~ The Fight ~
Ken’s fight with the officer’s kid back in PA wasn’t the first time they’d gone at it. It was, though, the first time Ken had won a battle against David Marshall. He was proud of that.
This battle had escalated after a spit wad skirmish during a boring history class.
In the hall, the school principal had said, “Slow down, cowboy. Where's the fire?”
“Sorry,” Ken said. He rushed toward the boys’ lav.
“You know the rules.”
“Sorry.”
“How's your new teacher this year?”
“He teaches history funny.”
“Funny ha-ha, or funny strange?”
“Dunno.”
Ken Paderson did know this: Life was dull without enemies.
In the boys’ lav relief came so forcefully it was pleasantly painful. He stepped out of the stall and tripped, falling onto the hard floor. Stunned, he looked up. Something smacked his face. He didn't know what had hit him. Wet. Cool. He swiped wads of wet toilet paper off his face.
David Marshall stood over him, armed with more dripping toilet paper.
Disoriented with the aftershock of thinking he’d been blinded by urine-soaked paper, Ken gripped the windowsill and pulled himself up. His right kneecap was singing with pain where he’d banged it on the floor when David tripped him. His saliva tasted strange. Metallic.
“Bombs away!” David flung a wet wad at Ken. Unfortunately, David was off-limits to serious counterstrikes, because Lord help you if you pissed off David's dad, Lieutenant Colonel Marshall. Lord help you more, though, if David thought you were a sissy.
“Marshall, you're nothing but a sissy,” Ken said.
“You're a shit heel like your dad,” David shot back.
“Am not.” But he wasn't so sure about that.
“Shit heel, shit heel, shit heel,” David chanted, and ran out, hyena laughter ricocheting off the walls.
In the mirror, Ken’s reflected lip dripped blood. The glossy red liquid on his face spurred him on. He liked how he looked.
“How many stitches?” His father backed the Chevy out of the barracks health clinic parking lot.
“Only four.” His reply came out as on nee four. Ken’s numb bottom lip was a pink blur in his lower peripheral vision.
“What’d you do?”
“Dunno.” Ken shrugged theatrically. You don’t have to do anything in particular to rile David Marshall.
“What did you do to defend yourself?” Paderson slowed down to let a group of war college students cross the street. He saluted. “I asked you a question.” When they pulled into the driveway, Ken and Paderson saw Tricia hanging towels on the backyard laundry line. She grinned questioningly around a clothespin clamped between her teeth.
“I asked you,” Paderson said, “'What did you do to defend yourself?'” A sharp twist on the ignition key. Silence replaced the car engine's murmur. The moment was drawn out for an eternity. Until his dad said:
“You just took it! Didn’t you? You just took it! What'd I tell you?”
“Thand up for mythelf.”
“You're damn right. Stand up for yourself.” The captain turned in his seat. Ken braced himself for a wallop, but instead his dad said, “When I was your age, I was smaller than most of the other boys. In gym class I was the second to last when we lined up by height. A kid named Donny Funkhauser and his goons picked on me.”
“They did?” He was lightheaded with this idea that goons picked on his dad. Why, they must've just walked up behind him on the ball field, tapped his right shoulder and when he turned to the right, they flew in from the left and socked him in the jaw. Ken could see it as clear as day, what he didn't get was why his dad was telling him this embarrassing detail from his childhood, especially since he didn’t tell other stories, even self-flattering stories about the old days.
“Those goons picked on me until I learned how to fight back. Don't stand around like a dumb ox waiting to see what they'll do to you next. Next time, stand up for yourself. Defend yourself. If you don’t, you’ll be fair game for anybody and his sister to pick on. Knock the bastard’s block off and he’ll think twice about bothering you again. You gotta defend yourself. That’s an order, soldier.”
“Yeth.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yeth, thir.”
“Yes, sir what?”
“Yeth, thir. Defend mythelf.”
The next day, with a stack of schoolbooks wedged between his arm and hip, Ken leaped off the bus. The school bus pulled away. The air smelled of diesel, ozone and earthworms. It had rained on and off the whole day, drops streaming like tears down the schoolroom windows. The clouds were filling up to rain again. A premature dusk had descended, smothering wet black tree branches and glossy leaves that released tiny showers with the slightest breeze. The barracks’ red brick buildings were drenched a darker shade of old blood.
Timmy and Tommy, twins, both two grades behind Ken, walked with him from the bus stop. Timmy's face was rounder than Tommy's, and he was a better outfielder, but that didn't mean Ken wanted to be seen hanging around with these two doofusses.
“Hey, Red!” The festive voice calling someone's nickname came from the top of the library fire escape.
“Bombs away!”
An orange orb hurtled downwards. A balloon filled with mud burst on Ken’s chest, splattering brown muck on his yellow shirt and schoolbooks and on the twins.
David Marshall folded over with exaggerated laughter. He stomped his feet making the third-story iron fire escape clatter. Three more near-misses burst with sloppy, heavy plops on the road.
“Your dad eats your mother with a spoon!” David hollered. He ducked into the building.
“You gonna chase 'em?” Tommy asked.
“Nah,” Ken said, “I’d only end up killing him.”
“He'll just be hair, teeth and bones when you're done with him,” Timmy said. “Won't he?”
“What happened to your lip?” Tommy asked. “I heard David decked you.”
“Bullshit. It's a football injury.”
“Hurt much? Looks like it hurts.”
“Nah.”
“Then how come you talk like this?” Timmy asked with clenched teeth and minimal lip action.
“Buzz off.”
“He got you but good,” Timmy said.
“It’s nothing.” Ken dashed to the creek at the bottom of the hill behind the library. He stripped off his muddy shirt, dunked it in the chilly water and slapped it against a large, flat rock the way pioneers washed clothes in the movies. The wet smacking sound was the only noise he could hear.
Ken wiped mud off his books with maple leaves. Under the cold, clingy shirt, goose bumps rose on his chest and arms. He selected a round, flat stone from the creek side, threw it across the water, and counted six skips. “Act natural,” he said.
Tommy and Timmy, through telepathic consultation, agreed that skipping stones was the most natural activity to pursue here at the creek. The twins were on the alert for an attack, but engrossed in finding perfectly shaped skipping stones, probably forgot about David Marshall.
Ken did not forget. He did not want to be dilly dallying at the creek with the doofuss twins as a tactic to delay confrontation. He did not want a fight. Nor did he want the word to get out that he was chicken, a sissy who runs from battle.
“Did you see that?” Tommy cried. “Five skips! Five skips that time!”
“David’s coming! He’s coming to get you!” Morbid excitement pitched Timmy's voice high. David sped down the hill on his bike propelled by gravity and maliciousness.
Ken gathered his textbooks. His father’s command resounded: Knock the bastard’s block off and he’ll think twice about bothering you again. If he went home with battle scars, his dad would grill him until he found out if and how Ken had defended himself. If he lost this fight, he’d have to bear his father's heavy disappointment and bow to David's supremacy. If he won, the retribution would be doubled, because David’s daddy outranked Ken’s dad. He could run for it. Yeah, across the creek, through the thrift store, around the old guard house and then home.
“Ah! High karate kick!” David’s black sneaker knocked Ken's books out of his hands and into an oil-slicked puddle. The books splayed in the puddle like injured birds. In a freak moment of silence they watched the pages soak up scummy water. “What are you going to do about it?” David asked, his lips a mean slit.
Ken said that David didn't even want to think about what he was going to do. Adrenaline, not confidence, was his ally.
Out on Route 11 or possibly as far away as the turnpike, the grumble of a tractor trailer shifting through its gears sounded like a beast chomping at the bit. In response, a rumble, felt more than heard, reverberated through the heavy air. Thunder.
David lunged at Ken. The twins jabbed their fists in the air and cheered. Ken broke out of the tussle and stood facing David. He held his arms loosely at his sides, ready for David to tackle him.
David grabbed a weathered gray board; rusty nails protruded from the end. He swung mightily. Ken twirled, trying to spin out of range of David’s weapon. The board hit his forearm solidly. A nail hooked his forearm, ripping shirt and skin. A chain of blood blossomed on Ken’s yellow shirtsleeve. He slipped his hand into his pants pocket and, for good luck, touched the quartz stone he'd found in Grandpap's garden.
David dropped the cudgel and wiggling his fingers, urged in a girlish voice, “Come on, come on. Come on, Red.”
The twins screamed, “Get ‘em, Ken! Get ‘em.” The rumbling noise crept closer, but it wasn't originating from the highway. The rumbling surrounded them.
Using a similar arm action he used to strike out the townies' baseball team, Ken swung at his enemy. The exquisite sensation of his arm whirling in an arc, the smack of his fist on David’s cheekbone intoxicated him, churned his stomach. David’s head jerked back violently. His hand flew to his cheek. Seeing blood on his fingers, David wailed, dropped to his knees and rolled his eyes up at Ken. His expression was of questioning intimacy seen in a mutt's eyes after its owner has delivered a boot in the rump. Blood, surprisingly cherry-intense against ashen skin, trickled into David’s ear. Ken wasn't sure if he was the victor, or in some bass ackwards way, the victim.
The twins turned tail and ran.
“You’ll pay for this, Red.” David sobbed. He made no moves to carry out his threat. He dragged himself upright with a queer, cautious articulation of arms and legs, like an old man.
Disgusted at this pathetic display and drunk with residual adrenaline, Ken shouted, “Crybaby!”
He plucked a stone from the mud and hurled it near David, as a final warning.
He'd collected a lot of facts that teachers don't teach you in school—bats weren’t blind, dogs wouldn't attack you if you acted like the pack leader, and he’d have hell to pay because David Marshall’s father was Ken’s dad’s CO—but teachers never quizzed them on that stuff.
He had trotted home. Exhilarated. Famished. Victorious.
After beating up the CO’s kid back in the states, he’d braced himself for the walloping his dad was going to give him. A beating would have been fair punishment, considering, but his parents were too distracted, ensnarled again in their private battle into which he wasn’t enlisted. This time, though, their fight didn’t have the same tone as the others.
There were frequent telephone calls. Terse conversations. Tight faces. Long sighs. This time sudden silence cloaked the barracks bungalow when he opened the back door and strolled into the kitchen. His mom’s makeup was smeary. His dad’s forehead was ridged, his stubble sprouting upon his ashen skin. His parents took their argument behind the closed bedroom door. Ken tried to listen to what they were arguing about, but his mind snarled, couldn’t receive the message that was undecipherable in its finality and terror. His parents’ voices, venomous and bitter, stoked his dread. No. It couldn’t be true. That’s why they weren’t telling him anything. If it were true, they would tell him. They’d have to tell him.
He didn’t tell his mom and dad that his arm hurt like hell.
When he woke up the next day, his sheets were all twisted and his arm still hurt like hell. His mother didn’t scold him, in fact she didn’t say much to him as she drove him to post infirmary to get a cast put on his left arm. That whack David had given him with a board had snapped his ulna bone.
Then a few days later, their little family of three was sitting at the dining room table. Funny the details one remembers: they were eating baked beans on new dishes. White dishes.
They’d told him almost a full month after he’d returned home from his summer vacation at Grandma and Grandpap Paderson’s farm, in time for the Labor Day parade and the start of school. He’d ridden the train the entire way to Lancaster and back by himself like a “young man.” He wasn’t even worried on the bus trip back from the Harrisburg train station to the Molly Pitcher hotel bus station. He avoided lavatories, though.
He couldn’t remember how exactly the subject came up. Just that he was expecting his dad to blow his top about the fight with David Marshall. His mom looked at him funny, then. He thought she was going to scold him for stabbing too many beans on his fork when what she said was, “Look, Ken, honey, we didn’t think you were old enough to be put through all that.”
Through all what? He didn’t ask. He concentrated on lifting the forkful of beans to his mouth.
“Your grandparents have passed.” The captain scraped baked beans into a neat pile at the rim of his plate. That abrasive sound.
Passed?
“The doctor found cancer in your grandpap’s stomach,” his mother said. “It took him fast. Grandma Beatrice died a week later.” She refused to look at Ken. In a stern voice she added, “Heart attack, she had a heart attack. Your grandmother died of a broken heart. It happens to old people. One of ‘em can’t live without the other. A crying shame that they got too dependent on each other.”
His eyes burned as he tried to adjust his inner universe to accommodate the news his parents had withheld from him until now. On the wall behind his dad, the framed jigsaw puzzle picture of a mountain in the tropics blurred.
“If you want to lay flowers at their tombstones, I’ll drive you to the cemetery this Sunday,” his dad said. He ladled baked beans onto his plate, ringing the spoon against the bowl.
Ken didn’t hear what his parents were saying next. He was remembering what he’d been told back when it had happened, when his grandparents had passed, had died. That baloney his mother had told him about his dad going to an APICS seminar for a full week was a lie, and Ken had fallen for it because APICS had something to do with warehousing. His mom said she was meeting Daddy at a hotel in Lancaster after his seminar. She said Ken was old enough to stay home without a babysitter for one night. Just call the Garstons next door if you need anything. Meatloaf’s in the fridge, she’d said as she folded her black cocktail dress she wore to parties into her overnight bag.
What a doofuss he’d been not figuring it out. Black dresses were for funerals. He felt his cheeks trembling. His parents’ mouths were moving, nonsensical sounds poured off their ugly lips. He picked up the white bowl of baked beans and shattered it against the wall. Beans and sauce snailed down the green wallpaper.
“I could’ve gone to the funeral!” He shrieked into the stunned silence. “I would’ve behaved!”
“Obviously not!” his mom chirped righteously. “You were too close to them.”
His dad shot up from the table. His right hand flew to his belt and began unhooking the buckle.
Ken’s buttocks clenched involuntarily. He could dash to his room and lock his door, or fly out the front door and not come back till after they’d cooled down and were worried about him running away. Ken’s eyes were riveted on his dad’s gleaming U.S. Army buckle. A beating he’d endure. The pain would be physical pain, the kind he could cope with. He would hole up in his bedroom to make them both feel guilty, and he could hate his dad for thrashing him. Gripping the edge of the dining table, he stayed seated in the chair, waiting for his dad to yank him up and whup his ass, but silent messages were flying across the table between his parents.
“Clean up the beans,” his mom told him. She stacked smeared dishes, and guided her husband away from the table. Captain Paderson left the dining room and turned on the evening news. After a moment she had said, “We were simply trying to protect you, Kenny, from the way I felt when my parents died. The way your dad feels now. We honestly did what we thought was best.”
He knew he could leave and not be reminded to clean up the beans he’d thrown on the wall. And he left, giving the screen door a hard shove so it slammed resoundingly.
Getting his parents’ “best” was worse than not getting the truth.