by John Smelcer
APPLES & ORANGES
Monday, June 1, 1980
“HEY, CAN I HAVE A RIDE TO SCHOOL?” James asked Sebastian, who was sitting astride his idling motorcycle cinching his helmet chinstrap.
Sebastian loved his green and white Suzuki 385GT street bike. He had been bagging groceries since he was in seventh grade, mostly a couple days a week after school and on Saturdays. He made tips only, but on a good Saturday he sometimes made as much as a hundred dollars in cash, mostly in ones and quarters. When he turned sixteen, he bought a used Datsun pickup truck with a dinky four-cylinder engine only a little bigger than a motorcycle engine. The little engine didn’t have much power, but it got over thirty-five miles per gallon. The truck was painted metallic gray, and it sported cool chrome moon hubcaps. It also had a black snap-on bed cover. He and his best friend, Andy, had installed a cassette player and more powerful speakers than the tinny ones it came with. He had a brown faux-leather box full of his favorite cassettes, which included ABBA, Elvis, Neil Diamond, Tony Orlando and Dawn, The Bee Gees, Quarterflash, Super Tramp, Johnny Cash, and Jim Croce. Sebastian’s taste in music was retro before it was cool to be retro.
He’d bought the five-year-old motorcycle only two weeks before, just as the weather warmed up enough for biking, which, in the interior of Alaska, was pretty late in the season.
“Sure, grab the other helmet,” he said with a smile.
While James was in the garage looking for the helmet, Sebastian took off for school, laughing aloud as he leaned into the turn from their street onto the main road. He sometimes gave his brother a ride in the truck, but he wasn’t about to have his brother sitting behind him with his crotch pressed against his back and his arms wrapped around his waist. That place was reserved for girls. Besides, James could still catch the school bus, which would be by in about five minutes.
“Take your hat off,” said Mr. Betters, the Western civilization teacher, pointing at the Harley Davidson cap on James’ head. “We don’t wear hats in school.”
In fact, almost everything James was wearing was Harley Davidson paraphernalia. He wore a heavy black leather jacket that creaked when he moved, and he had one of those long, black leather wallets connected to a belt loop on his jeans by a chain, both articles adorned with Harley logos. More than anything, James wanted to be a biker and join Hell’s Angels. But, unlike his older brother, he didn’t have enough money to buy a motorcycle, and besides, he couldn’t legally drive one until he turned sixteen, which was more than a year away.
James begrudgingly removed the cap.
Mr. Betters stood up from his desk with a stack of papers in his hands.
“I have your tests from last week. I’m glad to say that some of you did very well,” he said, glancing at Sebastian sitting in the front row wearing a gray sweatshirt with the words “Latham High School” in purple and gold. “And some of you did not,” he said, emphasizing the last word.
James knew the stuffy teacher was talking about him. Although he was a freshman and his older brother was a junior, they were in the same elective class. It was the only time they had ever been in the same class in their entire lives. Sebastian was the teacher’s pet, always earning A’s and always knowing the right answer to questions.
“Excellent work, Mr. Savage!” Mr. Betters exclaimed as he handed Sebastian his test with a large ‘A’ written in red ink. “And I like your school pride,” he said pointing at the sweatshirt.
The teacher was less enthusiastic when he returned James’s test.
“Do you listen to anything we talk about in class?” he said, as he handed James his paper with a “D-” written at the top. “Couldn’t you at least try to answer all the questions? Why do I even bother?”
After returning all the tests, Mr. Betters stood with his arms across his chest before the chalkboard.
“Now, as you all know, this is the last week of school. That was your last test, but you all still owe me the five-paragraph essay I assigned about the last chapter we read. Please get out your papers and pass them to the left. And make sure your name is on them.”
Everyone in class handed in a paper . . . everyone, that is, except for James, who never looked up from his Pee-Chee folder with the words “Western Civ. Sucks” scribbled across the ubiquitous sketch of a sprinting athlete surrounded by other doodling and the names of hard-rock bands like AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Cheap Trick, and Kiss. On the back cover he had written in large outlined letters: “Highway to Hell.”
While the other students robotically handed their stapled essays to the person to their left—his brother included—James quietly added two exclamation marks to the class name on the front of his folder.
Later, as everyone scrambled out of the classroom after the bell to head to third period, Sebastian stopped his brother in the hall.
“Hey, Bro, what’d you get on the test?”
James reluctantly pulled out the crumpled paper from his jacket pocket and showed it to his brother.
“Bummer, Dude,” Sebastian said, patting his brother on the back in a kind of mock sympathy. “Sucks to be you.”
James didn’t ask what Sebastian got. He already knew. Everyone knew Sebastian was a straight-A student on the Honor Roll. All James could muster before they went their separate ways for the rest of the day was a defeated, “School sucks!”
James had barely walked up the stairs when he got home before his father jumped on his case, speaking as though he had rehearsed what he was going to say beforehand.
“Your teacher called. He said you didn’t turn in your final assignment, a term paper or something. He said he didn’t think you would pass without it.”
James stood there, steeling himself, expecting to turn into a punching bag any minute.
His mother came out from preparing dinner in the kitchen.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Nancy here didn’t turn in the last assignment for one of his classes.”
A south paw, James clenched his left fist.
“My name isn’t Nancy,” he said very quietly.
“Stop mumbling and speak up like a man,” demanded his father in his drill sergeant tone. “What’s the matter? You got mush in your mouth?”
“I said I’m not a girl,” James replied, enunciating each word clearly and deliberately.
“Stop calling the boys girls,” said the mother, who didn’t often chastise her husband.
But she turned and walked back into the kitchen after her husband gave her a scowl as fearful as a slap in the face.
“Your teacher said he’d accept a late paper from you. Now go to your room and don’t come out until you’ve written it. And I want to read it when you’re done.”
“But dinner’s in half an hour,” James complained.
“I don’t care. Get to work.”
James stood at attention, snapped his heels together, and saluted his father.
“Heil Hitler!”
Instantly, his father smacked him upside the head so hard that the boy’s ear rang and he grimaced in pain.
“You better show me some respect, you little prick!” exclaimed the father, stabbing his index finger against the boy’s thin chest. “I’m sick of you! I’m sick of your attitude. You can’t do anything right!”
His father’s words slashed through James’ leather jacket like switchblade.
“You’re a goddamn weakling! You’ll never be half the man I am!”
The boy’s face turned beet-red, his knuckles white as a snowstorm. Finally, the abuse was too much to bear.
“I’m not a girl!” James erupted, taking a swing at his father and landing a glancing blow on the shoulder. “I’m not weak!”
The father fought back.
For several minutes, father and son—ages thirty-eight and fourteen-going-on-fifteen—grappled on the green shag-carp
eted floor, punching each other and pulling each other’s hair while James’ mother screamed for them to stop.
NOWHERE MAN
Tuesday, June 2, 1980
“FIGHT! FIGHT!” SOMEONE YELLED, while another student ran to find a teacher.
By the time a teacher arrived, James was fighting with three seniors from the varsity football team, each one of them outweighing him by forty or fifty pounds. All four had bloody noses and blood on their shirts. There were red smears on the gray hallway floor where sneakers had slipped on the blood. Maybe fifty students stood around watching the melee, cheering it on.
“Come on, man! Get him! Hit him! Kick him in the balls! Punch his lights out!”
No one coming on the scene would have had any clear notion for whom exactly the outbursts were meant.
The teacher, who taught English in a classroom two doors down, didn’t know who to grab.
“Break it up! Break it up!” he repeated, at first without much success.
But whenever the teacher grabbed one of the football players by the arm to pull him away from the fray, James took advantage of the moment and punched the player in the head. Finally, Mr. King, the assistant principal, arrived to help, and, together, they managed to stop the fight.
“It’s all over now. Go to your scheduled classes,” Mr. King instructed the assembled mob. “You heard me. Get going.”
Then he turned to address the three jocks.
“You guys okay? Anyone need to see the nurse?”
All three said they were okay.
“Alright, go wash your faces and then get to class,” said Mr. King. “But you, Mr. Savage,” he said using a beckoning index finger, “come with me.”
Neither said a word as they walked down the long hallway lined with lockers broken intermittently by windowed doors leading into classrooms. As they passed the main doors, James looked down at the tiled floor, which listed every year the school had been in existence, beginning with 1956, the year they had closed the old Fairbanks High School and opened Latham. When he stepped over the 1960 tile, James thought of his father, who had graduated from Latham in that year. When he stepped over the last year, 1979, James imagined that his year would be listed on the floor in a few years.
That is, if he graduated.
During the quiet walk, James pondered what was going to happen to him. This was the fourth time in the semester that he had been caught fighting, each time requiring a little talk with Mr. King. When they arrived at the principal’s office, James plopped down in the chair across from the desk.
“You should name this chair after me, or something,” he said, chuckling at his own joke.
Mr. King wasn’t amused.
“What is it with you? Do have a death wish? Are you high?” Mr. King asked while closing his office door. “I just don’t understand why you keep getting into fights,” he said, emphasizing the last word as he sat heavily in his cushioned chair behind his dark desk. “Your brother never gets in trouble.”
James stared at the floor. He could feel the brass knuckles inside his leather jacket pressing against his ribs. He wondered if the assistant principal could see the bulge from across the desk. Sometimes he carried a switchblade knife instead of the brass knuckles.
“I’m not my brother,” he whispered, clenching his fists, trying to hold back the anger he could feel welling up inside him.
“How’s that?”
“I’m not my brother!” James shouted, and brought his fist down on top of the desk so hard that a small framed photograph of a woman holding a little girl fell over.
“You certainly aren’t your brother,” replied Mr. King, righting the toppled photograph. “I just sent a news release to the newspaper with a list of the students who will have earned a 4.0 GPA this semester. Your brother’s name is on it.”
“La-dee-dah. You gonna marry him, too?”
“Always the tough guy. Always the bad-ass with the whole leather-jacket-biker routine. It’s like you always got something to prove, or you’re just plain suicidal.”
Still looking down, James noticed blood on the white part of his black-and-white sneakers. He wondered whose it was. He was worried that the assistant principal might ask to check his jacket for drugs and find the weapon and the sandwich baggie with a couple joints’ worth of weed.
“For Chrissake,” Mr. King continued, leaning forward to make his point, “you’re going to get in a lot of trouble if you keep up this crap after you turn eighteen. I mean legal trouble, like jail time, a criminal record.”
Without looking up, James touched his bottom lip. It felt swollen. He could taste blood inside his mouth, irony and salty.
“Do you hear a word I’m saying? I’m trying to understand you. I’m trying to help you.”
For the first time, James looked up, not at the man sitting behind the desk in front of him, but at the framed diplomas and degrees hanging neatly on the wall behind him.
“You went to the University of Alaska?”
Mr. King turned around to look at the diplomas.
“Yes. That’s right. I earned my bachelor’s and my master’s there.”
“Sebastian wants to go there when he graduates. Our dad went there, too. He also went here.”
“I know all about your father. Everyone in town does. You have every reason to be proud.”
James cringed.
“A lot of the records he set playing quarterback here go way back in the late fifties. He set all kinds of records. Some still stand today.”
“Yeah,” replied James, shrugging. “You don’t need to remind me. I see the trophies and the pictures of him with his greased-back hair in that glass case by the main entrance every day.”
“You know, your father led his teams to the state championship three years in a row?” Mr. King boasted as if it were his own father he was talking about. “Three in a row! That’s something.”
“Yeah, yeah,” replied James, unmoved. “He has all these pictures and trophies and plaques in the living room and in his den, including a bunch of medals and crap he got when he was in Vietnam.
“I have a lot of respect for your father. He’s a war hero, son . . . an amazing man. A real patriot. A man’s man. You should be proud.”
“I guess,” is all the reply James could muster, his conflicted feelings about his father churning away in his stomach till he felt like throwing up all over Mr. King’s nice desk.
“You would do well to be more like your father.”
James glared into the assistant principal’s eyes. He wanted to jump across the wood desk, rip the man’s arm off, and beat him with it.
Oblivious to the boy’s intention, Mr. King continued.
“What about you, James?” His tone was sympathetic, as though he felt he was making some headway, establishing a connection with the troubled teen the way he was taught in his night classes in education. “What do you want to do with your life?”
“I don’t know. All I know for sure is that I’m tired of everyone comparing me to my brother. I’m not like him. I’m also sick and tired of people telling me what a great guy my dad is. They don’t know him the way I do. If they only knew the things he does to . . .”
James stopped mid-sentence.
Mr. King studied the troubled boy across from him and tried to think of a response.
“What do I want out of life? I’ll tell you,” James continued, his voice slow and far away. “I just want to be left alone.”
“What do you mean by that? Are you having problems at school?” Mr. King asked, leaning closer, genuinely concerned.
“My problems with school don’t mean crap, excuse my French.”
“Then what is it? Are you having problems at home?”
“There’s no problem. I play my part.”
“What part is that?”
; James was quiet at first, looking down at the linoleum floor again, counting the large gray and black squares, thinking about his father and how to endure him, about things he knew and would never share with anyone. Tears welled up in his eyes before he spoke.
“My father and I have our roles. He tries to break himself against me, and I do the breaking. Pretty simple. I can deal with it.”
A look of concern descended on the middle-aged man’s face.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
“No.”
“What about your brother? Does Sebastian have trouble with your father?”
“Yeah, sure. Of course. We both do. We just deal with him differently.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” said James, standing up from the chair. “Forget I said anything. Can I go now?”
“We’re not finished,” replied Mr. King, motioning for James to sit back down.
James complied reluctantly, slumping lazily in the wooden chair.
“Sit up straight. Listen to me, James. I can’t have you starting fights in my school. This is the fourth time this semester. I have to suspend you, even though there’s only three days left until summer vacation. I’ll have to call your folks.”
James’s shoulders drooped, and he shook his head in defeat.
“Great! Just what I need. My dad’s gonna love that,” he said sarcastically, emphasizing the world love—a word, for him at least, that never belonged in the same sentence as the word father.
James walked the two miles home, kicking empty cans along the way, and thinking about what his father was going to do to him after Mr. King told him about the suspension. He still had bruises from their fight only the day before. Halfway home, walking by a bank, he saw a small bird fluttering on the sidewalk in front of one of the large windows. He could see a little tuft of gray feathers stuck to the glass about seven feet up, and he reasoned that the bird must have flown into it, the way birds often fly headlong into windows. The bird was on its side with its eyes closed, its beak cracked at the tip, its clawed toes opening and closing slowly, as if they were trying to grip a tree branch.