Deranged

Long Island, 1979

Mr. Pollard had just stepped through the door after a long day of working for the New York City Transit Authority. He was amazed his wife even heard him seeing that she was in the kitchen preparing dinner and she had the TV set in there blasting away. The woman must have hearing like a bat. That was all he could think of. He breathed in deeply and smelled the sausage, peppers, and onions that were cooking. Well, that was one good thing at least. He joined her in the kitchen, and after lowering the volume of the TV, he nuzzled the back of her neck while she busied herself with the homemade sauce she was preparing. She acted as if he wasn’t even there. He gave up and took a beer from the fridge.

“He’s my son now, huh?” he said. “I thought he’s always your little angel.” Sighing, he asked, “What did the boy do?”

“He got into a fight with other boys in school.” Her voice turned brittle as she added, “And he cut three of his classes.”

Mr. Pollard took a long pull on his beer, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Doesn’t sound like that big a deal,” he said.

Mrs. Pollard turned to give her husband a severe look. “It is a big deal,” she insisted. “Henry won’t tell me what happened, but I could tell that he’d been crying. You need to get to the bottom of it.”

Mr. Pollard took another pull on his beer while his wife stood her ground, her arms crossed over her chest. Anyone looking at them would have a hard time reconciling them as Henry’s biological parents, at least at first. Mr. Pollard stood six feet, four inches tall, and was a large, barrel-chested, broad-shouldered block of a man. While his skin was naturally pale and his features could be construed as doughy and a bit lumpy, he was good-looking in a rough and tumble sort of way. His wife in contrast was barely five feet tall; a diminutive and very pretty redhead. It would take some doing, but if you had enough of an imagination and you studied them carefully you’d be able to see where bits of Henry came from, and the only conclusion you’d be able to make was that Henry had been badly shortchanged genetically. Almost any combination of genes from his parents would’ve resulted in a good-looking kid, and Henry got the one in a million mixture that didn’t.

Mr. Pollard blinked first in the mini-staring contest he had with his wife, realizing quickly enough that if he didn’t give in she’d let the sausages burn.

“Okay, I’ll talk to him,” he grumbled, letting out a heavy sigh of defeat.

“Henry’s in his room.” A worried look weakened Mrs. Pollard’s expression. “He insists he’s not hungry and won’t be eating dinner. Something’s wrong.”

Mr. Pollard nodded. Sausage, pepper, and onion smothered in his wife’s homemade tomato sauce was not only his favorite, but Henry’s. While he thought his wife babied Henry too much and that boys Henry’s age needed to be able to work out their own differences with fists if necessary, he had to admit that if Henry voluntarily missed tonight’s dinner, there had to be a problem. He polished off the rest of his beer and left the empty bottle on the countertop, then headed off to his son’s room. He didn’t bother knocking on the closed door, and just walked in without warning while Henry was doing one of his drawings.

In his no-nonsense tone, he demanded, “Tell me about this fight you had today.”

Henry looked ashen as he tried to bury the drawing he’d been working on within a stack of other drawings.

“Nothing happened.”

This was said so sullenly that Mr. Pollard eyed his son carefully until he could intuit the meaning. “Some boys picked on you, huh?”

Henry looked utterly miserable.

“And you didn’t fight back?”

Henry gave him a crestfallen, helpless look that answered him as well as any words could have.

Mr. Pollard nodded to himself. “It’s my fault, not yours. I should’ve taught you how to fight by now,” he said, although as far as he was concerned it was really his wife’s fault. She was always babying Henry, always insisting that their son was too sensitive to get into fights or do anything where he could hurt himself, which was ridiculous. Thirteen-year-old boys are supposed to get into fights! They’re supposed to roughhouse and get scrapes and bumps and bruises! Mr. Pollard closed the bedroom door so his wife wouldn’t be able to hear them.

“You let other boys pick on you and it never stops,” he said secretively once he was sitting on Henry’s bed. “Here’s what you do. Tomorrow you pick out the meanest of them and you beat the bejesus out of that boy. You do that and the rest of them will leave you alone forever.”

Henry gave his dad a look as if he were crazy. “I can’t do that.”

“Sure you can. You’re as strong as an ox, Henry. You get that from me. All you need to do is get your hands on that boy, and the fight’s over. Stand up, I’ll show you what to do.”

Reluctantly, Henry did as he was told.

“Okay, you got short arms, so you want to get close to that boy and then start pounding away. Clench your fists as tight as you can and use short punches. Don’t pull your fists back any farther than your chest. Let’s see what you got.”

Mr. Pollard held both palms up to his son, and Henry half-heartedly punched one of them.

“Come on, you can do better than that. Let it rip. Fast and furious, and twist your body into each punch.”

Henry started punching his hands, at first reluctantly, but then a crazed intensity took over.

“Ow, ow, ow, you’re breaking my bones. Don’t stop, though . . . Ow, ow, ow. Holy cow, you’re one strong kid . . . A natural mauler. You’re going to make mincemeat out of that bully. He won’t stand a chance.”

Henry had thrown around forty punches in rapid succession before he started slowing down and his punches became sluggish.

“That’s enough for now, killer,” Mr. Pollard said with a renewed sense of pride. “I almost feel sorry for that bully, but that boy deserves every bit of the lesson you’re going to be teaching him.”

Henry stopped punching his dad’s palms. His stubby arms fell slack, and he started looking mopey again.

“I don’t think I can do this,” he said dejectedly.

Mr. Pollard good-naturedly tousled his son’s hair. “Sure you can, and you will. Henry, I have complete faith in you. Believe your old man, it will be over before you know it. And then the rest of those kids will know what they’re dealing with.” He paused before adding, “You’re going to need your strength for tomorrow. You’re sure you don’t want any of that sausage and pepper mom’s cooking up? It sure smelled good.”

Grudgingly Henry admitted that he could eat.

“Good. Let’s go to the kitchen and help mom set the table. And don’t mention any of this to her. No need for her to worry, especially since it’s going to be that other boy who’ll be getting knocked on his butt.”

Mr. Pollard draped his arm around his son’s shoulders and walked with him to the kitchen. He’d almost asked Henry about the drawing Henry had been working on when he came into the room. Before his son had shoved it into a stack of other drawings, Mr. Pollard had caught a glimpse of it, and it looked to him like a picture of a blonde girl having spikes driven into her eyes. He might’ve been mistaken, though, and besides Henry had quite an imagination and was always drawing weird stuff.

* * *

The next day after opening bell, Henry was walking to his locker when Brad Black sidled up to him and called him an ugly little hoggie. Brad was probably going to say more, but before he could Henry turned and punched him in the stomach with every ounce of strength he could muster, and Brad went as white as a sheet and his body sagged. The next moment, Henry was shoving Brad into an empty locker. Brad was a tall, skinny boy, and while the lockers were five feet long from the floor to the top shelf, they were also very narrow and weren’t made to have teenage boys shoved into them. The sides of Brad’s head got scraped pretty badly and a piece of his left earlobe was torn off. By the time the assistant principal, Mr. Aronson, had pulled Henry away, Brad Black had been completely forced inside the locker, and later had to be cut out by the fire department.

The school originally talked about suspending Henry for the rest of the school year, but after hearing from other students how Brad and his gang had picked on Henry for years, his suspension was shortened to two weeks. When Henry returned back to school, no one picked on him anymore. Further, if he had paid any attention to Sally Klosky, he would’ve noticed that she now looked at him with a renewed interest. But he no longer paid any attention to her. As far as he was concerned, she no longer existed. His second day back, he sought out Nancy Bower during lunch and asked if he could sit with her. She told him she’d like that.