18th Emergency (2 page)

“Who’s your friend?”

“This
is my friend.” At that Ezzie would step out from the shadows and stand with him.

Marv Hammerman would look at them, sizing them up, the two of them, this duo his mother had created for strength. Then with a faint smile Hammerman would reach out, grab them up like cymbals and clang them together. When Hammerman set them down they would twang for forty-five minutes before they could stumble off.

“Well, I know what I’m talking about, that’s all,” his mother said. “If you could get Ezzie to help you—”

“All right, Mom, I’ll ask him.”

He ate four lima beans and looked at his mother. “Is that enough? I’m not hungry.”

“Eat.”

He thought he was going to choke. Emergency Five—Being Choked by a Boa Constrictor. When you were being strangled by a boa constrictor, Ezzie had said, what you had to do was taunt the boa constrictor and get him to
bite
you instead of
strangle
you. His bite, Ezzie admitted, was a little painful but the strangulation was worse.

This had seemed a first-rate survival measure at the time. Now he had trouble imagining him and Ezzie in the jungle being squeezed by the boa constrictor. He tried to imagine Ezzie’s face, pink and earnest, above the boa constrictor’s loop. He tried to hear Ezzie’s voice taunting, “Sure you can strangle, but can you bite? Let’s see you try to bite us!”

“Hey, Mouse, you coming?” Ezzie had opened the door to the hall now, and his voice came up the stairs as if through a megaphone.

“I’ll eat the rest later,” Mouse said. He was already out of his chair, moving toward the door.

“Oh, all right,” his mother said, “go on.”

He ran quickly out of the apartment and down the stairs. Ezzie was waiting for him outside, sitting down. As soon as he saw Mouse, Ezzie got up and said, “Hey, what happened? Where’d you go after school?”

Mouse said, “Hammerman’s after me.”

Ezzie’s pink mouth formed a perfect O. He didn’t say anything, but his breath came out in a long sympathetic wheeze. Finally he said,
“Marv
Hammerman?” even though he knew there was only one Hammerman in the world, just as there had been only one Hitler.

“Yes.”

“Is after
you?”

Mouse nodded, sunk in misery. He could see Marv Hammerman. He came up in Mouse’s mind the way monsters do in horror movies, big and powerful, with the same cold, unreal eyes. It was the eyes Mouse really feared. One look from those eyes, he thought, just one look of a certain length—about three seconds—and you knew you were his next victim.

“What did you do?” Ezzie asked. “Or did you do anything?”

At least, Mouse thought, Ezzie understood that. If you were Marv Hammerman, you didn’t need a reason. He sat down on the steps and squinted up at Ezzie. “I did something,” he said.

“What?” Ezzie asked. His tongue flicked out and in so quickly it didn’t even moisten his lips. “What’d you do? You bump into him or something?”

Mouse shook his head.

“Well, what?”

Mouse said, “You know that big chart in the upstairs hall at school?”

“What’d you say? I can’t even hear you, Mouse. You’re muttering.” Ezzie bent closer. “Look at me. Now what did you say?”

Mouse looked up, still squinting. He said, “You know that big chart outside the history room? In the hall?”

“Chart?” Ezzie said blankly. “What chart, Mouse?”

“This chart takes up the whole wall, Ez, how could you miss it? It’s a chart about early man, and it shows man’s progress up from the apes, the side view of all those different kinds of prehistoric men, like Cro-Magnon man and Homo erectus.
That
chart.”

“Oh, yeah, I saw it, so go on.”

Mouse could see that Ezzie was eager for him to get on to the good part, the violence. He slumped. He wet his lips. He said, “Well, when I was passing this chart on my way out of history—and I don’t know why I did this—I really don’t. When I was passing this chart, Ez, on my way to math—” He swallowed, almost choking on his spit. “When I was passing this chart, Ez, I took my pencil and I wrote Marv Hammerman’s name on the bottom of the chart and then I drew an arrow to the picture of Neanderthal man.”

“What?” Ezzie cried.
“What?”
He could not seem to take it in. Mouse knew that Ezzie had been prepared to sympathize with an accident. He had almost been the victim of one of those himself. One day at school Ezzie had reached for the handle on the water fountain a second ahead of Marv Hammerman. If Ezzie hadn’t glanced up just in time, seen Hammerman and said quickly, “Go ahead, I’m not thirsty,” then this sagging figure on the steps might be him. “What did you do it for, Mouse?”

“I don’t know.”

“You crazy or something?”

“I don’t know.”

“Marv Hammerman!” Ezzie sighed. It was a mournful sound that seemed to have come from a culture used to sorrow. “Anybody else in the school would have been better. I would rather have the principal after me than Marv Hammerman.”

“I know.”

“Hammerman’s big, Mouse. He’s flunked a lot.”

“I know,” Mouse said again. There was an unwritten law that it was all right to fight anyone in your own grade. The fact that Hammerman was older and stronger made no difference. They were both in the sixth grade.

“Then what’d you do it for?” Ezzie asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You must want trouble,” Ezzie said. “Like my grandfather. He’s always provoking people. The bus driver won’t even pick him up anymore.”

“No, I don’t want trouble.”

“Then, why did you—”

“I don’t
know.”
Then he sagged again and said, “I didn’t even know I had done it really until I’d finished. I just looked at the picture of Neanderthal man and thought of Hammerman. It does look like him, Ezzie, the sloping face and the shoulders.”

“Maybe Hammerman doesn’t know you did it though,” Ezzie said. “Did you ever think of that? I mean, who’s going to go up to Hammerman and tell him his name is on the prehistoric man chart?” Ezzie leaned forward. “Hey, Hammerman,” he said, imitating the imaginary fool, “I saw a funny thing about you on the prehistoric man chart! Now, who in their right mind is going to—”

“He was right behind me when I did it,” Mouse said.

“What?”

“He was right behind me,” Mouse said stiffly. He could remember turning and looking into Hammerman’s eyes. It was such a strange, troubling moment that Mouse was unable to think about it.

Ezzie’s mouth formed the O, made the sympathetic sigh. Then he said, “And you don’t even know what you did it for?”

“No.”

Ezzie sank down on the steps beside Mouse. He leaned over his knees and said, “You ought to get out of that habit, that writing names and drawing arrows, you know that? I see those arrows everywhere. I’ll be walking down the street and I’ll look on a building and I’ll see the word DOOR written in little letters and there’ll be an arrow pointing to the door and I know you did it. It’s crazy, labeling stuff like that.”

“I never did that, Ez, not to a door.”

“Better to a door, if you ask me,” Ezzie said, shaking his head. He paused for a moment, then asked in a lower voice, “You ever been hit before, Mouse? I mean, hard?”

Mouse sighed. The conversation had now passed beyond the question of whether Hammerman would attack. It was now a matter of whether he, Mouse Fawley, could survive the attack. He said thickly, remembering, “Four times.”

“Four times in one fight? I mean, you stood up for four hits, Mouse?” There was grudging admiration in his voice.

Mouse shook his head. “Four hits—four fights.”

“You went right down each time? I mean, POW and you went down, POW and you went down, POW and you went—”

“Yes!”

“Where did you take these hits?” Ezzie asked, straightening suddenly. Ezzie had never taken a single direct blow in his life because he was a good dodger. Sometimes his mother chased him through the apartment striking at him while he dodged and ducked, crying, “Look out, Mom, look out now! You’re going to hit me!”

He asked again, “Where were you hit?”

Mouse said, “In the stomach.”

“All four times?”

“Yeah.” Mouse suddenly thought of his stomach as having a big red circular target on it with HIT HERE printed in the center. “Who hit you?”

“Two boys in Cincinnati when I was on vacation, and a boy named Mickey Swearinger, and somebody else I don’t remember.” He lowered his head because he remembered the fourth person all right, but he didn’t want to tell Ezzie about it. If he had added the name of Viola Angotti to the list of those who had hit him in the stomach, Ezzie’s face would have screwed up with laughter. “Viola Angotti hit you? No fooling, Viola Angotti?” It was the sort of thing Ezzie could carry on about for hours. “Viola Angotti.
The
Viola Angotti?”

And Mouse would have had to keep sitting there saying over and over, “Yes, Viola Angotti hit me in the stomach. Yes,
the
Viola Angotti.” And then he would have to tell Ezzie all about it, every detail, how one recess long ago the boys had decided to put some girls in the school trash cans. It had been one of those suggestions that stuns everyone with its rightness. Someone had said, “Hey, let’s put those girls over there in the trash cans!” and the plan won immediate acceptance. Nothing could have been more appropriate. The trash cans were big and had just been emptied, and in an instant the boys were off chasing the girls and yelling at the top of their lungs.

It had been wonderful at first, Mouse remembered. Primitive blood had raced through his body. The desire to capture had driven him like a wild man through the school yard, up the sidewalk, everywhere. He understood what had driven the cave man and the barbarian, because this same passion was driving him. Putting the girls in the trash cans was the most important challenge of his life. His long screaming charge ended with him red-faced, gasping for breath—and with Viola Angotti pinned against the garbage cans.

His moment of triumph was short. It lasted about two seconds. Then it began to dim as he realized, first, that it
was
Viola Angotti, and, second, that he was not going to be able to get her into the garbage can without a great deal of help.

He cried, “Hey, you guys, come on, I’ve got one,” but behind him the school yard was silent. Where was everybody? he had wondered uneasily. As it turned out, the principal had caught the other boys, and they were all being marched back in the front door of the school, but Mouse didn’t know this.

He called again, “Come on, you guys, get the lid off this garbage can, will you?”

And then, when he said that, Viola Angotti had taken two steps forward. She said, “Nobody’s putting
me
in no garbage can.” He could still remember how she had looked standing there. She had recently taken the part of the Statue of Liberty in a class play, and somehow she seemed taller and stronger at this moment than when she had been in costume.

He cried, “Hey, you guys!” It was a plea. “Where are you?”

And then Viola Angotti had taken one more step, and with a faint sigh she had socked him in the stomach so hard that he had doubled over and lost his lunch. He hadn’t known it was possible to be hit like that outside of a boxing ring. It was the hardest blow he had ever taken. Viola Angotti could be heavyweight champion of the world.

As she walked past his crumpled body she had said again, “Nobody’s putting me in no garbage can.” It had sounded like one of the world’s basic truths. The sun will rise. The tides will flow. Nobody’s putting Viola Angotti in no garbage can.

Later, when he thought about it, he realized that he had been lucky. If she had wanted to, Viola Angotti could have capped her victory by tossing his rag-doll body into the garbage can and slamming down the lid. Then, when the principal came out onto the playground calling, “Benjamin Fawley! Has anybody seen Benjamin Fawley?” he would have had to moan, “I’m in here.” He would have had to climb out of the garbage can in front of the whole school. His shame would have followed him for life. When he was a grown man, people would still be pointing him out to their children.
“That’s
the man that Viola Angotti stuffed into the garbage can.”

Now he thought that Marv Hammerman could make Viola Angotti’s blow seem like a baby’s pat. He wanted to double over on the steps.

Ezzie said. “You ought to watch out for your stomach like a fighter, protect your body. There’s a lot of valuable stuff in there.”

“I know.”

“The trick of it,” Ezzie said, “is moving quickly, ducking, getting out of the way.” Ezzie did a few quick steps, his feet flashing on the sidewalk. “You dance, Mouse, like this.” Mouse suddenly remembered that Ezzie had once told him that if you were ever bitten by a tarantula (Emergency Six) you had to start dancing immediately. Ezzie said you were supposed to do this special Italian folk dance, but any quick lively steps would probably do.

Mouse had a picture of himself doing this lively dance in front of Hammerman. Hammerman would watch for a moment. There would be no expression on his face. The dance would reach a peak. Mouse’s arms and legs would be a blur of motion. And then Hammerman would reach down, a sort of slow graceful movement like he was bowling, and come up effortlessly right into Mouse’s stomach.

Mouse leaned forward, shielding his body with his arms. He cleared his throat. “Did anybody ever hit you, Ezzie?”

Ezzie stopped dancing. “Sure.”

“Who?”

“Well, relatives mostly. You can’t hardly walk through my living room without somebody trying to hit you—for any little thing. I accidentally step on my sister’s feet—she’s got long feet, Mouse, she can’t hardly buy ordinary shoes, and she takes it as an insult if you step on one of them. She’s fast too, Mouse. That’s how I learned about getting out of the way.”

“But nobody like Hammerman ever hit you?”

“No.” He sounded apologetic.

Mouse sighed. Above him his mother called, “Benjie, come up now. I want you to do something for me.”

“I got to go.” Mouse still sat there. He hated to leave the warmth of Ezzie’s understanding. Ezzie didn’t want to leave either. Mouse had taken on a fine tragic dimension in his eyes, and there was something about being with a person like that that made him feel good.