But I stopped. Listened. Because the air seemed to be filled with low-flying invisible birds. Large or small I could not tell, but fast, fast and out of their senses, skimming past me from every direction on terrified steel wings and silent except for the unaccountable sharp noise of the flight itself. One dove into the snow at my feet — nothing but a sudden hole in the snow— and I stepped back from it, raised my hands against the unpredictable approach, the irregular sound of motion, the blind but somehow deliberate line of attack. Escaped homing pigeons? A covey of tiny ducks driven berserk in the cold? Eaglets? I found myself beating the air, attempting to shield my eyes and ears, thought I saw a little drop of blood on the snow. And I was relieved with the first hit. It caught me just behind the earcrunching shock at the base of the head — and still it might have been the ice-encrusted body of a small bird, except that despite the pain, the vigorous crack of the thing and my loss of breath, and even while I reached behind my ear and discovered my fingers covered with ice and blood, I was turning around, stooping, trying and of course failing to find the body. With the second hit — quite furious, close on the first, snowball full in the face — my relief was complete and I knew that this time at least I had nothing to fear from any unnatural vengefulness of wild birds.
Tremlow, I thought, when the hard-packed snowball of the second hit burst in my face, Tremlow, thinking that only Tremlow’s malice — it was black and putty-thick, a curd incomprehensibly coughed up just for me — could account for the singular intensity of this treachery intended to befall me in the parking lot, could account for the raging meanness behind this ambush. I stood my ground, spitting snow, shaking the snow out of my eyes, dragging the snow away with my two hands and feeling the sudden purple abrasions on my cheeks, trying to dodge. Not a shadow, not a curved arm, not a single one of them in sight. But the barrage was slowing, though losing none of its power, none of its accuracy, and I could see the snowballs now and they were winging at me from all angles, every direction. I swung at them, growled at them, helpless and wet and bleeding, and still they came. The third hit — blow in the side, sound of a thump, no breath — sailed up at me slowly, slowly, loomed like a white cabbage and struck me exactly as I tried to step out of its path. Tracer bullet confusion of snowballs. Malevolent missiles. From every comer of the lot they came, and from the vicinity of the all-but-hidden cars — lovers? could this be the activity of island lovers? nothing better to do? — and even, I thought, from as far as the cemetery.
I fought back. Oh, I fought back, scooping the snow wildly, snarling, beating and compressing that snow into white iron balls and flinging them, heaving them off into the flurry, the thick of the night, but I could find no enemy and it was a hopeless sweat. “Tremlow!” I shouted, raising my head though I felt in tingling scalp and quivering chin the unprotected condition of that bald head as target, “Tremlow! Come out and fight!” A hoarse shout. Unmistakable cry of rage addressed to the phantom bully, the ringleader of my distant past. Perhaps from somewhere, from some dark comer of the world, he heard.
Because it ceased. I saw no one, heard no human sound, no laughter, and the last of the discharged snowballs fell about me in a heavy but harmless patter like the last great duds of a spent avalanche. Final lobbing to earth of useless snowballs. Irregular thudding in the snow. Then safe. Then silence. Only the gentle puffing fall of the now tiny flakes, only the far-off wind, only the muffled sound of Jack Spratt’s Merry Hep Cats commencing once again in my ears. Only the yellow light on the snow. And of course the blood and snot on the back of my hand.
I waited. And slowly I controlled my temper and my pain, controlled my breathing, brushed the palm of my hand over my scalp and regained my usual composure. I was wet and chilled, but I smiled when I saw what an enormous ring I had trampled all about me in the snow. The great stag that had been at bay was no longer at bay. Tremlow, if he had ever been there, was gone. As I walked slowly back along the deep path I had cut from the fire door to the center of the parking lot I forgot about the demon of my past and began to muse about that enemy of the present who was, I knew, only too real. How was it possible, I wondered, for a man to throw snowballs with an artificial hand?
But it was my night of trials and when I returned to the gymnasium, blinking, wiping face and hands with my handkerchief, trying to reset the sparkle in my watering eyes, I saw the two of them at once — Jomo, Cassandra — saw that the hook was buried deep in the bow, that the two of them were dipping together to the strains of a waltz — Jomo leading off with a long leg thrust between her legs — and that Jomo was panting and that his trousers were sopping wet up to the knees. Poor Cassandra like a green leaf was turning, floating, waltzing away out of my life, a green leaf on the back of the spider. My teen-age bomb and her boy friend. And I might have charged him then and there, might have struck him down when two little white roly-poly women cut me short, caught my arms, hung a numbered placard around my neck, pushed me forward like little tugs — dirt in the girdles, dough in the dimples, mother’s milk to spare — and the music stopped, girls giggled, someone stood on a Coca-Cola crate and shouted: “Take your places, belly-bumpers! Gather about now, folks, for the contest!”
And another voice: “Make them take off their belts, hey, Doc! Buckles ain’t fair!”
And the first: “Ladies, pick your bumpers … bumpers in place … come on now, fellows, we got to start!”
Laughter. Calls of encouragement. Eight pairs of bumpers— including me — to fight it out pair by pair. Then a circle in the crowd, silence, boy with the bass drum and boy with the cornet standing there to beat and blow for each winner. And I who had always considered myself quite trim, heavy but rather handsome of form, holding up my trousers, perspiring now, I was called upon to make sport of myself, to join in the fleshly malice of this island game. Perverse. The death of modesty. But I could not refuse, could not explain that there was some mistake-rising to the catcalls in that human ring — could do nothing but accept the challenge and bump with the best of them and give them the full brunt of belly, if belly they wanted. I noticed that the old-timers were drinking down last minute pitchers of water so that they would rumble. But I was not intimidated. I would show them a thing or two with my stomach which all at once felt like a warhead. Allons. …
The fat began to fly. It was an obscene tournament. And if I had lost the night even before my abortive journey to the parking lot, or if I had begun to suffer the hour that would never pass when I first set foot in Jomo’s car, or if I had tasted the thick endlessness of the night with my first hurried mouthful of chocolate cake, knowing that I was sealed more and more tightly into some sort of desperate honeycomb of dead time with every drink the bare-headed marine took from his bottle — drinking to my frustration, drinking me dry — and if I had already begun my endless sweat at the mere sight of dancers dancing, what then was my dismay among the belly-bumpers? What then my injury — pain of bouncing bags, cramp of belligerence low in the gut — what then my confusion and drugged determination as I stood there facing the glazed eye of time? Dimly I heard Doc’s voice, “Hey there, no hands!” And slowly, slowly, I forced myself to learn the stance with body sagging to the front, back bowed, shoulders drawn tightly to the rear, elbows pulled close to the ribs and sharply bent, hands limp, fingers limp, barely holding up the trousers, forced myself to balance on the balls of my feet, to balance, pull in the chin, thrust, sail forward and bump, shudder, recover. Without moving my feet. Dead time. Spirited dismay.