THE ARRIVAL OF THE Ward 17s this past year was the first big import of new faces since Manny and all those guys came up from Cuba a few years back. But this bunch made even more of a difference, because the 17s didn’t just bring new faces from outside the neighborhood, they brought stuff. Attitude. Butchie was a Ward 17 guy, and he was a good example of stuff I could see where he might be a hard guy to handle, except for the baseball thing that got us together right away. He’s a good ol’ ballplayer. Mean pitcher. Loaded with intimidating, tough stuff.
But the everyday stuff mostly had to do with the fact that they weren’t crazy about being here. All right, so it was school, so nobody was crazy about being here. But the 17s were the only ones who were here strictly because they didn’t want to be someplace else. They were kind of angry about the busing deal and they didn’t care who knew about it.
I didn’t want to know about it.
“I can’t stand this one more day,” Butchie said, throwing his big self down into the desk next to me. He looked miserable, his long hair hanging straggly three inches below his ski hat. The hair, frozen as it was, looked like brown icicles.
“Hey Butch,” I said casually, since it wasn’t unlike him to be just like this. I knew his story. Everyone knew his story. He liked to tell his story anyway.
“Walk a half-mile. Take the bus to Forest Hills. Wait in the freezing cold for another stinking bus. Walk another two blocks. And for what?”
“To get to school?” I suggested.
Just then, Napoleon Charlie Ellis entered the room, walked the aisle, and took the seat on my right. Butch gestured through me, toward Napoleon.
“And why am I even doing this? Why am I even here? I’m sittin’ with them anyway now, and tomorrow I’ll probably be sittin’ with more of ’em. Until my old man finds me a school three buses away.”
Napoleon leaned forward, looked past me at Butchie, expressionless, but not without a message anyway. Butchie looked back.
“Forget about it,” Butch said. “Nothing personal.”
Napoleon shook his head. “Nothing personal? Tell me, is it that you think I am deaf, or that I’m stupid and cannot understand the words?”
I was now a hot sandwich.
“Of course it is personal,” Napoleon went on. “You are talking about persons, and I am one of them. You traveled two buses to get here. So? I traveled two thousand miles. And to sit with you?”
“So who asked you to?” Butchie said. “It’s not like we had a shortage of you people.”
I did not want to be in the middle of this, but that is literally where I was. This did not have to happen. I had to do something.
“Listen,” I said, making a slicing motion between them with my hand. “Butchie said forget about it. Didn’t you hear that? He said forget about it. When a guy says forget about it, it’s supposed to be the end of it, so... that’s the end of it.”
Butch was in deeper than he wanted to be anyway, I could see from his embarrassed red face. Of course I could see nothing of the kind on Napoleon’s face. Napoleon had a different kind of face. I didn’t really know Napoleon’s face in that way.
But I assumed that he wouldn’t want to be in this messiness. I assumed we would feel the same way. Wouldn’t we?
Butch just turned away and sat rigid in his seat. I looked to Napoleon, who was slowly turning away as well.
“See,” I said, “you just need to not make such a big deal out of stuff. Relax, Napoleon.” I was hit with a timely inspiration from TV. “Like the commercial says, right? ‘No problems.’ Right? ‘No problems.’”
I thought I’d done pretty well, coming up with a smooth culture reference to ease things up. Maybe I knew more stuff than I gave myself credit for.
“That’s the Bahamas,” Napoleon said.
Now he didn’t look too thrilled with me either. Cripes. It was all so unnecessary. I couldn’t imagine it all wouldn’t blow over by lunch.
Pre-lunch, down in the basement getting our food out of our lockers. There was a daily ritual, always brought the guys together no matter what kind of lousy day it was. Beating up on Arthur Brown’s brown-bag lunch.
“Throw it here,” I called to Butchie. Butchie lobbed me a perfect spiral, the length of the corridor and right through Arthur’s outstretched hands. It was no fun unless Arthur at least had a shot at reaching it.
“Arthur, what’s in here?” I asked, looking at the bag. “It’s leaking already after only three passes.”
“Tuna. Jerk,” Arthur snapped, lunging my way.
Butchie was about to catch it, then let it fall. He loves that move. “Too much mayonnaise. We told you last time on tuna day, you gotta tell your mom to go easier on the mayo. Makes our hands all slippery. And it’s making you too fat and slow to catch us.”
“Give me my lunch,” Arthur Brown growled at Butchie. He was very serious about it, which meant we only had three or four tosses left in the game. Butchie let it fly in my direction.
Just as I was about to catch it, a hand stuck up in my face, snagging the bag.
“Good grab, Napoleon,” I said. Arthur was grimly heading our way. “Here he comes,” I said. “Unload, unload.”
Butchie was waving his hands madly from the imaginary end zone. Arthur was bearing down on Napoleon.
Napoleon handed the bag to Arthur, who was so taken by surprise that he dropped it.
“What did you do that for?” I asked.
“It’s the man’s lunch,” Napoleon said. “Is it not?”
Butchie was headed our way, quite disgusted at the turn of events. “What happened?”
“He gave me my lunch,” Arthur said.
“Dope, whatja do that for?”
“Don’t call me that,” Napoleon said.
“You had no business doing that,” Butchie said.
“Nevermind,” I said. “He didn’t know.”
“What?” Napoleon Charlie Ellis wanted to know. “What did I not know?”
“What you did not know was that we have been doing this for a long time, and you weren’t supposed to give Arthur back his lunch yet.” Butchie was taking this very seriously, like we were some military outfit and the new scrub hadn’t been read the rules. “For your information, Arthur likes this game and as a matter of fact he has been playing it for so long that he can’t even eat right if he hasn’t chased after his lunch for at least five minutes to stimulate his appetite. Isn’t that right, Arthur?” Butch shouted, though straining in Napoleon’s direction.
Everyone looked at Arthur.
“Um. I probably could eat it anyway.”
Napoleon Charlie Ellis nodded, then walked to his own locker.
Butchie followed him. “So, you don’t have to save him, Charlie, and you don’t have to mess around with things you don’t understand, like how things run here. Maybe you were in charge back in the school where nobody wore any shoes, but it ain’t gonna be that way here.”
Napoleon slammed his locker. That tin old-locker noise filled the concrete corridor and seemed to echo a hundred times.
“I did not ask you to call me Charlie. If you wish to talk to me you may do so, and you may call me Napoleon, and you may do it more quietly. I’ll not be shouted at by you. And as for being boss of you, I have no ambition to be a pig farmer.”
I had never seen anyone speak to Butch like this. I don’t suppose Butch had ever seen it either, since the idea of it was making him go spastic.
“Who do you think you are, man. ...” Butchie said, inching up too close and staring down at Napoleon from his extra few inches of height.
“I know well who I am,” said Napoleon calmly, so calmly he nearly closed his eyes all the way as he said it.
This, I thought, was a good time to join in. I slipped between them.
“He just never played throw the lunch before, Butch,” I said, giving him a healthy shove, but not so hard that he’d shove me back. Almost no one is allowed to shove Butchie. I am. But I’m not keenly interested in testing it beyond that. “He’s still getting used to everything.”
Butchie stared as I threw my arm around Napoleon’s shoulders. Then Napoleon stared, at my arm. I don’t think he was all that accustomed to this kind of contact. But he didn’t do anything about it.
“Right,” Butchie grunted. “Well, he better get used to everything. Quick.” He turned to go back upstairs. He signaled Arthur Brown to follow, even though Butchie would not ordinarily be walking with Arthur. It was just one of those moments you’re not supposed to walk away from alone.
“That boy has got a problem, Richard,” Napoleon Charlie Ellis said.
“Butchie’s just kind of... tense.”
“He’s not tense with you. He is tense with me.”
“And you’re tense with everybody. Maybe the two of you are too much alike, what do you think of that?”
He removed my arm from his shoulders like he was removing a putrefied fish.
“You couldn’t really believe that,” he said, opening his locker again to get out his lunch.
“Well, you are kind of a hard guy yourself, Napoleon. It could just be that you make people be worse than they are, because of the way you are. Maybe it’s you.”
He closed the locker, stood with his own perfectly creased brown bag. It smelled incredible to me, all mixed and spiced, like Chinese food, only I couldn’t imagine anybody bringing Chinese food for lunch, and anyway, it was a whole different spice smell.
“I am certain you do not believe such nonsense, Richard.”
We headed over to my locker.
“Can we trade?” I asked. “Half of your lunch for half of mine? I never smelled a lunch like that in my life. I don’t even want to know what it is. Can we trade?”
He sighed. “Possibly.”
I opened my locker. It smelled like it usually does. like Spam.
“No,” he said immediately.
But as we walked up the stairs, he reached into his bag and handed me a small, breaded, spiced knot of some meat thing. I was almost afraid to eat it because that meant I wouldn’t be able to smell it anymore.
“A gift,” Napoleon Charlie Ellis said. “Now, please tell me you don’t honestly believe...”
“Where was I?” I interrupted. “Oh yes, Jim Rice is going to be in left field, with Fred Lynn in center. They are talking about putting them number three and four in the lineup, with Rice batting cleanup. ...”
“I am asking you to talk about something serious, Richard.”
“Baseball is as serious as it gets,” I said.
Napoleon shook his head, took a polite bite out of his food.
“Well it’s as serious as I get anyway,” I said, also taking a bite of his food.