· 6 ·
ON THE FIRST MONDAY IN December, Armstrong announces he’ll be holding an arm-wrestling contest at the end of the week. The rules, his rules, are that he’ll sit on one side of a lunch table and all sixth-graders who think they’re somethin’ can line up for a chance to beat him. The entry fee will be twenty-five cents, which you have to drop into a Coke can that Armstrong’ll put on the table. If one of us—any one of us—can beat him, the entire contents of the can will be ours.
All week long the sixth-graders go without milk. I feel sorry for the milk monitor, who has to carry the heavy tray from the refrigerator to the lunch tables. Most weeks he sells out, and the walk back is a lot lighter. But this week nobody’s forking over the five cents a day for a carton of milk. By Friday, when the refrigerator should be empty, it’s full. And when our pockets should be empty, they’re also full—with five nickels.
Twenty-five cents. The price of glory.
Friday at lunch, Armstrong sets down an empty Coke can: open for business. The sixth-graders—all the girls and all the boys except Otis—form a line. I make sure I’m the last one in it.
By the time I belly-up to his table, Armstrong has brought down forty arms (forty-one if you count the two hands he let Shelley use). I feed my nickels into his can one at a time. There’s room only for three. The other two rest on top.
“Right hand or left?” he says.
“Right.”
Before we start, I want him to know that this challenger isn’t just another scrawny white boy from Laurel Canyon, but a husky, bench-pressing, whitewall-scrubbing, bad-ass white boy from Laurel Canyon. So I pull my short sleeve up over my shoulder and twist it under my arm like a tank top.
Armstrong looks at my bicep.
“Been lifting wheelchairs, haven’t you, Ross?”
“Yup.”
“Quikcrete weighs more.”
He pulls up his sleeve and shows me a bicep three times as big.
Our elbows hit the table and our hands come together. If you’ve ever had your blood pressure taken, you know how they strap that cuff around your arm and at first it’s snug but not too tight, but then the nurse squeezes the little bulb and the cuff gets tighter and tighter until it’s a cobra wrapped around your arm. Well, Armstrong’s grip is like that. It starts out all friendly and soft, but pretty soon I feel him squeeze my hand like he wants to crush it. But guess what. Tennis has given me a strong grip too. So I squeeze back just as hard. Armstrong’s eyes flash at me like he wasn’t expecting this. And my eyes flash back because neither was I.
Ross waited till the last minute ’cause he thinks I’ll be tired. What he doesn’t know is that when you’ve been twisting weeds by the bottom until you hear the roots crack, you’ve been building the kind of wrist strength that’s right for arm wrestling. And judging by all the nickels spilling out of my can, I’m about to get handsomely compensated, as Mr. Khalil would say, for all the yard work I did.
Trouble is, this boy’s arm is not going down easy. And the look in his eye says we’ve got some unfinished business to settle. I know what it is, too. He’s still mad ’cause he thinks I disrespected his brother.
And I’m still mad ’cause he disrespected me.
My arm’s got the advantage now. On the downward side of things—forty-five degrees if you know your geometry. But Leslie is cheering for Charlie Ross, and she’s got eyes for him that must have some kind of magic. Potion eyes, I’d call ’em, because now our arms are standing straight up, like a soldier.
“Go, Charlie, go!” Magic Girl screams. My arm starts leaning the wrong way, like the soldier just got shot.
Our two arms are trembling in a black and white blur. I can feel the big vein in my neck bulging out. Every muscle in my body is tight.
“Come on, Charlie, you can do it!”
“Take him down, Ross.”
“Charlie, I’m rooting for you.”
That’s Leslie, whose sweet voice is a shot of adrenaline. Armstrong’s arm is getting weaker. It’s going down! I’m winning!
“Go, Ross, go! Go, Ross, go! Go, Ross, go!”
The whole school is cheering me on. Even Mr. Mitchell is watching from his upstairs window. And Mrs. Gaines from her corner on the yard. I’ve got the momentum. I’ve got the advantage. Soon I’ll have a whole week’s milk money, times forty kids.
“Charlie! Charlie! Charlie!”
Armstrong leans in. I can smell the peanut butter on his breath.
“Say, Ross,” he says, his mouth inches from my ear. The veins in his neck are pulsing.
“What?” I grunt.
“Yo’ mama’s left titty callin’.”
“Huh?”
“Yo’ mama’s left titty. It’s callin’ you for a drink of milk.”
I can’t help it. My vein-popping concentration gives way to a smile, which turns to a snort, which spreads to a giggle, which explodes to laughter. Soon I’m laughing so hard my arm goes limp.
And gets slammed onto the table, belly-up like a dead fish.
The bell rings. Armstrong grabs his tin can. Coins rain into his pockets. And he jingles off to class.
Ninth of December and I’m in the Christmas spirit. At lunchtime I open up my box, and there’s more silver in there than Jim Hawkins found on Treasure Island.
Mrs. Gaines is flapping around the schoolyard like usual. But when she sees how my box shines, she lands right beside me.
“What have you got there, Armstrong?”
“Ho Hos, ma’am. Thirty-six of ’em. Barely fit in my lunch box.”
“Where are they from?”
“Market near my house. Don’t worry, Mrs. Gaines, they’re paid for. My own money, too.”
Her eyes bulge like the kind on a bath toy when tiny hands give it a squeeze.
“Would you like to have one?” I say.
I set one on the table in front of her. Her long red fingernail plucks at the tin foil and peels it back. She’s got the same color lipstick as her nails. I watch her red lips come apart and—well, you’d expect a proper lady like Mrs. Gaines, Yard Supervisor and all, to take a proper lady-size bite. But now it’s my eyes’ turn to bug out, ’cause here comes the hungriest bite of Ho Ho you ever saw. Half gone in one chomp.
“Well?”
“I can guarantee one thing, Armstrong,” she says soon as the other half’s gone, “this is not the last Ho Ho that Edwina Gaines will consume.”
She winks at me and smiles. Smiles. Man, this really must be Santa’s food.
Pretty soon it goes around that I’m giving away Ho Hos. A whole lot of kids come running up to me.
“Hey, Armstrong, can I have one?” a fourth-grader asks.
“Sure,” I say.
“Can I?” says a boy with shoes untied.
“If you drink your milk with it.”
“I will.”
He’s so cute. Must be a kindergartner.
More and more little feet come running. More and more Ho Hos go. And then a terrible thing happens.
I have to say no to little kids.
“I’m so sorry, boys and girls,” I say. “But there are only five more Ho Hos in Armstrong’s box. And those I’ve got to save.”
I carry the last five over to Ross’s table and set them down. “Here you go, Ross,” I say. “I am sorry that I stole from your lunch. I hope you will accept my apology and my Ho Hos. And, while you’re in an accepting mood, I hope you don’t mind some advice.”
“What?” he says in a tone that says he does mind.
“Tomorrow when you come to school, bring the two boxes you worked for, plus these five I just gave you, and hand ’em out to those kids over there. After they eat ’em and nobody’s mouth catches fire, your reputation around here will be restored.”
When I tell my dad how Armstrong turned our nickels into his Ho Hos, and how he saved both our reputations, Dad says, “I guess you’re even now.”
I guess we are.