White Mythology

by WD Clarke

  We stank, was all he said as we got in. He was saving his best lines for later. And it was true: we did. We smelled to the highest of high heaven. We besmirched, befouled, bedevilled the automotive environment with our meat-eater musk. Pepé le Pieu—that amorous innocent, that suave cartoon skunk hunk who blithely carried pandemonium with him wherever he went—had nothing on us, and our subjective noses, like Pepé’s, were blissfully ignorant of our own objective reality. Yet neither Gerald nor I would have cared in the least if we had become aware of it, since as the entire hockey team assessed the matter, smelliness was akin to manliness, and it was esteemed to be a matter of honour and duty to abstain from washing your equipment for the entire season. At any rate, we had no choice but to keep our gear on all through the harangue that followed in the basement, for there could be no question of our showering and changing first. As harangues went, it was typical of its kind, and did not deviate from an all-too-familiar template:

  (i.) Introduce problem as rhetorical question

  (ii.) Circumnavigate problem, lingering, as a lover might, indefatigably over each microcosmic detail

  (iii.) Pass immediate judgement, assign considerable blame

  (iv.) Discover heretofore unnoticed, seemingly trivial facets of problem, without which problem cannot be properly (perhaps even possibly) understood

  (v.) Obsess over said minor details until it becomes undeniably clear that they are, in fact, major—that is, that they are crucial to the penetration of the core, to the essence of problem

  (vi.) Elaborate, with lyrical passion, dramatic palpability and epic domain-and-range, upon the who-what-where-when-and-whys of the give-and-take of blame

  (vii.) Repeat

  (viii.) Repeat

  (ix.) Repeat

  That is, there was no deviation until Gerald said, surprisingly: I think I’ve heard about enough.

  Silence, and the two men (I was only just beginning to realize that Gerald was being drafted into the major leagues) stared at one another. Finally, perhaps a little unnerved by his own new-found nerviness, who knows? Gerald said:

  Enough, get it?

  And he turned and walked away, moving with a bit too much deliberation, as if he were a drunk trying to evade the gaze of the police, or someone who had just noticed his Ex on the street, and making too much of a show at pretending that he hadn’t. He plodded up the stairs, each of which protested loudly as he went, and then, I could hear, made his way towards the front of the house. Dad followed him at a fair distance, and I followed dad, each of us speechless and free-will-less, as if in a trance.

  When we got to the main floor we saw him standing at the front entrance to the house. He’d opened the main door, but hadn’t let go of the knob. He looked back, over his shoulder, smirking as if to say: I’m not really looking over my shoulder, I’m not looking at you, and then he shoved his hand through the glass of the storm door.

  I knew where he was going, too. He walked down the driveway, his hand bleeding. He was going to Victor’s.

  Dad never said a word about the window. It got fixed before Mom returned home. And that would prove to have been our final lecture. Things was changin’, alright, the wheel was turnin’. Gerald was ascending, Dad descending. But what about me? Where was I going? Where was I?

  The game was called Shot In The Dark. Before, as kids, we’d played it with cap guns, plastic Fisher-Price milk bottles, and a Fisher-Price milk truck. It was suitable for three or more people, preferably more. We took it in turns to be the one with the gun, the Outsider, the Vigilante. This individual would have to descend into a pitch-black, basement Rec Room that had been turned into one huge fort of overturned tables, couches, cushions and vinyl bean-bag chairs. The fort was re-arranged after every round, so that the lone gunslinger would have no foreknowledge of where things were or where the others might be hiding. He’d have to descend the stairs and enter a confusing and threatening world where he and he alone was fighting for Truth and Justice. More often than not, of course, evil would triumph, for the Hero’s task was an exceedingly difficult one: to navigate blindly through what amounted to a giant labyrinthine mousetrap; to kill, if need be, a corporate enemy (whose name, of course, was Legion), each member of which was vying with the others for the privilege of assassinating the invader with a tossed milk bottle; to re-capture, ultimately, the stolen milk truck; and to re-establish, if only momentarily, a moral universe that had been, and that would again be, overturned—all this, all to earn the right to begin again, to re-enter the trap and to pitch oneself against one’s ultimate fate one more time.

  As we grew older, the game evolved along with us. We took it outside, expanded its scope, evangelized it to more of our friends, and instinctively proceeded to base it upon what seemed to us to be a more plausible cosmology. Gone was the series of solitary messiahs pitched against an army of vipers (though each real, flesh-and-blood saviour was doomed to fail in the earlier version of the game, it was always understood that the ideal hero, the saviour-at-the-end-of-time, would somehow ultimately prevail). In its place we erected the amoral, Manichean nationalism of the chessboard, in which the forces of light and dark were both opposite and equal, and were locked in perpetual, ineluctable struggle. But we did not impute ‘goodness’ or ‘evil’ upon the binary black and white of our game; such terms were empty of meaning within its boundaries. Rather, we simply divided the world into ‘Us’ and ‘Them’.

  Gipper pretty well forced my brother to choose me, but I could see the masking-tape dividing-line flash briefly across the surface of Gerald’s eyes. Then he dismissed the thought and pressed professionally on to the task at hand, calling his Side to order while the other team went off to their own fort, to their own flag. It was nearly dusk. Both Gerald and Victor were dressed in Camo gear they’d ordered from Soldier of Fortune magazine. Victor—distant, formal, rigid—stood by his side, holding on to a green garbage bag-full of equipment, while Gerald addressed us rooks, bishops, knights and pawns.

  It is nearly dusk, he said. We ‘won’ the coin toss, as you know, and Gipper will be expecting us to attack quickly and with full force as soon as it’s dark. He thinks we’ll be going balls-out on this one, all impatient and hasty, and I’d like him to go on thinking that. That’s why I’m going to send two of you out with half our ammunition and all of our smoke bombs, to stage a diversionary invasion. More on that later. Victor, give Bobby the extra Cammo gear. Bobby, you’re going to be The Man tonight; you’re going out behind us to the road, and circle around behind them while they’re busy being diverted, and just waltz right in and take their flag, all by your lonesome. They’ll have a skeleton crew manning the fort, but they won’t be watching their backside. They’ll be worrying about holding off our full-bore ‘attack’, while the rest of them will be coming at us from all sides, expecting there’ll be as few of us here as they’ve got at their fort, thinking they can confuse us and overwhelm us & grab our flag before we can grab theirs. But, of course, thinking that, they’ll be wrong.

  We didn’t ask how Gerald knew this. We knew how he knew it. He’d placed a mole inside Gipper’s organization, bribing Mike Mullaney with a gross of bottle rockets, and had let Gipper choose him for the Other Side. This may or may not have been fair, but it was not yet against the rules. And Mike had reported on Gipper’s strategy to his real boss at 1630 hours, at the suppertime break, when the two forts had been readied.

  We reassembled at 1743 hours. I was chosen to lead the diversionary invasion, with Bobby’s twin brother Jack as my aide-de-camp. Tora! Tora! Tora! I said to Jack, who had seen the movie of the same name and understood what I meant by it: the two of us were being sent out as Kamikazes, and would not be expected to return. We would be outnumbered 2.5 to 1, and our only hope of emerging unscathed was our considerable supply of smoke bombs, with which we were to convince Gipper’s side that we were a much more potent force than we really were.

  Smoke bombs are about two inches long, and 5∕8 ths of an inch in dia
meter, the same size as an M-80. We had two dozen of them, which would last us about 9 minutes if we deployed them in judicious one-minute intervals, after an initial volley of six, which needed to be within five to ten seconds of each other in order to create the requisite ‘wall-of-smoke’ that Gerald had ordered.

  Add to that the half-gross of bottle rockets we were to launch, as well as the two-dozen belts of firecracker grenades and the full dozen of M-80 mortar bombs, and we had a lot to deal with, and needed to pay attention. We wouldn’t have much chance to watch out for incoming rounds. We’ve got a fighting chance, anyway, Jack said optimistically. Perhaps, I said. Perhaps.

  Gerald called both Sides out into No-Man’s Land for a review of the rules. He had typed them, using Mom’s ultra-hefty ibm Selectric typewriter (pilfered from dad’s office at Jonesco) onto the front and back of one of the white cardboard inserts from dad’s drycleaned dress shirts. Then he had had them laminated down at the office supply store, so they were pretty much indestructible.

  Ok, he said, a lot of you already know the rules, but some of you are new. I won’t say much about those who know the rules but don’t care to keep them, except: watch it! So, anyway, here they are, the rules are as follows:

  1. The Game and Match:

  a.) The goal of sitd (Shot In The Dark) is to capture the Other Side’s flag.

  b.) When one Side’s flag is captured all hostilities cease and the Game is over.

  c.) The Side capturing the flag is declared to be the winner of the Game.

  d.) The first Side to win 4 Games out of 7 is the winner of the Match.

  e.) There shall be at most one Game contested per night, and no less than one per week.

  f.) A tentative schedule will be posted by the Convenor. It will be the General’s responsibility to delegate a Communications Officer, who will keep his Side informed of any scheduling changes.

  2. Whistles:

  a.) Each Side is supplied with a distinctive whistle.

  b.) Each Side has a designated whistle-blower.

  c.) Hostilities commence at dusk. ‘Dusk’ is defined by the mutual agreement of both Generals.

  d.) Both Generals are said to be in agreement as to the arrival of dusk when one Side sounds its whistle and the Other Side sounds a reply.

  e.) When a flag is captured the losing Side is obliged to sound its whistle a second time, signalling the end to all hostilities.

  f.) Failure to sound the whistle immediately upon the capture of one’s flag will result in the suspension of both the offending Side’s whistle-blower and General for 5 games.

  g.) Each Side will make its designated whistle-blower known to the Other before the commencement of hostilities.

  3. Combatants:

  a.) Membership and participation in sitd is a privilege, and is by invitation only. No Yacht Club members allowed!

  b.) Failure to comply with the Rules & Regulations of sitd may result in forfeiture of membership, at the discretion of the Convenor.

  c.) Failure to pay membership dues will result in the forfeiture of the privilege of membership.

  4. Death and the Honor System:

  a.) If you get hit above the waist (but below the neck) with a bottle rocket, you are officially Dead.

  b.) If you get hit below the waist with a bottle rocket, you are officially Paralysed, from the waist down.

  c.) If you get hit in the arm with a bottle rocket, you officially lose the use of that arm.

  d.) If you hit someone else in the head with a bottle rocket, you are officially Dead, while they are officially Unharmed.

  e.) If you get hit with an exploding belt of firecrackers, you are officially Dead.

  f.) If an exploding belt of firecrackers lands within one of your own stride lengths of any part of your anatomy, you are officially Paralysed from the waist down.

  g.) If you are hit by, or are caught within 3 stride-lengths of an exploding M-80, you are officially, Unrecognizably, Dead. —Dead, Dead, Dead, D-E-D Dead.

  h.) Failure to own up to, and to clearly (and with sufficient volume) announce your own Demise, will result in an immediate 3 game suspension.

  5. Safety

  a.) Protective eyewear is to be worn at all times, upon the commencement of Hostilities.

  b.) Anyone who goes home crying to Mommy when they get hurt will be set upon and severely beaten!

  c.) Never, ever, under any circumstances, allow ammunition to come into contact with flammable objects!

  Carpe Diem! Gerald said finally, over much foot shuffling, and the two Sides went off to their respective fortresses. The Other Side blew their whistle shortly thereafter, and Gerald had without hesitation motioned to Victor’s brother Piotr to do the same. Victor then electronically ignited the ceremonial Estes rocket, whose launch heralded the beginning of the Autumn Test Match. The rocket, a yellow two-and-a-half foot-long cardboard-and-balsa stunner, had been built by Gerald and Victor, and sported a clear plastic payload tube near the nose. Gerald had placed three raw eggs in the tube, which would be jettisoned by an explosive charge as the rocket reached apogee, 4 or 5 seconds after the solid fuel Estes engine ran out. It was unlikely, Victor unnecessarily said, that the eggs would drop anywhere nearby enough to have made it worth it. Jack Kennedy and I put on black woollen caps and crept off into the night, laden with ‘goodies’, as Jack called them. Hostilities commenced.

  I glanced at my watch, which, along with the others’, had been synchronized with Gerald’s, which had itself been synchronized with the radio signal from the atomic clock in Colorado earlier that afternoon. It was 1757 hours. Gerald had instructed us to wait until 1804 hours. We did.

  We hurled our initial volley of 6 ssmoke bombs, coming at Gipper from a 45° off midline, me on the left and Jack on the right. Jack could throw about 40 yards, and I could manage a good 50 or 55, and we created an elaborate cross-hatching pattern with these first half-dozen. Then Jack began to work the Bottle while I dealt with the various bombs, skillfully alternating the M-80s and the firecrackers with the smokers.

  It went quite well, and we obeyed our orders (‘Under no circumstances are you to get closer than 40 yards of their fort!’) to the letter. We deployed our ammunition at such a rate that, it seemed, we were proving successful at concealing the true paucity of our numbers. We worked together so flawlessly, in fact, Jack & I, that it felt not so much like a well-tuned machine as like an organic whole, the organs of a larger body, something truly alive. We slipped into that synergistic groove, that transcendent Zone, for some minutes, disregarding our watches, trusting our instincts. I am certain that we had the defenders both panicked and baffled, that they would have scratched their collective heads if we had given them time to do so. But we didn’t. We were uncannily aggressive. I know this for a fact, because barely a round came out of their fort for every five or six of ours that went in.

  Then Fortune spun her wheel … and suddenly, I felt hollow, almost nauseous. Then I felt it radiating from my stomach to my nerve-endings, like the kind of lightning that moves from ground to cloud instead of vice versa. Reverse lightning. I felt it, well in advance of any substantive evidence, any merely sensory input could corroborate it. I felt it long before anything actually happened.

  I glanced down at my watch, for the first time since 1804 hours. It was 1812, eight minutes in.

  At 1813 hours we were supposed to deploy our penultimate rounds, and then I was to move 10 yards closer, close enough to put my final 2 smokers just behind their fort, on either side. Jack had our team’s one signal flare with him (a six-inch, 10-ball cylinder), and he would light it simultaneously with my final volley, which would signal the by-now-ensconced and ready-to-pounce Bobby to ready himself.

  I broke silence for the first time, and shouted the codeword, ‘Balls’, over to Jack. He had anchored the fireworks tube in to the ground, lit it, and I hucked the first of the final 3 smoke bombs. I had two left, and nothing else. The last of my confidence escaped into the ether, and was rep
laced by that empty, vacant feeling. I was now defenceless, and somewhat afraid. The phosphorous spheres shot up, one after the other at 3 second intervals, each briefly lighting up the sky over our heads. Jack, Bobby and I were all to wait for the last of the charges (and to count to 30 Mississippis, in case of a dud round), and then we were to carry out our Final Orders. After throwing my final two smokers behind their fort, I was to advance with Jack into the rapidly clearing area 25 yards out, and the two of us were to make targets of ourselves, dashing back and forth in front of their fort to distract them while Bobby came at their flag from behind.

  The fifth ball of fireworks shot up, exploded like a star, then the sixth, and seventh. This was it. I had my final rounds ready, one in my pocket, the other in my right hand. In my left I held a Bic lighter. My teeth were clenched together.