(thirteen) Comrades in Arms

(part five) Death to All Fascists!

“This is a people shooting hat,” I said. “I shoot people in this hat”.

-The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger

(thirteen) Comrades in Arms

He hadn’t gone back to school the next day. Jake secretly hoped that in the interim between the time he left school the day and the Monday he was due to return, some other huge news item would burst onto the scene. Perhaps, the rumor that Shelly Geller was pregnant or Josh Stern had been caught staring at David Proctor’s ass during swim class would spread like the flu and everyone would forget the minor sniffles caused by the cartoon of Jake and the Carson Twins in flagrante delecto.

His sister Denise went to school and got his homework for him to do, but the books sat on his desk stacked in a neat pile. All of his spare time went into the planning of what would surely be his greatest achievement. He woke, restless. He called the Carson house and, confirming his suspicions, Alex picked up the phone. Neither of them had gone to school either.

“I knew it. I’m coming over”, Jake said as he hung up the phone.

They were still in their pajamas drinking down the last bit of pink milk out of the empty bowl out of which they’d eaten their Frankenberry cereal. Scott’s hair was a disheveled mess while Alex’s was smoothed back as if he hadn’t moved an inch during the entirety of last night’s slumber.

“I told you you shouldna went back in”, Scott said licking his spoon. “You shoulda listened”.

“Fuck you”, Jake yelled. “My Dad woulda kicked my ass if I ditched school”.

“Which is worse?”, Alex asked. “That or what actually happened”.

Jake weighed this for a second. What would’ve happened? He would’ve gotten a down-the-basement-hug-the-pole-licking from his Dad and his big, thick, black leather belt, that’s what. He would’ve spent the rest of the night, in bed, on his stomach, sobbing into his pillow and devising ways to rig his father’s car to explode using only household items. This would’ve kept him from focusing on the true villian in this scenario, the thorn in his plump peasant paw, Mr. Eddie Stephens. Jake then shook the thought from his head.

“Eddie needs to by taught a lesson”, Jake countered.

“Who’s gonna teach it to him? You?”, Scott said walking his bowl into the kitchen.

“He’ll bash your brains in. Bash ‘em right the fuck in, Wendy”, he said the tale end of this in his pale mimic of Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

“No, We’re all gonna do it”, Jake sat on the sofa and leaned into the space between him and the twins.

Alex looked up from his Detroit Free Press Comics. “What?”

“What’s this ‘we’ shit, White Man?”, Scott protested. “Keep me out of it”.

“Remember the drumstick incident?”, Jake questioned. Scott flinched as if a bee had flown past peripheral field of vision. He remembered, all right. He couldn’t forget it.

* * *

It was the first day of ninth grade and he was in the band room packing up his snare drum kit. He was planning on joining the high school marching band and had promised himself that he would practice every single day to be the best drummer C.H.S. ever had. He had just bent down to pick up the drum stand when Eddie appeared in the doorway, flanked by Richie and Morris.

“Well, if it isn’t the band fag”, Eddie sneered.

Scott quickened his ritual of dismantling and packing his instrument, hurriedly sticking the sticks in their velvet resting place. Eddie grabbed one of the drumsticks from the case and started to rap it on the table.

“Give me that back”, Scott whined. Being in Eddie’s presence always made his voice turn back into a girlish pitch. It also made him sweat profusely.

“Take it from me. Go on, take it”, Eddie said holding the stick out toward Scott.

Scott grabbed for it and Eddie swung it from under his reach and brought it down across his knuckles with a sharp ‘crack’. Scott winced and drew his hand back. Richie backed into the hallway to look for anyone coming. He saw Jake standing at his locker, speaking to Alex clueless to his brother’s pain.

“Give it back”, Scott cried.

Eddied mocked him, “Givvvee iiiittt baaaaacckkk”.

Scott’s face colored as if the temperature in the room had jumped twenty degrees. This flushing was making him sweat even more heavily now. Damp spots began to appear at the creases of his poly blend polo shirt near his armpits.

“I’m trying to give it to you”, Eddie offered again, hand outstretched in a mock gesture of peace. "Take it."

Scott lunged for it again and Eddie raked it over the back of his hand at the wrist, this time with a deeper, meatier clap. Scott bent double from the pain and howled wordlessly.

“Shut up. You’re gonna get us in trouble”, Morris whispered loudly.

Scott stood up. He slammed the case shut, latched it with his other hand and began to walk out of the band room, cradling his injured paw next to this chest.

“You forgot your stick”, Eddie said.

“Keep it”, Scott yelped, shoving his way past.

“I don’t want it”, Eddie screamed and he brought it down on the top of Scott’s head, cracking the wood in two.

The severed piece flew across the room in an arc, tumbled end for end and stuck into the faded corkboard marked ‘Band News’ that was mounted on the front wall. Scott dropped the drum kit with a metallic ‘thwoing’ and his hands flew to the top of his head. He yelped loudly, the sound echoing a slight return in the cavernous room. Richie whistled, alerting Eddie that someone was coming down the hall. Morris got scared and scrambled nervously out of the room, slipping on the dusty tile in the hall in a gross caricature of a cartoon getaway. The volume of Scott’s howl got louder. A door opened at the rear of the band room. The band teacher, Mr. Ford, a small rotund bald man came out of his tiny office. Sarah Tauber, a freshman, came waddling after him adjusting her top. She was apparently sinking the deal that would make her first chair clarinet for her entire academic career at C.H.S.

Jake and Alex came to the door as Eddie was exiting. He shoved Alex to the floor in his hasty retreat. They entered the room to see Scott seated on the floor balling and rubbing his scalp with both hands.

* * *

Scott stood, in his faded Coca-Cola shirt and pajama bottoms, caressing his head to dull the phantom pain this memory had brought back.

“So”, Scott said. “Who cares?”

“You gave up band the next day”, Alex said. “It’s because of Eddie that you’ll never be a drummer like Bonzo or Neal Peart”.

“What about you, hunh?” Scott jabbed his brother in the chest with his finger while he rubbed more furiously at the crown of his own head. “What about your Gazebo model?”

Alex had blocked that out of his mind completely. He had almost replied ‘What Gazebo model?’ when the memory came rushing back into his head like a breaker over rocks.

* * *

It was in Art class, the second to last art class of the eighth grade. The Clayton City Chamber of Commerce was sponsoring a contest for the new gazebo that would be built in next to the City Library. It was open to all Junior High and High School students with a ‘B’ average or better. The contest was for the students to build a model of their version of the gazebo and the best design would be built and the winner would be given a $50 gift certificate to Walker-Crawford Art and Paint Supply.

Alex had worked studiously on his model. He researched gazebo architecture at the library, making numerous sketches in preparation for the building of the scale model. He had chose 1/24 scale and was going to carve the balsa wood that the school supplied into miniature 1x2 slats and 4x4 posts. He hand carved each and every rough-hewn cedar shake shingle to evoke his beloved Cape Cod effect. He had even equipped the gazebo with a wide ramp that came down in levels from the rear for Stuart Weber. He wanted the friendly mentally retarded man that everyone called “Stu” to be able to ride his three wheel bicycle up to the platform if he was ever given a public service award for his untiring efforts keeping the city parks free of refuse. Eddie took one look at the handicap accessible ramp and pronounced it ‘gay’.

Alex had left the model unattended on the day that it was to be turned in. The Mountain Dew Big Gulp he’d bought for breakfast had run right through him and he ran to the bathroom, making it to the bank of urinals with seconds to spare. He stood at the urinal quietly reading the juvenalia scrawled across the pale yellow-painted plaster until the flow subsided. A shiver ran through him that he'd incorrectly passed off a the 'Pee Shakes'. It was more an unconscious premonition.

As he was returning from the bathroom he passed Eddie in the hall. Eddie was holding a hall pass and Alex assumed he was also en route to the urinals. When he reached the class, he saw Ms. Turner was waving a towel out the door and he caught the slightest whiff of toasting wood in the air. He stepped up his walk into a canter, then to jog as he ran past Ms. Turner.

“I’m sorry, Alex”, she said as he ran past.

Most of the girls were coughing and waving their hands in front of their faces. Some of the boys were gathered around the huge double sink at the rear of the art room. He noticed the trail of smolder and steam rising from in front of the group. Alex ran to the sink to find his gazebo, a quarter of it--the handicap ramp included--charred into a black, wet, crumbling mess.

* * *

Alex padded into the kitchen and poured himself a giant tumbler of ice-cold water from the tap. He downed it in a few gulps and refilled the glass. He started sipping the second as he walked back into the living room where Scott and Jake were sitting.

“All right. I’m in”.