“Have you?” Mike asked.
“A couple of weeks ago. They were going to find out eventually.”
“What did your dad say?”
“He called me a loser and a coward and a pinheaded-moron-faggot. Then he swung at me.”
“He hit you?” Sid said.
“Tried. I caught his fist in my hand. He can’t take me and he knows it.”
“Then what happened?”
“I left and spent the rest of the day at Olympus and played with Beowulf and talked poetry with Aidos. I spent the night on Regina’s couch. My old man hasn’t talked to me since.”
“Jeezus,” Brandon said. “What about you, Max? You tell your mom yet?”
“She knows,” he said.
A stern, crackling voice came over the secretary’s intercom a few feet away. “Send them in, Mrs. Jones.”
Principal Kohl was sitting complacently behind his desk when they entered. He motioned to them to sit down. Coach Dubbs was already seated, bent over and nervously wringing his baseball cap. He looked at Max beseechingly. Mike, Brandon, and Sid walked over and stood in front of a line of folding chairs against the wall, but seeing that Max and Steve hadn’t moved, they hesitated to sit.
Kohl snapped his fingers and pointed at the chairs. “Sit!” he ordered.
The three boys dropped onto their chairs like sacks of chicken feed. Max and Steve didn’t flinch.
Max said, “I prefer not to.”
“No, thanks,” Steve said.
“I see,” Kohl said, sitting up straight. “What’s your game, boys? What do you kids want? New uniforms?” He smirked. “Tell me, what’s all this nonsense about?”
“It’s simple,” Max said. “We don’t want to play anymore.”
“But why?” the coach exclaimed. “What’s the problem? This is the year! What could you possibly be thinking?”
Max said, “Don’t take it personally, Coach.”
“For Chrissakes, Stormer,” he shouted, “I hold practice and a half dozen scrubs show up and tell me my entire starting squad has quit, and I’m supposed to just shrug it off and say, oh well, I guess Max Stormer has better things to do? Dammit Stormer, you owe me!”
“I disagree,” Max replied calmly.
“The hell you don’t. I taught you this game!”
“You flatter yourself, Coach,” Steve said.
The coach turned a bitter eye on Steve. “And you, Hanson, you were nothing before I got my hands on you. It was me that whipped you into shape, me who turned your lard into muscle. Is this the thanks I get? Huh?”
“That was your job,” Steve said. “Let’s just leave it at that.”
“It wasn’t just a job. You were my boys, all of you.” He looked to the others in assurance. “Mike? Brandon? Sid?”
The youths stared at the floor and shuffled their feet.
“Come now,” Kohl said, “be manly about this. Mike, Sid, is this your decision or are you just playing follow the leader?”
“If Max and Steve don’t play,” Mike said, “then we don’t play.”
“So it’s not your decision,” Kohl said. “They bullied you into it. Isn’t that what you’re saying?”
“No,” Brandon said. “They didn’t bully us into anything. If they don’t want to play that’s their business. But we don’t want to play without them. It wouldn’t be any fun, and besides, we’d suck.”
Mike shrugged. “It’s just a game.”
“It is not just a game!” Coach Dubbs yelled, his chubby face red with anger and desperation. “It is a part of growing up. If you remember anything about high school, it’s going to be your days playing ball. Imagine, a state championship! It would be a victory you would cherish for the rest of your lives. I can’t believe you’d be so stupid as to throw it all away on, on…what? So that you can loaf? I don’t get it. And what about college and scholarships? Huh? One great season and I can guarantee all you boys scholarships. That’s worth something, isn’t it? Well?”
“I’m not going to college,” Brandon said. “I’m taking over my dad’s lumber business.”
“I’m joining the Air Force,” Mike said.
“If I go to college,” Steve said, “I don’t want to owe anybody anything.”
The coach turned to Principal Kohl and threw up his hands in exasperation. “What kind of school are you running here?” he growled.
His insubordination met with a hard, cold glare. “Boys,” Kohl said, “am I to understand then that there can be no changing your minds?”
They nodded.
“Very well,” he said. “Coach Dubbs, you’re fired.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“You can’t fire me,” the coach exclaimed. “I’ve been here for fifteen years, you son-of-a—”
Mason Kohl rose from his chair and walked over to the coach with a graveness that seemed to darken the entire room, like a cloud passing before the sun. He held his finger up to the coach’s face and waved it slowly back and forth. It seemed to glow like a black light, and all eyes in the room were drawn to it.
Max felt a shadow pass over his heart, and it was only by a surge of conscious will that he managed to avert his eyes. Upon seeing his friends’ mesmerized faces he grabbed Steve and yanked him aside. “Hold on to yourself,” he whispered.
“Sir,” Kohl said, looking straight through the coach, “we have no team. We need no coach.”
The tremble on the coach’s lips spread quickly to the rest of his body. He was now but an object at the end of the principal’s finger, something insignificant, futile, and absurd.
The corner of Kohl’s mouth hatched a malicious grin. “You are no longer wanted here,” he said.
“But the union…” the coach stammered in a last-ditch effort to save his identity from oblivion.
“I know you have not paid your union dues in seven years. They do not know you. You have nothing to commend you, no one to save you. You are a useless appendage. The appendix of the soul, if you will.” Kohl smiled, a hideous smile, closer to that of a dog baring his teeth. “And I have removed you. Now, go!” He swept the terrible finger toward the door. Coach Dubbs shrank off. Worse than defeated, he looked annihilated.
Mike, Sid, and Brandon sat plastered against the backs of their chairs—pale, scared, and speechless. They looked as if they had just witnessed an execution. The principal approached them. Their instinct was to shove back their chairs, but the legs were already against the wall. He walked up to them and put his hands on his hips. He shook his head in disappointment.
“You boys will regret this, I assure you,” he said. “Personally, I couldn’t care less about your team, but this childish ploy at independence and rebellion I find pathetic and nauseating. Go back to class. Behave yourselves. Know that I am waiting for the smallest opportunity to make your lives miserable.”
“Yes, sir,” the three youths answered. They rose, careful not to brush the principal who had left barely any room between himself and the boys to comfortably stand and pass.
“Not you, Mr. Stormer,” Kohl said, as the five of them were about to leave. “I want to talk to you.”
40
Bad Faith
Steve turned to Max with clenched fists. “Do you want me to stay?” he whispered. “He can’t make me leave.”
“No, go on. I’ll meet you on the mountain after school.”
“Are you sure? There’s something about him…”
“I know. I’ll see you.” He slapped Steve on the back and led him out of the room. “Take care of these guys, they look a little out of it.”
“Close the door, please, Mr. Stormer,” Kohl said, returning to his chair.
Max complied and then began a nonchalant perusal of the principal’s office, which was Spartan, nearly antiseptic.
“What,” Max said, stopping in front of the principal’s desk and noticing its lack of clutter, “not even a picture of the wife and kids?”
“I never mar
ried,” Kohl said.
“A handsome fellow like you?”
“We all have our priorities.”
“True.”
“And what are your priorities, Mr. Stormer?”
“I don’t believe in discussing things that interest me with people who don’t.”
Kohl smirked. “Such scorn! And so young.”
“No,” Max replied. “Boredom.”
“You are not the complex person you like to imagine yourself to be, Mr. Stormer. You hate me because I stand for authority, and you have a blind hatred for anyone in a position of authority.”
“No, not blind. I can see that you have no authority over me other than that which I might give to you.”
“And how much do you give me, Max?”
“Just enough to graduate me and not a speck more.”
“Hmm, and should I decide not to graduate you?”
“Is that a threat?”
“Of course it is, Max.”
“If you believe that I would give a piece of paper more authority over my life than I do my own will, then you really do know me less than zero.”
“You are naive, son.”
“I am a lot of things,” Max rejoined. “But I will not practice bad faith.”
“Hah!” Kohl scoffed. “What do you know about faith, Mr. Stormer? You must believe in something to have faith. You are merely one of these deluded numbers who belong to the cult of the first person singular. Me and my is all you believe.”
“I believe we can do better,” Max said. “If you don’t understand that, then there is little else I can say that you will understand.”
The principal rose from his chair and crossed his arms. “Your spunk is misplaced, Mr. Stormer. You have that atrocious disease called romanticism. You are full of the pride of youth, and if you are not careful, you will burn yourself out before you’ve acquired the tempering experience you require. You need discipline, Mr. Stormer.”
“I have discipline.”
“No,” Kohl said, his voice rising to just short of a shout. “You have impudence. To be disciplined you must know how to obey. But you are too arrogant for that, and it will be your downfall.”
“Are you finished?”
“Not yet. As I said, we all have our priorities. I will not allow you to interfere with mine. Your misguided attempt at rebellion has caused me some embarrassment. I don’t like to be embarrassed. How do you suppose I should answer all the questions that will be put to me on account of your childish temper tantrum?”
“Try the truth. You’d be surprised how well that can work.”
“The truth,” he repeated, shaking his head in amusement. “You like the way that word sounds, don’t you? It just rolls right off your tongue and makes you feel like a man. And yet, you don’t even know what it is.” The principal raised his chin and narrowed his eyes. “You are in for unhappy days, Mr. Stormer. Nobody likes a quitter. Pinecrest will not take kindly to your decision. You will be rejected by everyone.”
“I will reject their rejection,” he said, and then headed towards the door.
Principal Kohl strode out from behind his desk and cornered Max against the door. Pressing in on him, he unleashed the awful finger and rammed it into Max’s chest. “You are but a ball at the end of my tether, Mr. Stormer,” he said, glaring into Max’s eyes, his neck taut with anger. “You do one more thing to disturb me and I’ll send you flying into the void. Do you understand me?”
Max felt Kohl’s finger drill hard and hot into his sternum, as if a hole was being bored into him for his vitality to drain out. With a fierce look of defiance, he fixed his eyes on the principal’s, which were dark and menacing, and full of malevolent concentration.
“I am the principal,” Kohl continued. “It is my job to instill in you the spirit of seriousness.” A twisted smile wiggled across his face. “Play ball, Max. What have you to lose? You might even earn a moment’s glory. A person like you can’t expect much more out of life.” He rapped Max sharply on the chest with the dreadful finger. “You can do it, Max. I have faith in you. Now, shall I call Coach Dubbs and tell him we’ve all had a change of heart?”
Max said, “Take your ugly talon off my chest before I break it off.”
“You mean this?” The principal laughed, raising the finger to Max’s face. “It’s an old habit of mine. I use it to make a point—”
Max snatched the finger with one hand and Kohl’s elbow with the other, and bore down on them. In agonizing suddenness, the principal was on his knees looking up into Max’s smirking face.
“It might work on others,” Max said, “but not on me.”
Kohl saw his secretary through the glass look on in incredulous horror, the phone at her ear. He shook his head at her.
Max glanced behind and saw the woman set down the handset. He tossed away the principal’s arm and turned to leave.
“You’ve proved nothing by this, Stormer,” Kohl said, shaking the hurt from his arm.
“I don’t have anything to prove to anyone but myself. Get that straight, would you?”
Outside the building, Max encountered Mayor Fitch and a man Max had never seen before; a large, balding, and well-dressed man who was not from Pinecrest.
“Hello, Max,” the mayor greeted. “Are you ready for the big season?”
Max smiled. “Ready as I’ll ever be, Mr. Mayor.”
“Good boy,” Fitch said, slapping Max on the back as they passed him on their way into the administration building.
Part III
Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.
—Henry David Thoreau
41
Spirit in the Night
Aidos’ absence did not dissuade the youths from venturing to the mountain. After school restarted, their retreats to the woods proved a welcome respite from the drudgery and tedium of the classroom. Here the cobwebs were cleared from their minds, and the sleep vanished from their eyes. Here they had a secret life; an intimacy with the world and one another that was impossible down below.
They all missed Aidos and were shocked to hear of her undertaking. They certainly could not imagine themselves doing such a thing. Yet, they lived the risk vicariously, and the courageousness of her endeavor boosted their resolve to continue on the path they had begun. Although they worried about her, they felt certain that any day she would show up unharmed with the splendid glory of a returning knight. What stories she would have to tell!
Max often could not make it up the mountain until late afternoon. Because of his mother’s fragile health he had to take over many of her duties at the restaurant, including the accounting. On top of this, he had to care for his sisters. He was everything to them: brother, father, play pal, teacher. They loved him with childhood’s faith, and for Max they were the greatest joy in his life.
His day did not end with putting the girls to bed. When the house was quiet and the streets empty, he opened his books and clasped hands with the great minds of the past and joined them in thought. He nodded across the centuries to those whom he admired, and he quarreled with them too. In the middle of the night, under the glare of his desktop lamp, the great dramas of life unfolded.
Max never lost sight of the fact that history never pauses, and that he and every other person played his or her part in its making. He didn’t think that people should spend their lives pondering the meaning of life. Just as the glutton dug his grave with his teeth, the miser with his nickels, and the womanizer with his crotch; too much thinking about life, he believed, was one of the surest ways to avoid living the best of it.
He allowed himself six hours of sleep. What began as discipline became habit; what became habit condensed into character. He discovered a willpower he didn’t know he possessed.
Whenever Max had the time he visited Mr. Thoreson. He liked Mr. Thoreson, and Mr. Thoreson liked Max. Max did not see him as the father he never had or wished that he had. Max was not interested in any father figure. He wanted only fri
ends and comrades. He was a man now, and had set aside his youthful psychology of anger and resentment as one does an empty plate. He looked up to himself—to his better self. He was fond of the words of the Chinese philosopher Mencius, which Aidos once quoted to him: “He who follows that which is best in himself becomes a great man. He who follows that which is meanest in himself becomes a little man.” He took the ancient one’s advice to heart.
During the first few weeks of Aidos’ absence, Max avoided bringing her up in conversation with Mr. Thoreson. He could tell the man was worried sick about her, and Max thought that Mr. Thoreson had aged since she had left. His temples had grayed and his back stooped slightly from walking with his head bowed to the ground.
Worry crippled Hardy’s thoughts and concentration, and so he was unable to write. Instead of writing, he immersed himself in household chores and long put-off projects. Max, who was the better carpenter and handyman, assisted him, and together they refurbished the bathroom and kitchen, installing new cabinets and refinishing the counters. They tore down the old shed and put up a new, more spacious one in its place.
Mr. Thoreson admired Max’s ingenuity and the skillful, unflappable way he went about his work. He could do in one hour what would have taken Hardy Thoreson five.
He asked Max what the feasibility was for adding a small balcony to Aidos’ bedroom window. For years she had wanted to attempt the project. They never got around to it because he thought it too difficult. Max returned the next day with a plan he had drawn up, and they set to work.
“I can’t wait to see her face when she gets a load of this,” Mr. Thoreson said, gesturing to the newly constructed balcony. He and Max sat on a wood stump along the side of the house sipping iced tea. It was nearing dusk and the evening air was noticeably chillier than a week earlier. It hadn’t rained in almost a month, but it looked like rain that night.
“I want to thank you again, Max, for all your help. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
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