I knew it. I said the word.
“It’s a switchblade.”
Now Repperton’s eyes did not just flash; they blazed, promising hellfire, damnation, and a long period in traction. “That’s bullshit, Mr Casey,” he said hoarsely. “He’s lying. I swear to God.”
Mr Casey still said nothing. He looked slowly at Arnie.
“Cunningham,” he said. “Did Repperton here pull a knife on you?”
Arnie wouldn’t answer at first. Then in a low voice that was little more than a sigh, he said, “Yeah.”
Now Repperton’s blazing glance was for both of us.
Casey turned to Moochie Welch and Don Vandenberg. All at once I could see that his method of handling this had changed he had begun to move slowly and carefully, as if testing the footing beneath carefully each time he moved a step forward. Mr Casey had already grasped the consequences.
“Was there a knife involved?” he asked them.
Moochie and Vandenberg looked at their feet and would not answer. That was answer enough.
“Turn out your pockets, Buddy,” Mr Casey said.
“Fuck I will!” Buddy said. His voice went shrill. “You can’t make me!”
“If you mean I don’t have the authority, you’re wrong,” Mr Casey said. “If you mean I can’t turn your pockets out for myself if I decide to try it, that’s also wrong. But—”
“Yeah, try it,” Buddy shouted at him. “I’ll knock you through that wall, you little bald fuck!”
My stomach was rolling helplessly. I hated stuff like this, ugly confrontation scenes, and this was the worst one I’d ever been a part of.
But Mr Casey had things under control, and he never deviated from his course.
“But I’m not going to do it,” he finished. “You’re going to turn out your pockets yourself.”
