I was fourteen, in 1956, and Junior Jones was the largest organization of human flesh I had ever seen. I moved out of his way, but Chipper Dove said, “Hey, Junior, don’t you know this kid?”
“No, I haven’t met him,” said Junior Jones.
“Well, this is Franny Berry’s brother,” Chip Dove said.
“How do you do?” said Junior Jones.
“Hello,” I said.
“Old Coach Bob is this kid’s grandfather, Junior,” Dove said.
That’s nice,” said Junior Jones. He filled his mouth with a froth of lather from the tiny bar of soap in his hand, then tipped his head back and rinsed his mouth out in the downstream of the shower. Perhaps, I thought, this was what he did instead of brushing his teeth.
“We were talking,” Dove said, “about what it was we liked about Franny.”
“Her smile,” Metz said.
“You said her tits, too,” Chipper Dove said. “And I said she had the nicest ass at this school. We didn’t get to ask the kid, here, what he likes about his sister, but I thought we’d ask you first, Junior.”
Junior Jones had lathered his bar of soap away to nothing; his huge head was awash with white froth; when he rinsed himself under the shower, the suds lapped around his ankles. I looked down at my feet and felt the close presence of the remaining twosome from Iowa Bob’s backfield. A burnt-face boy named Chester Pulaski, who spent too much time under the sun lamp—even so, his neck blazed with boils; his forehead was studded with them. He was primarily a blocking back—not by choice; he simply didn’t run quite as well as Lenny Metz. Chester Pulaski was a natural blocking back because he tended to run at his opponents more than he tended away from them. With him, and flitting near to me, like a horsefly that won’t leave you alone, was a boy as black as Junior Jones; any comparison, however, was over with their colour. He sometimes lined up as a wide receiver, and when he ran out of the backfield it was only to catch Chipper Dove’s short and safe little passes. His name was Harold Swallow, and he was no bigger than I was, but Harold Swallow could fly. He had moves like the bird he was named for; if anyone ever tackled him, he might have broken in half, but when he wasn’t catching passes and flying out of bounds, he was just hiding in the backfield, usually behind Chester Pulaski or Junior Jones.
They were all there, standing around me, and I thought that if a bomb were to be dropped on one spot in the shower room, Coach Bob’s winning season would be over. Athletically, at least, I was the only one who wouldn’t have been missed. I was simply not in the same category with Iowa Bob’s imported backfield, or with the giant lineman Junior Jones; there were other linemen, of course, but Junior Jones was the main reason Chipper Dove never even fell down. He was the main reason there was always a hole for Chester Pulaski to lead Lenny Metz through; Jones made a hole big enough for them to run through side by side.
“Come on, Junior, think,” Chip Dove said, dangerously—because the tone of mockery in his voice implied his doubt that Junior Jones could think. “What is it you like about Franny Berry?” Dove asked.
“She’s got nice little feet,” said Harold Swallow. Everyone stared at him, but he just pranced around under the falling water, not looking at anybody.
“She’s got beautiful skin,” said Chester Pulaski, helplessly drawing even more attention to his boils.
“Junior!” Chip Dove said, and Junior Jones shut off his shower. He stood and dripped for a while. He made me feel as if I were Egg, years ago, still learning to walk.
“She’s just another white girl, to me,” Junior Jones said, and his look paused a second on each of us before moving on. “But she seems like a good girl,” he added, to me. Then he turned my shower back on and shoved me under it—it was too cold—and he walked out of the shower room, leaving a draught.
I was impressed that even Chipper Dove would go only so far with him, but I was more impressed that Franny was in trouble—and still more impressed that I was helpless to do anything about it.
“That scum Chipper Dove talks about your ass, your tits, even your feet” I told her. “You watch out for him.”
“My feet?” Franny said. “What’s he say about my feet?”
“All right,” I said. “That was Harold Swallow.” Everyone knew Harold Swallow was crazy; in those days, when someone was as crazy as Harold Swallow, we said he was as crazy as a waltzing mouse.
“What did Chip Dove say about me?” Franny asked. “I just care about him.”
“Your ass is all he cares about,” I told her. “And he talks about it to everyone.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I’m not that interested.”
“Well, he’s interested,” I said. “Just stick with Struthers.”
“Oh, kid, let me tell you,” she sighed. “Struthers is sweet, but he is boring, boring, boring.”
I hung my head. We were in the upstairs hall of what was now only a rented house, although it still felt like the Bates family house to us. Franny rarely came into my room anymore. We did our homework in our own rooms and met outside the bathroom to talk. Frank didn’t even seem to use the bathroom. Every day, now, in the hall outside our rooms, Mother would stack up more cartons and trunks; we were getting ready to move to the Hotel New Hampshire.
“And I don’t see why you have to be a cheerleader, Franny,” I said. “I mean, you, of all people—a cheerleader.”
“Because I like it,” she said.
In fact, it was after a cheerleading practice that I met Franny, not far from our place in the ferns we didn’t see so much of—now that we were students at the school—when we encountered Iowa Bob’s backfield. They had accosted someone on the path through the woods that was the shortcut back to the gym; they were working someone over in the large mud puddle that was drilled with football cleats—holes like machine-gun fire in the mud. When Franny and I saw who they were—the boys in the backfield—and that they were beating up on someone, we started to run the other way. That backfield was always beating up on someone. But we hadn’t run more than twenty-five yards before Franny caught my arm and stopped me. “I think it was Frank,” she said. “They’ve got Frank.”
So of course we had to go back. For just a second, before we could actually see what was going on, I felt very brave; I felt Franny take my hand and I gave her a strong squeeze. Her cheerleading skirt was so short that the back of my hand brushed her thigh. Then she pulled her hand out of mine and screamed. I was in my track shorts and I felt my legs turn cold.
Frank was wearing his band uniform. They had stripped the shit-brown pants (with the death-grey stripe down the leg) clean off him. Frank’s underwear was yanked down to his ankles. The jacket of his band uniform had been tugged up to the middle of his chest; one silver epaulette floated free in the mud puddle, alongside Frank’s face, and his silver cap with the brown braid—almost indistinguishable from the mud itself—was squashed under Harold Swallow’s knee. Harold held on to one of Frank’s arms, fully extended; Lenny Metz stretched Frank’s other arm. Frank lay belly down with his balls in the heart of the mud puddle, his astonishing bare ass rising up out of the water and submerging again, as Chipper Dove pushed it down with his foot, then let it up, then pushed it down. Chester Pulaski, the blocking back, sat on the backs of Frank’s knees with Frank’s ankles locked under this arms.
“Come on, hump it!” said Chipper Dove to Frank. He pushed down on Frank’s ass and drove him deep into the mud puddle again. The football cleats left little white indentations on Frank’s ass.