by Jesse Jordan
James squeezed through the entrance into the courts along with a couple older girls and a red-haired kid with apocalyptic acne and a bloodthirsty grin. Nick was waiting. He’d already made it to the center of the closest court and turned to face James. The crowd pushed in, desperate for the best view but trying to create at least some small circle in which the battle might take place.
James breathed in and was amazed—lilac. He could smell the lilac bushes down the street. He could smell watermelon bubblegum and the press of students around him, many still unaccustomed to the notion of regular washings. James looked at Nick and felt his mind flush with focus. He saw that Nick had a quarter-sized cluster of razor burn on the side of his neck; he saw that he was bouncing from foot to foot, that the middle finger on his right hand was shaking, and that beads of sweat dappled the left side of his forehead.
James felt hands on his shoulder blades guiding him toward Nick, and when he was a foot or two away, the touch disappeared and the way behind James was swallowed up by eager, bouncing bodies. The circle was alive, expanding here, dipping back there, and holding Nick and James inside of it like a belly.
James’s entire body felt as if, for the first time in his life, it was at his disposal. He was aware of the feeling of his shorts against the backs of his thighs, of the socks and rubber soles between the balls of his feet and the blacktop, of the muscles that nature had strung across his back. And close up now, James saw it. He looked at Nick—in Nick—and in his eyes, he saw unbridled fear. Fear run wild. He saw fear as far back as Nick himself and saw that, like water, it’d been boiled and frozen into many forms, but it was always fear.
Gail’s warning siren screech tore through the air. “Fuck him up, Niiiick!”
Like a starting gun, it released them. Nick pulled back his right fist, so James dove into Nick’s belly—“Oooomph”—and the two of them hit the ground on their sides. The screaming went up in volume and timbre, and as James wondered, What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? he felt Nick’s hands slip inside his guard and find his throat.
The pain was intense and immediate. Nick’s thumbs pressed on James’s Adam’s apple and the artery beside it. James’s neck crushed, blood stopped, black dots pop-popping already; and then his feet were coming up, knees high, until they were between the boys. James kicked out, feeling his shoes catch against the soft matter of belly and groin, and the fingers relaxed enough for him to wriggle free and roll away.
They both got to their feet with arms flailing defensively, eyes searching, until they found they were a good six feet from each other. Nick held his balls with his left hand. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but before any sound came out James was charging, and in this charge was all of their relationship, from childhood to this moment—all the hateful looks, all the times spit was dribbled and sucked up to taunt, all the shoulder bumps in the hallways, all the “faggots” and “retards” and “spazzes,” all the pitiless hatred for Nick that James had wrapped tightly in his arms and held back. And though he was screaming a warrior’s bloody release in his mind, outwardly James was silent.
Nick cocked his right fist and shifted his weight to his back foot. James had obviously never been in a fight, rushing in like that, presenting his chin. Nick exuded the confidence of veteran know-how as he measured James’s approach. A slight dip of his shoulder showed his intention to bob to the right, out of James’s path, and bash James’s exposed face with a right cross at the same time. The moment was interminable for both boys, though for the crowd it was less than an instant, only part of the disorderly, random fighting.
James saw Nick’s fist at the last possible point, realizing his error, and in his mind he screamed, No!
And the fist froze. It caught dead in the air only inches from Nick’s own ear, and James threw his punch with everything he ever wanted to do or say to Nick. He saw Nick’s eyes, dull and confused, searching upward toward the paralyzed fist. He saw his own punch connect at the tip of Nick’s jaw, and it was like a switch turned off. Nick’s eyes rolled topside as his knees went, and he crumpled to the ground, folding over his own legs, his head bouncing off the blacktop with an apathetic smack.
“Oooooooohhhhhhh.” The sound moved over and through them like a strong wind. The crowd a choir of disbelief now, and then a voice, “Oh, shit!” and there were shouts and shrieks and laughs and claps and hoots.
The fight was over, sudden and without narrative arc. Surprise and relief like pure sunshine happiness warmed James. He felt hands slapping his back—he saw Gail looking at him with a mingling of disgust and wariness, as one would look at a skunk in their backyard—and he saw Nick, lying there, unmoving, his left foot underneath him, his right splayed out straight.
The terror was unmistakable. He’s really hurt. Oh no, no, no. Whether it was a fear that he’d get in trouble or a fear for Nick’s well-being, James didn’t investigate. He knew only that he needed Nick to move, to wake up. Now.
LaMarcus bent down by Nick and shook him. “Nick.”
Nick’s eyes opened, though they appeared to be looking at two objects simultaneously, one close and one very far. “My hand. It’s stuck.”
LaMarcus pulled Nick up to his feet, supporting his weight easily. “Okay, man, cops’ll be here soon.” They began to walk, though Nick’s feet were able to successfully participate only every few steps. Colin walked behind them, and when Gail paused, as if considering whether she wanted to follow, Jess ran up and took Nick’s other arm, at which point Gail made up her mind and hurried after them. The crowd grew loose, taking extra-special care to give the vanquished party a wide berth, and James thought he didn’t understand anything about girls. Not a goddamn thing.
Woop-woop!
Children squealed, dashing in all directions. A few yelled, “Cops!” but most just ran. James stood dead-still on the spot where he’d knocked Nick Schroeder out and watched them go. He watched the freshmen sprint in genuine panic, watched Nick and Colin ladderwalk away to the west, watched Maria and Katie scramble into a bush to hide, watched kids whooping and laughing as they ran.
A strong, firm hand pressed his arm. He followed the arm up to the face of Ken Lakatos. “Go,” he said. “Run.”
The cops walked in yelling for everyone to stay exactly where they were, and James was gone, sprinting past a portly, mustachioed cop, who offered a perfunctory “Stop.”
He looked back to see a few kids sheeped in a corner, suffering their first interrogation. No one gave chase, and those who had run now slowed to ambles, drifting away with eyes back, waving to James, swinging fists through the air, knocking out their own invisible enemies.
31. The Story of Stone Grove/ChocoMalt/the Eights as Told by the United States Census—As much as the citizens of Stone Grove seemed to enjoy the narrative of the closing of the ChocoMalt factory decimating the town, followed by the oozing land-dealers sneaking in clumps of Section 8 housing, befouling the once-pure town with elements of urban rot and crime, the US Census Bureau tells a different tale. While it is true that the demographics have changed, it would appear that the rest of the damage has been largely imaginary and hysterical. The 1970 census reported Stone Grove’s population as 95 percent white/non-Hispanic, with the African American population at .004 percent and the Hispanic population at .019 percent. As of the last census, Stone Grove’s white/non-Hispanic population was 71 percent, while African American citizens comprised 4.1 percent of the total population and the Hispanic population came in around 17 percent.
Here’s the rub, though. The crime rate is 135.6 (per 100,000) which is both well below the national average and roughly where it was when ChocoMalt was still operating, The schools are all well (if not exceptionally) rated; George Washington (formerly Gary Gilmore) High School, for example, is ranked No. 56 in Illinois, which is just slightly higher than the year the factory closed. Seventy-five percent of Stone Grove’s workforce now hold white-collar jobs. There’s also the fact that, in spite of all of its civic generosity, i
n spite of being the town’s benefactor through some rough times, at its height the ChocoMalt factory only actually employed around 300 people, many of whom were not residents of Stone Grove.
Nobody likes this story, though. It lacks drama.
32. The year before, James learned (read: overheard a conversation) that when guys get initiated into a gang they get beat in, but when girls get initiated they get to choose if they want to get beat in or have sex with all the guys in the gang. He heard Ileana’s friend Lala say that her cousin in Cicero went with the sex option, but that the guys never respect you if you do that, and if she ever gets in she’s gonna get beat in.
33. On the east side, by the large parking lot and the dilapidated water tower.
34. And though he’d been sure he wouldn’t be able to eat, James took down a bacon-and-cheese omelet with the hashbrowns cooked inside, two pieces of buttered toast, and two sausage links.
35. According to Ezra, the apostle John was commonly referred to as John the Know-It-All, John the Suck-Up, and John the Shitstain—roughly translated from the original Aramaic.
36. Ezra’s case: The thirteenth-century politician Count Ugolino is in the Ninth Circle (Antenora) along with Archbishop Ruggieri, both of them condemned due to their acts of betrayal. The Count sentenced there because of a life of political and military betrayal, including working a side deal with Archbishop Ruggieri to get Ugolino’s nephew (with whom he was sharing power) exiled. The Archbishop was placed in the Ninth Circle because he then screwed Ugolino on the deal, turned the public against him, and had the Count, along with his two sons and two grandsons, arrested and locked in a tower, at which point the door was nailed shut, the key literally thrown in a river, and the Count and his family left to starve to death. There were whispers of cannibalism to survive, though in the end it didn’t matter. All perished.
Dante has placed them together in the Inferno, the Count gnawing on the back of the Archbishop’s head for eternity. The Archbishop having been the worse betrayer(?), and the Count driven on always by his rage. Now, bad guys? No doubt. But do their political double-dealings (and an admittedly cruel quintuple homicide) really compare with the betrayals of mankind perpetrated by Ashurnasirpal II or Caligula or Qin Shi Huang?
37. James felt his heart falter—the literal skipping of a beat—at the mention of the monster’s name. He was terrified that Ezra would describe him, that it would be verified beyond a doubt—but he longed for it, too. His dreams were an eclipse begging to be stared at.
38. Anxiety always went straight to James’s stomach.
39. But he couldn’t focus, not on the class or his own crisis. There was no clarity to be had.
40. His consciousness refused to stay on one course.
41. Thoughts interrupted thoughts interrupted thoughts.
42. As if his mind was not his own.
43. Gail had gone to school with all of them since fifth grade, existing in the middle ground of nonpopular nonpariahs. However, in the summer between eighth grade and freshmen year, Gail underwent major changes. To quote Colin O’Connor: “I shit you not, man, her tits musta grown three sizes. Just wait ’til you see her.” She also became a blonde and eschewed the cute and innocent outfits which her mother had previously picked out, instead building a wardrobe of short, tight, low, and high. The social vacancy momentarily left by Dorian’s suicide attempt was filled by Gail with military efficiency.
44. More than one student-turned-pugilist had employed the grab-and-wait (or lay-and-pray) tactic, wherein the goal is to grab your opponent and hold them until the inevitable arrival of the police.
8. How to Open Up a Human Being and Look Inside
Mom left mushroom chicken and wild rice on a small plate inside a glass dish in the oven, as she had book club and it was one of Dad’s prescheduled late nights of work. James watched the news as he ate, though he couldn’t follow any of it.45 He could barely concentrate on the act of shoveling food into his mouth. His mind went again and again to the feeling of the rock of his coiled fist meeting the wobbly hinge of jaw. He replayed the fight over and over like SportsCenter and felt the rush again and again and saw the kids waving and heard them hollering. He saw Nick’s fist freeze, saw the locked arm, the terrified look on his face, and he felt something oddly like shame mingling with the triumph.
James also remembered a thought which had been born earlier in the day as he sat in Ms. Adderley’s class. She’d been talking about General Westmoreland’s failed plan to create a war of attrition against North Vietnam, with large-scale bombing drawing them into massive battles, and how it didn’t work because the North knew that it was a guerilla army and refused to change their tactics, no matter how much Westmoreland baited them. James had forgotten all about this because of the fight, but it came rushing back now. The sense of urgency in class—You need to know these things. You need to learn these things. He figured he should learn all he could about what great generals had done in the past but also—remembering how Ezra said if the War started right now the other side’s numbers would be way superior—how a smaller fighting force attacked a larger one.
James powered up the laptop in the living room, and from the kitchen he grabbed a notepad, a pen, and a glass of chocolate milk.
As James navigated to Wikipedia, he drew a line down the middle of the yellow, lined paper. At the top, to the left of the line, he wrote, Generals to Research, with a line under it. On the other side of the center line he wrote, Military Tactics, with a line under it, under which he wrote, Guerilla Warfare.
His hands hovered over the keys. He didn’t want to research Westmoreland; that guy sounded like a real dumbass. But he remembered something else Ms. Adderley said and began to type. Earlier in the year, she’d spent a whole day on how the story we’ve all been told about George Washington is a cartoon obscuring the portrait of an amazing man. She talked about what a hard and smart general he was, as well as how everyone who knew him respected and was drawn to him.
This was exactly what James was looking for.
However, after two readings of Washington’s Wikipedia entry, the only thing James had added to his Military Tactics column was Good Communication.
James pivoted, jumping hyperlinks from Washington to other generals, building a solid research list. Thirty minutes later, the left side of the notepad read, General Washington, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Julius Caesar, Hannibal, Genghis Khan, Edwin Rommel, George Patton, Sun Tzu, Belisarius, Robert E. Lee, Generalissimo, Shogun, Winston Churchill.
James spent the next two hours and fifteen minutes jumping from page to page, with intermittent breaks to pee and make more chocolate milk. The yellow notepad remained beside him, though he failed to write anything else.
There seemed to be little to learn from any of them that had practical applications. Make your enemy think you have superior numbers, or if possible, actually have superior numbers; attack in unexpected ways; earn the esteem and loyalty of your troops; never give up, unless you have to, then give up graciously; be a bastard. It seemed at first as though there was something close by in all this researching, something just on the other side of what he was reading, but soon he was only clicking through, clicking through, clicking through.
Anxiety burned into exhaustion, and though he wasn’t aware he was doing it, James slowly laid his head on the desk and let his eyes close as the Wikipedia page for Ashikaga Takauji glowed before him.
I’m descending. I look up and see that monster, Leviathan, watching me, his nightmare face piercing the circle of sky above. I’m not walking—am I? It feels like I’m floating down, down, down this giant circle. The walls are dark, and they seem to shimmer and move, and behind them a scrap of light appears and disappears, blinks once here, then there, then gone. Down, down, down. It feels like forever, and . . . god, it’s cold . . . getting colder, hadn’t noticed until now, until it’s already so cold.
Light. Here. Through the wall, through the shimmer. It’s . . . giving off light.
What . . . It’s gold and softly glowing, shaped like a teardrop, maybe the size of an overstuffed backpack. It looks like a genie’s lamp. I lean in, ’cause I can barely make it out, like the silhouette of someone showering—oh my god! There are thousands of them! Millions! I back away, turning now, descending farther. They’re everywhere. Behind these weird, warbly walls like an infestation, and, oh man oh man oh man oh man oh . . . there’s something horrible about them, something trapped and vicious and screaming in pain. Ten million cockroaches pouring out of the walls of your house.
Down, down, down, trying not to look, but there they are, and I think they’ve noticed me. They’re, they’re . . . shaking, rattling . . . screaming energy of so, so many, like prisoners reaching through the bars, screaming, and I know that at any moment it’s going to give. The walls will shatter, will melt, and these things will swarm, will eat me, and I try to run, but it’s so slow, and a noise is growing, a buzzing like the whispers of the whole school. But with something under it, higher, like screams. I can’t help it—I’m looking at the golden teardrops as I pass by and they shake like angry fists, and each one seems to recognize me, to press against the shimmering wall, pleading, moaning louder, dying to a whimper as I pass . . .