“You deaf?” Maya Keeler picked up what was left of my milk and poured it over the tuna wrap. Maya is the blond girl who isn’t more than an inch or so taller than me. I can’t fathom why, but it appears that she may currently be romantically involved with Dowell. In any case, Maya seems to have emerged, in these first few weeks of sophomore year, as the butcherboys’ mastermind, the brains behind the whole operation. She’s the one, for instance, who engineered the poetry-anthology soccer game you witnessed a couple of weeks ago. Just before Dowell knocked the book from my hand, it was Maya’s voice behind me saying, “There, check it. Right there.”
But let us return to the scene at hand. Phase two of the Jonathan Hopkirk Defensive Plan: Look for Rescue. I took a quick, surreptitious scan of the cafeteria for a lunchroom monitor, but of course the butcherboys had already done that before they moved in on me. No one wants a detention, let alone a mandatory anti-bullying essay assignment. Even I am not worth that hassle.
The last drops of milk were shaken out over my hair. The other kids at my table were now looking decidedly uncomfortable. Two senior girls zipped up their backpacks and vacated, leaving more than enough space for the butcherboys, but we’d moved past mere logistics now and were well into the principle of the thing.
Dowell reached down and “tased” my ribs with his fingers so hard that I winced sideways and almost toppled off my chair. “Pay attention, faggot,” he said.
Pardon the cliché, but at that moment I really did heave an inward sigh of relief. Phase three—Hope They Hang Themselves with Their Own Rope—was a triumphant success. Believe it or not, faggot is a word I don’t hear all that often. The F-word has become so strongly associated with homophobia and gay bashing that it’s almost magical in its ability to attract public disapproval.
Dowell had overstepped. The other butcherboys leaned away and shuffled back slightly, putting a tiny amount of space between themselves and Dowell and me, isolating us, glancing around for reactions. A couple of nearby kids had turned to watch.
“C’mon, asswipe, get up,” Liam said, but I could hear it in his voice; he was embarrassed, almost apologetic. “We need your seat.”
I swear, Kurl, me continuing to sit there with my sodden sandwich wasn’t just mulishness. I was preoccupied with a whole array of anxious thoughts: about how everyone was watching, about how I’d forgotten to set my alarm that morning and had to run out without breakfast, and how I’d spent all my money on this tuna wrap which was now a soggy mess, and how now I’d be shaky and stupid with low blood sugar for all my afternoon classes.
Anyhow, I finally looked up, and my eye met Dowell’s, and he reached over and grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and hauled me up out of the chair and cocked his fist and—well, you know the rest, Kurl, because that’s the precise moment you intervened.
My deus ex machina. It’s as though you appeared out of nowhere. You stepped right up to Dowell and me, and he immediately let go of my collar. Your face was utterly expressionless. I had noticed that about you already, watching you pass in the halls or sitting out on the steps behind the gym: You have this way of keeping your face perfectly still and serene no matter what’s going on around you.
Last Thursday, for instance, I watched a couple of junior girls approach you in the parking lot. They’d been whispering and giggling about you—I could see that even from halfway across the lawn, so I’m sure you saw it from where you were standing beside the driver’s-side door of your car.
You had a vicious new bruise on your cheekbone from some fight or another. I’ve heard the rumors about your fighting habit, of course. People are saying it was fighting that got you booted off the football team. I even overheard someone say you punched the coach.
Anyhow, when the girls finally worked up the nerve to approach you and started to chat you up, I wasn’t sure whether you would grin and flirt back or drive them off with a snarl. But you chose Option C, Kurl: Perfect Neutrality. You lifted your chin in a polite “hey” gesture and put a hand to your cheek and dropped it again—I guessed correctly about their opening line; they must have asked you about the bruise—but your expression stayed blank and you turned back to your car so soon that the girls practically wilted and slumped away.
That’s more or less how events proceeded in the cafeteria, too, isn’t it? You didn’t shake a fist, didn’t say, “Get lost, punks,” or whatever a person would typically say to disperse a group of butcherboys—you didn’t even sneer. You didn’t have to. That fading bruise on your face makes you look downright menacing. “Will fight anyone, for any reason,” it proclaims.
You gazed down upon Dowell for less than three seconds before he caved. He barely paused to snatch his bag of chips and his bottle of Dr Pepper off the table before turning tail and scuttling away. They’d all disappeared by the time I got my heartbeat back under control, and I collapsed into my chair at the now-empty table.
You picked up my milk-flooded tray and stood looking at me. For about one millisecond there was the tiniest flicker of something troubled across your face—I don’t know, I’ve thought it over quite a bit and I can’t puzzle out what it might have been. Maybe you were considering whether to ram the tray down my throat. You said, “Why aren’t you sitting at the gay table?” And then you turned and stalked off.
My answer? I am squarely with Bron on this one, Kurl. The Gable is Discrimination 101. Designating a specific area of a supposedly common space for a minority group, even unofficially, implies that the rest of the space is off-limits for that group. But in the interests of being forthright, I do know what you meant. You meant, “Why are you putting yourself in the path of these monsters, and if you’ve found yourself in that path accidentally, why are you staying here?” Answer? Choose one of the following: A. Stupidity. B. Stubbornness. C. Fatalism. D. Masochism. E. All of the Above.
Yours truly,
Jonathan Hopkirk
Wednesday, September 30
Dear Little JO,
You’re kind of a nosy little bugger aren’t you? Watching my face in the parking lot et cetera. How about you quit stalking me and spying on me around school. And I think I was pretty clear when I said no more poems. Do you really believe you’re the guy Walt is writing about? Do you think you’ve figured out the disdain and calmness of martyrs like he says? Do you think getting pushed around in the caf by a bunch of little jerkoffs makes you understand the large hearts of heroes?
I mean come on. Even the fact that you call them the butcherboys turns the whole thing into something more poetic and romantic than it is. Where did you come up with that name for them anyway? It doesn’t even make sense given the fact that half of them are girls. The thing about you, Jo, is that you seem to be sort of fooling yourself a lot of the time.
My brother Mark started in the Reserves when I was twelve years old. I guess he would’ve been seventeen at the time. Sometime a few months in, he told me about this one recruit at Camp Ripley who got caught giving a blowjob to a UPS delivery guy. Before his hearing the guy shot himself with his assault rifle. I remember Mark saying, At least he did the honorable thing. At the time it made me think of old-fashioned knights, samurai or something. The honorable thing. I mean when you think about it like that I guess you don’t have it so bad at Lincoln, Jo.
Sincerely,
AK
Wednesday, September 30
Dear Little JO,
I felt pretty bad about that last letter so I’m writing you another one during my free period. I mean it doesn’t matter if we put extra letters in Khang’s box. It’s not like she’s going to take marks off for doing that.
In Math I sit pretty close to Bron. We got to talking and at some point I told her about Khang’s assignment and that I’m writing to you. She thought it was hilarious. She goes, I bet you’re getting more than one page a week from him. And I bet he’s making you write more than one page a week too.
I said she seems to know you pretty well for being the kid brother of her friend. Sh
e said she and Shayna let you tag along with them everywhere since you don’t have friends your own age. I mean I was already aware you don’t have friends from seeing you at school alone all the time. But Bron sort of calls it like she sees it, doesn’t she? She says things that don’t sound harsh at the time but look harsh when you write them down. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’m mostly alone at school too. Alone everywhere actually.
I don’t know why I told Bron about our letters. I guess I was looking for a second opinion about you and the way you stand out so much. And how you do it on purpose, it seems. Wearing all those costumes et cetera. Drawing fire, is how I think of it. How you draw fire.
Writing that makes me think of something I read for the PSA assignment. In an explosion you will naturally want to hold your breath. Don’t though. The blast wave will overpressurize the air and burst your lungs like balloons. Most explosion victims die from bleeding lungs not shrapnel.
So I asked Bron why you wear those clothes. Today it was that shirt with the little red flowers and that greenish-brownish blazer. Tweed or something. Like you’re about to go hunting in Wales or someplace. Or that bow tie the other day with the swirly blue-and-yellow pattern. I mean I see those outfits on you and I nearly break into a sweat thinking about your safety. A walking target.
She goes, Hasn’t he introduced you to his idol Walt Whitman yet?
I had to laugh. Yeah, me and Walt are already on friendly terms, I said.
Bron goes, It’s cosplay.
I ask her what that is, and she explains that you’re a hard-core Whitman fanboy, so you dress like him. Bron’s exact words: hard-core fanboy.
Is that a thing? I ask her. Like, is there a club or something?
Nope, there’s just Jonathan, she says.
Do you remember that dog walker I mentioned? I’ve been paying a bit more attention to him lately. This morning the dogs were sort of pulling him along the sidewalk, and he goes, They are scenting the death of the natural world. Those were his exact words. I mean it almost sounded like poetry, like some of that poetry you’ve been sending me. Or maybe he actually said sensing, not scenting. Sensing the death of the natural world.
So apparently what you’re supposed to do in an explosion is reduce your lateral profile. This means lie on your side and put your arm over your exposed eye.
I guess the dog walker didn’t have time to follow these instructions. When I talk to him he has to turn his head all the way around to the other side so he can see me with his one eye and hear me with his one ear.
Sincerely,
AK
Thursday, October 1
Dear Kurl,
This is an extra letter, as I don’t have English again until Monday. I hope you don’t mind receiving two letters this week. It’ll just be a quick note, really—Lyle’s picking me up for a dentist appointment at 3:30 p.m., so I’ve just ducked into Ms. Khang’s classroom momentarily after school.
I want to explain why it looked like I was crying at lunch today at the bike racks, when you approached Bron, Shayna, and me. The moment was somewhat awkward all around, wasn’t it?
You didn’t technically approach us—it’s more accurate to say that you were just passing by us on your way to the bus stop. I suppose it must have been a surprise, looking over and discovering me with tears leaking down my face and both girls laughing unabashedly at me.
“What’s the matter?” you asked. “What happened to him?”
“Whoa!” Bron said. “What happened to you?” That black eye, Kurl! I’m sure all three of us were equally taken aback at the sight, but naturally it was Bron who didn’t hesitate to inquire.
“Nothing. A fight,” you retorted, and you veered off across the driveway before any of us could say anything more. I looked for you this afternoon, to apologize for our nosiness and to see if you were okay, but you didn’t come back to school after lunch.
Anyhow. Please know that you’re welcome to tell me about all this fighting if you care to (I can’t help but observe its frequency: that bruise on your cheekbone, today a black eye), but in the spirit of our “write about whatever you want” agreement, I won’t press the issue.
Meanwhile, though, I’d like to explain the phenomenon of my tears. My sister had just shown us an old postcard she found in one of Lyle’s books at home, in his Encyclopedia of Band Names. The postcard pictured a dive bar downtown called the Ace—do you know that place upstairs from the Skyline Diner, that diagonal sign with the sleazy-looking neon arrow pointing up the stairs? Anyhow, Shayna thought it might be our mother Raphael’s handwriting on the back of the card. Two short sentences: I must have impressed Axel anyways. He said the gig is mine if I want it. No address, no salutation.
Bron said she thought it must be an ironic postcard, printed as a joke by the bar, because there was no way the Ace would have been a bona fide tourist destination even back then.
Shayna said she was totally missing the point. “It must have been a solo gig, right? Not a Decent Fellows thing,” she said. “Mom must have had a side thing going.”
I badly wished to inspect the postcard more closely, but Shayna snatched it out of my hand and stuffed it in the inside pocket of her jean jacket. It was the snatching and stuffing that must have led to the tears on my face when you happened to pass by us. Something about this precious artifact from the past being handled so roughly. As I may have mentioned, there aren’t any photographs of Raphael Vogel in the Hopkirk house, so any evidence of my mother’s existence on this earth is freighted with extra emotional significance.
The truth, Kurl, is that I tend to cry quite easily. It’s a physical reflex I can’t seem to control, and I cry not only in reaction to sadness but to almost any emotional experience, including atypical ones like surprise and embarrassment. Cry is actually too strong a word for it. It’s more like involuntary leakage of a few tears, which I hardly notice and can try to hide with a surreptitious sweep of my fingertips. Naturally, though, it tends to throw more fuel on the fire when it comes to bullying and public-mockery scenarios.
Yours truly,
Jonathan Hopkirk
PS: I’ve found myself wondering, these last few days, how your brother got injured in Afghanistan. Don’t feel you have to disclose it, if you don’t care to.
Friday, October 2
Dear Little JO,
All right. Here’s a quick note back to you. It’s not a secret or anything. Mark’s hip bone got shattered on a rock when he was thrown from the back of a truck. He’d been over there a little more than eighteen months. Apparently he was standing in the truck bed with everyone else, and they came around a corner and there was a goat in the road. So of course the driver slammed on the brakes and swerved.
Mark was the only one who fell out. His rifle slid down an embankment and he lost it. He also broke his wrist. The bad luck was that the hospital in Fallujah was so under-resourced that he had to wait ages for surgery. Way too long. Then an insurgent attack on the base filled up the whole hospital, so in the end he got sent to Germany for the surgery. All that waiting apparently made the damage worse.
Sincerely,
AK
Saturday, October 3 +
Sunday, October 4
Dear Kurl,
Have you ever been to Basement Records? Shayna and I practically grew up there. As kids we would loiter in the store on Saturday afternoons while we waited for Lyle to finish teaching his classes at the music school upstairs.
Today Bron and Shayna were there with me because Bron has undertaken a project on her blog she’s calling “Life Notes.” She finds a fan of a particular record, interviews them about the role the record has played in their life and its influence, and then turns the interview into a song-by-song mini-biography (accompanied, of course, by the playlist). I’m enchanted by the notion that one could conceive of a project like this and just go out there without further ado and execute it. If it were me, I’d get utterly hung up about which record to post first. I’d be paralyz
ed with the implications of every choice: What tone would I be setting for the blog, what sort of readers might gravitate toward title x versus title y, what is the color scheme of the album’s cover art and will it clash with the blog template I’m currently employing? I’m exaggerating here for effect, Kurl, but only a little.
Anyhow. The three of us were spread out across the store, flipping through albums in various categories. Bron had already found Etta James’s Tell Mama for the post she was writing about her maternal aunt, Constance Otulah, so she was back in the P-for-Prince subsection of R & B. Shayna was over in Metal, and she and Bron were chatting across the aisles, reminiscing about some party last spring at which everyone had spontaneously gathered around and started dancing to “You Shook Me All Night Long.” I’d been absorbed in the liner notes of an early Flatt & Scruggs record, only eavesdropping with half an ear.
They were a couple of minutes further along in the conversation when I snapped to attention: “He sounded like some kind of wild animal in a trap!” Bron was saying. “I swear to God, the hair on my arms stood straight up.”
“Is this Kurl?” I asked. “Are you talking about Kurl?”
Shayna rolled her eyes; I’d told her about our English assignment. “Jojo is some kind of Adam Kurlansky anthropologist, now that he’s getting letters from him.”
“I heard,” Bron said. “You do know that guy would swat you like a gnat if you ever tried to talk to him in real life, right?”
“What happened at the party, though?” I said.
Then Bron recounted how the members of the football team had bent a wire coat hanger into the letter W for Wolverines and heated it up on the stove and burned it into each other’s skin. When they came around to you, Kurl, you sat down in the kitchen chair like everyone before you. The others had taken off their shirts or jeans to accept the brand somewhere hidden, but you told them you wanted it right on your bicep. When they brought the hot wire near your arm you kept flinching away, and when they tried to hold you steady for it, according to Bron, you “suddenly went nuclear.”
We Contain Multitudes Page 3