Mr Casey shoved his wav through the loosening knot of spectators and took in the situation. He wasn’t a big guy like Coach Puffer; he didn’t even look particularly rugged. He was of medium height and age, and going bald. Big horn-rimmed glasses sat squarely on his face. He favoured plain white shirts—no tie—and he was wearing one of them now. He wasn’t a big guy, but Mr Casey got respect. Nobody fucked around with him, because he wasn’t afraid of kids deep down the way so many teachers are. The kids knew it, too. Buddy and Don and Moochie knew it; it was in the sullen way they dropped their eyes and shuffled their feet.
“Get lost,” Mr Casey said briskly to the few remaining spectators. They started to drift away. Moochie Welch decided to try and drift with them. “Not you, Peter,” Mr Casey said.
“Aw, Mr Casey, I ain’t been doing nothing,” Moochie said.
“Me neither,” Don said. “How come you always pick on, us?”
Mr Casey came over to where I was still leaning on Arnie” for support. “Are you all right, Dennis?”
I was finally beginning to get over it—I wouldn’t have been if one of my thighs hadn’t partially blocked Welch’s hand. I nodded.
Mr Casey walked back to where Buddy Repperton, Moochie Welch, and Don Vandenberg stood in a shuffling, angry line. Don hadn’t been joking; he had been speaking for all of them. They really did feel picked on.
“This is cute, isn’t it?” Mr Casey said finally. “Three on two. That the way you like to do things, Buddy? Those odds don’t seem stacked enough for you.”
Buddy looked up, threw Casey a smouldering, ugly glance, and then dropped his eyes again. “They started it. Those guys.”
“That’s not true—” Arnie began.
“Shut up, cuntface,” Buddy said. He started to add something, but before he could get it out, Mr Casey grabbed him and threw him up against the back wall of the shop. There was a tin sign there which read SMOKING HERE ONLY. Mr Casey began to slam Buddy Repperton against that sign, and every time he did it, the sign jangled, like dramatic punctuation. He handled Repperton the way you or I might have handled a great big ragdoll. I guess he had muscles somewhere, all right.
“You want to shut your big mouth,” he said, and slammed Buddy against the sign. “You want to shut your mouth or clean up your mouth. Because I don’t have to listen to that stuff coming from you, Buddy.”
He let go of Repperton’s shirt. It had pulled out of his jeans, showing his white, untanned belly. He looked back at Arnie. “What were you saying?”
“I came past the smoking area on my way out to the bleachers to eat my lunch,” Arnie said. “Repperton was smoking with his friends there. He came over and knocked my lunchbag out of my hand and then stepped on it. He squashed it.” He seemed about to say something more, struggled with it, and swallowed it again. “That started the fight.”
But I wasn’t going to leave it at that. I’m no stoolie or tattletale, not under ordinary circumstances, but Repperton had apparently decided that more than a good beating was required to avenge himself for getting kicked out of Darnell’s. He could have punched a hole in Arnie’s intestines, maybe killed him.
“Mr Casey,” I said.
He looked at me. Behind him, Buddy Repperton’s green eyes flashed at me balefully—a warning. Keep your mouth shut, this is between us. Even a year before, some twisted sense of pride might have forced me to go along with him and play the game, but not now.
“What is it, Dennis?”
“He’s had it in for Arnie since the summmer. He’s got a knife, and he looked like he was planning to stick it in.”
Arnie was looking at me, his grey eyes opaque and unreadable. I thought about him calling Repperton a shitter—LeBay’s word—and felt a prickle of goosebumps on my back.
“You fucking liar!” Repperton cried dramatically. “I ain’t got no knife!”
Casey looked at him without saying anything. Vandenberg and Welch looked extremely uncomfortable now—scared. Their possible punishment for this little scuffle had progressed beyond detention, which they were used to, and suspension, which they had experienced, toward the outer limits of expulsion.
I only had to say one more word. I thought about it. I almost didn’t. But it had been Arnie, and Arnie was my friend, and inside where it mattered, I didn’t just think he had meant to stick Arnie with that blade; I knew it. I said the word.
“It’s a switchblade.”
Now Repperton’s eyes did not just flash; they blazed, promising hellfire, damnation, and a long period in traction. “That’s bullshit, Mr Casey,” he said hoarsely. “He’s lying. I swear to God.”
Mr Casey still said nothing. He looked slowly at Arnie.
“Cunningham,” he said. “Did Repperton here pull a knife on you?”
Arnie wouldn’t answer at first. Then in a low voice that was little more than a sigh, he said, “Yeah.”
Now Repperton’s blazing glance was for both of us.
Casey turned to Moochie Welch and Don Vandenberg. All at once I could see that his method of handling this had changed he had begun to move slowly and carefully, as if testing the footing beneath carefully each time he moved a step forward. Mr Casey had already grasped the consequences.
“Was there a knife involved?” he asked them.
Moochie and Vandenberg looked at their feet and would not answer. That was answer enough.
“Turn out your pockets, Buddy,” Mr Casey said.
“Fuck I will!” Buddy said. His voice went shrill. “You can’t make me!”
“If you mean I don’t have the authority, you’re wrong,” Mr Casey said. “If you mean I can’t turn your pockets out for myself if I decide to try it, that’s also wrong. But—”
“Yeah, try it,” Buddy shouted at him. “I’ll knock you through that wall, you little bald fuck!”
My stomach was rolling helplessly. I hated stuff like this, ugly confrontation scenes, and this was the worst one I’d ever been a part of.
But Mr Casey had things under control, and he never deviated from his course.
“But I’m not going to do it,” he finished. “You’re going to turn out your pockets yourself.”
“Fat fucking chance,” Buddy said. He was standing against the back wall of the shop so that the bulge in his hip pocket wouldn’t show. His shirt-tail hung in two wrinkled flaps over the crotch of his jeans. His eyes darted here and there like the eyes of an animal brought to bay.
Mr Casey glanced at Moochie and Don Vandenberg. You two boys go up to the office and stay there until I come up,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere else; you’ve got enough trouble without that.”
They walked away slowly, close together, as if for protection. Moochie threw one glance back. In the main building the bell went off. People started to stream back inside: some of them giving us curious glances. We had missed lunch. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t hungry anymore.
Mr Casey turned his attention back to Buddy.
“You’re on school grounds right now,” he said. “You should thank God you are, because if you do have a knife, Buddy, and if you pulled it, that’s assault with a deadly weapon. They send you to prison for that.”
“Prove it, prove it!” Buddy shouted. His cheeks were flaming, his breath coming in quick, nervous little gasps.
“If you don’t turn out your pockets right now, I’m going to write a dismissal slip on you. Then I’m going to call the cops and the minute you step outside the main gate, they’ll grab you. You see the bind you’re in?” He looked grimly at Buddy. “We keep our own house here,” he said. “But if I have to write you a dismissal, Buddy, your ass belongs to them. Of course if you have no knife, you’re okay. But if you do and they find it…”
There was a moment of silence. The four of us stood in tableau. I didn’t think he was going to do it; he would take his dismissal and try to ditch the knife somewhere quickly. Then he must have realised that the cops would hunt for it and probably find it, because he pulled the knife out of his back pocket and threw it down on the tarmac. It landed on the go-button. The blade popped out and winked wickedly in the afternoon sunlight, eight inches of chromed steel.