by Don Bajema
It was all so obvious. I couldn’t understand why everyone pretended not to see it. I knew everyone needed to keep a sense of order. Mamma Bear, Daddy Bear and Baby Bear. I knew that everyone needed to play their role or they would go crazy. But I couldn’t find a place for myself so I just lived. And I wanted Mamma Bear. I could feel it like an electrical charge buzzing and snapping between all of us. She must have known. I could see it in her walk, in her eyes.
There were two levels of living. One on the surface with smiles and hellos. We all went about our daily activities as if it weren’t there. But there were always little giveaways to another darker hidden level. I could see it in the animosity Lyle and his wife shared — the tightening of jaws, abrupt ends to conversations, eyes lingering on turned backs, dishes clattering with anger. I could sense it all around me.
Her sons watched us whenever we were in the same room. She stared at me for longer than she should have. She stared with curiosity. Her body spoke. I’d hold my breath as she untied the apron’s knot behind her back and turned to hang it on a hook next to the door. I could feel my arms around her thin waist so clearly that she must have felt them too. Her fingers would tangle through her black hair, her forearm wiping her brow.
She whistled low looking at me and said, “Boy, it’s a hot one today.”
I jabbered something in response and she half-smiled, her eyes growing soft and sympathetic. Offended and angry inside, I’d leave.
I’d lay low for a few days, sleeping and trying to rest. Then I’d come back down the street and weave stories to her children. I’d tell them their secrets, infiltrate their minds and alleviate their fears with insights that I hoped would balance the violence I rained upon them. I celebrated their names, offered them views to the infinite potential hidden in us all. I won back their hearts and captured their imaginations. All the while I could feel it coming.
Then after a day or two, the emphasis would shift back to her. I’d go into her house with eyes hunting, sitting in the room pretending to nap, watching her sitting in the rocker singing softly to herself. Waiting for her tongue to part her lips. Waiting for the moment to say the funny thing that made her laugh. Waiting to say the words that meant two things. Watching her eyes look into me. Searching for the second meaning, to see if it was there. Speaking dirty things to her in my mind without saying a word.
But it always built into something that triggered me. I’d wake one morning with my eyes blazing and molars grinding. I’d get dressed and climb out my bedroom window. Making my way to her house through the canyons bordering our houses, I’d try to go along the ditch, climbing from tree to brush to tree without touching the ground. I ran over the stones on the creek bottom, went through a storm drain leading to a path behind her fence. I’d climb it and drop into her back yard. The boys would be sitting around the patio behind the garage listening to the radio. I’d have to get control of myself if a grownup was there. But if there wasn’t, they’d take one look at me and run. But I was a cat and they were mice. And then I’d beat them and rampage through the neighbors’ yards, breaking windows, screaming and destroying whatever was near me, defiling anything of sentimental value, spitting and fighting everybody until they put me in my room alone to masturbate again and again.
A day or two later, I’d review the wreckage. Hearing doors close as I neared houses. Enduring anguished lectures and cowering under threats — a repentant son, a satiated angel. Inside, knowing I was an animal who ruined anyone who came too close.
I could affect them all, but I could not get to her. I inspired her anger. I made her face contort with revulsion and something else that seemed like curiosity and a desire to fathom what this force was that drove me to these strange, violent lengths.
Basic conduct must have originated in the need for tribes to survive, but this was not instilled in me. I could not be overwhelmed or made to submit to any convention. I could not accept it; the face of the want was so great that I already recognized it as my own fall. I did not expect to plead to anything that had an ear toward forgiveness. Forgiveness had nothing to do with me.
There would be a price and I would pay it the moment it presented itself. But it never did. It just existed like a thing that just was, and had nothing connected to it. And over time, it faded.
Her sons paid it. They found their own needs to trust beyond instinct, to defy the truly dangerous, to risk finding something they could not understand, to go where they did not belong, to be drawn to all of those things. Before they were thirty, they were murdered in San Berdoo behind a garage by a new friend for failing to see what should have been plain to them. They had seen it before.
WHOPPER
The truth is Robert Monroe was a liar. He was lying when I was six. He was still lying when I was ten. He needed lies in his life. He needed falsehood. He said the truth was too boring.
One morning Robert started in on a long story and this guy home from a CYA detention camp out in Poway groaned, “What a whopper,” and spat through his teeth, hitting Robert on the shoulder of his T-shirt.
Robert looked at the ground in front of him for a week. Then he started telling about the time his father got his fingers slammed in the truck door, which we knew was true because we were there when it happened. That story led right into one about the day his epileptic uncle pulled a V8 out of an Oldsmobile with his bare hands. The way his eyes went red as he stood up with the whole works balanced on the inside of his forearms. How he shook, and the pressure blew his boots off.
Someone finally just started calling him Whopper. The shock on his face said he knew for sure he’d been tagged. For the rest of that Saturday, every time someone called him Whopper, everyone would crack up, rolling on a lawn under a jacaranda tree, flowers crushed under our brown backs, hysterical in the delight of such an outrageous disgrace of one of our own. Whopper kept trying to threaten us into dropping his new name but it was no use.
Didn’t stop him from lying though. He’d quit for a while, then he’d get away with a little lie. Then he’d try a larger one to see if he could still pull it off. We’d bust him. He’d even cry when we didn’t believe him. It got so he’d really bug you.
In July, he tried to pad his batting average and we caught him. We shouted the lie at him through the fence when he got to bat, watched him strike out. We mentioned it at the concession stand in front of his sisters. Brought it up about ten times during the long walk home after the game. He took it pretty bad. He’d want to fight, but being in the wrong, his heart wasn’t really in it. We laughed at him instead.
That turned out to be his last lie. We didn’t notice at the time really, but by the time we got back to school, Whopper hadn’t whopped since baseball season.
First day at school, at the bike racks. A cloud of dust and a deep circle of boys. Fight’s gonna start. I’m walking over with Whopper beside me. About twelve sixth-grade boys are in a circle, yelling in horror. And in the center is Jimmy Johnson, the toughest sixth grader who ever lived.
Jimmy Johnson was already building a reputation that was to peak two years later in the eighth grade, when he got impatient only being the toughest kid in junior high. He wanted the high school. He made sure the word got to the toughest kid there, a Golden Gloves boxer named Matranga. Then Jimmy went right up to the guy in the middle of school and said, “Let’s go somewhere where the teachers can’t protect you.”
That afternoon at a hamburger stand, in front of about three hundred kids, Jimmy Johnson kicked the shit out of Matranga. Thirty seconds. It was strange to see the will of someone evaporate like it did in Matranga. Jimmy showed him a whole different level of violence. It went beyond trying to hurt someone or sensing victory or anything like that. It was without honor or logic. It was Jimmy doing what he was born to do. And when Matranga’s car keys popped out of his jacket pocket, Jimmy snatched them off the ground and threw them on the burg
er stand roof. Jimmy yelled to his buddy Benny. Benny tossed him a can of lighter fluid. He sprays down the guy’s hair and lights him up. Whoosh! Matranga ran around like a horror movie until a couple of friends threw him down and smothered the flames. By then, Jimmy and Benny were gone.
At the bike racks, Whopper and I approach the circle and peer through the shoulders. Jimmy Johnson is down on his hands and knees, cutting the legs off of a thrashing ten-inch alligator lizard. The lizard has red stubs at its tail and at one leg. Jimmy puts the leg in front of the lizard’s mouth hoping he’ll eat it, which he doesn’t. Jimmy is getting ready to cut off another leg when Whopper says:
“You have to stop doing that.”
Whopper is in the fourth grade, a third Jimmy’s size and skinny. Jimmy Johnson’s got nothing to prove. I’m standing next to Whopper, praying Jimmy hasn’t heard him.
“Or what?”
As soon as Whopper begins to talk he sounds miles away.
“I’ll try to kick your ass.”
All the boys go “Whoooaaa” at Whopper and start laughing at him. Jimmy ignores him. Whopper says, “I mean it, Jimmy.”
When Jimmy presses the knife on the large joint of a hind leg, Whopper pushes past a couple of kids and shoves Jimmy over. Jimmy struggles to keep his balance, but finally falls on his back holding the lizard in the air so that it doesn’t hit the ground and get crushed in his hand. He’s protecting it. The lizard twists its head, snaps the air, three legs twitching and a red stump left for a tail, like the burning end of a cigar. Jimmy’s getting his awkward body realigned, pressing one hand on the ground, pulling his legs under his hips, using one knee and then the other to finally stand. He seems to be waiting to hear the boys snickering behind his back. Something seems to be crying deep inside.
For the first time I notice that he’s wearing big, stupid-looking hard-soled shoes, the fashion of geezers at the beach. His head is plastered with a lot of vaseline melting in the sun, his scalp visible through his very thin hair. I try to see it all at once, but I lose it beyond a vague sympathy for the lonely awkward life of Jimmy Johnson. But he is focusing on Whopper with an expression saying, “I’ll fuck you up in a minute.”
Then he puts the lizard back on the ground and slices off two legs. He stares at it, hunting for the connection beween the lizard’s fate and his part in it as its vengeful god.
Jimmy stands up. The circle widens, like it wants to get a little distance, but at the same time it moves and shrugs and jumps and ooohs and ahhhhs and groans like it’s alive. Jimmy starts punching Whopper’s arms and shoulders, letting him know how hard he hits. But Whopper doesn’t try to run. So Jimmy moves in, going for his head. Knots and bumps turning purple on Whopper’s face, nasty gaps forming over his cheeks and eyes. And Whopper keeps swinging anyway, making Jimmy more and more pissed.
What should I do? Jump in? Get the crap kicked out of me in front of everyone? Just because Whopper feels the same thing as I do about torturing a lizard, but has the guts to do something about it? What I’m seeing being done to him, I don’t want done to me.
I think fascination is not necessarily a good thing. I mean, we didn’t want to watch. But everyone did anyway. And we would have looked if Whopper was the lizard and Jimmy was chopping him up with an axe. It’s one of those unclassified sins. You will watch. But there was something clean in it anyway, as certain uses of our spirit can sanitize anything no matter how foul, because Whopper wouldn’t quit. Like he was taking it from nothing but an ass kicking and making it into something else. We waited for him to quit. We couldn’t see any point not to. Except Whopper had discovered something that was beyond anything he’d ever felt. It was pure purpose. Whopper was the only one with the balls to go in. I’m not making myself clear. I mean that Whopper had found something — new territory, a place that he ruled, his place. He was between Jimmy’s knees and on the ground, but he’d get to his feet just to get pounded like no one we’ve ever seen get pounded.
Guys are yelling at Jimmy to quit, and Jimmy is yelling back.
“Not until he does!”
Whopper keeps swinging, once or twice landing something feeble on Jimmy’s face. But the little pop bouncing off Jimmy’s head had so much . . . I don’t know . . . class. Finally, Jimmy goes nuts. Blood is flying in the air, girls are crying, but Whopper only gets more determined. I mean you can see the thread of concentration. It seems kind of calm. He was definitely following something and it was changing him into someone else. Hammered at the bike racks on Jimmy’s anvil like they are in it together. Like Whopper needed Jimmy to show us his heart. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. My feet are buried in concrete. I just stand there. Time already stopped.
Some little kids peek in the circle and start screaming and a teacher is running over. We all scatter for different parts of the canyons. Some girls wait around to give the teacher names.
I walk home with Whopper, following him down the canyon trail, listening to him cry and catch his breath. What am I supposed to say? He must hate every one of us who didn’t back him up. I would if I was him. I’d especially hate me. He always calls me his best friend. I’m even a year older. I feel two things real strong. The first is that I am proud to be walking with him. The second is that I am ashamed of myself. But at that point, the distance between us was so far that I knew he couldn’t blame me. I could see that he didn’t. I mean, he was pissed, but who wouldn’t be? I wanted to tell Whopper everything I just told you but I can’t get the words at the time and he wouldn’t listen anyway. So I just say:
“Man, that was the bravest thing I ever saw.”
“Stupidest.”
He answers in a way that had a sort of joke behind it, one word, calling it stupid, not saying it bitter but more like I said, a joke.
I couldn’t believe it. I left it alone.
He told me for a while he hoped somebody would stop it. But when he saw no one would, he figured what the fuck.
Then he says, “Where were you?”
So I lie to him. I tell him I thought he didn’t want the fight stopped. Then I go further and tell him I was thinking about helping him, but a couple of Jimmy’s friends were looking at me, waiting. I knew it right away. I wished I’d never said it.
“Don’t lie, Eddie. . . . Don’t lie to me.”
He looks like he’s gonna bust me in the face. He was pretty hot and he had a lot he wanted to tell me, but it’s plain I wouldn’t understand. Nobody would. Maybe my Uncle Adrian. But none of us Whopper’s age. The rest of us will just have to wonder if we’ll ever have balls.
I am as amazed at this ascension as if he had sprouted wings and lifted right up off the ground. And everything he did told me he was free now. He couldn’t change it if he wanted to. I always saw him in the air from then on. I mean like, in the air. I noticed how he always sat in the highest place. Like on the kitchen counter, or the tree in the front yard. He began talking about parachutes and astronauts. This is gonna sound funny but he seemed kind of wise, informed or something. I mean right there, he knew more than either of our fathers or any of our older brothers. I knew it wouldn’t last to tomorrow but I knew for sure that right then he could tell me about things even our mothers didn’t know about men. He was in on the secret.
Whopper stands for a minute, starts to walk, mumbles and sits down. He looks at me through the bruised mush around his eyes. I check out his cuts and stuff. An eyebrow has a slit that is still bleeding. He hangs his head to see how much of a puddle he can make. He tries to write his name with the drops in the dirt. He has put a tooth through his lower lip. His cheeks are blue and black, skinned and filled with dirt. His hands are raw. He’s a mess.
He stares at the skin hanging off his knuckles — bright red orange scrapes you can almost see through. He chews off a large piece in the middle of his hand.
I look back up the trail,
the fence on the top of the mesa is filled with kids and teachers. They’re all staring down the hill. One teacher is calling out Whopper’s real name, but since we’re behind a stand of manzanita, we can’t be seen.
I can tell Whopper’s beginning to see what he’s done. It’s beginning to dawn on him that it’s all over. He has made it. The isolation he felt in the fight was really the isolation of his own courage.
I tell him about the fight. Some of it he didn’t remember and it strikes him as funny. He laughs a couple of times. He says, “Really?” when I describe how brave and tough he was. I even tell him about how he looked changed and the anvil and all. He smiles like he thinks I’m crazy.
We walk home the long way, wondering what his mother is gonna say. I ask him if he is ever going to talk about it. It seems to me to be the only way to get something out of this for himself. He can’t really just go back to being who he was. He doesn’t answer.
“Because it would be so righteous if you didn’t.”
Whopper says, “Why?”
I don’t say anything. I just hoped he’d figure it out. I can see him hiding the smile on his busted lips the color of plums. He stumbles down on the edge of a deer trail overlooking a huge patch of anise. The stuff grows all over San Diego, thickets of bamboo-like stalks with big splayed flowers — tall, sometimes eight feet. The seeds taste like licorice.
He mumbles, “Yeah, I’ll act like it didn’t even happen.”
He practices the shrug he’s gonna use when people ask him about it. Every boy and girl in school will think he is God. Still, none of us would have done what he’d done to make it that way.
It worked. At school his name became ironic, like the names they give huge guys, calling them Tiny or Half-Pint. Overnight, Whopper was a name of honor.