Ben got much better marks in school, of course, though David tried to discount the importance of this, feeling that he himself was just “mentally lazy,” as Mr. Skelton had once called him. He didn’t consider algebra, for instance, to be a discipline that could prove his brain unequal to Ben’s. He considered those who were good at it to be slightly mad, and their concentration upon its rigid difficulties rather inhuman. But of course Ben was very good at that sort of thing; his homework was always done. Most of the boys in school that year didn’t care much about homework, but Ben always did what he contracted to do. David considered this a lack of a sense of humor; the teachers themselves didn’t seem to care as much as Ben did. Sometimes they would study their algebra or trigonometry together at the Whipples’ house. These sessions were mostly for David’s benefit, because, whatever the reason, David could hardly cope with things mathematical. Ben was appalled at the shortness of his span of attention.
“Look,” Ben would say. “You take the sine minus the cosine…” And with his words, so sober and knowledgeable, David would feel a weakness setting in, a strange, highly pleasant weakness in his legs and arms—euphoric, because everything became hilariously funny—and he’d look at an equation made of things called sines and cosines and see in it elaborate scansions. One, without its pluses and minuses, went, “Sine, cosine, cosine, sine=cosine, sosine, sine, sine.” This David sang to the tune of “Yankee Doodle,” while Ben looked stern and disgusted. David thought it hysterically funny, and his arms turned so weak from laughter he couldn’t even hold a pencil. “Sine minus cosine!” Ben said, and David fell out of his chair onto the floor, screaming, “I’ll sign! I’ll sign anything! Just let me out of here!”
For some reason, he found it impossible to take those steps, those intermediate little steps, toward what he wanted to be. He wanted to be grown-up and powerful right now—to be part of the war, part of the world. Ben took each step as it came, and really mastered it. His head was full of equations and ways to factor them. David never took the time. But he was stronger than Ben; he could take him in a fight. He could get him down, but always he was fearfully aware of the difference between his mind and Ben’s, and he knew that what he took down to the dirt and held there was somehow more intelligent, more valuable than he was.
Ben had many ways of being irritating. His bike, for instance, and his loyalty to that monster. It had thirty-inch wheels, and the tires were about as big around as a thumb. These were irreplaceable, of course, and not just because of the war—where could anyone have ever found such oddities? The rubber, in the few places where it showed through the friction tape, was very old, actually sticky to the touch. Nearly everybody else had balloon tires.
Between the girls’ entrance and the boys’ entrance to the high school was a cement sidewalk, and frost had heaved up one of the blocks so that it was canted at about a twenty-degree angle. Before school and after school, while the girls stood at their entrance and watched, the boys would get on their bikes, head down the walk and hit that ramp. Pete Kelly had the record jump—a good fifteen feet, marked in chalk with his name. David’s was nowhere near that, and Ben’s was even less; his excuse was his giraffelike bike. David always tried to get Ben to use his, a prewar Elgin, but Ben never would. Once when it was Ben’s turn to go, he tried again. “Here, take mine,” he said, in a rather unpleasant voice that was an insult to Ben’s bike. The other jumpers were standing around impatiently, making airplane noises, and he didn’t hear Ben’s answer. He reached for Ben’s bike and at the same time pushed the Elgin toward him by the center of the handlebars.
With a short, violent move, Ben shoved his hand away. “Mine!” he said. “I’ll use mine!”
“Okay, hammerhead,” David said.
It was Ben’s loyalty to that bike, or perhaps the way he could bring up out of nowhere something that sounded like principle, that would enrage David. At the same time, he had to respect it, and that made it even more irritating. Here Ben was, with his narrow, washed-out face and lank, washed-out-looking hair, yet he could be as recalcitrant as a rock. David kept thinking he should have been more like his father, who looked like him but was a shy, friendly man who had to say hello a thousand times a day on his mail route and still seemed to enjoy it. For a moment he felt like kicking out a few of Ben’s spokes, but he didn’t, and Ben went ahead and made his usual short jump. David felt that Ben didn’t really approve of the jumping, but they all had to do it. This was in lieu of being Eddie Kusacs in his Corsair, he supposed.
On the way home that afternoon he and Ben ended up fighting, their bikes in a pile on the sidewalk. He had Ben pinned, as usual, but in the process Ben had hit him in the nose, and it felt like a wedge driven between his eyes. His poor nose; he couldn’t comfort it because he needed both hands and all his strength to hold Ben down. His cheekbones ached, and he seemed to taste the metal fillings in his teeth. He had Ben’s head halfway under someone’s barberry hedge, and one of the little thorns had come off its branch and was sticking in Ben’s cheek.
“There’s a thorn sticking in your cheek,” he said. “I can see it sticking right in there.”
Convulsive movements on Ben’s part. His arm rose, and for the space of an inch it was invincible; David couldn’t stop it. But Ben’s strength was like a pump working upon David’s tiny but real center of fear, and this forced strength into him so that he could push Ben back down again. His bony wrists gave David’s fingers pain as he leaned on them.
“Sticking right into your flesh,” he said. “Must be in a quarter of an inch.”
Ben would never say a word while they were fighting. For him it was all beyond words, it was all power. He had no need to talk because what he wanted to do was clear enough. David had to talk. He was always talking at Ben’s face, which was as unforgiving as a bird’s. He’d talk and talk at that smooth, blank face while Ben despised his arguments.
“Will you give up? Will you give up? Can’t you see I’ve got you pinned, you bastard! Hey, Ben, will you give up? I’ll spit in your eyes, you bastard!”
He felt Ben waiting, letting his strength return. He was always just barely surprised by Ben’s sudden strategies. Ben tried to butt his face with his forehead, and almost did. When David fought him, it was always to contain, to immobilize him. Though he may have bragged that he was deadly, any blow of Ben’s that was really meant to hurt stayed with him for days, frightening yet admirable.
Even when Ben’s father came along, David didn’t dare let him up.
“What’s going on here?” Mr. Caswell said mildly. He was smiling, which shocked David. He hardly dared look away from Ben, but he had to look up at Mr. Caswell’s thin yet somehow droopy face.
Since Ben wouldn’t talk, he had to answer. “We’re wrestling,” he said.
Mr. Caswell shifted his leather mailbag from one thin shoulder to another, then pulled his lapels straight. He just stood there in his baggy uniform, and it seemed strange to David to see a face so like Ben’s yet so mild. “Why don’t you come along home?”
“I don’t want to let him up,” David said.
Mr. Caswell understood why. “Ben,” he said, “if David lets you up, will you stop fighting?”
Ben wouldn’t answer; he tried to bridge and throw David off. David threw his weight on him hard and flattened him out again. Then he tried to butt David with his forehead, but he’d tried that before.
“You boys are friends,” Mr. Caswell said. “Why do you have to fight so much?”
“He wouldn’t use my bike!” David said. He was very angry, and sorry for himself, even afraid that he might cry.
“Ben wouldn’t use your bike?”
“He wouldn’t use it!”
“My goodness!” Mr. Caswell said, trying to be funny. He was a funny man, actually. One time he told them he had a cold in his elbow, and he said it in such a serious, surprised sort of voice even Ben laughed. “Heavens to Betsy! It’s like I tried to give a man five dollars and he wouldn’t take i
t so I hit him!”
Neither Ben nor David thought this was very funny.
“Well, what are you going to do when it comes suppertime? Can we send out some food for you?” Mr. Caswell asked.
“I don’t want to keep him down!” David burst out, regretting it immediately, because he saw a flicker of satisfaction on Ben’s face. “I wish I had another arm,” he said through his teeth. “I’d bash your face in!”
“Well, boys,” Mr. Caswell said, “are you going to hurt yourselves?”
“I don’t want to hurt him!” David said, still feeling sorry for himself. After all, hadn’t he won this fight?
“Ben?” Mr. Caswell said.
Ben wouldn’t answer.
“Ben,” Mr. Caswell said. David sensed pride and resignation in the word. Mr. Caswell thought for a moment, then said, “Well, I’m not going to butt in. Seems you’re both old enough so it wouldn’t help anyway. I’d stop and chat awhile, but I’ve got to finish my route.”
Before he left them, he reached down and with gentle fingers brushed the thorn from Ben’s cheek. It was just in the skin, and Ben’s cheek didn’t even bleed. Then he was off, ambling along in his casual, mailman’s stride, leaving them with their problem.
It was now late in the afternoon. Although on these spring evenings it stayed light until nearly nine o’clock, the quality of the light changed just perceptibly, and the edges and colors of the barberry hedge grew sharp with the slanting light. To David they seemed to have been prisoners of that small place for hours, and he began to recognize each tuft of grass. A few inches from Ben’s white hand was a crushed dandelion stem, split and bent so that he could see the silver inside of it, and he saw it again, with recognition, noting that it hadn’t changed. Ben strained against his weight, and each time David could summon just enough strength to overpower him.
How long were they held in that deadlock? Ben’s face flickered in the new light as David’s eyes moved, and the small twigs faded upward into Ben’s hair. David knew Ben would never give up. Once Ben actually spoke. “Will you give up?” Ben asked. It was like a dream in which logic turns crazy. Was Ben the one who held him down? Once Ben caught him off guard, and for a violent moment they scrabbled, sobbing, into the barberry hedge. He fought Ben back down again, and brought him gasping into the dirt alongside the hedge. He hadn’t known he had such strength; he’d bent Ben’s arms where he had no leverage, where pain alone seemed to be his strength. His fingers seemed to have gone right through Ben’s wrists between tendon and bone. Ben cursed him in a high, strangely babyish voice, half bawling—one long little scream. He sobbed his own curses back at Ben, crying because it wasn’t fair that his greater strength hadn’t won this fight. Then there were long periods of silence, almost of relaxation, as he listened to cars pass along the street. Suddenly they both knew it must be long past suppertime.
And somehow their fight ended, not necessarily because of the time and its official demand upon them. Their fights always had to end in some sort of truce, which could be forgotten, so that they could fight again the next time. Neither of them ever won. On this occasion, he would have to meet Ben the next day, Saturday, because of their jobs at Milledge & Cunningham. And Sunday night Ben would be relieving him again on the airraid tower. They couldn’t get away from each other if they tried.
When he got home there was the matter of missing supper, and his soiled clothes. Also, about fourteen people had seen the fight, including Horace and Kate. It was decided that after supper and a bath he would go to the Caswells’ and apologize. This was his mother’s decision; she took a totally unreasonable attitude toward what was to him an ordinary occurrence. His arguments against this were useless.
He didn’t mind facing Ben or his father, but Mrs. Caswell was another thing. She usually affected a richly ironic tone that left him speechless—even, he sometimes felt, armless and legless. He couldn’t cope with it. “To what honor do we owe your illustrious presence, Sir David?” That sort of thing. Mr. Caswell was hardly ever in sight. He’d be down in the basement or out in the garage.
He rode his bike the two blocks to Ben’s house. It was nearly ten o’clock, and he didn’t have a light. There was only one streetlight in between, at the bottom of High Street, but they always rode right on through the darkness. Ben’s little house was always strange, after the Whipples’ huge house. The Atwater Kent radio touched the living-room sofa on one side and the matching chair on the other. He frequently bumped his head when he went upstairs. Ben was an only child, so they didn’t need much room, but to see him stooping around in the halls and in his own narrow, low-ceilinged room made David want to get outside. The place was like a doll’s house, and Mrs. Caswell was the doll—she was round and short. The rest of them should have been outside, sticking their hands in through the windows. Nothing inside ever seemed to change, to get used; the lace antimacassars on the sofa arms never got dirty, never were pushed askew.
When he reached the house, he dropped his bike on the grass and went up to the little porch as quietly as he could. Finally he knocked, and Mrs. Caswell came to the door. Her skin had tiny striations on it, like a Mcintosh apple; in some kinds of light she looked as though she had a rash all over. She was full of pressure, and she made him nervous.
“David, David, David,” she said, sighing with weary tolerance, as though he’d been there too often. Which he certainly hadn’t. She smiled—she always smiled—and he thought it hurt her to smile, because that constant irony seemed to be the result of pain.
She put her hand on his arm and drew him inside; she was always touching him. “Our postman is in his hobby shop,” she said, “and our good boy is in his books.”
She sat him down, too deeply, into the sofa. He never knew where to sit on it, in that last moment when there was still a little choice, because the cushions tilted and shifted. This time he sat next to the arm, too deep, but he hooked an elbow over the arm to hold himself up.
“Shouldn’t you allow Benjamin to do his homework?” she asked. “I suppose yours is all done, neat as pie?”
“No,” he said. Already he was going into a mild, classroomlike coma. Nothing that was going to happen was anything he wanted to happen.
“But David,” she said, affecting a reasonable tone, “how can our Benjamin be valedictorian if we don’t let him study?”
This was ridiculous. Nothing in the world could keep Ben from being valedictorian. Usually a girl was, because they took easy subjects like home economics or typing, but Ben’s only rival, Joan Warren, had moved to Northlee. Who cared, anyway? He didn’t think Ben cared; Ben just had the habit of doing all his work. Nothing like that could ever really be pinned on Ben. But he thought: Why is she trying to ruin her son’s reputation? His own mother would have more sense than that.
Ben had heard them, and came stooping down the stairs, no opinion visible on his sallow face.
“Hi, Dave,” he said. His eyes were blank, as though he were still thinking equations.
It was then that David confessed, lying, and trying to make little of it. “We were just wrestling,” he said.
“My little boys were wrestling!” Mrs. Caswell said. “My little cubs, trying out their new muscles!”
“Yeah,” David said. “Just wrestling a little.” He got up to go, but as he turned toward the door she came up to him and took him fiercely by the arm. He looked down into her hard face.
“Don’t you realize that Benjamin is a genius?” she said. There was a lot of hissing in her voice; she really meant it. He didn’t really doubt it himself. But she scared him. She scared him by saying such a crazy thing. He jerked his arm away from her hand and ran out of the house.
A few days later, just before school let out, Eddie Kusacs buzzed them all again. He came five times that spring, and each time would remain distinct in David’s memory. He never knew where Eddie came from, or what he was doing in a Marine Corsair so far from the sea. But there he was, fracturing the blue sky above the high sc
hool, fracturing their attention, fracturing the school, the teachers, telling them all how they were prisoners of their little town. Then he was gone.
The bicycle jumping that afternoon was more daring than usual. Pete Kelly established a new record. David beat his old mark by one foot. The sunlight made him sneeze as it bounced off the sidewalk, and beneath him was the familiar noise of sprockets and spokes, the little stressful twangs and creaks of his bike—then the lift and belly thrill of the flight. No one went very high in the air, but when he landed there was a dense, hard push through his elbows, and his handlebars squeaked down an inch or two. Then the slewing in the dry dirt beyond the walk, and for a moment all the girls’ eyes were upon him.
As Ben came up to take his ritual jump, David said, “Come on, genius.” This was a bit like poking a snake, and he didn’t say it very loudly. He never knew if Ben heard it or not. But afterwards he would still see him clearly as he swung his long leg up over his bike—his blue sock and a section of white, hairless leg, thin and uniform as a length of two-inch pipe. He pushed off and began to pump hard. His long, limp hair came down over his forehead, and the wind pushed it aside, parted it in the middle. His mouth was set, made into a little slit by effort—the same expression he wore when he was mad at David—as he hunched over those strange handlebars that bent down and around like rams’ horns. There he went, his chain grinding, and he hit the ramp. David always thought his tire blew then and his wheel buckled later, when he landed, but others said no, everything went haywire at once.
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