TWO
THE OTHER BOYS were bigger. Jeremy hated that. A fight was bad enough. Every ten year old boy knows you have to have them from time to time. Especially ten year old boys who happen to be a few grades smarter than maybe they ought to be. But there was a difference between a fight and an all out beating.
Jeremy watched from his spot under the oak as the three bigger boys converged on the new kid, all sweaty arms and little eyes. The new boy was Korean, just introduced in class that morning as Seung Quan. He had been reading by himself at the edge of the dusty school yard, as Jeremy was under his oak, when the welcoming committee had spotted him. Except they didn’t call it a school yard here at the Ottawa Institute for Learning, it was a free area. Poor kids had recess in school yards, Ottawa Institute peers took afternoon contemplation in the free area. But new kids who looked a little different and read by themselves got their asses kicked no matter how much money their parents might have. This might be the manicured suburbs, but it was still Detroit.
Jeremy squinted from under his canopy of shade into the June sun, hot and white. The light bleached away the Rockwellian color from the scene. There would be no charming tussle ending with four new friends for life, each covered with badge-of-honor bruises. The three big American boys were going to beat the yellow off the little Korean kid and laugh while they did it. Jeremy glanced down at the cover of his book. Enthroned in his high-tech wheelchair, Stephen Hawking gazed back, knowing, and somehow as ageless as the star field behind him. Jeremy brushed a lock of curly blond hair out of his eyes and stood up.
As he started into the sun from under his shade tree, Jeremy wondered if he should call for reinforcements. The cell phone clipped to his belt was there for a reason—his father, on the rare occasion he might be around, was always reminding him of that. If he pressed number 2 on the speed dial, Mr. Horton would materialize and take care of any situation that needed taking care of.
Jeremy visualized the bodyguard his father had assigned to watch over his only son: Mr. Horton’s six foot four inches of brick-walled body ended under a scalp so highly polished you could pick your teeth in its reflection. Jeremy couldn’t imagine anyone with enough courage or self-loathing to try, except maybe his father. His father owned Mr. Horton, or paid him well enough so the distinction between absolute ownership and well-compensated loyalty was indiscernible.
Across the yard, the three boys closed around Seung like a triplet of glaciers. Jeremy’s hand strayed near the cell phone—a gunfighter going for his Colt—and stopped as one of his father’s many axioms surfaced. Never over-extend. Overkill just causes more problems by leaving you exposed. His father had said as much from the sidelines during a fencing lesson. Frank Mason might have been only an occasional presence in his son’s life, but when he did appear, he always left a mark in the form of a lesson or gift. Among his father’s many specialties was the art of sword play. Like chess at high speed, son. Teach your mind to focus on fast-forward and you’ll always win. Jeremy surveyed the scene again. He thought of Mr. Horton and the high-caliber bulge under the left lapel of his suit. Jeremy shook his head, his fingers dropping from the phone. This was a playground, not a beach head. And besides, if he overextended now it would only cause more problems later. His dad might not be the world’s most attentive parent, but he was smart.
Jeremy looked toward the school building, but at the Ottawa Institute, the Learning Guides (never teachers) gave the student peers as much room as they could. Ottawa peers were far too socially advanced to need the kind of supervision that public school children required. The learning guides were most likely ensconced within The Retreat (teacher’s lounge), partaking of refreshments and stimulating conversation (smoking cigarettes and bullshitting). Jeremy squinted through the sunlight at the school’s blank windows, sunglasses on a disinterested face.
He would have to wing it.
Jeremy jogged up to the nasty little group just as Seung peered up at the glowering threesome. He might be a foreigner, but from the look on his face, Seung knew this scenario well enough. Brutality doesn’t need a language to get its point across. Jeremy who, in spite of his privileged life, had been on the receiving end of a pummeling or two, knew that look. It was resignation, a mental dropping of the shoulders. It was Oh shit, let’s just get this over with. And it was just as recognizable on Korean features as on his own.
Jeremy singled out the leader and called, “Hey, Noah,” to Noah Wright, son of Preston Wright, heir to the Wright Way Cleaning products fortune. Noah, the biggest of the three, turned what would become a body of gross proportion later in life, but was now little more than “husky”, and set his gaze on Jeremy.
“Fuck off, faggot,” he said through fleshy lips. “This is between us and the chink.”
Jeremy tried to keep the shakes that jigged his spine from showing in his voice. He knew he should be scared, but he wasn’t. He was furious. It was something about unfairness that did it to him, set him off like this. Jeremy didn’t know why, but he’d been like this as long as he could remember. He didn’t think it was from one of his father’s many lessons, though. The concept of fair and unfair semmed to elude Frank Mason. It’s not that the world’s unfair, Jer-boy. There’s no such thing as fair. Fair is an illusion. During all of these lessons, Jeremy nodded like a good student, even tried to understand his father’s point of view, but he’d never bought that one. He couldn’t. It just wasn’t in his make up. His father said he got it from his mother’s side, but Jeremy had to take his word for it. His mother had drowned in a boating accident when Jeremy was about eighteen months old.
Now, in the face of this bloated thug and his cronies, the part of him that just couldn’t make sense of unfairness caused him to tremble with rage. “He’s Korean,” was all he could say.
Noah lumbered a step closer. Jeremy smelled candy and something else underneath, wet and sour. The two boys were in the same grade, but Jeremy had skipped ahead two years, and his learning guides were already making noises about moving him ahead again at the end of this year. Jeremy was ten and just the right size for his age. Noah was thirteen and enormous for his. He had almost a foot in height on Jeremy and was nearly twice his weight.
Noah loomed in, squinting, pig-like, “Whacha’ gonna’ do, faggot? Call the Terminator on us?”
Jeremy yanked his cell off the belt clip and tossed it into the grass. He didn’t want the temptation to call Mr. Horton so close. One of Noah’s cohorts, Harry Ukstins, scuttled forth like a trained spider and grabbed the cell phone. Jeremy ignored him. He glanced down at Seung, whose eyes darted from point to point in a frenetic dance while his face remained impassive. Jeremy wondered if something was wrong with the kid. He looked back at Noah, “Why don’t you just leave him alone, Noah?” His father had said that when you want to influence another person, it helped to use their name.
“Why don’t you just suck my dick, faggot?”
A slick comeback like “I’m not into necrophilia.” would have been perfect, but Jeremy wouldn’t think of it until hours later. Skipped grades or not, his brain didn’t work like that under this type of pressure. His father, now that was something else. His dad, always had something to say. In this instance all Jeremy could muster was, “Just leave him alone.”
The third leg of the welcoming committee, Pete Webster, pulled their attention back around to Seung, “Hey, Noah, the chink thinks he’s going somewhere.”
Seung had gotten to his feet and was brushing the dust from the back of his slacks. It was as if this exchange of American pleasantries was all very interesting, but now it was time to return to his studies. He made quick eye contact with Jeremy and gave a ghost of a nod before taking a step to remove himself from the circle.
“Where you goin’, chink?” Harry Ukstins said and pushed at Seung’s shoulder with a stiff arm.
Seung fell back a step, sighed and turned away from Ukstins. H
e attempted to walk out of the circle through Webster and was similarly rebuffed. “Wrong way, chink-boy.”
Seung turned to Noah this time, but did not attempt to walk through the big boy. Jeremy watched his eyes do that frenetic dancing trick before settling on Noah’s chest. Without making eye contact, as if he knew his words would go unheard, Seung said in Midwestern accented English, “Please let me by, Noah.”
Noah answered the “please” with a full body charge. Jeremy winced as the mountainous bully tried to fall on the slight boy, to crush him to the ground. His wince turned into open-mouthed astonishment as Seung began to move.
Seung leaned back and seemed to flow with the force of his attacker. Instead of bending under Noah’s greater weight, he fell back and to the side, while reaching out and taking Noah by the thumb of his splayed left hand. It was impossible for Jeremy to see everything because Seung’s motions were both hidden behind Noah’s bulk and just so fast. One moment, Seung had been asking Noah to let him by, the next, he was standing to the side with Noah upside down in the air next to him. Just as Seung regained his relaxed posture one pace to the left, Noah hit the dusty earth with a thud the other boys felt all the way up their legs.
Noah grabbed his chest and wheezed. His own bulk had knocked the wind out of him. Seung turned around and faced Ukstins and Webster. They stood as frozen as Greek statues, carved in tribute to the gods of toady jack-asses through time. Seung held out his hand to Ukstins. “Phone, please,” he said.
Ukstins gawked, “Huh?”
“The cell phone, please.”
Webster smacked his compatriot on the arm. “Mason’s cell, dick-wad!”
“Shit, right!” Ukstins whipped it out and handed the phone to Seung. “Here.”
Seung took it, stared at the two boys for a moment and turned to Jeremy. “Thank you for intervening,” he said and handed the cell back to Jeremy.
Jeremy took the phone and realized he was smiling like an idiot. “Yeah,” he said, “uh, sure. Whatever. I mean, I didn’t do anything.”
“You spoke up,” Seung said, and with that he walked back toward the school building.
Jeremy watched him go for a moment and looked down at the gasping lump of bully at his feet. Noah stared up through the tears squeezing from his eyes. “He work for your daddy too, Mason?”
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Sins of the Fathers Page 2